More meaning

First published in Column 8 on the 16^th February, 1994 

I wrote last week’s column ahead of time, one of those few occasions when I manage to beat the deadline. For once, it was ready before the same week’s column was even printed.

You may recall I was contemplating the meaning of life – as much as it’s possible within this rectangle.

The day after I finished the column, my mother-in-law died in England. Two days later, on the Friday, my uncle, my only close blood relative on my father’s side, also died in England. Neither of these deaths were exactly unexpected, but they gave a new dimension to the words I’d written.

What those deaths bring home is the fact of how difficult it is to express grief at a distance. When there’s a funeral to attend, and ceremonies to go through, and seldom-seen relatives to meet and hug, the process is a little easier, in the sense that it gives our physical beings something to do.

When the funeral has to be imagined, with all the arrangements taking place out of your hands, and all the family talking and meeting, but not in your presence, the deaths take on an unreal, unbelievable aspect, and have insufficient meaning. Because there seems little point in taking time off, our physical beings are forced to get on with the mundane duties of life, and most of the grief stays below the surface.

Grief’s a strange thing anyway. I was very attached to my grandfather as a child – I lived in his house, along with other assorted relatives. He became ill one sunny Saturday morning after church, sitting awkwardly in the back of the Austin, his face uncustomarily uncheerful.

He went to bed, but later in the morning I found him on his hands and knees in the passageway. ‘It’s all right, sport,’ he said, grinning at the puzzlement on my face.

It wasn’t all right.

He asked, ‘Did I give you a fright?’ as the ambulance took him away. I never saw him again.

Forty years later, returning late one night with my wife from a church get-together, something we’d been talking about triggered off the grief I’d never experienced as a child, and I lay on my bed and cried for my grandfather.

Whether or not we live in an age that’s more difficult in terms of loss and instability than any other, I can’t say. I know that the more friends I lose over the years through shifts [shifting houses and towns], the harder it is to try and make new ones. The more separations and divorces I hear about, the harder it is to feel concern – or to know what to feel anymore. The more sudden deaths I’m hit by, the more I wonder if I haven’t closed off to avoid the pain.

Writers have a terrible tendency to take all aspects of life, including death and loss, and file them away for future reference, in case they’re useful material for some article or story some day.

I haven’t got this on my own. I’m reading a biography of Dorothy L Sayers: again and again she expressed a similar concern. While she behaved appropriately, her feelings often failed to match the external behaviour.

Is this callousness, or just difficult in having the ‘right’ feelings at the right time? We often use the word ‘callous’ to mean people hardened to life.

Calluses on the violinist or guitarist’s fingers come from contact with the strings, from making music. Calluses on the woodworker’s hands come from turning rough wood into smooth bowls or carvings. Hardness becomes part of the very hand itself; a thing necessary to protect the softness underneath.

Perhaps hardness, or some form of indifference on the outside, isn’t always a true indication of what’s going on inside. 

Calluses developing on a guitarist's fingers 

 The grandfather in question was my maternal grandfather. I never knew my paternal one, who not only lived in England but died when I was a toddler.

It turns out that a callus is what you get on your finger, hand etc. Callous - with an 'o' - is an adjective describing what kind of a person you might be. It’s taken me many decades to know this. 

 

 

 

Inconsistencies

First published in Column 8 on the 26^th January, 1994

Dear Bro (on postcard of Cathedral Square),
This year we went to Christchurch for our holidays. We took most of the children. We really enjoyed ourselves. The days of having fun holiday have not passed.
Yours, Mike.

Dear Mike (postcard of Eketahuna garage),
Glad to hear things went better this year. Did I say I enjoyed your list of things you learned in ’93? Learn anything else on holiday?
Big Bro

Dear Bro (on Orana Park stationery),
Learnt about inconsistencies. Learnt not to give up on people – there’s always hope for change. (Not sure if I can relate that to Saddam Hussein or Idi Amind, however.) learnt that people (and spelling) aren’t consistent.

Learnt also that if I’d put money on certain horses one week – I didn’t, Bro, so calm down – I’d have done very well. And if I’d followed the same laid-back ‘system’ the following week, all the nags would have left me broke. (They didn’t, because I only used play money.)

I finally learnt what quinellas and trifectas are, as well as Burlington Berties, Double Carpets and Trixies. I also learnt new meanings for Patent, Yankee and Canadian!

Horses are inconsistent brutes, but it was an interesting holiday exercise, all the same.

Learnt, also, that there’s something very inconsistent about advertising for staff. We’ve known for a while, Bro, that you can’t, e.g., advertise for a male member of staff – you must advertise gender-undefined. But does that stop you taking on a male member of staff anyway, and turning down all the females who’ve wasted their time applying?

The Press told us about a Japanese shop-manager who advertised for a male and was rapped over the knuckles by the HRC. Presumably, she could still have rejected all the females who applied, couldn’t she? What do you think, Bro?
Yours, Mike

Dear Mike (postcard of a different Eketahuna garage)
I don’t know everything, but as sometimes happens, your answer seems to make sense. Why do you ask me questions like these? It’s only January.
Yours, tired already, Bro

Dear Bro (typed on computer paper)
I learnt from the correspondence columns of the Press that no matter how good and sensible and life-saving an item is, some people will always object to using it. Bicycle helmets, for instance. The ‘I’ve been cycling for 40 years and I’ve never had an accident’ approach. You’d think they’d want to encourage those who were only just starting cycling to make it through their own 40 years, wouldn’t you?

And I notice another inconsistency. In the pages of both the Press and the Times, there have been discussions on world population explosions and birth control – especially for those naughty nations where there are people who refuse to practice the latter.

I was interested in the comments of the one correspondent. She said that the most densely populated areas in the world were the most developed and affluent: Holland, for instance. Yet the IPPF’s population control programmes concentrated on Third World countries.

She said, ‘poverty is caused by economic and social factors, as we are discovering in this country,’ not lack of birth control. The Third World represents ‘a threat to the economic monopoly of the developed world, so kill them off through birth and economic regulations.’ What do you reckon, Bro?
Yours, Lil’ Mickey.

Dear Mick (postcard of Taumarunui garage – who knows where my brother lives?)
I reckon you’re getting too serious and heavy for the beginning of the year. Lighten up, brother. Forget the debates – I’m more interested in what you learned on holiday.
Your weary Bro

Dear tossed and turned Bro,
I also learnt 15 different ways to make my column look varied and interesting. Did you notice?

 

Cathedral Square, and its famous cathedral, were wrecked by two major earthquakes less than fifteen years later, in 2010 and 2011.

Burlington Berties, Double Carpets and Trixies are all traditional UK horse racing and sports betting terms:

• Burlington Berties: Slang for odds of 100/30 (or 10/3). The name comes from traditional bookmaker tic-tac rhyming slang, inspired by the famous early 20th-century music hall song Burlington Bertie from Bow.
• Double Carpets: Slang for odds of 33/1. In betting jargon, a "carpet" represents 3/1 odds (derived from the old criminal slang "carpet" meaning a three-month prison sentence). Repeating it as a "double carpet" signifies 33/1.
• Trixies: A type of multiple combination wager consisting of 4 separate bets across three different selections (3 doubles and 1 treble). A punter only needs two of the selections to win to secure a financial return.

 

Questions

First published in Column Eight on the 2^nd February, 1994 

Two things make a trip to the University Bookshop’s upstairs permanent sale worthwhile. First, the array of books that appear to have no market. A book of dedications? A book of bits left out of other books?

Secondly, the way in which customers can discover minor gems, books in the Trivial Pursuit mode.

I came across just such a one in the holidays: Volume 2 of Notes and Queries, a collection of questions and answer from the Guardian’s column in which ‘readers seek enlightenment from each other on an astonishingly broad range of subjects.’

In this book the questions are as intriguing as the answers. And quite contradictory answers arise, as mathematicians and scientists and philosophers each take up their own (unproven) point of view.

A newspaper column probably isn’t the place ask, ‘what is the meaning of life?’ This question perhaps deserves some of the answers it got, including the one that says that asking such a question is about as meaninful as asking what is the meaning of lumbago.

The question ‘Is this a question?’ initiates various obscure answers, including ‘All these cunning answers are actually irrelevant because Shakespeare told us that ‘that is the question’ or ‘This sentence no vere. Who cares. The reader bored. Time to bring subject to a.’

The answer to such questions as ‘Why there are so many Coldharbour lanes,’ or ‘When was the first semi-detached house built, are rather more straightforward, even though the answers vary enormously.

Two answers to one question are in Latin, and three to a question on simplified spelling are in various versions of that spelling, including one that gets increasingly unreadable as the paragraph evolves.

Two novels which avoid the letter ‘e’ (one each in English and French) are discussed, and an unexpected dispute arises over the translation.

And there are answers that are just fun: ‘Is it true that goldfish have a memory span of only five seconds?’ The first answer is utterly complex; the second says, ‘For a fish with a good memory try a piranha. They have a megabyte.’

The inventors of items, or their descendants, answer question – only to  be contradicted by someone else’s descendant. One poet (Julius Lipton), after living in obscurity for 55 years, pops up to explain what has happened to him since his one and only book was published.

The joy of such a column isn’t the fact that you get real answers to real questions – although occasionally you do – but the way in which people’s minds take up the challenge of answering an intriguing question in an entertaining way. ‘How to measure the weight of your hand,’ for example. This may have been a genuine question, but it produces some very suspect answers.

Finally what do you notice about the following poem?

I know a little man both ept and ert,

An intro? Extra? No he’s just a vert.

Shevelled and couth and kempt, pecunious, ane,

His image trudes upon the captive brain.

When life turns sipid and the mind is traught

The spirit soars as I would sist it ought.

Chalantly then, like any gainly goof,

My digent self is sertive, choate, loof.

Or the following sentences? Jump, dogs! Why vex Frizt Blank, QC? or Mr Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx.

After all this, here’s my question. Has anybody seen volume one of Notes and Queries?

 

The word vere most commonly functions as a Latin adverb meaning "really," "truly," "actually," or "correctly", or as a historical name derived from Latin and Old French roots.

It’s interesting that in the last few months (of 2026) the famous (in Dunedin) University Book Shop announced its closure – various matters had evolved to bring it down. There was a great outcry from those who regarded it as a precious resource. And lo and behold, somebody bought it and has kept it open – someone who actually knows how to run a bookshop, as well.

The meaning of lumbago?

First published in Column Eight on the 9^th February, 1994 

In spite of last week’s quote about newspaper columns not being the best place to consider the meaning of life, I’m going to throw 600 words in that direction today.

1994 has already distinguished itself as a year in which to ponder just how fragile we humans are. Floods here and abroad; forest fires threatening to devastate a city outright; earthquakes tossing buildings, cars and people around like leaves in a breeze.

In a year in which Hell is said to have frozen over, I think we’d do well to take some time out to mull over our mortality.

I remember one young fellow I used to work with – he may have grown up in the years since I knew him – who claimed that Hell was the place to go. All his mates would be there, he said, and they could spend eternity partying with no moralistic do-gooders looking over their shoulders.

Personally, I don’t consider Hell, heated or frozen over, to hold much charm, even with the possibility of always doing my own thing. (I find it bad enough in this life coping with the aftermath of doing only what I want.)

A current television ad claims we spend most of lives doing boring things, and have only five and a half unadulterated (by which I think they mean time spent away from adults) months to PAAAAAARTY! My mathematical kids think the admen have miscalculated – or consider life to be very short.

As an adulterated person, however, I believe those five and a half months might be better spent in a bit of contemplation.

Contemplation isn’t in, right now, I realise. In fact, the world around us, particularly for us city folks, is downright against it. We have constant noise from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same. Who could survive with – yuk! – silence.

Consequently, we don’t spend much humble-time sitting and thinking about how insignificant we are – the commercials tell us otherwise, anyway. Neither do we give ourselves much free space to wonder at the fact that each day is a gift, not something belonging to us as a right.

Life is to be lived, we say, and forget the hereafter.

Some years ago the stands collapsed at an overseas football match and hundreds of people were killed or maimed. Not only did it appear ‘live’ on television, but the game carried on. In commenting to a workmate about the callousness of this, he said the rest of the fans would have caused a riot – with worse results than the aftermath of the collapsed stands.

Once upon a time, when someone died, we used to take time out to stop and think. Now we’re hardly any different to those soccer fans: we want to ignore the dead and dying and get on with the game. Distractions on every side pull us away from thinking about anything the here and now.

I include myself in this: Death barely makes a tremor on the surface of my soul, unless it’s someone extremely close to me. Constant exposure to death in the media tends to make me callous. I can turn from death to life in a moment, barely blinking a brain-cell.

But I’ll have to face death for myself one day, sooner or later, suddenly or slowly. And in spite of my Bros’ recent suggestion to ‘lighten up,’ there are times when a bit of reflection in the gloom-room doesn’t go amiss.

Considering the meaning of life is a good deal more interesting than considering the meaning of lumbago – if that’s philosophically possible (anyway, lumbago always sounds like a South American dance to me). And though the year is well on its way, I’m determined to think more about where I’m going in this life, as well as the life beyond.

(Hopefully, however, I haven’t already wasted my ‘five and a half months’ in partying.)

 

Courtesy Manchester Physio

 Nowadays AI has an answer regarding The meaning of lumbago…

The precise capitalized string 'THE MEANING OF LUMBAGO' originates from a specific philosophical analogy popularised by the famous psychotherapist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl in his seminal works on meaning and existence.

While it was written earlier, it became heavily studied and quoted in 1990s university lecture halls, psychology textbooks, and self-help literature.

Frankl used the phrase to explain why you cannot ask a broad, blanket question like "What is the meaning of life?" He argued that life's meaning is highly specific to the individual and their current situation, using this exact logic:

Asking for a general "meaning of life" makes as little sense as asking a chess champion, "What is the best chess move in the world?" It depends entirely on the game situation. It is just like asking a doctor, "What is the meaning of lumbago?"

 [What is the meaning of life? – Antonio Gallo, quoted on Goodreads.

I believe all men ask themselves, at least once in their lifetime, this question. I remember, once I asked this question to someone during a lecture: I was answered that “life is a sexually transmitted condition with a 100 per cent mortality rate”. What we do know for certain is that “we were not once, we are now, and we will not be again”. Life is not a linguistic term and hence has no meaning. Just as if I asked “what is the meaning of lumbago”. At this point, you might as well ask me “Why are you putting this question?”. To be frank, I don’t know. I forgot to ask my parents …

 The Joke / Logic Behind It [AI likes to explain jokes, even though I'm not it/he/she understands them]

In medical terms, "lumbago" isn't a complex, profound disease with a hidden purpose—it literally just means lower back pain. Therefore, asking for the "deep philosophical meaning" of a standard muscle ache is inherently absurd. Frankl used it as a humorous, dry reality check to show that people look for abstract cosmic answers to life when they should be focusing on the practical, specific reality right in front of them.

 

A few questions

First published in Column 8 on the 8th December, 1993

Poetry – what is it? Who needs it? Does it mean anything? Has it any Economic Value?

Since I came across the poetry of a minor American poet, Billy Collins, a couple of months ago, I’ve begun to explore other people’s poetry again, after a poetryless patch. (Billy Collins is so ‘minor’ I can’t even get any of his four books in New Zealand libraries, and so far I’ve tracked down only seven of his poems – and a fragment.)

Poetry: often little more than a few words on an otherwise white page; sometimes so obscure in meaning that the thought behind the words has to be teased out line by line – if it can be found at all. Sometimes running on for page after page, like an eleven-course meal, yet capable of lifting you onto another plateau.

Poetry is magnificent and wondrous – and banal – from the doggerel-dinosaur type to the highly refined and processed. But why do poets write something that isn’t prose? (Apart from ‘prose poems.’) Why do some men and women spend their lives producing a handful of jottings – barely enough to fill a book – when others are so prolific their work becomes almost impossible to collate?

Why should we feel awe at being in touch with a poet? Aren’t they human?

When I was in London, a close friend dragged me into a bookshop one day, found the poetry section, opened up a book with poems by John Heath-Stubbs, and making enough noise to awaken the other customers, showed me that one of the poems was dedicated to  her. Twenty precisely organised lines.

When I was a postie, my colleagues pointed to the tall, skinny fellow in the next bay. ‘Ian Wedde.’ So? ‘He’s a poet.’ Wow! Shivers ran down my spine. This was what a poet looked like.

Not necessarily. At the funeral of a distant cousin: hair and beard long and unkempt, wild-eyed, on the periphery of the crowd, a different sort of person. ‘Jimmy Baxter,’ someone mumbles. ‘Look at the state he’s in.’

All this name-dropping tells us nothing about poetry, except perhaps that we attach some mystique to the poets. Some poets are normal people, some are crazy. Whatever, they’re all born with an urge to write in this peculiar fashion. Few poets produce prose.

Can poetry be taught? Robert Bly, the American poet, doesn’t think so. For him, life is the best teacher; the kind of life that’s dedicated to searching the soul for depths most of us don’t bother to plummet.

His mode of teaching would be to send students out in the woods for six months, each one alone, each having to build their own shelter and find their own food. And after that six months they might be ready to think about putting words on paper. Is he serious?

Billy Collins, in Advice to Writers, with the same tongue-in-cheek seriousness, says:

Even if it keeps you up all night, wash down the walls and scrub the floor of your study before composing a syllable.’

Do those fragments of writing on a page really have to be worked at, or can they be jotted down almost in the time it takes to read them? Yes and no. Some poems arrive full-blown in their creator’s minds. Others take years to write, and still the poet isn’t satisfied.

I enjoy taking words at random out of the dictionary, or random sentences from magazines or books, and trying to turn them into poetry. Some take on a life of their own.

‘The jobless momentum makes paupers of thugs,’ or ‘My advice to the bloated is to crackdown on diamonds.’

It’s an enjoyable way to play with words. Is it poetry, or merely a collage? Is poetry more than words anyway?

Why write poetry? Still less, why read it?

Why sing songs? Why have children?

 

Billy Collins, courtesy of the New York Times

Billy Collins was perhaps only minor in New Zealand in 1993. By 2001 he’d been nominated U S Poet Laureate and has since received a large number of awards. In 1993 there were only four books of poetry by him available, now in 2026 there are something like twenty, and I’m missing several from my collection. He remains one of my favourite poets, and plainly is a favourite poet of a vast number of people. 

In addition to the line quoted above about washing the walls etc, Collins gives this ‘response’ to an unnamed questioner about how he goes about writing poetry, in a poem named ‘Purity.’ It always has to be remembered that Collins tends greatly to the tongue-in-cheek…

 

My favourite time to write is in the late afternoon, 

weekdays, particularly Wednesdays.

This is how I go about it:

I take a fresh pot of tea into my study and close the door.

Then I remove my clothes and leave them in a pile

as if I had melted to death and my legacy consisted of only

a white shirt, a pair of pants and a pot of cold tea.

 

 

 

A most ingenious paradox

First published in Column 8 on the 1^st December, 1993

I hope you’re sitting while you read the next sentence. Let me say, Thank God for New Zealand politics (if you weren’t sitting down, you must be now.)

An article in the ODT last week attempted to unravel the so-called Italian paradox. What paradox? As far as I could make out, the paradox is that Italian politics and Italian life in general, thrive on corruption. To quote Professor Franco Ferrarotti, holder of Italy’s first academic chair in sociology, ‘Corruption is of the essence of being a politician.’

Professor Ferrarotti has been living in the hot Mediterranean sun too long, methinks. He considers telling lies is an expedient. Stealing, he says, is not a serious offence, especially if you do it with dexterity. Corruption, as long as you don’t physically hurt anyone, is considered a fine art.

Now do you see why New Zealand seems like a sweet place to live, in spite of Jim and Ruth and Mike and Bill and Jenny?

The professor is one of the founders of modern sociological studies in Italy, and it might be thought he’s merely observing his countrymen’s habits. He doesn’t, however, seem to see much wrong with the way they behave.

Professor Ferrarotti makes more paradoxical statements further on (if paradoxical is really the right word), when he talks about the Catholic Church, an institution he apparently regards as belonging to Italy alone.

Having been brought up as a Catholic, I may have slightly more knowledge about this corner of Christianity than some.

The eminent professor claims that confession is merely an institution wherein people confess only in order to go out and sin again. He calls it a ‘virtuous cycle of vice,’ whatever that clever-sounding phrase may mean. (It might join my collection of all-purpose modern phrases such as ‘orchestrated litany of lies’ and ‘mother of all whatever-you-wish.’)

He also claims confession is a Mediterranean institution, which outsiders cannot understand. I think Prof F’s sociology lacks breadth. Mediterranean confession may be a little difficult to grasp, but confession is as broadspread as the Catholic Church (which in spite of its ‘Roman’ adjective, is only Roman in Rome).

He says repentance doesn’t mean you won’t sin again. It’s curious that the first Christians were hot on it meaning just that. They certainly never saw it as a means to cover up your sins for a few moments before you went out and acted as wickedly as before.

According to the Prof, only Italy is able to talk negatively about itself as a country. ‘Insecure nationalities cannot afford the luxury of self-criticism.’

Our Kiwi-clobbering machine, then, ought to make New Zealand a very secure place.

Perhaps the truth lies closer to the fact that following Ferrarotti’s view, Italy appears to be unable to control its destiny, unable to deal with the wickedness inherent in its daily life, and unable to appreciate how the rest of the world see it: a nation bankrupt politically, and perhaps morally.

There is nothing worse than a nation which in its arrogance claims to know itself better than anyone else. France takes that stance, apparently unable to see how oafish and boorish its behaviour is within the world community. Robbie Burns’ phrase about seeing ourselves as others see us, seems more than appropriate.

I’m not against Italy or Italians. I spent my honeymoon in Rome, and stayed there briefly on another occasion. I enjoyed the place, the history, the people (but not the lack of public toilets). However, New Zealand’s lack of corruption, aversion to lies and stealing makes it look the more pleasant of the two countries.

If Prof F’s views are true, heaven help the Italians – it will take more than a Mediterranean-coloured confession to change their ways.

Photo courtesy of Carlo Bordoni

 

Silly reason?

First published in Column 8 on the 15^th December, 1993

I know Christmas is sometimes called (most aptly) the ‘silly season,’ but some communities go more for the ‘silly reason.’ I’ve probably mentioned the following episode in my column previously, so bear with me being repetitive in my old age.

When my youngest was still at kindergarten, I asked the head teacher why the children weren’t singing Christmas carols during the days before Christmas. She said they couldn’t do that because it would offend those for whom Christmas had no special significance.

The minority rules, okay? Never mind that carols at Christmas, and Christmas itself, are woven into the web of our culture, whether you have any Christian association or not.

Now I see that the wise and respected burghers of Birmingham, in England, have gone the same way. They’ve banned the symbols of Christmas from their street lighting. I could see why some anti-Christian people might throw out Christian symbols, but in Birmingham even Santa Claus (who in his present guise is far more the symbol of commercialism than Christmas) has been given the push.

All in the name of ‘acknowledging’ the other communities. All in the name of tolerance, no doubt. All in the name of political correctness – gone overboard.

Birmingham’s festive lighting can now be seen as anything and everything: celebrating the Hindu and Sikh winter festivals, the Jewish Chanukah and the Chinese and Vietnamese New Year. I think it’s barmy.

Minority cultures expect us to accept their ways – when we’re under their roofs, or within their compounds. We’re not allowed to do certain things because of their protocol. Fair enough. But when the majority says it’s going to deny its own culture, I begin to wonder if it has thought the matter through.

I don’t personally think that Hindus or Sikhs or Jews or Asians are going to care two hoots about what the culture within which they have made their homes does. In fact, my feeling, if I were part of such a minority, would be puzzlement as to why that majority culture wished to deny its own heritage.

That was my argument with the kindy teacher several years ago: why should my children be taught all about someone else’s culture when their own was being suppressed? It doesn’t make sense. Our discussion was at the time when certain parties in the land were claiming that the white majority has no culture – a piece of rubbish that even Christmas goodwill finds hard to countenance.

Enough of grizzling at PC nonsense. Let’s look at something more positive.

People in Paeroa are hoping to become New Zealand’s ‘Christmas Town.’  They’ve been holding an exhibition and festival right through December.

Among the displays is a 90-minute tour of Christmases past and present, an art exhibition, a country music competition, an international food fair, a ‘third world’ café, and a multimedia drama about New Zealand’s first Christmas.

The business people and retailers have offered overwhelming support and about 400 people in the community are expected to be involved. Good on them for going all out for a celebration that can encompass real joy if we’ll allow it.

I don’t see any point in pulling back from the celebration of Christmas, whether you believe I the reasons why we celebrate it or not. Whatever we do, don’t let’s be wimpy like the Brums – let’s be like the people from Paeroa and go all out for it.

Part of Birmingham Christmas Market in the mid-2020s

It’s chilling to read again that as long ago as some time in the mid-eighties there were people already playing the Woke card; our own heritage and customs were being pushed out by the so-called offence to people who didn’t happen to believe in them. Now in 2026 this has taken on the cloak of a huge industry, and anything that’s connected to our British and European heritage is in danger of being wiped out by people who were not only born into this heritage, but who benefit from it.

Not remembering the Birmingham incident after all these years I thought I’d check up on it. Here’s Google’s AI take on it.

The claim that Birmingham City Council banned Christmas decorations and Santa Claus from its streets in 1993 is a longstanding myth.

The rumour stems from a real media controversy that took place that year, but the details were heavily distorted by local press:

·         The Reality of the Lights: In November 1993, Birmingham City Council installed festive street lights along New Street. The contemporary, abstract design of the lights had been unanimously approved by a cross-party committee of councillors and local trade representatives.

·         The Media Backlash: The Birmingham Post ran an editorial criticizing the design because it did not explicitly depict traditional images like Santa Claus, reindeer, fairies, wise men, or angels. The paper accused the council of an "outbreak of political correctness" and deliberately downgrading the Christian significance of the holiday.

·         The Council's Position: The council never passed any ban on Christmas decorations or Santa Claus. UK Parliament records from the time show that MPs even raised an Early Day Motion defending the council, labelling the newspaper's reports as "anti-Labour fantasies" and "press misrepresentation".

·         This 1993 dispute laid the groundwork for the much larger, internationally famous "Winterval" myth in 1997 and 1998, when a generic marketing banner used by Birmingham to promote 41 days of diverse winter events (including Christmas markets and Diwali) was widely—and incorrectly—reported by national media as an official attempt to rename or "ban" Christmas.

I haven’t disputed AI’s take on this – though it would be interesting to see if it would rethink its information – but when you read Michael Chubb’s comments on his Winterval, it seems to me he’s still defending the actions of this council after many years. Why Parliament got in on the story is a bit of a mystery. It really had nothing to do with them; it was the newspapers who spread most of the controversy, and apparently continue to do so after all these years.

Paeroa continues its now longstanding Christmas Show. I’d be interested to know if its drama about the First NZ Christmas was still part of it…

What I learned in 1993

First published in Column 8 on the 22^nd December, 1993. I must have had a bit of a year in 1993: this should have come across as witty, but it verges on the vitriolic.

I learned what a homie is (though I am still not sure if I’ve got the spelling right, or if, in fact, anyone knows). Homies like to wear super-baggy jeans, slung so low round the hips they threaten to slide down to their ankles. They hide their torsos in tent-like tops.

They often have undercuts – another word added to my vocab this year. This means they cut their hair stubble short (often at ‘number one’ on the blades), underneath longer hair. This may be kept hidden – in which case it is only the fact that you have done it that’s important – or the longer hair may be tied up, making the scalp look as though the barber had a sudden seizure.

I learned that homies invade families indiscriminately, rather like stray cats or scabies.

I learned, yet again, that statistics are extremely flexible. It all depends on who is using them. Thus one group can claim that men are almost entirely to blame for violence in the home, while another says statistics show women to be the major offenders – 53% in fact. And that women caused death in nearly 56% of the cases.

That’s an interesting statistic for Suffrage Year.

I learned you can utterly forget that you have been sexually abused as a child, but that certain therapies can help you remember.

I learned also that some therapists can help you remember things that never actually happened, and if you are clever, you can make a lot of money out of remembering – you will need to, to pay your even cleverer therapist.

I learned that other people deny this.

I learned that women in power are no different to men in power, and that there is barely any difference between politicians and poets – both have to be somewhat crazy.

I have also learned that politics is about ambition: it has little to do with integrity, wisdom or servanthood. It has a lot to do with back-stabbing, sudden demotions, and revenge. And that’s New Zealand politics I’m talking about, not Italian.

I learned that I was wise to wear a beard for 22 years: it conveniently hid the ageing of my face. For one beardless week I felt like either Jekyll or Hyde – I’m not sure which.

I learned also that there is a very strong cultural bias against beards: sadly many of the male population have succumbed to the lie that men are better-looking without their beards. (Well, we’ll all have beards in heaven!)

I learned to smile at the frazzled parents of little children when the latter were wrecking things, or carting their baby sisters down the stairs. I now know that being a parent in those years is a delight by comparison with being a parent of a teenager – let alone of four. Teenagers are no different to preschoolers – they’re just bigger.

I have yet to learn whether there is any truth in the theory that children in their twenties are almost human.

I learned that people are just as interested in what I don’t want to write about, as in what I do. In fact, I debated detailing today all the subjects I would not write about in 1994, but I wasn’t sure if I could hold to such a resolution.

I’ve learned that in spite of all the commercialism of Christmas, in spite of the people in our community who would have us wipe Christmas off the calendar – and its message off the map – in spite of Santa Claus proliferating like the flowers that bloom in the Spring (tra la), in spite of the pressures of holidays and presents and even the violence that surfaces so readily at this stressful time of the year, Christ and Christmas do not go away.

Their truth remains, focused in the birth of a child who changed not only the course of history, but is still capable of changing the hears of men and women.

I’ve learned that when nearly everything else around is changing, a few things do not.

Three young men dressed in their homie best

I noticed when retyping this some thirty years later that a subeditor appears to have changed all my contractions to fully written out words, something I was unlikely to be doing after three years of writing the Column. It’s nice to be able to put all the contractions back in again.

I’m not sure why I claim poets are necessarily crazy. Certainly there have been crazy poets – you may even know one or two – but by contrast with politicians they are people of great sanity. Although Rimbaud and Verlaine notoriously had knife ‘fights’ and Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the wrist with a pistol once. Apparently Ben Jonson fatally stabbed an actor in a duel – I’m not sure if this counts…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t want to!

First published in Column 8 on the 17^th November, 1993

Having avoided writing about politics during the election run-up (apart from my recommendation of MMP, a piece of advice most voters in my electorate signally ignored), I still don’t want to write about politics. Politics, and politicians, we’ve had quite enough of.

And I don’t want to write about dinosaurs, even though I allowed myself to be persuaded to visit the mechanical monsters at the museum. The mechanics and the marketing – and the sound effects – were marvellous, but I don’t want to write about dinosaurs. They’ve had enough media attention to last several billion years.

And I don’t want to write about unemployment, even though the French contemplate cutting back everyone’s hours and wages in order to give unemployed people jobs, and even though the English politicians are finally admitting that there is a correlation between crime and unemployment, a fact that our politicians have so far been unable to perceive. Blast, I’m writing about politicians. They’re insidious, and creep in wherever you don’t want them.

I don’t want to write about employment either, even though some gentleman with the memorable name of Mex Bouzaid has managed to create employment in Queenstown – yes folks, the word was ‘create.’ He seems to be beating the Employment Service at their own game.

And I don’t want to write about recycling either, even though we’re told we don’t do enough of it, and when we do, we have to pay to get rid of it, and when we’ve got rid of it no one wants it.

I don’t want to write about the fact that the community is constantly blamed for not recycling enough, when no local authority wants to set up anything that will actually use what we recycle.

And I don’t want to write about the arguments over whether cloth nappies or disposable nappies are better for the environment, because that would be writing about the environment, and I don’t want to write about that either.

I don’t want to write about whether it’s better to use more trees to make disposable nappies that can’t really be disposed of, or whether it’s better to use more water to wash away the poo and the chemicals that clean the poo out of the cloth nappies. I just don’t want to write about such Karitane-yellow matters.

And I certainly don’t want to write about crime and the way criminals make more money out of ACC than non-criminals – because I don’t want to write about ACC either: that would mean I’d have to write about politicians, and as I said…

Nor do I want to write about people being attacked for no more reason that that the exist, because as soon as I start writing about crime I’d be writing about unemployment and politicians – see what happens?

And I don’t want to write about Suffragette Year because it’s politically (!) incorrect for a man to write about women. We mere males cannot possibly understand the complexities of what it is to be female.

I’m looking forward to All Male Year, and suggest we start aside our dollars now to fund it, because I doubt if there’ll be any government subsidies going.

And I don’t want to write about sex, or Aids, or condoms or abortion or homosexuality, because then I’d be moralising, and since the present trend of the world is to believe that morals and feelings and doing your own thing are all pretty much the same, I’d probably be wasting my time.

And I most definitely don’t want to write about film stars, because they get constant attention, while nobodies live and die – and get maybe a centimetre of news space.

And I most definitely don’t want to write about myself. When I write about matters on which I have opinions - my wife says that means opinionated – the world ignores it.

On the other hand, when I write about my beard, or buying clothes, or bringing up kids, everyone and her sister comments on it.

Anyway, is there anything interesting about me which I haven’t already written?

Courtesy of A Great Dream Language School

Karitane-yellow was a joke name in our house for the poo on a nappy, which we saw a good deal of over several years of having five children.

Much more positive

First published in Column 8 on the 27^th October, 1993 

In spite of the strong urgings of the recent Otago Daily Times editorial, I’m going to vote for MMP. [Mixed Member Proportional]

I’ve read several views on the referendum. I’m probably more fortunate, in fact, than many voters who’ve found the argufying back and forth painfully difficult to understand, and who’ve all but given up trying. (Fortunate in the sense that reading is something I enjoy, even when the subject is politics.)

What’s been offered to television-viewing voters who read little? Fatuous Government ads which explain nothing. Tedious to watch, they turn people off in microseconds. I suspect the aloofness of politicians keeps them out of touch with people and they think we’re all nincompoops.

The same actors appear in equally expensive newspaper ads, listing the so-called facts, but offering little in the way of guidelines or help to the confused. (Did they deliberately set out to find actors who would look dumb and bewildered?)

The Times said: Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t – hardly a complement to the present incumbents – and added that this referendum was the ‘most important constitutional event since women were given the vote.’

I don’t agree that this referendum is an equally important constitutional events. The women’s vote changed this country’s history, for a much more important reason than a political one. For the first time men had to think about the way they regarded women. (And still have to.) This referendum is hardly going to change anything as important as that.

FPP [First Past the Post] has the support of big business. That alone should make us suspicious (!) Big business in New Zealand has hardly been the champion of people’s rights. When Mr Bolger called businessmen ‘heroes,’ as though they were somehow saviours of the nation, I woke laughing in the night. Big business profits aren’t ploughed back into the country, at least not into the part of the country that needs it.

Then there’s Shirtcliffe and Co, with their almighty resources. It makes you wonder what motive these pro-FPP bods have in spending so highly on campaigning for the status quo.

I’ve read two major pro-MMP articles. Both were honest enough to say that MMP won’t cure all our ills. They didn’t say politicians would somehow mature overnight, becoming capable of achieving worthwhile tasks. They did remind us that politicians mostly resist the thought of change.

They didn’t say MMP works well everywhere, though it works very well in some places.

What they did say was that FPP isn’t fair. They pointed out that for the majority of voters, FPP wasted your vote. As David McLoughlin says in an article entitled Don’t Blow the Chance of Real Reform: ‘…every NZ Government since 1951 has won a majority of seats in Parliament with a minority of votes.’ Crazy.

Dunedinites, of all voters, must be fed up being represented by Opposition members time after time. Isn’t that a result of FPP?

I’m going to vote MMP, and I hope most other people do too. It would send a strong signal to the politicians of this country, these privileged humans who notoriously ignore the rank and file who elect them.

I’d fed up with feeling that I don’t even have half a say in how this country is run. If MMP did nothing else but remind politicians that they’re the servants of the people, not their dictators, I’d be pleased.

Maybe then my tiny two-pronged vote might count for something more than a pencil tick on a page.

This curious advertisement appeared around the time of the referendum. 

MMP remains contentious thirty years later. One of its curiosities is that it allows unelected members to get into Parliament by being on a ‘list.’ The list is connected to a convoluted system that relates to how many electorate seats are won (or are not won) as against how many…well, it’s too complicated to explain here, so better to read this explanation, because after all this time I’m still not sure I understand it.

This compilation from 1996, after the first election under MMP, gives some of the views of people who voted or didn’t vote for the referendum, plus some animated explanations from Footrot Flats characters.

While MMP allows smaller parties to get a chance at being in Government, it also led to the appalling situation created by Winston Peters three terms ago, when he decided, after days of keeping the country waiting, that he would side with Jacinda and the Labour Party, even though National was ahead. This meant we got a coalition party governing us who turned out to be one of the worst in the country’s history. For many people it felt as though MMP made a mockery of their votes by allowing a coalition decided purely on the basis on one man’s say so.

Self-help books

First published in Column Eight on the 20^th October, 1993 

When I read those self-help How-To books something curious happens. I agree all along the line with what the author says, but as for doing something about the problem, a lazy streak takes over and mumbles, ‘Some other time.’

Only some How-To books, of course, demand a change in our lifestyle or character. The majority are in the How To Boil an Egg, or How To Repair Electrical Fuses and Flexible Cords Safely, mode.

NZ Books in Print shows only 24 titles starting with How To. But the Public Library’s computer lists some 4000! Plainly there’s a great deal of interest in teaching yourself How To Do Something – or at least a great deal of recognition by publishers that How To titles sell.

The variety is cosmic. How To Be a Space Scientist in Your Own Home, or How To Colonize. How To Abandon Ship, How To Be an Alien, and (really useful), How To Count Like a Martian. If physicists continue to redefine time and space and tell us that someday we’ll start going backwards, it may be useful to read How To Avoid the Future. 

As a male I can learn How To Be a Real Man, or a Family Man, or a Gifted Parent, or How To Be a King, or How To Be Popular with My Pet. (For people with dogs, that should be How To Be Pupular.)

A modern woman can read How To Be an Assertive, Not Aggressive, Woman: a total guide to self-assertiveness in life, in love and on the job. Or else she can learn How To Be Chic, Fabulous and Live Forever.

On the other hand she, or her husband, can learn How To Clean Everything (a book I think would have a very short life in all but the most particular households). It may be better to read How To Decorate a Dump.

While we’re on domesticity, we can learn How To Cook a Wolf – useful if we’re travelling in North America – or How To Deep-Freeze a Mammoth (something we may need if Nobel prizewinning scientists continue to produce genetic material from dead insects.) It may then be useful to read How To Tell a Proton From a Crouton.

Gardeners, you can learn How To Enjoy Your Weeds, How To Make a Cloud, a Holepunch (to make rain in the aforesaid clouds, no doubt), or How To Make Snop Snappers and other fine things.

Motorists, you can learn How To Be a Motorist (!), How To Avoid Automobile Accidents, and even How To Get Off Speeding Tickets.

In case someone has borrowed that book first, you may have to read How To Hold Up a Bank, or alternatively, How To Rob a Bank Without Violence.

After that it may be worth reading How To Survive Your Life, or if that’s not so difficult, How To Survive Christmas. At the worst, try How To Eat a Hotdog on the Main St of Thames.

If reading itself is a problem, you can tackle How To Read a Book. And if that’s approaching the matter too broadly, try How To Read a Page (if the worst comes to the worst, and neither of these is where you need to begin, there’s always How To See.)

The scope is enormous: I can learn How To Juggle, How To Spy, How To Be Poor, How To Conquer (it seems a bit late for that), or How To Banish Cellulite Forever. I can even learn How To Be a Pom, which should be useful with my in-laws.

Do you like to look on the negative side of life? Read How To Make Yourself Miserable for the Rest of the Century.

And if all this learning is too much for you, try How To Do Nothing with Nobody All By Yourself.

One of the many covers of this obviously popular book. 

Coming back to this column in 2026, I was interested to find that a number of these books were still in print, and those that weren’t were at least visible and described on sites like Goodreads, where they’re still read. A number of the titles, of course, are of books for kids, containing imaginative and playful ideas.  

One book, How to Enjoy Your Weeds, which took me a bit of tracking down, is out of print. But in light of the fact that this year, in our garden, we’ve spent an inordinate amount of time pulling out weeds (the excess weeds due to more rain than usual, I think), I could do with reading it. I might find something more useful to do with them than disposing of them. I’ve tried storing them in closed bins, but the stink is high when they’re released, and I’m still not sure they’re great for my compost. We’ve shaken the life out of them in order to retain the soil that clings to them, and we left them in large bags to be collected by the Garden Waste people. But still I cling to the idea that they must be good for something, since God made so many of them!  

Whoops!

First published in Column 8 on the 13^th October, 1993

Whoops! My column last week brought two phone calls about two different matters, both of which proved that I don’t know everything. Yet again. Naturally, I’ve since spent several sleepless nights evaluating my worth as a human being.

There was a third whoops (!) regarding an earlier column. In that one I said that the small Canadian town of Chemainus had only 32 murals. In fact, it now has 40. The brochure my wife brought home is the first edition, available at a more reasonable price only because it’s out of date.

To get back to the other two whoopses (!) Last week I talked about the success of Business Grow in Christchurch, wondering why Dunedin hadn’t picked up on the idea. Two days later Business Grow was launched in Dunedin! No credit to me, of course, since the first I heard about it was when the co-ordinator, Lynne Harrison, rang to tell me, but marvellous serendipity all the same.

I’m glad we’ve got in on the act, and hope Business Grow a la Dunedin is a soaring success.

My other phone call was from a European New Zealander. (That police word for Europeans, ‘Caucasian,’ gets up my nose.) He told me that October 10 (the day I thought there was little point in keeping in the calendar), had actually been a day of considerable importance in the history of the New Zealand Chinese community.

The Chinese called the day the Double Tenth, and always had a holiday on it until a couple of decades ago. The anniversary began with the dethroning of the last Chinese Emperor in 1911, when China became a republic.

New Zealand Chinese celebrated the day by shutting up shop completely, and holding a memorial service. Chinese children took the day off school, much to the envy of their European counterparts, and all the Chinese families went on a picnic at which sports and games were played.

One Chinese lady I spoke to said her family always had their portrait taken on that day, in the morning, before going off to Logan Park for the picnic.

By the 1950s the sporting side had become the major emphasis, according to Ng Bickleen Fong, the author of The Chinese in New Zealand and the sense of fellowship was being lost. The sporting aspect became a national affair; travel to the tournament was paid for by the Chinese Association.

In due course the Chinese people shifted the tournament to the Easter break so that more time could be spent at it.

The Double Tenth itself was stopped in 1972, write Dianne and Peter Beatson (in their book Chinese New Zealanders), because our Government decided to recognise the Communist Government in China. However, some Chinese still remember the day with a nostalgic warmth, though they celebrate it in a rather quieter way.

A similar commemoration takes place on November 18, but since it is a very much smaller ethnic group in New Zealand, the Latvians, most of us Europeans won’t have heard of it.

I’ve only ever known two Latvian New Zealanders, one of whom was the wonderful Lily Latisheva, an artistic and operatic lady of considerable presence. Her talents were rather unappreciated in her adopted town. (The other Latvian, conveniently, is married to my Chinese consultant.)

November 18, anyway, was when Latvia won her independence after World War I. Being squashed between other large hungry nations, she lost it again – until the recent demise of the Soviet Union.

Unearthing all these matters hitherto hidden to me makes it worthwhile writing a whoops (!) or two.

Puyi, the last Emperor of China

In 1996 I met Lynne Harrison. She came to the shop I was running to give us some advice on how to use Business Grow, which she was still involved with. I made mention of this in my diary at the time, but had forgotten about it until I checked for any references to ‘Business Grow’ in my own business life.

The full title of Ng Bickleen Fong’s book is Chinese in New Zealand – a study in assimilation.

 

Creating jobs?

First published in Column Eight on the 6^th October, 1993

The third anniversary of my first Midweek column comes midway between today and next Wednesday, on October 10. I could say this gives October 10 something to be proud of each year, but with due modesty, I won’t.

October 10 doesn’t seem to be a day on which other things of great note have happened, though it was the day Liz Taylor and Richard Burton got married for the second time – somewhere in Botswana. Emmeline Pankhurst formed the Women’s Social and Political Union on this day, and a British QC called Igor Judge rose to the High Court and became, confusingly, Mr Justice Judge.

Fascinating stuff, huh? At least the Pankhurst item has some topical relevancy.

Three years of finding column ideas have included hair-tearing when the Sunday evening clock is ticking on towards bedtime and I still haven’t written anything. On other occasions someone has spoken no more than a sentence and ideas have tumbled out too fast to keep up with.

The bit of the brain that produces ideas is a fairly enigmatic corner. It constantly cries, ‘Need more input!’ But having received aforesaid input, it’s just as likely to ditch the lot into some miscellaneous brain bin and inquire why you haven’t fed it today.

Thus, while feeding my brain from my 1988 collection of clippings, I came across a couple of items related to job creation ideas, both of which came from (good grief) Christchurch.

I hear on the news that Canterbury is now the fastest growing area for job creation in the country. Business Grow, the scheme which uses a business adviser to link businesses with a wide range of assistance to help them with expansion, began there. Four hundred have come out of this idea alone. (Has Dunedin begun Business Grow yet?)

Back to the 1988 clippings. On October 12 that year James Maddren, a Christchurch businessman, suggested to the South Island Local Bodies Association that they consider selective immigration to the South Island (like about a million people), to increase our population base and improve our economy. (A new job is supposed to be created for every five new people.)

The association’s executive committee was to investigate the proposal. I guess it did, but I haven’t seen droves of skilled immigrants arriving. Did the Government scotch the idea with its usual anti-immigration approach?

In another clipping a Christchurch law tutor named Owen Dennis ran an ideas seminar in Dunedin for the NZ Institute of Management. What he presented wasn’t new, but the first paragraph of the report reads, ‘Here’s a great idea: start an ideas competition to generate jobs and activity in Dunedin.’

I can’t remember anyone taking this up, although not being the most organised collector of detail, I may easily have missed it. Has anybody tried an ideas competition here in town?

We could do with an ongoing ideas presentation on a public basis, perhaps as a weekly column in one of the newspapers. A list of all sorts of ideas might well stimulate local brains dulled by too much occupation with incomes and outgoings.

The bright, witty, foolish and downright silly ideas would all need to have a home in such a list, because even though a particular idea may have no merit, it may spark off something really useful. They’d need to be ideas, though, not just criticism of the status quo.

Thomas Edison is said to have a goal of coming up with a minor invention every ten days and a major one every six months. He was one man. What might a similar city-wide goal in the job creation area achieve? And if Christchurch can do it, anyone can…I mean, can’t we?

 

Justice Igor Judge, courtesy of the BBC

As things do over 36 or so years, there have been some changes. I don’t know that the ideas idea has ever taken off, but immigration has, at least as far as the North Island is concerned. And Christchurch is a sprawling city nothing like its former self. So maybe the ideas idea worked well there.