On a good day

First published in Column Eight on the 4^th of November, 1992

Dunedin on a good day – what can beat it?

By the time you read this we may be back to dour days again. Let’s  hope not. But even if you read this in the midst of cold day troughs, let’s keep remembering and celebrating the city on one of its father-son sitting together staring at the horizon orange-chocolate-chip icecreams days.

I’m writing this (lacking a laptop, in longhand) while sitting in the TownAce, on the St Clair Esplanade, with the bluest of skies, and the sun spread out like glistening gladwrap from one end of the visible world to the other, sparkling off car mirrors, wristwatches and hair gel, off surfers’ iridescent wetsuits and totem-painted boards.

A sockless-look lover strolls past with his girl, her blonde hair hairdresser-crinkled into such a dishevelled style, she might almost have got out of bed like that. Another couple sit eating hamburgers, knee to knee and playing footsie, all white T-shirts and bleached jeans. Everywhere the sloppy loose-fitting shorts and shirts – the uniform of the surfie and skateboarder alike.

The surround-sound of the sea like music from Taizé, endlessly repeating patterns until the mind slows down to a pulse slower than heartbeats, and chooses to relax, even if only for three-quarters of an hour.

Dogs! Freed from the city restraints, full of excitements, beach-crazy tails barely keeping up with the cantering, side-stepping, sand-covered swerving, the barking, leaping, bound and skidding into the waves. Fur a-dripping, sudden-shaking-splashing over sandwiches, toddlers and towels.

Dogs, lolloping after swooping and screaming seagulls, or barking at bumptious birds balancing one-legged on a post. The seagull pecking order in full force – the most irritable one arching from pole to pole in a series of violin phrase marks, deposing less aggressive brothers like toppling rows of dominoes.

The rubbish tins are unfinished papier-mâché. Old sun-bleached advertisements peel off: Dr Mobile Cycle Service, the Crown Thursday, September 3, ‘not a national joke (hopefully)’ beneath the bearded face of an optimistic local Government candidate.

The barely-walking baby with brand new yellow bucket and matching spade, fearless in his father’s hand until he reaches that great child-eating monster, the sea. All is calm until something white rips around his feet, sneaking in behind, cutting him off, until great green walls rise up, cold, full of Overwhelming (full of playfulness to someone a few inches taller), and intent on sweeping the child out beyond White Island.

Winter-white legs; the only browned skins come from an expensive bottle or from birth.

Grey-haired late-aged lady tourists, wrapped against the slight sea breeze, large black handbags holding tickets, passports, travellers’ cheques, spare hankies (or hotel tissues), motel keys, maps, monies; leaning on the fence in the few brief moments before they’re whisked off again to another breathless night in some unfamiliar place.

Dunedin on a good day, when an umbrella is non persona grata; when raincoats hang mouldy in the hall; when shoes don’t squelch in puddles; when winter woollies sleep heavy in the bottom drawer; when sunglasses, sunhats, suntans are the order of the day; when rhododendrons and motor-mowers make up for lost time; when we remember, for all our island exposure, that we live in the equivalent latitude to Spain; when even old men roll up their sleeves and trouser-legs and go for a sea-paddle, and call to mind a long-forgotten John Milton twist from the long gone radio show, Take It From Here: ‘They also surf who only stand and wade.’

 

St Clair Esplanade, Dunedin

The TownAce was one of those vehicles that, in spite of its durability, our family eventually managed to wear out. The sliding door dropped at least twice in the street and had to be put on again, amongst other mini-disasters.

The line – ‘They also surf who only stand and wade’ is a parody of ‘They also serve who only stand and wait’  which comes from John Milton’s sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spent (also known as ‘On His Blindness’). I say in the Column that this parody turned up on Take It From Here, but I got that wrong. I remember that the words were the punch line to a long-winded story by either Frank Muir or Denis Norden, the sort of story that turned up most weeks on the radio show in which they themselves appeared, rather than being scriptwriters.  However, looking at the format of Take It From Here, there was no place in which such a story would be told, and I’m now sure it appeared on My Word, where Muir and Norden regularly gave a suspect origin to a well-known phrase or quotation.

My line above - the uniform of the surfie and skateboarder alike – reminds me strongly of poem by Les Murray The Dream of Wearing Shorts Forever. In this poem Murray divides shorts up into four kinds, one of them being ‘scunge’, and in the scunge section talks about the kind of loose much-worn clothing of young beach people, and surfers.