Blogger, boohai and Puhoi

It's taking a bit of time getting used to Blogger's new format. There are some things I like about it, but as so often with these sorts of changes, things that are most useful get hidden out of the way and take some finding. Such as the way to create a new post. You'll look in vain at the top of the posts page for any indication that you can ever create another post, and then out of the corner of your eye, in the far distant bottom right corner is a plus inside a circle. That's the thing to click on if you want to start something fresh.

It's a bit like telling a friend when they're coming to visit. 'You'll find the back door somewhere round the back,' and leaving them to discover that the back door isn't actually at the back, but out of sight around the side of the house that no visitor would ever make their way to.

We stayed at my cousin's house recently while she was away somewhere else. The back door led off the drive where you parked your car (and was one of those that didn't open normally, but required you to pull it towards you in order to get the lock to work). So it was effectively the front door. 

To reach the actual front door, however, you had to go through a side gate in front of the front side of the house, turn a corner, and only then discover that the front door was well and truly hidden in a very private garden. 

But that's not what I intended to write about today. 

I found myself using the expression ‘It’s up the boohai’ this morning when answering my daughter. It's not something I say often, but it’s a handy way of inferring that something’s completely in a muddle. In this case that the local Council's Dog Registration system seems to have got itself thoroughly discombobulated as a result of Lockdown. 

The implication that something's gone haywire is the way I’ve always used it, and I think it was how my mother used it as well. We’re not alone in doing so: here's Sam Young citing someone who claims that the dictionary definition of being lost or astray isn't the one he's used to:

I recall that my Dad sometimes used the expression "Up the Boohai" to describe poor reasoning or irrational behaviour. He was a WW I vet and he told me that the term was used by the troops to describe some of the officers' decisions, as in "These are the orders but they're all up the boohai." 

Some online dictionaries only give the definition of lost for good, or gone astray. 'Up the Puhoi’ was supposedly the original phrase. Puhoi is a village on the Puhoi River, north of Auckland, where Bohemian immigrants apparently settled. Why you'd get more lost in Puhoi than other places is a bit of a mystery. 

Photo courtesy of HelloAuckland.co.nz

Nearly there

I'm almost finished re-reading A House for Mr Biswas, which in a post a while ago I said I much preferred to Naipaul's later book, A Bend in the River. My memory of Mr Biswas was that it was often funny and gave an insight into a society that I knew nothing about. I'd forgotten how dark it actually is, if, in fact, I actually noticed this the first time round.

Mr Biswas is something of a loser, yet he retains his integrity throughout - although it's a rather suspect integrity, in the sense that it consists of a low-level rebellion against his wife and her family almost from the day he suggests she might marry him. It's only this rebellion that sustains him - and his awful sense of humour (which is appreciated by no one else). He has faults galore: he allows the Tulsi family (his in-laws) to overtake his life almost completely, he's at odds with most of the other male characters in the book and consequently has no real friends, he is careless about his children while they're under the 'care' of the Tulsi tribe, and he has no real practical sense about anything.

On the other hand, he's better read than many of the other characters, he's able to maintain a position as a reporter in a newspaper for many years, he builds two houses before he gets his final home (one is abandoned after a terrific storm, and the other comes close to being burnt down), and perhaps most of all, he's a survivor. The Tulsi family are enough to grind any man down - males in their family are merely there to produce more Tulsis - and beyond that, Mr Biswas (as he's almost always known throughout the book) overcomes innumerable obstacles that could easily wear another man down.

On second reading it turns out not to be a cheerful book: Naipaul seems almost to delight in pushing his characters' faces down into the mud (Mr Biswas isn't the only one who tries all sorts of things and sees them fail). The section entitled Adventure at Shorthills is a prime example of just how awful things become when a group of people with no practical wisdom can undermine all the advantages that are given to them on a platter. It would be depressing if there wasn't an element of comedy amidst it all.

And that's what makes it different to A Bend in the River. That book has almost no comedic element at all; it's Mr Biswas without the trenchant humour - in fact the narrator in River is Mr Biswas all over again, but with slightly more luck.

Gone Baby Gone

Watched Gone Baby Gone on DVD the other night. I hadn’t heard of it until I came across it in the video store, which is a bit of a surprise now, having seen the movie. It’s top quality, and tells a difficult tale with great integrity. You certainly won’t agree with the actions of all the characters, especially that of the main character, but it’s a movie that makes you think about what the characters do.
It’s Mystic River territory, but without the three heavyweights who carried that movie. Here the main character, Patrick, is played by Casey Affleck (his taller and better-known brother, Ben directs the movie). This Affleck is someone I don’t remember having seen before, even though he appeared in all three of the Oceans movies. (Not that you remember anyone of the other eight Ocean team members in those movies, pretty much, since they’re so thinly written as characters). Casey is superb in the movie: he comes across as having strength, in spite of his relative youth; he has a moral compass that pretty much sticks on course even though all those around him disagree with his decisions (especially his final one); and he’s believable. His partner, Angie, played in a very soft fashion by Michelle Monaghan, seems almost miscast. Could such a person exist in the neighbourhood portrayed in the movie, where she’s supposed to be at home? She has intuition, sure, but she has little else as a character. She’s the only weak point in the movie, I think.
Patrick and Angie are lovers and partners in work: they’re private detectives, of a sort, and are very familiar with the extremely rough-and-ready territory they inhabit. So rough-and-ready you don’t want to open your mouth and say the wrong word at the wrong time: though Affleck’s character frequently does. The movie is littered with the f-word and even uses the c-word in one striking – and appropriate - moment. And the cast surrounding the main actors is full of actors and, I suspect, non-actors, who look so real you know you wouldn’t want to meet them in broad daylight - let alone at night.
The story concerns a missing child, a little girl, whose mother doesn’t give a damn about her, really, though she professes to. Her uncle and aunt are obviously the ones who care about her, and love her, and they employ the private detectives to bump up the lack of progress in the police case. In spite of this, the detectives get involved with a couple of ordinary police detectives (one of them played by Ed Harris, looking as though the hairdresser had a field day with his tonsure), and the story progresses from there with constant twists and turns. Morgan Freeman makes a few vital appearances, and Amy Ryan is scarily on target as the child's crass and careless mother.
It has a ‘happier’ ending than Mystic River – in one sense. But the choice that Affleck takes is tough, and there’s no knowing where it will lead him. The ending is wide open. (Apparently there’s an alternative ending on the DVD, but we didn’t have time to check it out.)

New York Waterfalls

There was a brief article in our local paper the other day about Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfalls. These are four man-made waterfalls built on New York’s East River. They pour down from great heights (between 90 and 120 feet) and are up to 80 feet across. All the water they use is pumped up from the River itself, a kind of permanent recycling. (Though I don’t think there are any water purifiers involved!)

You can read a full article on the waterfalls in the New York Times, which includes a video about the falls, with their creator speaking, and lots of moving pictures of them.