Pettifogging Fisticuffs

Pettifogging Fisticuffs

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

Remember the saying ‘real men don’t eat quiche?’ It inferred that real men were too tough to get into food that melted in your mouth. In other words, no males eating fluffy-food needed to apply for the ‘real man’ brigade.

I think the saying should now be amended to ‘real men don’t play rugby.’ Perhaps that broad statement needs a little qualification. A few real men play rugby, but they’re getting harder and harder to see amongst the pack of scruffs who’ve been performing on the fields the last few seasons.

I don’t suppose rugby ever qualified as a gentle man’s game – there’s always been a rough edge to it.  But these days there’s no way you’d think of it as a game for gents: the rugby field’s become a place where galoots with weight to throw around think their weight’s the main reason they’re in the team.

If someone else gets in your way, poke him in the snout, or pull his arm off, or throttle him. What do you mean, tackle him? That’s for quiche-eating sissies.

My biggest concern with all these lumps whose brains reside in their fist is the effect they’re having on the up-and-coming generation of footballers.

Kids are learning a mindset regarding this game: the opposing team’s only there to walk over. In fact, if you don’t get in first, they’ll demolish you. Hang the game: this is warfare.

I’m appalled by kids who think that rucking someone’s face or head or torso or let is the way to play 
rugby. I cringe when kids consider that injuring the opposition is part of the game. I even hear about kids who go into the scrum determined to punch someone’s lights out so as to put them out of the action.

Where do they learn all this? Do their coaches teach them? I don’t think so.

Courtesy Jwgfoto

It’s not long since we used to see an advert on television where an aggressive young player in the changing rooms was told he wasn’t going to play because he had the wrong attitude.

The philosophy behind that advert no longer impacts on the minds of the kids out on the fields. Aggression and ugly play are getting to be the norm.

And why? The answer’s obvious. Refs spend countless minutes in games these days sorting out adults who can’t control their tempers or fists. They’re forced to waste the time of paying spectators because so-called top players get steamed up over nothing and don’t have the self-control to behave on the field. And half the time it’s fully televised for all the nation to see.

The skills of good rugby players are going down the tubes because they’ve forgotten their purpose is to play a game, not have a fight. If these players are so much into fighting, send them into a boxing ring.  At least there people expect you to knock your brains into sludge.

Let’s leave fisticuffs off the football field.

I struggle to persuade the rugby enthusiasts in my family (with the exception of the Aged Parent) that doing serious damage to other players is not the norm. They see it all the time now and see the best-known players getting into it. If those heroes do it, it must be okay.

Does the pressure of playing rugby, or the hype of a championship final, or the state of the ground really cause grown men to fling their fists about? I don’t think so.

And will hitting the pockets of the players with a fine really tackle the problem? Coughing up cash is the easy way out.

I think these guys need to be hit where it hurts: ban them from the game, not just for a few weeks, but for a full season. Put them on the back burner and see if some sense of shame starts to seep into their system.

So what if they’re big-time rugby stars? In the future, are most fans going to remember Richard’s Loe’s playing, or the way he eye-gouged Greg Cooper?

And while these guys are out of it, let them do a bit of community work with people who find being battered isn’t so macho. And perhaps they could write a few essays for general publication on why they think a lack of self-control is so vital to their game, or how they reckon young players can avoid being influenced by their petulant behaviour.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the NZRFU has the guts to turn these players into real men.

Opera holding hands with Rugby Players?

It isn’t often I’d think of the world of rugby at the same time as the world of opera, but in one area there are distinct similarities.

In the past those playing rugby at the top of their careers were still performing at a relatively low level of stress, on their bodies, on their emotional lives, on their ‘real’ jobs and on the families.

Equally, opera singers tended to live at a much slower pace, many of them living out their working lives in one or two theatres and seldom having to travel.

No more. Both rugby players and opera singers are expected to ‘play’ for longer and longer seasons, and there are penalties on both if they don’t show up for work. Opera singers in particular are expected to travel constantly in order to perform all over the world, and often don’t get the rest that’s needed after long flights. (Even as long ago as the 60s I can remember one jet-lagged opera singer arriving for rehearsal and getting into a real tantrum that was mostly the result of tiredness.)

So it’s probably not surprising that both opera singers and rugby players are turning more and more to drugs in order to maintain their high profiles. Expect to see an increasing number of opera stars requiring drug treatment over the next few years; already it’s becoming a cause of concern. I don’t think rugby players aren’t yet known for drug problems, but it can’t be far away.

Perhaps it’ll be a good thing if the world, because of an oil crisis, has to slow down on flying players – of both sorts – hither, thither and yon. Then we might find these talented people being able to work under less pressure, without having to resort to drugs - and alcohol – to keep them at the top.

Football on the rise for both sexes in NZ

The national game in New Zealand, as you probably know, is rugby. And it's a blokes' game. Or rather it used to be. In fact there are plenty of women throughout the country playing rugby just as fiercely and energetically as their male counterparts.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a Saturday morning game one of my grandsons was playing in. His position is hooker, that guy who dangles between two props in the scrum. And this fellow really does dangle because he's small for his age. Some of my friends won't believe this, but I actually played hooker myself way back when I actually played rugby. But unlike my grandson, who's in there boots and all, I wasn't cut out for the game. Half the time the players from the opposite team would wind up covered in blood when we went down in a scrum: my blood, because my nose would bleed at the drop of a hat. Even if my nose hadn't bled, I still preferred indoor sports, with the less physical contact the better.

It was interesting that the visiting team in this particular game had one girl player in it. And she was very good: she had speed, and she was excellent at kicking goals. She could have been easily hurt by some of the bigger boys in either team, but she seemed to manage to keep out of their way - or perhaps they avoided her, because I think even in boys of that age there's an inbuilt sense that girls won't take the impacts a boy might.

Courtesy NZ Football

I said at the beginning that rugby is our national game, but soccer, it appears, is rapidly catching up. And of course there are girls in soccer too, and plenty of them. (The National women's team is called the Football Ferns; the men's is the All Whites, in contrast to the internationally-known men's rugby team, the All Blacks.)

One of my other grandsons used to play in a team when he was younger that had girls as well as boys in it. Now that the boys are bigger I think the sexes are separated off into their own teams. But girls' teams are catching on fast. There was a photo in the sports pages of the newspaper a couple of days ago promoting girls' soccer, in fact.

Which was part of the reason that I decided that the main character in my latest children's fantasy, The Disenchanted Wizard, would be a girl who plays soccer - with a passion. And also idolises Xanadu Whitworth, the top player in the city. At the beginning of the story, Della, the soccer player, is putting up an enormous poster of Xanadu in her bedroom. Her younger cousin Harold thinks Xanadu's smile is probably photoshopped. Della scoffs at the idea, and it turns out, in due course, that she's right to scoff. But she's wrong about some of the other things Harold has to say...

Bits and Pieces

 First published in Column Eight on the 21^st November, 1990

 I intended this week to write about a certain international restaurant chain and its recent decision to stop using foam packaging in order to please its green customers.

However, by the time my wife had used here felt-tip censor’s pen there were more black holes in the article than in all the galaxies.

As if that wasn’t enough, two acquaintances told me my piece on How to read articles was mere burbling.

A schoolteacher, on the other hand, said he had to read it through twice to make sense of it. He said he seldom has to do that with anything in the newspaper. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.

I guess all this comes under the category of reader-response, or friendly feedback.

Feedback was mostly why my wife’s felt-tip went so heavily to work. She didn’t feel we were in the position to face a libel suit from a company which boasts 11,000 restaurants world-wide.

(Of course, if anyone wishes to read the article, I’ll send them a copy for a small charge, say $25. That seems at least as valid an offer as a similar one by my forebear, George Burck.)

The other major piece of feedback I’ve had, since I’m on that subject, is the question of this column’s name. One or two people have asked why it’s called Column 8. (Well, one person has.)

I would have preferred to have had something like Crowl’s Cosy Corner, or Crowl’s Quiet Clippings, or Quaint Crowl Comments. As it happened, (fortunately, some of you may think), I was not given the choice.

Nor was I offered a choice of which portrait would be displayed in the top right corner. I am not actually bald or nearly-blind, as the photograph implies. However, to my dismay, people still recognise me from it.

Back to Column 8. It doesn’t get its name from being eight inches across the page from ‘THE Column.’ (I was born in the heady days before metrics were brought in, so if you want to know what that is in the new lingo, you’ll have to convert it yourself) – (20cm – Ed.)

Nor does it get its name from the fact that we have eight people in our family.

Nor, as far as my memory serves me, is it the eighth column to appear on this page.

It doesn’t refer in any sensible way to a rowing shell occupied by eight persons. Speaking of which, I was intrigued to find on the programme, Beyond 2000, that sporting scientists have discovered they can tell which people make the best rowers.

They experimented with a team of girls in Oz, and these kids took to the sport like ducks to water.

If only sports scientists had existed when I was a youth. I might not have wasted the better years of my life wondering what I was supposed to play.

I know it wasn’t rugby. I was so small I was always made hooker. But every time I got a knock, my nose bled all over the other players.

As for cricket, I was too short-sighted to see the ball coming.

Perhaps there really was some sport that would have suited me down to the ground. Then I might not have felt so out of the play in those sport-is-king days.

Too late. Back to column eight.

The title was the editor’s idea. The column is the eighth in the newspaper, if you count the seven on the first page. Pretty cryptic, huh?

 

Young rugby player looks as though he's broken his neck...

Of course, Column Eight, in consisting of the upper halves of two columns each week, was actually Column Eight and Nine. Bit too clunky a title, perhaps.

Unfortunately I don’t remember what George Burck’s offer was to the readers. He was the previous writer – and his column had a much more appropriate name (which I can’t now remember either).

What ‘THE Column’ was I have no idea. I doubt if it was called by that title – maybe I assumed everyone would know which particular column it was.

The ‘hooker,’ during the short time I played rugby, wasn’t one of the great hulking front row forwards of the present day, but a smaller person who could be lifted up and used as a kind of bat to kick the ball backwards or sidewards out to the bloke who passed it onto the backs. At least that’s how it appeared to me. I had very little idea of what the game was about.

Rugby players from 1904
courtesy Wikimedia Commons

A letter to the Editor in relation to this column:

Our columnist Mike Crowl doesn’t know it (yet) but from his comment today about his schooldays rugby I see that he has something in common with former MP Stan Rodger, and myself. Like Mike’s, my nose bled whenever it got a knock, usually about the first ruck, and soon my face, arms, and jersey were crimson. But it was able to turn this to considerable advantage as (a) it transformed my diminutive presence into a rather more fearsome-looking proposition, and (b) it discouraged all the opposition 14-year-olds who didn’t like blood from tackling me.

Stan Rodger had Mike’s other problem, short-sightedness. Stan and I were once in a King Edward Technical College team of substantial insignificance (none of your 1^st XV stuff here) and Stan’s value to the team lay more in his bulk than his speed – the latter of which he lacked to about the same degree as he did vision. A couple of us would be briefed each game to keep an eye on Stan and make sure he kept heading for where the play was, with the instruction to him of ‘when you get to the next ruck, fall on it.’ This usually had the effect of instantly moving the ruck about 10m towards the opponent’s goal line (or our own, depending on how well Stan had maintained his sense of direction.)

Stan’s other value came on the odd occasion that he found himself with the ball. He could build up quite a head of steam over 20m and be virtually unstoppable, and a try was usually ‘on’ as long as he had a couple of us on either side keeping him on target – rather like destroyer escorts flanking an aircraft carrier.

Sadly, I note that Stan never made it into the All Blacks. Perhaps it was his political aspirations that got in the way. Which all, of course, explains where the term ‘Sideline Stan’ really came from!

Penman.

 Penman, I think, was George Burck, the writer of the column that had appeared before Column 8 took over. 

Pillow Talk

One of the characters in the play our church is doing for its 150th anniversary celebrations is called Hopestill Pillow.  Yup.  And she was a real person and that was her real name.  Extraordinary.   Which set me to thinking about pillows as a topic, so I trolled through my clippings on Evernote to see what came up.  

First there's a tweet from the witty writer who goes by the name of Kim Kierkegaardashian.  He or she mixes the serious spirituality of Kierkegaard with the vacuousness Kardashain philosophy of life.  

Weary of people, weary of myself, so weary that I need an eternity to rest. That's why I always carry a pillow when I'm travelling.

 

And talking about neck pillows, another favourite tweeter, Alan Jacobs, wrote: I salute you, dude who walks around the airport with your inflatable neck pillow tied around your collar.   There's something daft about this sentence. 

 

On another tack entirely, Joan Acocella wrote an article on the grimness of the Grimms Brothers' fairy tales. There's a reference to pillows in this one: In “The Twelve Brothers,” a king who has twelve sons decides that, if his next child is a girl, he will have all his sons killed. That way, his daughter will inherit more money. So he has twelve coffins built, each with a little pillow. Little pillows! For boys whom he is willing to murder!

A super-preganancy pillow!

And in another article related to the after-effects of abortions, we read about Emily, who, after having had an abortion, began to have flashbacks in relation to live babies: Emily’s first flashback hit her violently when she had her first ultrasound while pregnant with a “wanted” child. As time went on, she would get frequent intrusive thoughts concerning her abortion when looking at the faces of her babies. After a time, she began to also experience habitual, obsessive, and scary thoughts about hurting her children. She imagined stabbing her children with a knife one by one, suffocating them with pillows, and strangling them.

 

In a piece by Lois Swagerty about churches sometimes forgetting what they exist for, we read:

One way the church may have its comfort zone stretched is when new elements of the community are welcomed inside.

“A young lady from the neighbourhood came in when she was high on drugs,” recalls Cindy Milbry, director of community outreach for Redeemer Lutheran Church in Toledo. “Pastor was doing the sermon and the girl  disrupted the whole process. Someone said, ‘Let’s call the police,’ but I told them, ‘This is what the church is for.’ Instead I took her downstairs and fixed her a plate of food. The next time she came in, she wasn’t as high, but she was still disruptive. One of the girls sat down with her and she fell asleep, so we got her a pillow and covered her up. People didn’t say as much.  Next time she came, she went up front for prayer and gave her testimony. She said the only peace she has is when she comes to the church. She’s learning that the church is a safe place to come and sit. And the congregation is learning that Jesus came for the unsaved, not the saved.”

And finally, a joke which touches on the friendly rivalry between Australians and New Zealanders:

An Australian rugby fan, a South African rugby fan and a New Zealand rugby fan are all in Saudi Arabia, sharing a smuggled crate of booze when Saudi police rush in and arrest them. The mere possession of alcohol is a severe offence in Saudi Arabia, so for consuming the booze they are all sentenced to death. However, after many months and with the help of good lawyers, they are able successfully to appeal their sentences down to life imprisonment. By a stroke of luck, it was a Saudi national holiday the day their trial finished, and the benevolent sheikh decided they could be released after receiving just 20 lashes.

As they were preparing for their punishment, the sheikh announced, "It's my first wife's birthday today, and she has asked me to allow each of you one wish before your whipping."

The South African was first. He thought for a while, then said, "Please tie a pillow to my back."

This was done, but the pillow lasted only 10 lashes before the whip went through. When the punishment was done, the South African had to be carried away bleeding and crying with pain.

The Australian was next up. After watching the South African's horror, he said smugly, "Please fix two pillows to my back." But even two pillows could take only 15 lashes before the whip went through and the Australian was soon led away whimpering loudly (as they do).

The New Zealander was the last one up, but before he could say anything, the sheikh turned to him and said, "You are from a most beautiful part of the world and your culture is one of the finest. For this, you may have two wishes!"

"Thank you, your most royal and merciful highness," the Kiwi replied. "In recognition of your kindness, my first wish is that you give me not 20 lashes but 100 lashes."

"Not only are you an honourable, handsome and powerful man, you are also very brave," the sheikh said with an admiring look on his face. "If 100 lashes is what you desire, then so be it. And your second wish"?

"Tie the Australian to my back."

 

Minister for the Rugby World Cup

Murray McCully, I've only just discovered, is Minster [sic] of Foreign Affairs, Minister for Sport and Recreation and Minister for the Rugby World Cup. We need a Minister for the Rugby World Cup? Crikey!

Unfortunately, I missed what he was saying about what New Zealanders should be doing in relation to the Cup, because it was on the radio, and the bath was running in the background and the kettle was boiling. But it sounded as though he was doing an Aunty Government thing about telling us to behave ourselves and give a good impression to overseas visitors. But I could be totally wrong...

Refs rule, okay?

First published in Column 8 on the 18^th August, 1993

Whenever I watch a game of rugby – you’ll note that I’ve finally learnt how to spell the word – my heart goes out to one particular person on the field.

In my rugby days it used to be the hooker – me – sandwiched between two great hulking props, my ears mangled, my shoulders wrenched and my head forced – Crrrunch! – up against an opposing wall of bull terriers. However, after I retired (round the age of 10) my sympathies diverted to a person who acts in a sense always as the bridesmaid, never the bride – if I can use such an expression in this context.

That person is the referee. He’s never the star – he’s only noticed when he does something wrong. He has to be in the action at all points, yet he can’t be part of the action.

He’s like a child in a field of raging bulls, and woe betide if he’s careless enough to get in the way of a footballer making his way like a diesel engine (converted to lpg) towards touchdown. Not only would the ref’s name be mud, he might be buried face down in it.

On my walk to work I often come across a huge mastiff looking over a fence – a tall fence, thank goodness. His eyes are red and the expression on his black face is ambiguous enough for me to think twice about going close to him.

A ref often finds himself in a similar situation: he’s supposed to stand up to the equivalent of several mastiffs and state his case for claiming they’re in the wrong. If necessary he has to send one of them, like a schoolboy caught making stinkbombs behind the loos, off the field.

Refs have to have the stamina to keep up with a ball kicked from one 22m line to the other, and still somehow be in the right place at the right time – always. I don’t know how they do it.

The reason I mention rugby is that during the last week I was in a somewhat similar position to that occupied by your average ref. (Note, I said somewhat similar.) I was one of several stamina-requiring bodies who acted as accompanist to singers in a musical mini-version of the BleedUsSlow Cup: The Dunedin Performing Art Competitions.

(Singers, by the way, are not equatable with mastiffs. Singers come in all sizes: Chihuahuas, St Bernards, Pomeranians.)

Accompanists have to  have many of the qualities of the average ref. They must somehow be at all times invisible and subtle; in control but not pushing; as musical as the singer, but patently not more so.

They should never be seen to be nervous, lest they put the singer off; and they should make no mistakes…lest they put the singer off (in other words, when the singer misses a page out, so does the accompanist).

Accompanists must ignore trickling itches in inaccessible spots, as well as the ones they could reach but can’t afford to because they’re just about to turn a page over. (As refs must get on and blow the whistle when they’d prefer to blow their nose.)

They must at all times act as though they hadn’t a care in the world, and that performing in front of a crowd is an everyday occurrence to be taken in their stride. Just like refs.

Football and musical crowds are both very discerning. The ears of the latter are more acute, but the former know all the rules – better than the ref.

Accompanist can pour out their emotions through their fingernails. But what does a ref do when he’s feeling all churned up? At the end of the game, no one ever swaps his shirt with the ref.

Because my week was musical, I’ve had an idea. Next Saturday, let’s all give the ref a treat, and nominate him for Most Valuable Player.

2024 Six Nations Championship, ITALY vs ENGLAND,
3 February 2024, Stadio Olimpico, Rome
photo courtesy Stefano Delfrate

Barbered

First published in Column 8 on the 29^th July, 1992

Some weeks are better than others for making you feel old – well, older, anyway.

This week I went to a barber for the first time in eighteen years, the very barber to whom I used to go when I was a callow youth. He’d lost more hair than I had, which was a sort of consolation – and shifted premises – but little else of the familiar going-to-the-barber routine had changed.

There was still the partnering of tobacco with male tonsure – even in these enlightened days you don’t see tobacco in the ladies’ hairdressers. There was the scent of men’s hair spray. There was the feeling of being like a bed being made as the cloth was swept around me and tucked in at the edges.

There were the large mirrors reflecting a blurred shape that to me looked much the same before and after. And as always, however careful the barber is, there was the rest-of-the-day-awareness inside your singlet of having been barbered.

The same old art of casual conversation was still practiced, an art for which I had no talent in my youth. Since I didn’t know anything about the ‘important’ topics of the day – rugby, politics and rugby, I used to think nothing I had to say could possibly be of interest to a relative stranger, and kept my mouth more closed than open.

This may have been frustrating for the barber, though I guess it would be more frustrating for a dentist. Why do dentists seem to expect just as much conversation from you as barbers? Maybe their meal times are like ours…

After some years of attempting to increase the intellectual level of what passes for conversation at our meal tables each night – ‘pass the salt; he’s flicking rice everywhere, Mum; she touched me; he’s taken all the butter’ – I know now that conversation can be made from any coming together of a couple of minds.

In fact, after the experience of our mealtimes, it was quite stimulating to sit in the barber’s chair and gradually work towards finding some mutual topics of interest.

I’m always more than pleasantly surprised to find that eventually a few snippets of thought (even amongst snipping of hair) will assemble themselves into a conversation. Often some unsuspected mutual ground, as there was in tis case, will once again surprise you as how small the world really is.

Having my hair cut was no longer the ordeal it used to be. (I might even get to like it, and go and find a barber every time I’ve had enough of ‘Is this green stuff really a vegetable?’)

(By the way, in case you suspect, because I haven’t been to a barber for eighteen years, that my hair grows remarkably slowly, and I’m due for a paragraph in the Guinness Book of Records, let me assure you it sprouts at the pace common to all personkind. My home-barber – the one I acquired at marriage – decided she needed a break.)

When you think about it, in my 18 years away from things tonsorial I’d actually gained hair (unlike the barber). Eighteen years ago I had no beard to trim. Intuitively, unlike some male friends of mine, I hadn’t tried to grow one until there was actually something to cover the chin.

My family has pleaded with me for some time now to cut off my beard, their excuse being that they’ve never seen me without it. But in this winter I’d be daft to take off any more hair.

I’ve already made a mental note never to venture near a barber’s during the frosty season, even if I end up looking like Albert Einstein after he’d discovered his relatives.

Mike as Uncle Andrew in The Magician's Nephew -
no beard but an 'orrible wig instead. 
The boy playing Digory is Josh Chignell. 

 The ‘blurred shape’ I refer to was me, unable to see what the barber had done due to my shortsightedness; glasses were always removed while having a haircut even though the barber would invariably ask what I thought of the cut.

I’ve had a second family barber/hairdresser for around thirty years – my eldest daughter, who was trained as a hairdresser. She and my wife take turns, as it were, to cut my hair.

I did take my beard off in Sept 1993, to surprise my wife who’d been in the UK visiting her family. And again, twelve years later (to the month) in order to play Uncle Andrew in an adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew, by C S Lewis (see photo above). In both case it was grown again pretty smartly.

All for one

First published in Column 8 on the 16^th Sept 1992

Struggling my way late on Sunday afternoon towards the deadline of writing a column on Monday morning, I was considering discussing deadlines, when a reader kindly informed me of the absurd presentation conjunction on all three television channels.

I promise this is the last time for a while (a fortnight at least) that I mention the word television in this column. Otherwise my columnistic colleague, Miles Synge, will wonder if I’m stealing his thunder.  

Anyone who wanted to watch something apart from rubgy on television between the hours of five and six on Sunday evening must have wondered if they were expected to put on a videotape. That’s right, Stanton, all three channels screened rubgy, or one of its variants.

And, believe it or not, those able to get Sky would have seen archive film on…rubgy. Good grief.

(For those who wonder why this strange word ‘rubgy’ occurs in this column, you’ll have to consult my computer; I think it’s incapable of writing the word correctly.)

And it wasn’t only this hour that was overloaded with uniform entertainment: Television One had shown sport since 2.00 – (four hours in all); Channel 2’s sport went for two hours; and TV3’s for three (appropriate, I guess).

Don’t television presenters talk to each other anymore? Don’t they check out what’s been shown on each other’s channel? As my reader said, here was a prime opportunity for at least one of the channels to show something different. (Even that gentlemanly sport, soccer, perhaps.)

Does this tripling-up happen because rubgy is cheap to produce on television? (More economical obviously than importing quality programmes from overseas.) Or is it true that television companies get paid large sums of money to show certain sports? Even that might be acceptable, up to a point, if there was variety. But we don’t see other sports anywhere near as much as rugby, mainly because those sports can’t afford the cost of being shown. Talk about cheapskate television!

I can see the television channels turning their viewers right off (which I suppose would be a change), and the video shops being saturated with customers. Either that, or else viewers will do what friends of mine mostly do: they record the quality programmes – which almost invariably are shown around midnight – and watch them the next evening, during the junk food television.

In the future television producers may find it easier to sell their material direct to the video outlets, where customers can really have a choice about what they want to watch.

Then with fewer viewers watching the prime time pap, the advertisers may have to rethink their priorities. Watching television may become a very non-U thing to do. In fact I wonder if that isn’t already happening. Television may join the cinema in becoming old hat.

And talking of old hat cinema, I see the Octagon movie theatre, where the stalls swept upwards towards the screen, has finally closed.

No wonder there are so many back problems amongst now middle-aged former film-goers. I’m sure I’m not the only one to have suffered a crick in the neck or an ache in the back from having to sit with my head at an acute angle for anything up to three hours – as occurred after arriving late at The Sound of Music, and finding that the only seats left were a bare few yards from the screen.

Let’s hope the new cinema complex will be built with the customers in mind; which is more than we seem to be able to hope for from the television moguls.  

 

 I used to visit an elderly neighbour until he died a couple of years ago: his television was apparently incapable of playing anything but rugby, I thought, until I visited him in a rest home and found that there the television was incapable of playing anything but horseracing.

It’s also interesting that my comment about television producers selling to video outlets (when they still existed) came true, to a degree, and now, of course, many minor films only ever appear on streaming channels, and thousands of hours of television shows of all sorts are available there too. We’ve gone from no choice to total choice.

Progress

First published in Column 8 on the 4^th March, 1992

Put progress in the driving seat and she takes some curious turns. This week we bought a four-slice toaster to replace the old two-slice job. The latter had indicated it was on its last legs by burning the bread alive after refusing to pop it up.

However, once we’d unpacked the new four-slicer, and tried to toast in it, we found that the bread sat up above the top of the toaster by a good inch.

Now the bread we use isn’t abnormally-sized. When you purchased a toaster in the past you could assume you’d fit the bread into the machine and get the whole slice cooked. You don’t expect to carry a slice of bread around in your pocket to measure the depth of toasters.

Wouldn’t you think that a manufacturer would build this machine to take ordinary sliced bread? Maybe it’s a weight-watching plot to get us all to eat less bread. But there’s a problem with that: what do we do with the inch we have to cut off the top (or the bottom, depending on which way you choose to insert your bread)?

Toasters aren’t the only item to have missed the march of progress. I remember Katherine Whitehorn, the English columnist, saying that taps were no longer made merely to turn on and off. Instead of being consumer-friendly – as things usually were, long before computers arrived on the scene -they’d become designer-focused.

You know the sort I mean – you go to turn the top piece, and it swivels and swivels. Eventually you realise that the swivel motion is merely a pretty design – the tap only works when you press it down firmly. When pressed, these taps then emit a gush of water which you may or may not have time to get your hands under. And some stay stuck on: you have no way of knowing whether it will eventually turn off again by itself or whether you’re wasting gallons of hot water – and being unecological into the bargain.

Some public basins have foot controls. They’re very water-economical, since most of us take so long to discover how the tap works that we give up in disgust and leave our hands unhygienised.

I didn’t intend to talk about design progress, but about progress of a different sort. What caught my eye during the week was a snippet about dwarf-tossing, that mediaeval-sounding fad that recently took some European countries by storm.

Seemingly, just as we thought we were on the right bandwagon by expressing disgust that anyone should toss ‘people with a physical difference’ through the air, because it was an ‘intolerable attack on human dignity’ and an ‘exploitation of the handicapped,’ we find that at least one dwarf has campaigned to have the whole thing continued.

This man’s livelihood was being threatened by those who viewed the ‘sport’ with distaste and had banned it. His company, Fun Productions, was in danger of going bust.

Now wouldn’t you have thought that he’d been the person to ask in the first place as to how he felt about being used as a mini-caber? I mean, does a dwarf normally walk into a bar and find himself (in the process of being hoisted on to his bar stool) catapulted through the air by some burly fool? Or does he get the idea creatively, and decide, like any other entrepreneur, that this isn’t a bad way to make a living?

After all, there are rougher sports, such as rugby league. I think if I was a smaller person, and inclined for a bit of a thrill, I’d go for dwarf-tossing any time. (With knee, elbow and bum protectors of course.)

Rugby league seems to do nothing but bring out the violent in anyone with a bit of muscle. And there ain’t no inflated mattress to land on when someone forces you to the ground by pulling your shirt, your hair, your eyes, or any other loosehanging part of your anatomy.  

What a fine line we tread between deciding what’s best for other people and trampling on their rights.

 

Four-slice toaster, though not the one we own. 
Photo courtesy of SimonTrew, Wikimedia Commons

(2026) We bought a new four-slice toaster recently after our previous one gave up the ghost, and have had no end of trouble with it. Of course it comes with fancy gizmos, but doesn’t actually do the job it’s intended for. The side I normally use has been turned up to full throttle since not long after we got the thing, yet apparently it chooses to produce the ‘toasted’ bread at whatever heat it desires. So a piece put in straight after the toaster is started up will come out light, as though it’s barely seen the heat. The next piece is likely to make up for the lightness of the other and be cooked to death, or, if the toaster’s in a different mood, it will somehow bake the bread so that it’s nicely-coloured but hard to the point where it cracks and crumbles when you try to butter it. My wife normally uses the other half of the toaster, and her toast is mostly what you’d expect: toasted bread. A sexist toaster, apparently.

Since this column was written many public taps (as in restrooms) have no visible means of turning them on or off: you wave your hands around like an idiot, trying to get the thing to start, and then out of the blue it starts when you least expect it, and you still don’t know what caused it to do so. Nor how to turn it off again.