Out on the Weekend

One

Because it was a beautiful morning we got up early and went down to Oriental Bay. The children’s playground on the beach by Freyberg Pool must be one of the most beautiful locations for a children’s playground in the world.

Wellington is a very pleasing city to look at. It fits the land and sea well. The geography of the land has dictated how the city is built. When I am in towns where the land has been more pliable in the hands of its people I feel uneasy. The flat grids of places like Christchurch or Palmerston North prove that reason has nothing to do with character or beauty when it comes to town planning. In Wellington people have been trying to squeeze what they need onto the sides of hills and up and down little valleys for 160 years. In Christchurch they merely tacked on another grid.

We walked along the waterfront from the playground to the library. There is a new statue clamped to the side of the wharf near Te Papa. It is a man who appears to be arching his back and leaning into the wind. He faces out to the sea, standing on the wharf's edge. If the wind failed you sense he would fall into the sea that washes and slaps the piers below. When you stand beside him you can see his face. His heavy lids are closed and his mouth is serene. He is at peace. The statue is called Solace in the Wind.

At the library I got out a pile of books. This one is a comic about friendship. Robot Dreams takes about twenty minutes to read. It is cute. A dog builds a mail order robot. They hang out. One day they go to the beach and the robot rusts up and stops moving. The dog leaves him behind. The rest of the comic is about how the robot and the dog eventually find new friends. The ending is wonderfully touching. The dog gets a new mail order robot. He takes better care of him. None of the other friends he has tried out since leaving his first friend behind have worked out. The original robot is found in bits and pieces at a scrap yard by a fox. The fox rebuilds the robot using a radio for its body. The robot is happy. He plays music and hangs out with his new buddy. One day he sees the dog with his new robot friend on the street, passing by the window of his house. The robot is shocked, then sad, and then thoughtful. He goes to the window and turns his music on. The music drifts out across the street to where the dog is walking. The dog hears the music and likes it. Carrying on down the street without even seeing his former friend he begins to whistle the tune and wag his tail. THE END.

Friendship is complicated and uncomplicated. When you’re Eleanor’s age you tend to make friends with whoever is around. It’s remarkable. When we were in the library a little boy came up to Cathy and they read a book together about fish. I think it would be nice if grown ups could do this. When I was in the mood I would like to think that I could go to the library, sit on a couch with a stranger and read a book out loud together. Mind you, to be fair, this isn’t friendship, this is making friends, the first bit of the much bigger thing called friendship. Eleanor doesn’t have friends yet, but she is making friends. She has a buddy at crèche called Tom. They like each other. They share a sense of fun and physicality. Tom came to Eleanor’s birthday party. When I went out onto the deck in the middle of the party I found Eleanor dragging Tom across the deck by his feet while he chortled with glee. Next time Richard comes over I must drag him across the deck and see if he likes it.

All Blacks 18, Munster 16

The build up to this game and the excitement of the result reminded me of why I used to really love rugby. When I was a kid and the All Blacks went north to play Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England they always played the local teams midweek. Most of the games were pretty straight-forward, some of them were muddy, brutal affairs and occasionally they were magic. Over time it was decided to drop these games, to put sponsorship on the All Black jerseys, to let the All Blacks name be used to promote American cars and Australian cereals, pay everyone too much, and then let them go off-shore to make even more money.

Awhile ago I read two books. One was called The Book of Fame. It was a novel about the Invincibles tour by Lloyd Jones. The other book was a history book about the same tour. This was back in the day when you had to take a steamship to the other side of the world and be prepared to be away from home for months and months on end. The All Blacks played all comers, winning every game except a very dubiously referred match against a certain Welsh club team. It was hard work that tour. They played all the time, even with injury, and the travelling was long and hard. Oh, and they got paid bugger all. If you like rugby you should give the Lloyd Jones book a go.

What struck me about the book and watching the game against Munster was how much the All Blacks are admired in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The last time I remember the All Blacks doing a proper tour there were a few morons in the British press who thought the All Blacks should stop doing the haka. If these critics had bothered to watch how the haka was received by the crowds in the provinces they would have known what a dumb idea this was. The crowds loved it – they listened in silence and gave a roar at the end. Just like when the kicker from either side lined up a kick at goal. Did you hear the crowd at the Munster game? Even when the All Blacks kicked they were silent, and then clapped. We used to do this. In New Zealand this also used to be considered good form.

A few months ago I was listening to the panel on National Radio and one of the panellists commented on seeing an old faded sign behind the counter in a rather old faded shop. The sign said: Service Before Self. The panellist said that he thought most people would think that this was quite a quaint idea nowadays. Of course the most extreme form of this idea was somewhat discredited by asking hundreds of thousands men to march into machineguns in World War One. On the other hand self before all else is not very attractive either. It may be petty of me but I have little respect for All Blacks that leave mid-career to play club rugby in the Northern Hemisphere for cash, or people like Sonny Bill.

This is not a post about what the NZRFU should do about rugby; it is a post about doing things for the magic and honour of it. If we don’t believe in anything but ourselves or do anything except for our remuneration what a cold and venal world we will pass on.

Filler

While we were walking down Lambton Quay on Saturday I had to say I didn't want a pamphlet on:

• God
• The Red Cross
• Battery Farming

It was annoying. It's annoying being polite to strangers. Much easier to be rude to friends. To deal with this problem I invented the following T-shirt:

So handy when you have to run the gauntlet of leaflet handers on a Saturday. But wait, there's more.

Tired of having to select expensive cards for an endless variety of occasions? Try this:

Just sign and send. Seconds saved here can be spent cruising pointless websites or watching advertising on television.

Now I'm getting nasty?

I read Danyl's blog this afternoon and was somewhat distressed. I left a snippy comment. The fifty five million people who left comments later all disagreed with me (people read Danyl's blog, as opposed to this one... Hi Richard! Hi Mum!).

Apparently my comment was nasty, but then I don't think it is nice to talk about voters this way:
Mad props to all those Green Party supporters in Ohariu (all 2229 of you!) who gave your electorate votes to the Green candidate, ensuring that Green Party arch-nemesis Peter Dunne could return to Parliament with a majority of only 1170 votes over Labour candidate Charles Chauvel.

Congratulations to Simon Bridges, new National MP for Tauranga who helped rid Parliament Winston Peters and ensured that the eighty eight thousand assholes who voted for Peters simply wasted their votes.

It just isn't.

It reminded me of an article that Julian Barnes wrote about going to watch a very important chess game, and how all the chess geeks used really violent, sexua and offensive language to describe the various players, the strategies they used and their careers. They all thought they were right, they develop hatreds and allegiances, they forgot that opinions are like arseholes. Political bloggers also seem to be an intensely inward breed, whose tone can be pretty strong stuff and yet are highly offended at the strong stuff of others.

Listening to people who are into politics can be similar to what happens when you tell people you are a teacher. They spend quite a lot of time telling you how it is.

How is it? F**ked if I know, but I know it's pretty messy and there really isn't ever going to be a clean solution to all the problems of the classroom. I potter along doing my best, holding my stupid political outsider opinions and voting how I feel. I don't vote based on what the insiders think I should do strategically, and outside certain electorates I don't think that's what most people do - the 88,000 arseholes, the 2229 fools and the other 220,000 of us. Shame.

My other reflection on this blog's brief foray into things loosely connected to politics is that it can be quite hard to make a point if you use Winston Peters as an example. My point was the media have had undue influence here and overseas with some candidates which may not have been entirely fair. Danyl left a long comment on my blog about this but it went on a bit and didn't seem related to my point. I think he was trying to prove something. The other side point in my post was that even if you don't like someone it's not fair to deny their followers representation. Hey, if 88,000 people want Winston, good luck to them.

But frankly I have no interest in Winston Peters' political career (although he did have the best cheeky grin in politics... probably in the world). I couldn't give a jot about the elaborate ins and outs of the finances of his party many moons ago. He's gone. Next time I will use a different example, and try and make my point a bit better.

Postscript: I reread a few things and I've decided that Danyl's post was bitter and self righteous, and rather, well ... nasty. Maybe the comments section was satirical too. Anyway, scratch the apology.

Punching Bag

Journalists tell us stories. In their stories there are characters that have certain roles to play. Because journalists, like teachers and novelists, are mostly liberal in their views it is unsurprising that certain types of people are given certain roles. Right-leaning buffoon is a popular character. Recently there have been two examples of this in two elections on opposite sides of the world: Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for the office of Vice President in the American elections, and Winston Peters, leader of New Zealand First in the New Zealand elections. While I would never vote for either, I have also thought that many in the media have covered them complacently.

Winston is generally now portrayed in the New Zealand media as a smug, blustering man who has probably done some dodgy things but prefers antagonising journalists to giving answers. Sarah Palin is generally portrayed as an idiot. An idiot with some idiotic views, some of which might have been potentially dangerous should she have become Vice President.

Sarah Palin. Man. There are moments in her interviews with Katie Couric where you just can feel yourself die inside. It's very much like watching that genre of comedy perfected by Gervais where you feel as if you're watching a car crash in slow motion. Tina Fey realised this. Parts of her parody of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live are actually just word for word what Palin actually said. What's the problem with Palin? What’s the fundamental thing that led to her performing so disastrously in media interviews? She was unprepared. That's about it I reckon.
You can't, if you believe in democracy at all, discount her from the political debate because she has views you don't agree with - after all she represents the views of many in America. So if she was unprepared why didn't she just admit it instead of trying to bluff? Firstly let me say that I think it was encouraging that she wasn't good at bluffing. Secondly, how could she admit she was unprepared if she was running as Vice President? She was in a nasty situation. Unused to bluffing, talking on subjects she didn't know much about (and hadn't needed to know about in her previous roles), but not able to admit to not knowing the answers. Which makes me think that the people who put her name in the ring and ultimately chose her are really the ones to blame.
Some commentators in America were noting that the media were making a lot less of Joe Biden's gaffs, and he made a few. If Sarah Palin had said that FDR in 1929 jumped on the TV to reassure Americans about the depression (he wasn't President, and there was no such thing as TV) it would have been all over Saturday Night Live and the blogs, but Joe Biden hadn’t been given that role to play in the story of the election in the USA.

Winston Peters. His own assessment of the whole donations scandal is pretty accurate: cleared by the three investigations that counted, and censured by a kangaroo court. I think that any court where a figure as antagonising as Winston Peters is tried by his peers shortly before an election seems likely to be fairly biased. Who the hell is Owen Glenn? John Campbell's research on this was a comment to a reporter who went to Glenn's press conference: "You heard him speak? He seems credible doesn't he?" By any standard this is pretty poor. Constantly we heard the statement: "What possible motive could Glenn have to do this?" I can think of plenty. How about he is a man who likes to feel he has influence? How about he is a petty man who has a grudge about not getting what he thinks he paid for?

I also think Helen Clark's assessment of Peters was fairly accurate: his relationship with the media "is not the best" and he does himself no favours. True. His dealings with the media are infantile, and Guyon Espiner was right to call Peters' behaviour pathetic when Peters stormed off because journalists were standing on the wrong step. Pathetic. On the other hand, if he actually didn’t do anything really wrong then it seems a disservice to the democratic process that his political career is finished, as is his political party, the careers of the members of parliament who were in it, and the representation of the people who loyally voted for that party.

Still, it’s more satisfying sticking the journalistic boot into a man who has enjoyed sticking his own nicely shined business shoes into your gut for the last few years, than it is to be a little dispassionate and not call the result (wrongly) before various investigations are concluded.

Right wing whinging about the conspiracy of the left-wing media is usually wrong, but it is also sometimes right. Sarah Palin is not a bimbo. She has had a fairly successful political career in Alaska and raised a family of five. She holds views on social issues that are right wing, but she doesn’t seem to be fanatical about believing everyone should adopt her views. Winston Peters is antagonised by journalists in New Zealand. His other biggest flaw is probably self-delusion, but he has had a long career, represents a section of our population, has great charisma, and actually didn’t do too badly as minister of foreign affairs.

I suppose it is one of the perils of entering the public world that you have very little control over the role you are given in the national story.

The Fierce Urgency of Now

There are two pictures of people on my classroom wall at school: Martin Luther King Jnr. and Robert Kennedy. They both were shot in 1968. Bobby Kennedy lived to see Martin Luther King's death, and he spoke about it. Although Martin Luther King is the obvious link to Barack Obama it is the younger Kennedy I thought of when I felt that bubble of hope grow and seemingly burst up inside me as I followed the last 48 hours of the Obama campaign.

I only came around to Obama at the end. I heard him on the way to work yesterday speaking at a rally in Canton, Ohio. For the first time in a long time I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. For the first time in awhile I felt that hope was actually permitted, and that it was not a word being used insincerely in the mouth of just any man. Obama in the last few days of his campaign seemed to reach into the oratory of the black pastor, of the Afro-American minister, of Martin Luther King Jnr. I think this is the obvious comparison, and it was moving to see Jesse Jackson tonight standing with all those other people in the field before the first Afro-American President of America, it was moving to see him standing there crying and know that he had walked beside the coffin of Martin Luther King and had lived to see this day, that the hand that had rested on King's coffin was lofted now in celebration, forty years later.

When I got home tonight and heard that Obama had won I went and found my CD of Robert Kennedy speeches and played this:

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all. We must admit in ourselves that our own children’s future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember – even if only for a time – that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek – as we do – nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

Whether we like it or not, America is the moral compass of the West. It's revolution at the end of the 18th century forms the basis of our beliefs today. It has the scale of empire, its rhetoric is listened to, the poetry of its oratory is accepted as meaningful, and it has been meaningful right from the start:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

And today we see this exact principle enacted with the election of Barack Obama. How comfortable Thomas Jefferson and John Adams would have been with Barak as President is a moot point, but the truth of the statements at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence stand the test of time. America was founded on a mixture of pragmatism and heady idealism expressed in poetry and violence. Poetry and violence is a chapter about Bobby Kennedy. Poetry and violence is a chapter about Martin Luther King.

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.
And I don't mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I'm happy, tonight.
I'm not worried about anything.
I'm not fearing any man!
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

When I got home tonight I listened to Bobby Kennedy and I played with my daughter. I thought two things. First I thought how glad I am that my daughter is alive in an age when people can talk about hope again without sarcasm. Then I thought I would put another picture on my classroom wall tomorrow.

A picture of Barack Obama.

My Mother's Records

Two

When I was a teenager in Paraparaumu it was all the rage to fill up old 1.5 litre soft drink bottles with water and leave them all over your front lawn. It was supposed to stop dogs doing their business on your property. It got to the point where every single lawn in Paraparaumu had these plastic bottle droppings on them (usually with dog droppings in between). There were various theories as to why this was supposed to work. The only one I remember was that the dogs were supposed to be frightened of their reflection in the water bottle. Of course it didn't work. In fact it was utterly ridiculous. Nevertheless, thousands of adults across New Zealand covered their lawns with old Coke bottles in the belief that it did work.

The past is a strange place. Even the past of twenty years ago can seem very odd indeed. The movement of time eradicates context and leaves you with objects. It’s hard to say why people in the 80’s thought neon coloured sweat bands were cool, but they were. The reasons things were done tend to be forgotten leaving only the objects behind like, well like a hundred soft drinks bottles filled with water on someone’s lawn, or a book dropping suddenly out of the sky.

*

My mother first met my father at a wedding, and afterwards they went to a Joe Brown dance at Dunedin's town hall. My father was at the wedding because he worked on the family of the groom's farm shearing sheep. He sheared sheep to pay to go to university. My father didn't have a really great upbringing, he was brought up by a prickly Aunt, but he was decent at school, good at sport and a great ballroom dancer.When my mother first met my father he owned three records: two by a fellow called Mantovani (Immortal Classics and Tangos) and Belafonte’s debut record. They are still in the collection, and still treasured although Mantovani’s star has dipped so far below the horizon that it is hard to believe he was once so popular.

Mantovani Plays the Immortal Classics, Decca (1953). Mantovani released four other albums in 1953 including I suspect the less than immortal An Album of Christmas Music. It's hard not to make fun of Mantovani. Even the fan website is defensive: Quality Light Orchestra Music is sometimes confused, with "background” music, or "easy listening" music, it surely is not.... Have you ever heard of a category of music called "Quality Light Orchestra Music"? A reviewer of the latest Mantovani biography cryptically comments: As years pass, we realize that art glows at different angles when and where it is examined and experienced. And generally the world is looked at differently afterwards.

Sure.

The thing is I rather like this record. I like it for two reasons:

Firstly, I love things that were once enormously popular and have now vanished off the radar. Mantovani fits the bill. He was the first person to sell a million stereo records, phenomenally popular in Britain and America, one of the recording stars of his era. Now he would be unknown to everyone under fifty.

Secondly, the little sticker my mother put on the album cover says: "Please keep this record. It is very old, but it takes me back to when I first met M. and contains two of my most loved pieces of music: Handel's Largo and Schubert's Ave Maria." When I was a kid my mother had a tape of something like the London Pops Orchestra playing classical tunes. It had, predictably, a version of Pachelbel's Canon on it. It was an "interpretation" of that piece and it ended with a French horn. The thing is I never knew until I was a lot older that it was an interpretation and I got rather attached to that French horn. Even now when I hear versions of Canon I am always listening for the surging horn at the end, and always disappointed when it doesn't happen. My point is, with some songs it doesn't matter if the first version you hear of something is a supposedly "inferior" - it will become the version that matters most for you.

*

For years I had this memory of a book I had been made to read at school. It was about a boy living on an island and he was obsessed with Harry Belafonte. For a long time I had no idea who Harry Belafonte was (even though he was sitting in my mother's record collection). One day I dragged his record out, dusted it off and gave it a spin. Brilliant.


Belafonte’s debut album is wonderful. It was released in 1956 and it was the first LP to sell a million copies in the USA. It is very hard to be depressed and listen to this album. What a great cover.


Many years after I read that book I was talking about, still at school but now a teacher, I was leaving my classroom after the day was over. It was a windy, high-cloud day, rubbish blowing through the halls and across the field, and out of the sky dropped a book. Some student had thrown it on the classroom roof and it now flapped its way to my feet. It was called The Cay and I realised as I picked it up that this was the book I had read twenty years ago at school.