Hair today, gone tomorrow

My father had a wicked sense of humour. Literally. His great party trick was to pinch women’s bottoms. Not that they ever knew it was him. He would wait until another male was strategically placed behind his victim then he would lean over and surreptitiously pinch the derriere, look the other way and swiftly walk off. As a youngster I saw this happen often and was full of admiration for my wayward pater. The perpetratee would inevitably swing round and naturally blame the man directly behind her.

There were as far as I remember three possible reactions. The lady would laugh, frown or tell-off the nonplussed and entirely innocent non-offender. Through my rose coloured glasses of the time my memory is that on most occasions they weren’t that annoyed. But then again that was a different era; a time when the hand that rocked the cradle ruled the world, women were chaste and a bottom pinch was often viewed as a bit of fun.

Fast forward fifty years and if my father was the Prime Minister today he would no doubt be hung, drawn and quartered.

Oh how I long for the good old days.

Here’s what we know about the beat-up that dominated the news last week by a sensation-seeking media intent on ensuring John Key doesn’t get a fourth term. The incident(s) took place some time ago. The complainant did not go to her employers at the time or subsequently, but decided instead to wait a while and then relate the tale to extreme left wing blogger Martyn Bradbury. The couple she worked for told the New Zealand Herald that she had “strong political views”. John Key had recognised her distress, and had apologised and given her two bottles of wine.

But today we exist in a culture of victimhood which is taking on a sanctity all of its own. You must not touch or tug a woman’s hair in case she suffers for ever and ever. This looks like an instance of “convenient offence” because it suits the offendees own agenda. As a result it undermines deserving cases of discrimination and abuse.

I see the actions of the prime minister as being silly, and he himself has admitted it was foolish. And to be fair there was a power imbalance here, as there often is between a man and a woman and certainly there was in this instance between the most powerful man in New Zealand and a waitress.

My own attitude comes of course from being of the male gender and we often totally misunderstand the hurt caused to the female of the species when they consider their bodies are being violated. Too late I’m afraid to point this out to my father.

And so an annoying hair-tugging event, meant to be playful, but made out to be the crime of the century, may be just that if you are on the receiving end of the offence.

Compare this however to events that occurred when the election campaign was on. Key had to suffer death threats, rants made at him by an unruly mob chanting “F…John Key” egged on by a dubious German, effigies of him burnt, slurs made about his daughter and the lead singer in a popular counter-culture band talking about raping his daughter and his son during an interview on National Radio.

There was little sympathy for these actions at the time with some politicians actually encouraging that sort of violent and threatening behaviour.

Key’s widely-publicised misdemeanour took place in a public cafe full of patrons when he was visiting for a cup of coffee with his wife at his side. The luvvies from the left were so incensed that Laila Harre wrote that the Prime Minister’s antics were akin to those of serial sex offender and paedophile Rolf Harris.

More than a slight exaggeration, surely?

The real political story of the week was the Roy Morgan poll out last Thursday that showed Labour’s popularity had dropped 3.5 percentage points to be at just 27.5 percent. Ironically Labour has always claimed that the Roy Morgan polls are the most accurate. Their strategists will be looking askance at Andrew Little who has all but disappeared off the radar of late and will be wondering if they haven’t made another regrettable leadership choice.

This information was largely ignored by the news media as they continued day after day with a pointless crusade against Key with some opposition members even calling for him to stand down.

Key should take coffee and cake at home.

“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” - H. L. Mencken

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Teetering towards extinction

I found out recently that I am dying. Apparently I am also depressed, though I guess one would naturally go with the other. This information was relayed to me in an article I read in a magazine at the doctor’s waiting room which was headlined “No fun in being teetotal.” I quit drinking about thirty-five years ago and according to the article, I must now be at deaths door.

My wife is furious with me. To think that I have gone around pretending that I am disgustingly healthy, grinning from ear to ear, cracking jokes (though usually ones that only I find funny) and showing no outwards sign of depression (except when Winston Peters won Northland) she considers to be incredibly insensitive.

I should have fronted up she reckons. After all there will now be little time left to get my affairs in order. There are wills to construct, funeral services to plan, eulogy’s to compose (they will be short) friends and relatives to visit for the last time and all that sort of carry on.

I must say I do feel a trifle guilty. Until I read the article I was blissfully unaware that my time was nearly up; so too apparently was my GP.

The claims that brought me to the realisation of my perilous position were made by psychiatrist Bryan Rodgers, an Australian - well he would be, wouldn’t he - who studied 2700 male and female teetotalers in Canberra and 9500 non-drinkers in Britain and concluded that they had a higher death rate than moderate drinkers. He also wrote that non-drinkers were likely to suffer from anxiety and depression (well I am now) and were financially worse off. The last claim surprised me somewhat. Just because you give up drinking doesn’t mean your friends do, and my grog cupboard (or should it now be called a medicine cabinet) is as well stocked as ever. Replenishing it is not cheap and I can’t for the life of me see how taking up drinking again is going to put more money in my pocket.

But then again, Australian logic always did escape me.

It is fair to say though that non-alcoholic drinks are not inexpensive either; you’d be amazed at what you can pay for a glass of water in a pub in Wellington for instance. But the good thing about Coca-Cola is that one glass will last you for ages while the dehydrating effects of alcohol means your imbibing friends are back and forth to the bar - and, come to think of it, the toilet - all evening.

Dr. Rodgers was also reported as saying that non-drinkers ended up looking worse. Looking worse than what? I saw a couple of winos in the Cuba mall the other day and I’ll swear I looked better than them, though I admit only marginally. 

This was where Mrs. Long was a little kinder. She thought I definitely looked better than most of the winos she’d observed.

She’s always there when you need her.

But the big question is: will I be there for her? Well according to the magazine article, apparently not. By selfishly giving up drinking I am likely to leave my wife and family widowed and fatherless.

How thoughtless.

The other surprise is that the drinks you substitute for alcohol have always looked to be so darned healthy. Apart from Coca-Cola, and the jury is still out on whether it really rots your stomach, I have discovered some wonderful elixirs and I must tell you about these before my inevitable demise. Top billing is shared with Cranberry Classic and Campbell’s V8 Vegetable juice. The latter is manufactured in Aussie, as are most products on our supermarket shelves these days, which may put you off, but it’s made to the original American formula and it really is a superb tipple. Pellegrino’s carbonated water is refreshing, and if you want to have a drink when you’re not having a drink - given that Clayton’s fled the market almost before it got started - Grapetiser and/or Sanitarium’s sparkling grape juice look and taste the part.

And now a true story from my Licensing Trust files: In the early 1970’s two separate groups of diners were seated in the Empire Hotel dining room. One table orders the most expensive champagne available, the other, some sparkling grape juice. Both beverages delivered by separate wine waiters, both bottles encased in the customary white serviette, and, you guessed it, both delivered to the wrong tables. The group who thought they were drinking the most expensive champagne were so impressed with the smoothness and the ambiance they ordered a second bottle and only then discovered it was different from the first. Those who thought they were drinking sparkling grape juice - probably wowsers like me - were never told of the error. They probably had the night of their lives and, thanks to the mistake, are alive and well today.

There’s a message here somewhere, but I’m not quite sure what it is.

Anyway I’ve got the message. I must get off to the funeral directors and choose a casket. Which reminds me; the man who wrote the “Hokey Tokey” died last week. They had a lot of trouble keeping his body in the coffin. They’d put his left leg in….

“Apart from cheese and tulips, the main product of the country Holland is advocaat, a drink made from lawyers” - Alan Coren

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Losing life in the fast lane

“Television rules your lives” I used to tell my kids when they were young. They could no doubt level the same criticism at me today as they lead busy lives and I probably languish in front of the box more than I should. The truth is I barely venture off watching the state-owned channel TV One and so many apparent gems of the television viewing world have passed by me unnoticed.

For instance I have never seen Game of Thrones, for all I know “The Kardashians” may well be a mountain range in some remote corner of the world and Top Gear has never ever featured on my screen. Until last week that was. I now venture over to TV 3 in the mornings to see who my old friend Paul Henry is offending and an advertisement on that channel promoting the very last episode of Top Gear caught my eye and so I thought I’d better take the final opportunity to see this apparently iconic show.

It was an interesting experience. Top Gear seems to be broadcast out of a large tin shed to a surrounding audience who laugh at anything the presenters Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond have to say. The audience amusement was apparently genuine, despite the comments being bland and almost childish and I found myself yearning for a return to the canned laughter which was a distraction in the shows of old and still occurs I notice when the grandkids visit and insist on watching the Disney channel.

Top Gear appears to feature well-known Britons driving a fairly modest car around a tar-sealed circuit at what is, I gather, a barely-used airfield. Then a poorly handwritten magnetic label advising the time it took the celebrity driver to get around the course is placed on a metal board in time order and the compliant audience gasp on cue at the outcome.

Riveting television – not; I’m fighting off sleep and it’s still quite early in the evening. I’m even wondering if “Jones” might have a rerun of The Beverly Hillbillies I could switch to.

Clarkson looks older than I am and feel and I’m amazed he had enough strength to biff one of his producers over some catering arrangements and in the process losing his obscenely highly-paid job.

Millions of devoted middle-aged middle-England fans have signed a petition to get him back, but I must say I’m full of admiration for the Director-General, Lord Hall, for deciding enough was enough and sending him packing despite the dear old British Broadcasting Corporation standing to lose a small fortune as a result.

New Zealand wine producers were cock-a-hoop when it was disclosed that Clarkson and his co-hosts listed Cloudy Bay Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc among the twenty bottles of wine they insist be made available in their dressing room for their Top Gear Live shows. But that was only for starters. They also required 24 bottles of Bombay Sapphire gin with necessary gin and tonic making materials and a refrigerated cabinet.

They demanded for each episode a table in the room covered in linen, preferably filled with green plants and a sofa large enough for six people, one of whom is 6ft 3inches and likes to lie down. It also needed to have a Sky TV connection, a DVD player, and iPod dock and a PlayStation 3 with two controllers and a copy of Call of Duty.

Feeding Clarkson and Co had to include “lunch and evening meals and hot snacks, for example pies, jacket potatoes, pasta and prawn cocktail” it was reported, alongside “jelly babies and a cheese board.” Healthy options were chicken Caesar, Nicoise and Greek salads as well as a fruit bowl.

Marmite, honey, jam, peanut butter, HP sauce and balsamic vinegar were also required.

Stranger items on the list included a copy of Scrabble and Pictionary, “nice rubbish bins” and a can of Dove deodorant for men.

“All three presenters have their eclectic tastes and they certainly know what they want,” a Top Gear Live source said.

“Jeremy also likes to be driven around in a Range Rover and it is fair to say he can be a little bit of a Prima Donna at times.”

I’m surprised the prats weren’t all fired earlier.

“Conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long; even if it is, the consciousness of possessing it and using it well should satisfy one.”  - Louisa May Alcott

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And on the third day we're closed

Easter, an enigma for many in the modern world, came and went with its usual inconsistency and confusing values. Some shops it seems were allowed to open, others were not so blessed. Commercial radio and TV continued to broadcast although revenue from advertising was banned.

There is a certain amount of hypocrisy in the pronouncements as to who should work on holy days and who shouldn’t. No one directs hospital staff, public transport workers, petrol station attendants or caregivers to the elderly and the infirm to take religious days of rest, so what makes shopkeepers and their assistants so special?

The garden centre proprietors are always the loudest in their protests about being unable to market God’s most beautiful creation on the Friday and Sunday. Many of them will have ignored the ban and taken the inevitable fines on the chin.

Most of the Easter festivities centred on hot cross buns, chocolate bunnies and Easter eggs. All symbolic of the season, but the man Himself was almost conspicuous by His absence. His death and resurrection garnered little attention.

To be fair the judicial Good Friday murder of Jesus of Nazareth is not a pleasant story. He was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but instead between two thieves on a town garbage heap. It was the kind of place where cynics talked smut, thieves cursed and soldiers gambled.

Most people accept that Jesus was a real person and that He was put to death at the instructions of the Jewish priests and most of the social elite of the day who hated everything about Him. He saw through their pontificating and their self-important determination to maintain their status as the only dependable interpreters of the scriptures.

His Sunday resurrection and His subsequent ascension into heaven for many however are harder to swallow than the story of Jonah and the whale.

The Bible says He spent forty days before the ascension where He walked the land and talked to numerous people; perhaps as many as 500. According to the scriptures He then led his followers to the Mount of Olives, just East of Jerusalem where His feet lifted off the ground and they witnessed His ascension up into the clouds.

Not once throughout the rest of their lives did any of these people ever doubt having seen Jesus in the flesh after the resurrection. Many of them died a painful death of martyrdom while profoundly witnessing to the very end that Jesus had risen from the dead and thereby proved himself to be the Son of God.

There is something disturbingly familiar about all this. Two thousand and fifteen years on Jesus’ adherents are still despised by many. The forces of evil are ever present and over the Easter period we learnt of the massacre of 147 Christian students at a University in Kenya by the Somalia-based Al-Shabaab militant group. Like the Somalian group, Isis and Isis Boko Haram Islamic militants both blatantly threaten the followers of Christ.

Today Jerusalem, though just a speck on the world map, receives overwhelming attention as it and the surrounding states live in constant conflict. This holy land for both major religions is sadly devoid of peace and goodwill.

Laws and human rights based on Christian teachings have served New Zealand well as a society and we can probably endure a couple of days without an adrenalin shot from visiting a supermarket or a garden shop, but we need to be constantly vigilant. In a world where international travel is commonplace a terrorist act on our shores is always possible and perhaps even inevitable. New Zealand’s security agencies are under severe criticism for their perceived intrusions into our private lives, but I’m personally more than happy to put up with the surveillance.

And we can’t rest on our laurels. Religion was supposed to be replaced by Christianity yet there are well documented instances coming to light of how some of Christ’s representatives have fallen well short of His ideals.

I’m even told there are some devoutly religious groups who want to ban surrogacy.

Just as well they weren’t around in Jesus’ day.

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.” - Martin Luther King 

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A sheep joke that is admissable

When I was a kid, on every first day of April, at some ungodly hour of the morning, just before he went off to work, my father would wake me with some tall tale that would encourage me to leave the comfort of my bedroom and make an inspection. A claim that it was snowing, or even that there was an elephant on the front lawn would fool me easily and I would bound out of bed to look out the window, only to met with a chant of: “You big April fool!” or similar.

I gather it wasn’t just a tradition in our family, but I suspect that it has died a slow death in recent years. Certainly I must confess I haven’t kept up the tradition myself of late.

It wasn’t always the case. The best April fool’s fun I ever had was back in the 1970’s when I booked some air-time on the only local radio station at the time, 2ZD. Old school friend Arch King was the breakfast announcer and assistant manager to Johnny Shearer, neither of whom were averse to having a bit of fun.

We pre-recorded an interview that purported to be broadcast live. There were sound effects of hammering, banging and general carpentering and Arch said he was in Long’s Meatmarket’s shop in Queen Street and allowed me to describe the scene. I told the listeners that the noise was being made by a couple of builders who were erecting a sheep pen in our front window. More sound effects as we appeared to be walking through doors to the rear of the premises, and Arch spoke of a small stock trailer in the back yard that was housing a strange looking sheep.

He asked me to describe the rare animal to the listeners. I was happy to oblige. The sheep I said was unusual in as much as it had three back legs. Butchers were always short of legs of lamb and this rare breed of sheep was going to resolve that shortage. I said they had only recently been discovered in the hinterland of Iran where they had subsisted on sand and the odd bit of tussock. I explained that we’d imported a number of them and that had them out on our small farm at Norfolk Road where they were being kept in a sandpit. We were slowly weaning them off the sand and on to the lush grass. At the moment, because of their conventional diet, the meat tasted a bit gritty, I claimed, but once they had been weaned off the sand and were fully digesting the pasture we were providing, I was sure they would be as palatable as our conventional breeds.

I said we were going to put this sheep in the newly erected pen in our shop window and the general public were invited to come and inspect the intriguing animal before it was taken back to the sand pit at Norfolk Road at midday. Traditionally, April Fool’s Day finishes at twelve noon.

I added a rider. Because this particular type of sheep was not well established in Iran, there was no title for the breed. I offered a $20 meat pack for the person who came up with the best name.

The interview was broadcast at ten to eight on April the first - a Monday morning. Within minutes the road outside our shop was crowded with cars; many had to be double parked. First to arrive of course were those people coming into town with their car radios on. But they were soon joined by a host of others; often mothers with kids, the children, in some cases, still in their pyjamas.

The footpath was literally streaming with people desperate to see the five-legged sheep. They weren’t totally disappointed. In the window we had a children’s play pen and in the pen was a life-sized illustration of a sheep with three back legs. The late great signwriter Bill Wellington had crafted this for us and there was a callout shape from the sheep’s mouth that said: “Today is the first day of April” and another line at the back pointing to the third leg that read: “This leg is for pulling!”

Most people saw the funny side and business was brisk. Those who didn’t want to admit they been caught out came in and bought something; many of these folk had never dealt off us before in their lives. The local paper featured the story with a photo of the cartoon sheep on the front page.

A teacher from Wairarapa College won the meat pack. He came up with the name ‘Sloof’ which is of course fools backwards and we deemed this to be most appropriate. You’d be amazed how many people sent in serious entries.

A few days later the wife of a prominent farmer came into the shop and told us that on the Monday morning she was cooking breakfast for her husband and was surprised when he came down the stairs all dressed up.

“I thought you were going to work on the farm,” she said, but her husband told her that he that just had to go into town to have a look at this remarkable sheep in Longs’ butcher’s shop window.

She said she marched him over to the calendar and reminded him of the date. He went meekly back upstairs, changed into his old clothes and spent the rest of the day at the back of the farm.

“When he realised it was April the first,” she said, “He looked very sheepish,”

Well he would, wouldn’t he?

“The first day of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.” - Mark Twain.

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