Why Hollywood never beckoned

For those of you who have never met me I thought I should describe myself. I’m tall and handsome, but not dark. My body is not too dissimilar to Joseph Parker’s and from time to time people mistake me for either Robert Redford or George Clooney. It’s about then that I wake up. The only film star comparisons ever made are either with Jimmy “Schnozz” Durante or Marty Feldman - and they’re both dead!

As for Joseph Parker’s body - well mine would be best described as portly.

But it wasn’t always that way. I was a skinny kid, long of limb but short of body. This peculiarity was accentuated in those days when we would tie the belt that held up our trousers around our waist instead of the hips as we do today. My schoolyard nickname was “daddy longlegs,” cleverly appropriate when you consider my surname. I had big ears that stuck out at right angles which also earned me the nomenclature of “Wingnut.”

The school playground can be so cruel.

Apparently keen to continue my ongoing self-consciousness my parents would remind me that apart from a big nose I also had a droopy eyelid and a weak chin. Nothing much you could do with the chin, but they did offer me surgery for the ears to be pinned back and the eyelid to be lifted. Being a coward for the chloroform mask I declined both offers.

I understood their magnanimity. They would have been worried sick that no member of the opposite sex would be attracted to me and I would spend the rest of their lives living at home.

Amazingly over time the ears flattened out and the eyelid stopped drooping, probably after looking through a myriad of keyholes, but the rest of the asymmetries remained. The chin doubled, and then tripled. Someone, perhaps a past member of the Lansdowne schoolyard, unkindly suggested I had more chins than the Beijing telephone book.

Weak chins can be disguised by growing a beard. I tried this once, but beards tend to attract food items that have inadvertently missed the mouth cavity at feed time. They also constantly itch. While I had the beard people told me I looked like entertainer Ray Woolf and although this was the best comparison I’d had, it wasn’t enough of an incentive to keep it.

A few years ago I stood for the mayoralty. Instead of taking Helen Clark’s lead and opting for an airbrushed photograph for promotional purposes I decided to approach brilliant Dunedin caricature artist Murray Webb to do a head and shoulder image. I sent a front-on and profile photo and he rang me and said would I mind if he used the profile. I reluctantly agreed, but was delighted with the end result. Despite being instantly recognisable, Webb had done something no plastic surgeon could have contemplated; he had given me a chin.

My campaign committee weren’t convinced. I should have taken myself more seriously they reckoned. The electorate agreed; I lost the contest.

To preserve the body beautiful of late I have taken up pilates. “Bodymind Pilates” the company calls itself and encourages our class of aging men to turn up weekly and go through excruciating pain to uphold our posture. It’s an appropriate name. While the body winces the mind says come back next week, it can only get better. But it never does.

“You’re looking good” our attractive instructor repeatedly tells us. It’s a corporate exultation meant for all of us, but she’s lying. With perhaps one or two exceptions, most look awful.

We are given vinyl mats, plastic balls and a rubber band made out of balloon-like material and we use these to twist and turn in contortions people of our age should never be subjected to.

Amongst our group are a retired doctor and a retired lawyer, handy if we are about to have a cardiac arrest and need to make sure our wills are current. However there is no guarantee that either of them could get to us from the other side of the studio in time if we needed them to.

We’re doing our best, but Joseph Parker could knock us all out with one blow.

“The word ‘aerobics’ came about when the gym instructors all got together and said “If we’re going to charge ten dollars an hour, we can’t call it ‘jumping up and down.’” - Rita Rudner

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Beware the official crash rate

The role of the Reserve Bank Governor is to keep a lid on inflation. He does this by raising or lowering the Official Cash Rate (OCR) and then apparently sitting back to see how his machinations have worked out.

I suspect he gets an obscenely high salary for doing this which in itself is inflationary.

My erstwhile bookkeeping teachers at Wairarapa College, Mr Munn and Mr Brown, both taught me that the definition of inflation was “too much money chasing too few goods.” Mr Brown would often cynically add: “For this is the law of the profits.”

For years I have marvelled at the fact we have had precisely the opposite situation in this country. For decades now we’ve had too little money chasing too many goods and yet up until recently we’ve been unable to keep inflation in check.

Until last week that was.

Thanks in good part to the Americans fracking for oil, inflation is deflating and the Reserve Bank Governor has lowered the OCR to 3.25 percent allowing the Australian-owned banks to reduce interest rates and enabling Aucklander’s to pay even more money for their dwellings, which in turn is also likely to be inflationary.

Both Mr Munn and Mr Brown have gone to a higher place, so at this stage I am unable to tell them just how flawed some of their doctrines were.

So let’s examine my claim that there is too little money chasing too many goods.

Most people will tell you with some justification that they don’t have enough money.

Since the 2008 recession real wage increases would be harder to find than someone who admits they voted for Len Brown. Aucklander’s who have owned their own home for many years will be feeling like millionaires, but the value in their property is only of any use to them if they sell up and decide to buy a house somewhere other than Auckland or Christchurch. If they want to relocate back in their own city they will simply be treading water.

Those couples who seek to buy a house or lease one in the city of sails are facing eye-watering mortgages or enormously high rents. Two incomes would be essential and you might have to put off ever having a family. Those who won’t or can’t deny themselves parenthood are in real strife and are causing distress and angst nationally, especially when it’s exposed that they are having difficulty nourishing their offspring.

Addictive people will really be struggling as they nurture their habit and those who consider tattoos a necessity will also find that this adornment may contribute towards their paucity of funds.

As for too many goods? Well just look at our superstores; full to the brim with items made of genuine Taiwanese plastic and the great shops of the world are just a Wi-Fi away from instant access. With just a few exceptions, goods have never been cheaper.

The losers in all of this are the savers. Low interest rates are discouraging for those who squirrel money away. Back in 2008 the OCR was 8.5 percent however the Reserve Bank Governor has indicated that at some stage he will want see interest rates back to their traditional levels.

Imagine the mortgage repayments Aucklander’s will face when that happens.

It is likely that at that stage the banks will have to foreclose on many of those who will have borrowings higher than the value of their dwellings. 2008 all over again and just like the impending big earthquake, there’s a frightening inevitability about it all.

The Reserve Bank has used the unconventional monetary policy of low interest rates for an extended period to cure a very deep recession. It succeeded in doing that, but the country may eventually have to pay a price for this extreme policy.

People flock to Auckland for a number of reasons. Their employers demand it, the culture, the climate, the facilities and simply because big cities attract. It’s like a New Zealand within New Zealand. Our media outlets are largely stationed there and even their advertisers are so confident of its sovereignty they will happily beam information about their products and services New Zealand-wide when their outlets are only stationed in Auckland.

It’s an audacious city and we all rely on its continued success.

I just hope that reliance is not misplaced.

“I’m a wonderful housekeeper. Every time I get a divorce, I keep the house.” – Zsa Zsa Gabor

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Can a house really kill people?

Two year old Emma-Lita Bourne died in hospital last August of a brain-bleed caused by a pneumonia-like illness. Coroner Brandt Shortland said it was entirely possible the condition of the house she lived in had contributed to the illness.

He described the housing New Zealand property where the family resided as “very cold and not getting much sunshine with no carpet and only floorboards.” The government rental agency had apparently conceded that the house was damp and cold and had provided the family with a heater. However the Bourne’s said they didn’t turn it on as they couldn’t afford the power.

Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei blamed the government for an ongoing failure to make sure state housing is “decent, warm and dry and safe for our kids. In this case they claim to have put in ceiling insulation, but didn’t insulate the walls or put in carpet or thermal drapes because it was supposedly impractical.” she complained.

The house was also said to be full of mould.

I’ve always been a bit sceptical about the effectiveness of housing insulation. It is claimed to be a panacea to all our ills whereas I suspect it is more of a placebo. The manufacturers of these insulation products are great marketers and today their inclusion in all new homes is compulsory, but pretty well everyone in my generation were brought up in uninsulated dwellings and most lived to tell the tale.

Back in those “good old days” Pink Batts were unheard of and rugby referees wore white.

I was raised in a modest rough-cast house that had two bedrooms and a sunporch that got very little sun. The house was bitterly cold in the winter as rough-cast houses generally are. Most of the rooms were carpeted, but there was always a half meter of varnished floorboard around the edge of each room; wall-to-wall carpets were to be part of our future.

The living areas in our house faced south and I’d always wondered why so many homes of that era were built to the south and not the sun, but a master builder recently explained to me why this was so. In those pre-refrigerator days a food safe was an essential part of the home. This was a louvered cupboard in the kitchen always placed on the south side of the house open to the elements. Instead of glass it had a fine metal gauze covering that allowed cool air in, but not insects. You stored your milk, butter, cold meat and any other perishable food items in this “safe.” Dining rooms and living rooms were always adjacent to the kitchen so it was bedrooms and bathrooms that inevitably ended up facing the sun on the north and west sides.

My parents’ uninsulated house was kept warm with an open fire place in the living room - not nearly as efficient as today’s log fires - and a one bar heater in the kitchen. We went to bed with hot water bottles.

Coroner Shortland would have been appalled at these conditions and Ms Turei would probably have had both my parents incarcerated.

However there was no mould in the house. As soon as we left for school I gather my mother would open all the windows and the “air the house.” We did have one other fireplace; this was under the copper in the washhouse which she would light a couple of times a week to heat the water to wash our clothes. I guess with washing and ironing, cleaning, and cooking three meals a day for her family my mother wouldn’t have had much time to get cold.

My wife and I had our first house built when we got married. Again, absolutely no insulation, but a few years later fibreglass batts were invented and skilfully marketed and I bought some packs home one day and placed them in the ceiling. I was disappointed that there was no discernible difference to the warmth or otherwise of our dwelling.

And just like her mother and her mother-in-law before her, my wife “aired” the house daily.

The Bourne’s state house is a two storey attached unit and I would imagine that having other units annexed each side would provide insulation on two walls of the house at least.

Meanwhile a resident who lives in the same street told ONE News “The houses are damp, full of cockroaches and mice and are really cold.” A sad state of affairs, but I’m not convinced that it’s the government’s responsibility to keep houses free from cockroaches and mice. This sounds like poor housekeeping and general slovenliness.

Emma-Lita’s mother looks to be of Pacific Island extraction and she and her family would no doubt feel the cold dreadfully and it would be cruel and heartless not to have a huge amount of sympathy towards them for the loss of their daughter, but did the house kill the toddler?

Quite possibly, but I would lay most of the blame on poverty and culture.

“Home wasn’t built in a day.” – Jane Ace

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The chartered clubs' catch 22

Back in the 1970’s two of my closest friends, Lew Milne and Melvin Carroll, along with others, decided that Masterton needed a Cosmopolitan Club. I had just been elected on to the Masterton Licensing Trust and the Trust vigorously opposed the clubs application for a charter. This was on the grounds that the proposed club would take clients away from their public bars with potentially devastating economic outcomes.

So at the hearing, held in the old County Council chambers, I found myself on the opposite side of the fence from Lew and Melvin and friendships were strained. In the event the Commissioner found for the club, though strict membership numbers were imposed.

The club was an overnight success. Applications for membership exceeded the restraints set and for many years there were waiting lists of men wanting to join. Architect Trevor Daniell designed a splendid edifice and the newly-formed club borrowed money to build the premise on land leased from the Trust Lands Trust.

Lew Milne became the inaugural President.

The Licencing Trusts fears were inevitably realised; public bar patronage declined and the Trust had to find other avenues of revenue to replace what had once been its “cash cow.”

There were now three chartered clubs in the town, each with their own distinct enrolments. The Masterton Club attracted professional and business men and farmers. Farm owners that is, not farm workers; it was euphemistically called the “Gentlemen’s Club.” The Soldiers Club was exclusively the preserve of returned servicemen and the Cosmopolitan Club became the working man’s club. Small businessmen and schoolteachers were also known to join “the Cossie Club” and enjoy the company and the atmosphere.

And so it has flourished for many years, used by many other sections of the community as well as members. For instance Masterton’s four Probus Clubs all hold their monthly meetings there on consecutive weeks.

But times change. For some years now all three clubs have been shedding patronage. This situation was halted for a while when women members were admitted. The Soldier’s Club changed its name to The Services and Citizens Club and opened its doors to all comers.

And not just the clubs. The Licensing Trust once had four thriving public bars. The Horseshoe, the Pioneer, the Kuripuni and the Homestead. Now only the Kuripuni survives.

There are a number of reasons behind this. The younger generation are not in to joining clubs or patronising public bars to the same extent as their forbears. A night out for them is usually at a licensed restaurant with friends and family.

Therefore club membership is ageing. Pensioners don’t have a lot of discretionary income to spend on drink and anyway they tend to sit around enjoying the companionship of their mates rather than any intention of getting “blathered” (as they would say in Coronation Street.)

As a result, club coffers suffer.

There is also the potential to be breathalysed on the homeward journey and this has meant imbibing at your “local” - club or pub - is a risky business. Better to stay put with your large-as-life television set with surround-sound and watch live sport with instant replay than risk a drink-driving charge.

It has been suggested that Masterton needs to start anew with a purpose-built facility to encompass all three clubs. This happened in Blenheim where the Blenheim Workingmen’s Club, the Marlborough Club and the Returned Servicemen’s Association Club all abandoned their premises and built a brand new 12 million dollar facility.

A grand idea, but for Masterton from whence comes the money?

All three clubs are carrying debt. The Masterton Club say theirs is manageable, but the other two clubs have substantial borrowings so there would be little money available from selling off existing property. A premise sale may not even be available to the Services and Citizens Club as it may have covenants on it as to its continued use. It was gifted by Mr A.P. Whatman to provide a “comfortable home for returned soldiers for the rest of their lives.”

The Cosmopolitan Club, being on leased land, would be difficult to market.

And there are a number of under-utilised public spaces in the town already. I’m thinking of the YMCA and the huge Homestead complex and its massive adjacent carpark.

So there’s your catch 22. Ideally the three committees should get together, put aside parochialism and prejudices, embrace egalitarianism and chart a course that will provide an ideal solution for all of us.

But if the golf clubs and the A and P show committees are any example, then I won’t be holding my breath.

“The whole history of civilisation is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.” - Walter Bagehot

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