And now, my far-sighted analysis of rugby

Both my parents were keen tennis players and to enhance their skills they built a volley board in our expansive backyard. It was quite an edifice, with a single tennis court sized concrete pad in front and the height of the board itself was about the same as the crossbar of a rugby goal post.

This meant in the winter months I could use the structure to kick a football over and as a result I became fairly proficient at goal kicking. At the beginning of every football season the coach would always ask the assembled team: “Who fancies themselves as a goal-kicker?”

Three or four of us would generally come forward and I would often win the ensuing contest and subsequently become the teams designated goal-kicker. I played on the wing for a time and then as a flanker or a number eight and back then it was a mystery to me as to why the All Black’s goal kicker was always the fullback.

Surely there were locks or hookers or centres whose parents had volley boards in their backyards and had honed their skills to be at least as good if not better than the fullback?

All this changed of course when Grant Fox came along. Overnight it was the first-fives who took all the kicks. Didn’t matter that some of them couldn’t kick their way out of a paper bag; think Wallaby first-five Bernard Foley in the recent Suncorp Stadium test against the All Blacks. If winger Reece Hodge hadn’t finally stepped up to the mark New Zealand would have won the contest quite comfortably.

It’s an odds-on bet that Hodge’s parents were keen tennis players.

But there are a whole lot of aspects about the game of rugby today that mystify me. Foremost among these is the way the referees allow the halfback to put the ball in under their hookers feet. This is patently illegal. The rule book says it must be placed on an imaginary line in the centre of the scrum - or words to that effect, but because the referees have universally decided to hardly ever police this basic law, we seldom, if ever, see a ‘win against the head.’

‘Tight heads’ were once a feature of the game, but now the side with the scrum feed can be certain of winning the ball, which begs the question: why have scrums at all? Scrums these days are always collapsing on themselves, causing injuries to the players and frustration to the viewers as the games get held up endlessly causing Grant Nisbett and his cohorts to eventually run out of idle chatter.

Penalties for scrum infringements are given by referee guesswork which confuses the commentators and the laughable call sequence mantra, ‘crouch, bind, set’ sounds like an opening stanza for Morris dancing.

Give the ball to the team offended against and let them have a free kick. Result: more movement and less injuries resulting in a free-running game that would make Rugby League look cumbersome by comparison.

Then there is the business of the petulant player who throws the ball away robbing the opposition of the chance to have a quick throw-in. This infuriates me. It’s illegal of course, but the referees and the assistant referees are too busy admiring their images on the big screen to observe the infringement.

And don’t get me started on the TMO’s. I don’t want to appear insensitive, but in most cases Stevie Wonder would do a better job. I’m amazed at the number of cameras that are available to focus on the player grounding the ball - or not - and after seeing all the angles in slow motion, with my 20/20 vision, it is abundantly clear to me the All Blacks almost always score and their opposition seldom do.

And just to show that I am not biased towards our national team; why on earth do so many of them think they ought to have their hair cut like Kim Jong-un? If Donald Trump ever gets to see them with short backs and sides and their jelled-up mop tops he will probably issue orders to nuke them.

And finally there’s their tasteless psychedelic footwear and multi-coloured mouth-guards. Some All Blacks already have yellow teeth so they don’t need a black and yellow tooth protector to make them look like as though they’re auditioning for a vampire movie.

Polished black boots and pearly white mouth-guards should be a binding instruction from the public relations people at the NZRU.

So my readers - both of you - will now recognise my analytical brilliance when it comes to rugby and I intend emailing the Rugby Union offering my services for the upcoming Northern tour. I will run the touchlines yelling advice through a hand-held megaphone.

They will no doubt tell me I should have followed my parents and taken up tennis.

If the volley board was still around I would go and bang my head against it.

“The trouble with referees is they just don’t care which side wins.” – Tom Canterbury

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A tale of two Dicks in a bygone era

The Palmerston North squash club was holding a weekend tournament with a fancy dress cabaret in their clubrooms on the Saturday evening. The good-natured Masterton Police people had lent me two uniforms after I had displayed my mob clearing abilities on the Friday night over the road from the Masterton police station. “Uniforms” is a bit of an exaggeration; all we needed on a cold winters night were two great-coats and two helmets. We could supply the dark navy pants and substantial black shoes to complete the illusion.

My partner in crime was John Booth. Older residents who want to put a face to a name would be helped by knowing John’s father was well known stock buyer Randell Booth and his mother was Sister Booth, for many years the matron at Glenwood Hospital. John had joined the navy and seen the world after leaving school, but back in the early sixties, when this tale unfolded, he was managing the Masterton Metal Company at Waingawa.

The reason for wanting to dress up like law enforcement officers was because all sports clubs in those days operated illegal bars for their members to thwart six o’clock closing. We saw an opportunity to cause all sorts of havoc by bursting into the venue wearing police uniforms while the cabaret was in full swing and interrogating the hapless revelers. There would be members of the Wairarapa squash clubs in attendance but we relied on the collars of the coats being turned up high and the helmets down as low as we could get them, to avoid recognition.

We drove over on the cold wet night in my Volkswagen with our two girlfriends who later showed exceptional taste by marrying us, and when we got to the club we sent them on ahead to mingle with the party goers while we chose the best time to make our assertive entrance. The club lounge was upstairs and we wanted to carefully time our arrival to give full effect to the pandemonium we were hoping to create.

Finally we braced ourselves, ran up the stairs and burst through the doors, notebooks in hand. People recoiled instantly at the sight of us. Glasses were hastily hidden in a variety of places and many imbibers fled into the toilets which now became unisex, and were soon full to over-flowing. Some had glass shaped bulges in the most unlikely parts of their persons. John started to take down the particulars of those nearest the door while I marched up the bar, slapped my notebook on the counter and said authoritatively to the ashen faced barman: “I want names!” To be fair, and to avoid exaggeration this all happened in less than a minute or two before a Masterton club member recognised John Booth, knocked his helmet off and when mine was forcibly removed the cry went up: “It’s Long and Booth,” and after much relief-based hilarity, the party was back in full swing.

There was a prize for best fancy dress, which we won, and the evenings revelry might have ended there save for a conversation around the bar with a couple of Dicks that revealed a new opportunity. I use the word Dick in its true sense. These coincidentally were the Christian names of the two men who feature in this story.

To protect the innocent I can reveal that one Dick, was the manager of Masterton’s largest insurance company and the other was the professionally qualified superintendent of Masterton’s largest institution. These two thoughtfully considered that rather than waste the uniforms we might go in to the city centre and have some real fun. They were both competitive squash players and had not brought fancy dress over as such, but had for the occasion dressed up as a couple of larrikins. They had blackened their faces with burnt corks and wore disheveled clothing, the complete antithesis of the type of dress they wore, commensurate with the positions they held, back in Masterton.

We agreed to motor on down to Broadway where the two Dicks would create a disturbance and John and I would subsequently arrest them. A fairly simple procedure. Marion and Judy accompanied us in the Volkswagen; the two Dicks traveled in Dick Insurance’s car. It was pouring with rain but true to the era Broadway was a busy place thanks to the Saturday night picture-goers. Broadway had two theatres quite close to each other, the State and the Regent which shows you how much imagination the people who chose the names for New Zealand’s cinemas had back then.

We parked the Veedub about midway between the two theaters, Dick’s car was a few spaces down. John and I walked up the street with our hands clasped behind our backs nodding to the general public who being disgorged from the theatres and ensuring that the doors of the retail premises were locked and secure. Archetypical police behaviour back then before there was a plethora of patrol cars available to the gendarmery.

Behind us the two Dick’s started an altercation with each other which we turned around to inspect. We rushed back and attempted to break them up. Onlookers did not recognise any play acting. In fact the performance of the two Dick’s would have rivaled anything the moviegoers had seen on the screen that night. They rolled over and over on the footpath as John and I tried desperately to pries them apart. They both ended up in the gutter which was streaming with rain water. The illusion was complete. We “policemen” tried to elicit help from the onlookers who were now literally in their hundreds, lining both sides of the footpath. We got no help. Even back in those relatively law-abiding times, the larrikins were the heroes and were being egged on by the baying crowd.

Dick Insurance decided to take off and I followed in hot pursuit, while my colleague struggled without public assistance with Dick Institution. I yelled to the crowd: “Stop that man” but they parted like the Red Sea to ensure him a safe passage and actually jeered at me! One lady did try to help. She attempted to trip Dick Insurance up with the hook end of her umbrella and very nearly succeeded, but he only half fell and then regained his balance.

The last man to leave the confines of the Regent, he must have been sitting in the front row, came to my aid. He was well built but elderly, perhaps in his seventies, possibly a world war one veteran even, who said: “I’ll get him officer” and dive tackled Dick Insurance, spreading him all over the footpath. I got him, now half stunned, in a full-nelson and dragged him back to John who was struggling to get his charge into the waiting Volkswagen. By now the crowd were cheering, not the two successful policemen, but the two larrikins, who had put up such a good fight.

All this was witnessed by Marion and Judy who both surprisingly accepted proposals of marriage from us not long after. They had to stay on the footpath while we drove the arrestees around the corner and hid in the backyard of a closed service station. We waited there until the crowd had dispersed and then went back for Dick’s car and to pick up our potential fiancées. They told us that we had fled the scene at an opportune time. As we had pulled away the real police arrived in real police cars, apparently alerted by a member of the public who would have told them that two of their colleagues were in all sorts of trouble on Broadway. Reports of the arrest, and of their fellow policemen leaving the scene in a lime green Volkswagen, must have seemed surreal.

Marion just happened to work at Dick Institution’s institution. He didn’t want to hear a word of this back at work on Monday, he cautioned her, given that discipline was an essential ingredient in the smooth running of the organisation.

As far as I know, she never told one other nurse.

(First published May 3rd 2000)

“Son, when you participate in sporting events, it’s not whether you win or not, it’s how drunk you get” - Homer Simpson

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How come we've never kept up with inflation?

Imbibers and diners venturing into Bannister Street’s revamped Joxer Daly’s (now known as the Craft Beer Kitchen) will likely notice a large wall hanging featuring a bevy of bountiful, boater-hatted, bow-tied butchers. Actually I’ve used a bit of artistic license here, remove the bevy and the bountiful; there are only two butchers, but I love alliteration.

One of the above is Dan Simonsen; the other shall remain nameless for the sake of decorum, anonymity and good taste.

The photo was taken in 1967.

Eyes might be sensibly averted to the mouth-watering prices on the meat displayed on the counter in front of the two journeymen. Porterhouse steak is a mere 64 cents a pound. Decimal currency was just in, but we still sold goods in pounds rather than kilos. Converted, porterhouse would have been at $1.40 a kilo.

I checked in at my favourite supermarket last week and saw that porterhouse steak is now $35.99 a kilo, so it has increased 26 fold in 50 years.

Well, you’re thinking, so what? When inflation is taken into account, and we’ve certainly had plenty of that over the intervening period, prices naturally go up. Well my research via google showed that the average weekly wage was $50 in 1967; today it’s more like a thousand dollars, so that’s a 20 fold increase.

If we multiply the 1967 price by the wage increase we get $28.00 a kilo as opposed to $35.99; so steak may be steadily pricing itself off the market.

Strangely enough, the price of beef in the paddock hasn’t increased to anything like that extent, obviously attendant costs have.

If we did the same exercise with lamb the discrepancy is even greater. In the full-sized original photo, lamb loin chops are shown at 33 cents a pound; that’s 73 cents a kilo. Today’s supermarket price: $26.99 a kilo. In this instance the multiplication is times 37.

But the real disparity lies in housing. We built our first home in 1963. We borrowed 2500 pounds off the government-owned State Advances Corporation at an interest rate of 5%. I was being paid 20 pounds ($40) a week at the time and had my wage had been just below that level the interest rate would have been 3%.

You could build a modest three-bedroomed home for 2500 pounds back then, no garage or garden shed; they came later. If you proved you owned the section freehold (average price 150 pounds) State Advances would willingly lend you the money.

These solidly built houses are well entrenched in this town and have all stood the test of time.

Repayments for the 25 year loan weren’t too much of a burden and with ongoing inflation, sometimes rampant, became even less so.

Meanwhile the incoming Labour government has promised to build a tens of thousands of ‘affordable dwellings’ for first home buyers and suggest they will be priced at somewhere between five and six hundred thousand dollars.

My generations first homes cost us at most $6000 - multiply that by the 20 fold wage increases and you get $120,000. So somewhere in the mix today’s young couples have lost around four hundred and eighty thousand dollars.

The two butchers in the photo at CBK are smiling. And so they should be; they lived in the best of times.

“I hate everything about the twenty-first century - except its dentistry.” - A. L. Rowse

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A lawless masquerade

Back when I was single I used to play squash. Not very well, but I played. I played after squash too. We all did. Belonging to sporting club was a necessary adjunct to life back in the days when the pubs closed at six. The clubs adhered to no such closing regime and stayed open till late so you could refresh yourself after a gruelling game of whatever it was you were playing. The police turned a blind eye to after hours trading most of the time but had to make a raid on the odd occasion to keep their hands in. One week it might be the Blairlogie or the Taueru (two pubs on the road to the coast; both suspiciously burnt to the ground after the introduction of ten o’clock closing) the next week, a luckless sporting club. Getting caught drinking after hours carried no life sentence other than eternal shame to your family. In the sixties major crimes of the times were jaywalking, bookmaking and unlawful carnal knowledge; the latter now seemingly expunged from the lawbooks for some reason completely unknown to me.

We visited other squash clubs from time to time to play in competitions and then invariably to join them in a social cabaret on the Saturday night of the tournament. One such outing was to occur in Palmerston North and a friend and I and our girlfriends decided to give the tournament itself a miss but attend the Saturday night function. The event was to be a fancy dress. It occurred to us that if we were to arrived dressed as policeman, given that the illegal bar would be in full swing, we might just create pandemonium. There were no costume hire companies in town in those days so on Friday night I went cap in hand to the Masterton Police station and asked if I could borrow a couple of uniforms for the following evening.

Back then the tiny police station was on the corner of Lincoln Road and Church Street. I think the total compliment of police personnel was about five or six and the CIB section served the whole Wairarapa. I was politely told by the pleasant gendarmes manning the station that it was illegal for them to lend out uniforms. This was Brian Maude and Geoff Russell and they seemed genuinely sorry that they couldn’t help. I was about to walk out when they had a curious change of heart.

Over the road quite a large crowd was gathering outside the car company known as H. J. Jones Ltd. McKenzie Flooring now occupies the site. The friendly Austin/ Morris dealership was owned and operated by likable brothers Les and Eric Jones, both sons of the original owner: “H.J.” A Wairarapa Car Club Rally was leaving from the premises and had drawn a crowd of well over a hundred people who were taking up the footpath adjacent to where the cars were leaving from and had spilled on to the road. Passers-by were having great difficulty passing by. My two gregarious police persons said I could have the uniforms if I put one on now and went over the road and dispersed the crowd.

It seemed like a fair swap to me so I donned a navy great-coat (it was raining) put on the helmet and marched over to the madding crowd feeling somewhat drunk with power. “Move on” I said in the best PC Plod manner I could muster and moved the crowd back from the footpath edge allowing those wanting to use the footpath as a footpath an uninterrupted passage. I enjoyed the experience. Never before had so many people been so moved by so few in such a short time. With apologies to you know who.

I looked back at the station and saw constables Russell and Maude peeping over the half white painted windows with sheer admiration written in their expressions. I suspect their mouths, which were hidden, would have been in the wide grin mode. All would have gone swimmingly to plan if someone hadn’t recognised me.

That someone was Jack Jenkin, some years previously he had been my scoutmaster and he told me later he would not have known it was me except I was wearing pointed toe shoes. We used to call them winkle pickers. Fashionable for young men at the time, but hardly the attire for a policeman on duty. He cried out for all to hear: “It’s bl*#@y Ricky Long!” using language that would have made Lord Baden-Powell blush and the crowd swarmed back to their previous untenable positions. Mob rule returned to the streets.

Sole Times-Age photographer at the time was Norm Daken and he shot a picture as I turned to grin at his greeting. I rushed back to the sanctuary of the police station and found my two policemen in fits of laughter, well pleased with my performance and agreeing wholeheartedly to lend me the two uniforms. “By the way,” they wanted to know, “Who was it that took the photo?”

When I told them it was the Times-Age photographer the colour drained visibly from their cheeks. Lending a police uniform was a sackable offence. If the picture was published they could both lose their jobs. I was reminded too that my own role was a hangable felony, or something akin to that.

I was sorry I had placed us all in such a position. They invited me back to the station at nine the next morning to see if the three of us could somehow convince Norm that it would be in everyone’s best interests not to publish the photo. By the time I got there the hapless photographer had been interrogated under a powerful white light in a darkened backroom that didn’t really exist and had reluctantly handed over the negative and the print. There were no distinguishing marks on his person to suggest that the photos had been beaten out of him. I suspect he had probably been promised an exclusive scoop on the next major crime in the town as a reward for his co-operation. This would likely have been someone caught double-parking. Anyway Norm was his usual cheerful self as he left the station and seemed not too phased at having lost the opportunity to print the picture.

Messrs. Maude and Russell kept their end of the bargain and handed over two uniforms and at Palmerston North that night we had even more fun which will be the subject of next week’s column. I found the offending photo the other day during our house shift and thought that forty years on the Times-Age might at last like to publish it at last.

I met Brian Maude last year at a Licensing Trust conference in Auckland. He is now retired from the force and is a board member of a major trust in that city. I assume Geoff Russell has also retired, so there should be no repercussions. Unless of course, Police minister George Hawkins decides to withdraw their pensions.

Meanwhile I’m relying on the likelihood that the statute of limitations for being charged with impersonating a police officer will have well passed.

(First published April 26th 2000)

“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”- Margaret Thatcher

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Is this the longest war?

I went to see the film Battle of the Sexes recently. In essence it’s the story of a 1973 tennis match between Billie-Jean King and Bobby Riggs which became the most watched television sports event of all time. Trapped in a media glare King and Riggs, aged 30 and 55 respectively at the time, were on the opposite sides of a binary argument, but to some extent the real story was about off-court issues. Male chauvinism, equal pay, women’s liberation and even lesbianism were closely examined and mostly found wanting, even taking into account the era of the match-up.

Riggs, the world’s number one tennis player in 1939, is an old pro with a gambling addiction who has lost his drive and is looking for the next hustle. He firmly believes that an over-the-hill tennis veteran can beat the young female champion.

Meanwhile King has been arguing on behalf of her fellow players on the American women’s tennis circuit to be paid more and although the proposed match looks like a gimmick she realises the message it could send to the world if she wins. To complicate the issue, despite apparently being happily married, she unexpectedly falls in love with her female hairdresser.

And all this based on a true story.

If art really imitates life then the male of the species comes out of this rather badly.

A few years ago David Cunliffe apologised for being a man and subsequently lost the leadership of the Labour party, but perhaps he had a point.

Pay equity and glass ceilings are still relevant topics of conversation and then as if to emphasise the real life battle of the sexes out of left field wanders the grotesque Harvey Weinstein.

We’d all heard the stories of the ‘casting couches’ but turned blind eyes assuming the dalliances were consensual. A number of credible victims have come forward however alleging rape, and other sordid expectations from the pusillanimous producer.

But there are mixed messages. Italian film star Asia Argento says Mr Weinstein forced himself on her originally, but then concedes to later having a number of agreed-to liaisons with him ostensibly to further her career.

Meanwhile Weinstein admits to some misdemeanours, but assumes therapy will cure his perceived addiction and believes Mrs Weinstein will understand.

She doesn’t of course - and has left the building.

Can Mr Weinstein seriously be cured? I see a parallel in American doctor Vernon McGee’s ungenerous description of alcohol addiction. “If alcoholism is a disease,” he says “It is the only disease that comes in a bottle; the only disease contracted by an act of will, the only disease that is habit forming and is the only disease given as a Christmas gift.”

Writing in England’s Daily Telegraph 'Everyday Sexism' campaigner Lara Bates reckons Weinstein is not a “beast” or a “monster,” but a man who has behaved like many other powerful men. “While many decent men have been shocked and appalled by the emerging allegations, women everywhere have nodded grimly, thinking of their own Weinstein’s. If we insist on labelling Weinstein a monster, then we must face up to the fact that there are monsters everywhere and it shouldn’t be the responsibility of their victims to stop them,” she wrote.

You could argue that despite the 44 years since Billie-Jean and Bobby’s classic clash, the battle of the sexes is still being waged.

“Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relations with men, in their relations with women, all men are rapists, and that’s all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws and their codes.” - Marilyn French

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Are you being served?

I was in a menswear shop in a shopping mall in another city recently. The franchise is noted for its fine polo shirts and I was gazing at their latest samplings when a shop assistant asked me if I needed any help. I assured her I didn’t; I was just looking I said. I have a number of this company’s particular brand of polo shirt, but my wife pointed out that these were new colours and were made of a vastly improved material from those languishing in my wardrobe. She thought I should upscale my trousseau.

I assured her that my current vestments had a few more years left in them, but she reckoned they were getting out of shape and were fading. Both of these observations may have had a semblance of truth in them and it’s a characteristic of modern womanhood that they seem to always want their consorts to be seen in the latest fashion; as if anyone else would notice.

I moved to another display stand and did discern a pair of shoes that I coveted, but by now my wife had sensibly moved next door to a ladies-wear store and so was not there to urge me to acquire. Not that I would of have; although I am not the male equivalent of Imelda Marcos I do have more shoes than you can shake a stick at, some of them having barely been worn.

The shop assistant, passing by with clothes she was about to stack on an adjacent shelf, wanted to know was I still happy just browsing? I assured her I was and eventually left the premises with my credit card still firmly ensconced in my wallet.

I’m not the least bit unhappy with this outcome, but there was a time when shop assistants were known as salespeople. I have come to the inevitable conclusion however that employees who actually sell their sponsors products are about as rare as a contemporary NZ voter extolling the virtues of MMP.

With a bit of a nudge and some soundly thought-out dialogue I might well have walked out of the shop with a new pair of shoes and two state-of-the art polo shirts. I say two because the deal was $79.95 for one, or two for $140 - and I can’t resist a bargain.

But it’s not just menswear shops. I have noticed the same lack of interest in marketing to diners in restaurants.

When you go straight to the main course no effort is made to entice you to try an entree first. The main course menu often offers up extras like wedges, onion rings or mushrooms, but the waiter person never suggests you add these. And often you have to badger the individual attending your table to actually see the dessert menu.

At a local restaurant recently I had to leave the table to get my guests a drink from the bar having failed to attract anyone in the dining room to come and refill empty glasses. And what about getting offered coffee or a liqueur at the meals end. In fact when did you last see any restaurant serving liqueurs to round off the evening?

On the other hand it can be overdone. I went into McDonald's last week and said, “I’d like some fries.” The young lady at the counter said, “Would you like fries with that?”

“By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.” - Robert Frost

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A thoroughly modern navy

It was pleasing to note that the far-sighted New Zealand navy has finally pulled the plug on Morse code as a means of communication, 155 years after its invention. How thoroughly modern. What will they do next? Abandon keel hauling and walking the plank as a form of punishment? Samuel Morse came up with his amazing system where dots and dashes became dits and dahs in the middle of last century; he would have been somewhat gratified to know that it survived almost to the 21st century; at least in the antipodes.

Morse was, surprisingly, a portrait painter and the first words he transmitted were: “what hath God wrought.” It was never considered that there was any particular prophetic meaning in this, but back in 1845 the Bible would have been one of the few books in widespread circulation so a scriptural passage would be almost mandatory. Our illustrious navy was apparently a lot less poetic. “Close down this circuit. Out.” it said last week, as it ended a major division in its repertoire of communication systems. Morse would be turning in his grave at their lack of imagination. I gather for the navy, (and you’re going to love this,) there was no remorse.

I used to be dab hand at Morse myself; nearly fifty years ago, and I can still pretty well remember the whole alphabet in dits and dahs. This is amazing if you think about it because I can scarcely recall the name of someone I met half an hour ago. Fellow Lansdowne scouter Ken Wilton and I were the best in our troop and won the much sought after signals trophy at a regional scout competition held at the Solway showgrounds in the early 1950’s. Ken’s forte was reading semaphore flags which the New Zealand navy probably still use to alert sailors that it is time me for their daily tot of rum.

We used to practice our craft by me climbing up on the woodshed roof at our house at the bottom of Opaki Road and Ken getting up on top of his parents wash-house (we call them laundry’s now) in Third Street and we would flash messages to each other using our Eveready torches. We honed our communication skills this way, but I doubt that the messages we transmitted were earth shattering in content. Sounds like a pretty dull pastime compared to today’s high tech recreational activities but this was back in the days when Tom Sawyer was still our consummate hero, and the Ginger Spice equivalent was Becky Thatcher.

My Morse-code reputation must have proceeded me and at Wairarapa College I was assigned to the coveted signals corps during barracks week. My commanding cadet was one Neville Jaine. Neville was a year ahead of me at college and was even skinnier than I was (and still is, darn it) so it fell to me to have to carry the cumbersome and extremely heavy radio sets that were state of the art back then. We spent most of the week roaming the streets of Masterton communicating quintessential information back to the College. Neville wore the earphones perched over the ridiculous khaki soft hats we used to wear, while my growth was seriously stumped carrying the massive radio set on my back. We were sort of a juvenile equivalent of Dad’s Army.

But all this training prepared us perfectly for world war three where I imagined we might have been parachuted behind enemy lines to transmit intelligence back to our troops. Ken and I would have looked for the nearest wash-house or woodshed roof and Neville, who was a wonderful orator, could have done an impression of Puck from Midsummer Nights Dream to avert the enemy’s attention. In the event world war three was canceled; or maybe just postponed. Born in the lucky generation we were too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam. Ken went on to be an accountant, Neville and lawyer and then a judge and I followed in the footsteps of my ancestors and pedaled meat in a sacristy of sausages and soup bones.

For all that, Morse’s invention was an incredible breakthrough for its time and initiated a new phase in world history. Never before could a message be sent without someone going somewhere to carry it. But around thirty years ago the first satellite was launched and today hundreds of them encircle the globe and allow us to communicate instantly from one side of the world to the other. Cables under the sea enable instantaneous telephone contact; these cables are capable of holding a million voice messages and make worldwide usage of the internet possible.

Amidst all this technology, now well entrenched, our cautious navy has decided in its wisdom that Morse may be unnecessary. No one could accuse them of rushing into things.

The end result of all this explosion in international contact is what we call globalisation; a term hardly used as little as ten years ago. Commentators are even suggesting that because of globalisation nations are losing their borders and the sovereignty they once had. Politicians have lost their capability to influence events. Its not surprising that no one respects our political leaders like we once did. Multi-national companies now rule the waves, some of these with gross national products considerably higher than many nations. Word has it that they abandoned the Morse system of message transference eons ago.

The era of the nation state may be over. Countries, according to Japanese business writer Keniche Ohmae, have become mere “fictions.” and he cites the Asian economic crisis, which has affected us all, as a demonstration of this. This might well have meant that nations fighting nations would become a thing of the past but Kosovo and now the India/Pakistan conflict have somewhat defused this optimism.

It is possible then that one day we will again need a well equipped fighting force to ensure our own survival and reassert our nationhood. Colleges don’t have barracks weeks any more and the citizenry are probably are ill-prepared to fight a war. Ken Wilton and I will gladly clamber on to our shed roofs but it is no good calling on Neville Jaine to help out. As head of the police complaints authority he presently has his work cut out adjudicating as to whether or not the police acted hastily in shooting a car converter who brandished a fake gun at them. For some, world war three has already started.

Meanwhile the New Zealand navy is probably contemplating what to do with its carrier pigeons.

(First published in July 1999)

“No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned…a man in jail has more room, better food and commonly better company” - Samuel Johnson

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The idle teenager

Before television was introduced to this country in the early 1960’s, music held sway.

Drugs were unheard of, beer taps were turned off sharp at six, and in the evening radio was king. Apart from the “pictures” the only other form of entertainment, for the non-betrothed anyway, was dancing.

In the mid-fifties a new form of dance swept the world and in 1957 some friends and I formed a rock’n’roll band called The Drifters which saw us gainfully employed most Friday and Saturday nights in various dance halls around the Wairarapa.

In the South Island an entrepreneur named Joe Brown was making his fame and fortune with a dance every Saturday night in Dunedin’s vast Town Hall. Two halls actually, one for traditional dancing and one for rock’n’roll. Being New Zealand’s main university town at the time, these dances were packed with our brightest and whitest.

Joe Brown had another string to his bow. Every year he would travel up and down the country staging talent quests in the cities and major towns. “Joe Brown’s Search for Stars” was the proprietary name and the winners of each contest were invited to Dunedin for the annual grand final in the Town Hall, and then taken on tour. In 1960 Joe Brown’s Search for Stars came to Masterton.

The Drifters opted to compete; and in not just one item. We entered in the instrumental section as well as the vocal section and I was the band’s vocalist. We had an occasional female singer with a glorious voice named Lois Hatfield and we agreed to back her as well. Also local chemist Wayne Snowsill and I fancied ourselves as Everley Brothers imitators and so we proffered a separate entry. The winner was chosen by audience vote and they wisely selected local boy soprano Joseph Anderson for his splendid rendition of Sixteen Candles. Our items came second, third, fourth and fifth.

Joseph Anderson performed with great credit in Dunedin, but the grand final was won by a young Maori man from Palmerston North named Joe Nathan who received a standing ovation, I gather, with a stirring rendition of Old Man River.

The bean counters in Joe Brown’s back rooms in Dunedin, however, must have misread the Masterton results and saw my name featuring regularly, concluding I was a jack of all trades but, fortunately for me, not bothering to complete the proverb. I was offered the tour of New Zealand as a rock’n’roll singer and in doing so became part of the exceptionally talented Dunedin rock group, The Golden Aces.

I was flown to Dunedin in a creaky old DC3 one mid-winter’s Saturday morning where I was to join the troupers and rehearse for a few days before we took the show on the road. That afternoon I met the band and that night I sang at the Town Hall dance which was broadcast live to a New Zealand-wide audience on the YA network. There were lots of telegrams from friends and family back home saying that I came across well, but I knew the static from Wellington to Wairarapa was endemic and that I would have sounded less appealing to anyone with a half-decent reception.

On Sunday we met the rest of our fellow travellers and were shown the printed programmes. I nearly flipped. Beneath my photo I was described as New Zealand’s number One Teenage Idol. The band members were more circumspect. Having heard me the night before they decided a more appropriate title was New Zealand’s number one idle teenager.

This was a variety show typical of the era. Besides Joe Nathan, The Golden Aces and the idle teenager we had another Maori tenor from Christchurch named Charles Hikana, a ventriloquist from Wellington, Ray Anderson with his doll Benny P. Baker, Gary Chadwick, an harmonica player from New Plymouth, and last but certainly not least, New Zealand’s foremost pianist at the time, the irrepressible Jack Thompson from Invercargill.

Manager and compere was tall, charming, ex-Dunedin policeman, Ian Dawson. Dawson had an unusual impediment; he stuttered badly off stage, but in front of a microphone and an audience, his speech was unhindered.

We spent three days rehearsing the show in Dunedin and then took off for our opening night in the Palmerston North Opera House. We arrived with a blaze of publicity given that this was Joe Nathan’s home town and the city was particularly proud of him.

At around seven o’clock in the evening we made our way to the venue where Jack Thompson insisted that he had a dressing room to himself. There were only two dressing rooms in the complex so the rest of us had to share the one other. It was interesting to note that those of us of European descent put make-up on our faces to make ourselves browner under the spotlights, while those with the Maori ancestry put powder on to make themselves whiter. There’s a message here somewhere, but I’m not quite sure what it is.

A sell-out crowd greeted us warmly. Earlier we had sussed out the nearest coffee lounge to the theatre - it was to here that we intended to casually saunter after the show in order to accept the adulation of the crowds, imagining, particularly, a generous number of nubile young women craving autographs.

We made one major mistake in Dunedin. We had omitted to time the show. At intermission, which came earlier than we expected, we had pretty well run out of items. Such was the panic that Ian Dawson was now stuttering both on stage and off and Charles Hikana agreed to take over the role of compere. We sat down backstage and wondered what we would do for the remainder of the evening.

The final item on the programme was listed as The Sensational Trio - this was Joe Nathan, Charles and me. We harmonised such songs as ‘Heart of my Heart’ and ‘It’s a Sin to tell a Lie’ backed by Jack Thompson on the grand piano and The Golden Aces. Prior to that, Joe Nathan sang ‘Old Man River.’ These items were the only ones we so far hadn’t performed.

The 15 minute intermission stretched to 30 minutes as we agonised over how we would produce a creditable second half. I agreed to sing some songs the band and I had never rehearsed together, Ray Anderson said he would create further humorous patter between himself and Benny P. Baker and Gary Chadwick allowed he knew one or two other tunes he could belt out on his mouth organ. Golden Aces drummer Johnny Berryman, who also had a speech defect, caused I think by a cleft palate, said he could sing ‘Susannah’s a Funicle Man’ and when he did, the audience, assuming he was feigning the funny voice, demanded an encore.

So we managed a second half of sorts until it was time for the grand finale - Old Man River followed by The Sensational Trio. It was here we discovered why Jack Thompson wanted his own dressing room. It seemed he enjoyed a whisky during the show; on this occasion, a whole bottle of it.

Halfway though ‘Old Man River’ he got up from the piano stool, resplendent in white bow tie and tails, and whispered in Joe’s ear. The band stopped and Joe had to tell the audience that Jack wanted them to know that he had accompanied him when he won the final in Dunedin. The audience, as embarrassed as we were, clapped politely; the song restarted and was eventually well received.

It was now time for Charles and me to come on from different sides of the stage and burst into ‘Heart of my Heart’ in harmony with Joe. About half way through the song the entire audience broke up and started to laugh uproariously. Some were bent over double. We wondered: “What on earth have we done?”

I remember thinking perhaps my fly was unzipped but a quick glance ascertained that it wasn’t. I turned round and found the source of the uproar. Jack had fallen backwards off the piano stool and was lying on the stage his legs still on the seat and was grinning at Joe, Charles and me with the smile of someone well into his cups.

At this stage the trio looked anything but sensational and Ian Dawson, the poor man, was now stuttering incessantly and hastily lowered the curtain.

We gave the coffee lounge visit a miss. We could hear the crowds still laughing as they walked home past the stage doors and we waited until the coast was clear and then crept back to our hotel and ashamedly crawled into our beds.

The paper the next morning said it all. “Smoke concert air about Joe Brown’s Search for Stars” screamed the headline and started out: “The term ‘star’ is a much overworked word in the theatre, and certainly none of those on stage at the Opera House last night could lay claim to it.” Further on it stated: “Ricky Long from Masterton, described as New Zealand’s number one teenage idol, was unimpressive in an over-amplified performance” and went on, “What he and his band lacked in talent they made up for in volume.” This latter remark was a tad unfair; the band was not “mine” and was made up of exceptional musicians, except perhaps for their rhythm guitarist, me.

The critic managed to find fault with most of the items but saved the greatest vitriol for the unfortunate Jack Thompson. Surprisingly Palmerston North’s afternoon paper was kinder - their reviewer said the show was entertaining and merely complained of a few first night jitters. The morning paper however was more accurate.

In fact the show did improve; it could only get better and at the end of the six week tour it was being well received.

                                                                             Epilogue.

After the tour I convinced the superb Golden Aces saxophonist Barry Gray that he ought to leave Dunedin and come and play for the Drifters. I was best man at his wedding when he married our female vocalist Lois Hatfield. Fifty years on Barry and I found ourselves playing in a band called The Golden Oldies who performed regularly for old time dancers at Masterton’s Cosmopolitan Club. Barry has since passed on; so too has the Cossie Club and we now play for the same audience at the aptly named Old Folks Hall in Cole Street. Amazingly, after the tour Ian Dawson also came to Masterton. He promoted a Joe Brown style Saturday night dance in the Masterton Town Hall. The Drifters were his resident band. Joe Brown gave up the Search for Stars talent quests and took on The Miss New Zealand shows; Ian Dawson held the franchise for Miss Wairarapa. Later he moved to Wellington to take up ownership of the Sorrento Coffee Bar in Ghuznee Street and was to become the manager of the much celebrated Wellington pop group, The Librettos.

Midway through the tour, in August 1960, I had lost my teenage status; I turned twenty and the prospect of being an idle adult didn’t appeal. Except for my place in The Drifters I sensibly abandoned show business for more certain employment in the meat trade.

Which just goes to prove the universal adage: “Old rockers never die, they simply resort to selling sausages and writing tripe.”

(First published in January 2004)

"Tis strange - but true; for truth is always strange; stranger than fiction." - Lord Byron

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