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...

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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....

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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