Sunday Scribbles XXXX

 It occasionally seems as though there is a crude inevitability about life. That Destiny, however dull its armour may be, is still ready for one more foray into the affairs of man.
I am blithering on about games.
Last night we saw the great man-grinding machine that is the All Blacks slowly disassemble the hopes and dreams of the plucky Welsh team. Wales is a tiny sub-nation that sits like a leek-flavoured pimple on the rump of the island that perfidious Albion claims as its own. It regularly offers up 15 men as sacrifical lambs: men who battle mightily, courageously, and futilely against the black-clad New Zealanders. Meanwhile the three blind spinners of fate have indifferently decided, with an iron will, that the Welshmen's courage and dreams must be vanquished and discarded. The red-clad dragons of Wales leave the field of battle mere husks of their former selves, while the New Zealanders grow more handsome, strong, and intelligent with every encounter.
So it must seem to the crofters in the valleys, boyo.
Meanwhile, the cowherds and shepherds, graziers and vintners, lawyers and criminals, ad-men and media monkeys of New Zealand are drooling over our new sporting heroes: the "Unbeaten" All Whites. We finally managed to send another team to the Football World Trophy, and they have acquitted themselves honourably. If a medal were to be struck, it would trumpet their triumph on the face-side: they did not lose a game. The obverse side of that coin, never to be seen or talked about, would bear the motif "they did not win a game, either."
There is talk of a parade. Perhaps someone will be employed to walk beside Ricky Herbert, the team coach, to occasionally whisper into his shell-likes "you are just a man."
Yes, the All Whites did well. They scored points. They scored goals. And they managed to hold three well-known countrys' vastly expensive and hugely talented teams to a draw. And we have celebrated, mighily, because the tele told us to.
What do I think of the All Whites' effort? Bloody amazing. I am thrilled.
Destiny wasn't satisfied with ball games, however. Last night Jenny and I went to visit with the splendid Chris and Lyndsay. Excellent French Onion soup, a delightfully rustic chicken, leek, and prune pie, followed by a thumpingly good chocolate mousse. Conversation at their table is always a delight, and they cunningly befuddled my senses with nacreous wines and various spiritous liquors so my famously rapier-sharp wit is blunted upon their bon mots. Eventually the conversation drifted to the subject of games, and Lyndsay produced a word game called, variously, Quiddle and Bloody Stupid Game. I seemed to be the only one to employ the latter name.
Quiddle is a cross between a card game and a word game, and is mighty fun.At one point Lyndsay rushed off to check How Much We're Winning By (All Blacks v Wales). It being my turn to deal, Christine and I mischeivously rigged his hand, making sure he had to worst selection of cards possible. Christine hid his properly dealt cards under a handy cushion. Lyndsay, when he returned, picked up his cards, and mighty was the merriment as we watched his dismay. We laughed and pointed, then confessed our chicanery, and gave him his properly dealt cards. What a marvellous jape!
Slapping my thighs with laughter, I then picked up my cards. It seems that we had, in fact, picked only the second-worst hand with which to deceive the redoubtable Lyndsay. The real all-time worst one was now clutched in my paw.
The three spinners of fate, in their dank cave at the centre of our dreams, guffawed.
I lost the Bloody Stupid Game by miles.
Reading: the last volume of the astonishing "Stranger in Paradise".
Listening To: Antony and the Johnsons, "I Am A Bird Now". Equally astonishing.
More "Paper Heroes":

Prester shuddered. He had seen so much. But nothing about this meeting had been hinted at.


The room erupted in noise. Anger, frustration, and fear swept the room, and Whistler leapt onto a table. Held his arms up, and bellowed “Quiet, you bastards! Quiet!”

The hubbub died down. All eyes returned to Blunt. Hopes, it now seemed, were now pinned on a man 500 years dead.

“We must all keep calm. This,” Blunt’s lip curled, “this Charles owes us all an explanation. Speak, and tell me why you brought us here from the peace of our graves.”

Whistler got down from the table, and went to Charles. Grabbing the man, he hoisted him up, and deposited him on the table. Charles looked down, a smile of appreciation on his lips. “My god,” he thought. “I like what we have done here. I like what we have made. But I can’t imagine that six will be enough.” He spoke up, the buzzing fussiness of his voice now replaced with a confident baritone.

“People. Gentlemen. You know who you are, you know who each other is. You know you all have number of things in common: you are all warriors. You are all heroes. You have all stood and fought on the side of the weak against the pitiless savageness of the strong and evil.

“And that is why we have brought you to us. We are weak. We have an enemy whom we have ignored and allowed to grow in strength, and our laws and customs make it impossible for us to take up arms against him. We fear now that we may all perish.

“We are many people, and our enemy is few. Yet we are helpless against him, against the evil which confronts us. You are our last hope. You are our only hope. Without you, we die.”

Cienwyn climbed up beside him, and took over the narrative. “For two centuries there has been peace in our world. Peace that you all struggled so valiantly to create. This world you find yourselves in is very much your creation. It is a world built on ideas. It was the notions of chivalry and hospitality from the days of Arthur that inspired England to become the mother of all democracies. It was people like you, Colonel Blunt, and you, Sergeant-Major Whistler, who helped build and preserve that democracy. It was you, Mister Grey, who fought in a bitter war which nearly destroyed the greatest democracy of all, that shining city on a hill they called the United States of America. You, John Prester, who was so cruelly treated by the country you loved, yet you continued striving and struggling to ennoble it. “

A roar came from the assembly. “And what of me?” bellowed the huge Cimmerian. “Hanno the Barbarian, they called call me. God Emperor, they called me. I trampled my enemies into the dust and heard the lamentations of their women. I care nothing for this Greek thing, this democracy. Pah! I spit on it!"

The Sporting Life

Writing as a sofa spud, it occurs to me that sport is attracting less of my attention every year. I’m now becoming more satisfied with the odd glimpse of colliding bodies on the highlights shown on the television “news” programmes.

I cannot remember the last time I sat and watched an entire rugby game, beginning to bloody end, or even went to a one-day cricket match (once my one true love of live sport).

A lot of my flagging interest has come about, of course, by the fact that watching sport on the tele has become difficult and / or expensive. So much is now shown only on satellite TV, which is out of our budget, that I have been forced to replace sport-watching with a different leisure-time pursuit.

Naturally, I have opted for the manly endeavour of reading poetry.

I cannot, for the life of me, write poetry. I have neither the skill not the aptitude. I read Shakespeare’s sonnets, and marvel at his casually perfect placement of words – much like Ewan Chatsfield’s metronomic placement of a cricket ball, frustrating and teasing the batsmen into making an error: usually an error exploited by the Hadlee boy.

I am about to go and look for Walt Whitman, and the ever-worthy Wordsworth. Poetry may never become a spectator event, but it certainly can be spectacular.

Speaking of sports: 18 tries in one footy match? I can understand a game in which one team scores 9 tries… but not one which sees both teams score that number. Usually, if you let nine ball-carriers over your try-line, you’re being beaten to within an inch of your life. I wish I’d seen it: to see two teams that are so strong on attack, and so weak of DEE-fence (as our American second-cousins say) must have provided a comical spectacle.

And major thumbs-up to the Phoenix. A soccer game, with a crowd of 25,000+, in New Zealand? Old Satan must be wondering about the blizzards in Hades right about now.

And a cautious “on ya, boys” to the Black Sticks, for their fortitude in proceeding with their World cup attendance. Logic tells me they’re doing the right thing. If my son were one of them, though, I’d be shitting myself.

READING: Bernard Cornwell's latest, "The Burning Land". Anyone who knows my bookshelves will know I am a great B. Cornwell fan. This marks the first occasion he's released a book and I haven't gone and bought it. Yep, it's a library copy, and I've been waiting 5 months for it.

LISTENING TO: Led Zeppelin, "Mothership". The boys were all right.

TODAY'S WORD. Patience. Waiting five months for a book??! And you tell me I got no patience??! Hah! Bumbug!



RATS:

Twenty times stronger than steel, the strand of web could cope with the sudden shocks of the shots as they reverberated through the rifle's frame.
His body had settled into the day's work. He was spot-welded to the rifle, and his concentration was total. He was in that zone of existence when it seemed as though time itself had slowed down, marching through the day like a river of cold molasses. Decisions that should take a week's thought we remade in less than an instant. He could identify his targets, anticipate their movements, decide on whether to fire or not, and have a fresh round in his rifle's breech before he knew what he was doing. He could stay in this state of utter concentration for up to a half-hour before his body started protesting. He'd then put down his rifle, stretch, drink some water, and pick up the rifle again.
Movement. An officer: he recognised the sleeve markings. He sighted more quickly than he could think, pulled the trigger, and sent a bullet through the men's wrist, effectively amputating the hand.
Another German who wouldn't be back at the front line for months, if ever. Arthur had been at his station for less than twenty minutes, and he'd already done a good day's work.
Arthur Tomlinson had been a sniper on the Western Front for four months, and had, to date, killed a huge number of rats, and crippled 97 German officers. His great secret would stand for another day: he was yet to kill a man. It was his aim to never do so, and Arthur always hit the target he aimed at.

Sunday Scribbles XV

Back, after a coupleof Sundays away. Blame laziness - I do.

The Erebus Disaster. Is there something wrong with me? I can't help but think the whole 30th commemoration of the Air New Zealand crash on Erebus has been an overblown parody. It was a terrible and tragic event that saw hundreds of New Zealanders die in an instant, and blah blah blah. The cause of the crash was folly, stupidity, venality, and incompetence sob weep wail. The years after the crash saw nervous little men found out and justly pilloried, sigh oh dear me. It saw fine and noble men suffer in the cause of the truth, yawn and stretch. But the last sod of earth was shovelled onto the grave of the whole miserable affair years ago, and it should have been allowed to rest.

But along came a new Air New Zealand chairman who wanted to do the right thing. He very publicly apologied to the families of the crash victims. This was a good thing: Air New Zealand had behaved badly. Thirty years ago. Three decades. A generation and more ago. He offered to send a half-dozen family members, chosen at random, to Antarctica on the anniversary of the disaster. Nice of him. It should have ended there. Excellent PR campaign, done well.

Instead, it became a ghastly media circus. Camera crews from a dozen different "news" programmes told the story, over and over. Family members were interviewed until they burst into tears.. yes folks, the money shot. It has been a dreadful imposition on the actual people involved. A prominent businessman was pilloried for trying to help another businessman organise a commemorative flight.

Yes, people died. Sad, tragic, and all that. But it was 30 years ago. I doubt very much if we'd be having this sort of carry on if the tragedy had been the result of, say, a ferry sinking. When was the last time anyone got all tearful about the Wahine disaster? The "news" organisations rush about like demented jackals because it was an aeroplane crash in a stange place. Any plane crash is automatically interesting: The headlines will bellow "Small plane crashes: two dead" and will follow up with a breathless story about a Cessna crashing in Paekakariki... while relegating the car crash that killled four to page three. Air New Zealand has behaved well. TVNZ and TV3, TRN, Radioworks, and Radio New Zealand, Fairfax and Newsmedia have all behaved like slavering offal-eaters. They've disgusted me.



Rugby. As I write this, the All Blacks are playing France. I've just heard on the news that the ABs are leading. I'd be quite happy to watch the game, but I can't: we dropped our SKY subscription. Acxtually, even with a SKY subscription I wouldn't have been able to watch it, because one has to pay extra to watch sport. So, rugby has become less relevant. It's a game that needs to be seen: I can imagine cricket from the radio commentary, but not rugger. And they wonder why the game is becoming irrelevant: they've taken it away from its audience. The TV drama "The Wire" was broadcast here in NZ at 11.00pm, and sank without a trace: everywhere else in the world it waqs hailed as the best TV drama ever, full stop. Rugby will go the same way: a great game, perfect for TV, disappearing because over three quarters of the potential audience have been disenfranchised by the money-grubbers.



Strawberries are back on the shelves, and all is good with the world. About $2 a punnet, making them cheaper than they've been in years. And they're plump, juicy, full of flavour. My favourite fruit.



LISTENING TO: The radio. Media Report - 9.00 o'clock, Sunday morning. Excellent programme. Apart from that - yesterday, I dragged out an old Doris Day (!?) CD, and it was more fun than a barrel of monkeys. So i slapped on a Dean Martin CD, then a Perry Como one. Great music, full of joy. I ended the day with the Neil Young DVD, "Heart of Gold". Bliss.

READING: John Birmingham, "Without Warning". In the first six pages he had stripped the North American continent almost bare of people. He doesn't think small.

WORD OF THE DAY: Johnkey. Rhymes with donkey. Means shithead. Our prime minister isn't going to Copenhagen. Keeping (or making) New Zealand clean and green means nothing to this scabrous fool. Prediction: a one-term National government.



More RATS:


She looked deep into the younger woman’s eyes, and was only mildly surprised at what she saw there.
The pair bound Arthur’s wounds, and then went to look for the old man. They found him, snoring at the back door, with the old man’s old black cat licking at the huge blue knot on his forehead. Amy’s hand reached out, and took Jayne’s, which tightened fiercely around her fingers.
Amy said “I,” and stopped, at a loss.
Jayne replied “I know. And it’s good, Amy. It’s very, very good.”
Chapter Three.
The war in Europe and the Middle East had proceeded another four months, and the thin Radius bone in Arthur’s forearm had healed well. He bore two scars from the earthquake: a Vee-shape on his forehead, and a ragged coin of pink on his left forearm. Old Man Smith, after having had his eyesight restored, had worked his godson hard, and the arm had made an almost complete recovery. The muscle had been torn, and the scar glistened in a deep dimple: but Arthur’s strength had hardly been impaired.
The war was on everyone’s lips. The casualty lists had been a black-bordered horror in far too many copies of the Northridge Oracle, the local newspaper. Jayne Francis had devoted the left hand window of her General Store to make a memorial. She had arranged black ribbons and black bunting at the window, and every day she placed a different photograph there, for people to see, and remember. She had started with just the two pictures: the Cornwell boy, and his mate de Mille, both of whom had perished on the day of the earthquake, in far-off Turkey. Now, five months later, she could put a different photograph in the window for every day of the week, and she wept at the day’s end when she took one loved son away from public view, and replaced him with another. The seven photographs were rotated each week, even on Sunday when her store was closed. None of the boys whose photographs she displayed had been older than her when they died: the youngest, Adam Hall, had been just 19.
Conscription was now a reality, and the conversations in the smithy were heated, tempered, beaten, quenched, and thrust into the flames again. The old man was adamant that the war was evil, and nothing could budge him.
As for Arthur? Arthur was discovering that he wasn’t the man he’d fondly imagined himself to be.