Issue 169

I might’ve
found this note when I went downstairs to pick up the
milk, but there are no stairs, there hasn’t been
milk delivered for decades now and, in fact, there was
never any note. But I’ll persist with the fairy
story.
‘Mr Rudd’ the note might’ve read. ‘You
have been on this earth quite a long time and despite
kidding yourself that your life is unending you have been
selected by a panel of your peers to write your memoirs
as a matter of some urgency.’
‘Piss off!’ I might’ve said as I screwed
up the note and threw it in the waste bin. Then, on reconsidering
I might’ve fished it out again and transferred it
to the recycle bin.
And that might’ve been it. But things have rather
caught up with me and I now find myself contemplating
the prospect of devoting a good part of what’s left
of my life trying to remember something even slightly
interesting about it to include in what will most likely
be a slim tome with very thick paper and big writing –
and lots of pictures.
P&W readers will have noted that lately I’ve
been reading quite a few books written by my contemporary
musicians and entertainers. An unsolicited biography about
Paul McCartney and auto-biographies from Jimmy Barnes
and most recently Mark ‘Tinno’ Tinson come
to mind, which means my brain is about as alert as it’s
been recently. (Reading is good for the brain).
I enjoyed them all too. With regards to Paul McCartney,
despite my thinking that I might already know all there
is to know about him, it became clear that my waning interest
after the demise of The Beatles meant there was half a
life’s worth of catching up to do with his post-Beatles’
adventures.
And that was interesting to me, because the Paul personality
was blended in with the other Beatles and with even close
associates of the Fab Four, like George Martin, (The 5th
Beatle), and so it’s only now I’ve managed
to get a real sense of who Paul really is beyond The Beatles.

I didn’t see his much-lauded concert in Melbourne
recently, but Maria and I heard the Band on the Run
single on the Poodle’s radio on the way back from
the Lomond last night. (That’s almost the same,
isn’t it?) I was struck by what a mish-mash of a
song it is, and despite being laden with hooks the most
substantial hook was and still is Paul himself. (Maria
said she used to own the Wings’ album, which reinforces
our age difference).
Anyway, The Beatles could actually do NO WRONG in music
or fashion or anything I cared about, until their break-up
in whatever black year that was. I suppose you could say
that I was a Beatles’ tragic. For instance I saw
the band when they came to Christchurch (my second ever
concert, the first being the Trapp Family Singers) and
I camped out overnight with my brother in the Cathedral
Square to be at the first showing of… read
more

You
can go to the zoo on a hot day and not see very many animals,
as they sensibly go and find somewhere cool to lie down.
From the shade at the back of their enclosure, through
half-closed eyes and smiling quietly in a camouflaged
way to themselves, they watch humans trying to work out
where they are. If you were unlucky I am sure that you
might think that the zoo only had butterflies, a few meerkats
fresh from their TV appearance – and the ubiquitous seagulls
and sparrows. There are far more homo sapiens than any
other species, demonstrating the plague proportions of
the genus here as with everywhere else. They are not on
show despite their gaudy plumage, screeching cries, and
unusual skin markings.
I can still remember back probably sixty years to the
Auckland zoo with its forlorn polar bear in a deep concrete
enclosure painted blue and white with fake icebergs and
thinking, even at an early age, that the poor animal was
deeply, deeply unhappy. I believe that it got its short-lived
revenge some years later by eating someone that fell into
the pit.
The Auckland zoo also had one elephant that transported
kids around on some form of Howdah on its back –
something you don’t see nowadays. I thought it pretty
cool.
For my first few visits to Melbourne’s zoo I was
highly sceptical of the zoo’s claim that there were
elephants. One walked the bamboo track which claimed to
have elephants at the other end and found a closed kiosk,
confused tourists, and a couple of well-worn elephant
statues. The zoo claimed that there were elephants but
I had never seen, heard or smelt one and I think that
they are pretty hard to hide. I developed theories that
under the new zoo regime they and other large animals
were off in a large savannah-like park that mimicked their
native surrounds down near the Werribee Sewage Farm. They,
along with rhinoceroses, hippopotami, okapi and wildebeest,
ambled, galloped and frolicked in imaginary freedom far
from the city’s tight-fenced pens and enclosures.

Or that it was a test of visual acuity; all the large
animals had been artfully disguised by the World Wildlife
Fund as fast food outlets and coffee stands so, should
they not be spotted (unless they were hyenas who are nearly
always spotted), they could go back to their homeland
and train their brethren in the art of concealment. Or
making coffee and doughnuts.
But suddenly, after a month of visits, a gate was suddenly
open and the Trail of the Elephants unveiled. And there
they were. Large imposing and defecating in prodigious
quantities – apparently up to 75kg a day of shit. It would
have kept my roses going for a few years after I had dug
them out from under the steaming heaps. What our grandson
would have said had he been at the talking stage can only
be conjectured, but I hope the piles of ordure haven’t
scarred him for life.
read more