Dress standards

..Airport” as we started our descent in Whenupai, Auckland’s
main airport until 1965. This inspired great confidence in the passengers,
already frightened by the low altitude, turbulence, cloud and the single toilet.
It was an age of muted optimism.
Our father was a stock and station agent and would drive up from Eketahuna,
redolent of the social compost of the Manawatu farming community. Every year
we did the same thing: the zoo, (exciting, as you could ride on an elephant),
the Auckland Museum, (interesting for the scale boats and because you could
sit in the WW II Spitfire), the Waitakere scenic drive, (Hawaiian steak at
some forgotten refreshment rooms), visited our three delightful aunts, (Beverly,
Audrey and Joyce), and made a trip to a thermal resort, (either Helensville
or Waiwera, both of which had bars for our disinterested father). To round
off the week we also washed his car and sympathised with his hangover on the
morning after his parents had allowed him out for the night. Often in the
company of air hostesses.
Then we didn’t see him for another fifty-one weeks, which, I believe,
none of us minded.
Our grandparents were perhaps a little on the formal side. Every evening before
grandfather arrived home from his legal practice everybody was required to
dress for dinner – not in the Bertie Wooster sense of full evening dress –
but ( in my fading recollection) a tie was at least mandatory for all males.
I have it in my mind that my grandmother and great aunt managed twin sets
and pearls as the minimum. My grandfather I am sure was still in jacket, tie
and waistcoat with the highly polished shoes require of the legal and military
professions. Perhaps I exaggerate, but it was intimidating, especially from
my low perspective of eyes just above the level of the mahogany table.
My grandparents idea of a good time was to take us to an improving lecture
at the Commonwealth Society, where we inevitably sat in the front row, which
meant that you could neither fall asleep, fidget nor carry on furtive whispered
conversations. We dressed appropriately with so much starch in our underwear
and shirts that staying upright was no problem, though we sounded like wrapping
paper being crushed every time we moved. Given that we were also being fed
a mixed diet of Biggles and Richmal Crompton’s ‘William’
series of books for children, our values were probably a bit skewed to the
right of centre.
Finding a set of airbrushed nudes in a concealed section of either Lilliput
or a Naturist magazines just left us a bit mystified as to the general topography
of the opposite sex. At a tender age, Biggles is far more interesting.
But to the point.
I have been to several live classical concerts recently, courtesy a friend
who is both a music lover and a fine baritone. The concerts have ranged from
the good to the outstanding, with the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra “The
Grand Tour” concert at the Melbourne Recital Centre being outstanding
for both the music and the acoustics. My barbarian comment was that Mozart
has a lot in common with trad jazz in that you have no problem in guessing
what the next two or three bars are going to be, a remark that was not treated
with any seriousness by my more musically literate colleagues.
The contemporary work was the world premiere of Brett Dean’s Siduri
Dances for Orchestra and flute. I didn’t know that a flute could sound
like a distant humpback whale calling across the vast distances of the southern
oceans. Would you listen to it at home? Perhaps not, but it was breathtaking
in performance.
Prior to that I had been to three of the MSO Beethoven series at the Town
Hall. Good, but an unrelenting diet of Beethoven is a bit like being alternately
standing next to a panel press or being covered with warm yoghurt.
But the all this is leading to the crucial observation, which is that Melbourne’s
dress standards have slipped appallingly*. I can remember concerts when you
could discern the audience from the disposed begging for coins at the door
to the concert hall. No longer.
You might excuse the MSO being dressed from Vinnie’s black oddments
rack on the grounds of age, poverty and neglect, but the audience looked like
they had scrounged their outfits from clothing bins outside the railway station.
The clothing was often older and odder than the people wearing them.
These are special occasions – not just an alternative to going to the
supermarket on Saturday. Also, if you insist on going to church I don’t
believe that fluorescent runners are acceptable in the eyes of whatever deity
you opt for.
We need to do better. Pull our socks up and make sure that they match.
At ease. Parade is dismissed.

*Curiously the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, whose members are largely drawn
from the MSO, were much better dressed and had better haircuts.