The Cat’s Bar

..the
resting of containers and consumed beer by glass – or in New Zealand by the
jug. I can still remember a bar in Sydney with white tiles on the floor and
sawdust on the floor for the same reason as abattoirs had them – it made it
much easier to hose the blood and beer out before opening the next day.
But the Cat’s Bars had seats, were generally empty, and were much quieter. They
had carpets that were dry although the service was glacial as the barman usually
had to look through a distant door to see if anyone had tip-toed in with the
intent of securing a shandy, porter-gaff or gin. They sometimes had women of
a certain age in them, the age being certainly old and in my memory these dilapidated
belles sported hats, hairnets and gloves. They may have been as gloomy and in
need of dusting as the bar, although I may be confusing them both with scenes
from Coronation Street. Anyway, must have been made of blotting paper the way
they could soak the drink up.
Today even to think of a Ladies Bar is regarded as sexist and ridiculous as
there are not enough ladies in a world that seems to be populated by young things
in tight dresses tottering drunkenly around the inner city on high heels that
should require them to have hazard lights for low-flying aircraft.
As a student I was a frequenter of hotels, all of which are now gone either
through the attrition of gentrification or the Christchurch earthquake. The
Gresham Hotel in Cashel Street was the daily hangout for what was laughingly
called the ‘sick crew’, in honour of Thomas Pynchon’s yet
to be identified as post-modernist novel, ‘V’. After a hard day
at art school attempting to paint the next masterpiece after Marcel Duchamp’s
‘Large Glass’, a session at the front bar with students of literature
and law would see me toddle off in a vaguely unsteady state for my evening stint
at the Christchurch Press. The three block walk probably constituted my daily
exercise.
In my younger days and nights I drank most anything that was cheap. I knew better
but could afford nothing else but beer or flagon wine and, given that the drinking
age was twenty-one and I wasn’t, certain compromises had to be made. Once
I thought flagon Vermouth might be a welcome change – but it only brought
me another near death experience and a soliloquy in from of the porcelain pulpit.

I can claim to have identified the Marlborough area of New Zealand as being
ideal for grape-growing well before anybody else –as long as 1962 is long
before anybody else, although as I told only the three other people in the car
and two of them are now dead, this claim may be hard to substantiate. Nor would
I have picked the fact that it now produces megalitres of Sauvignon Blanc, a
lot of which is only usable as a petrol additive to clean fuel injectors. That
Kiwis are not unaware of their wine’s reputation as one wine is called
Cat’s Pee on a Gooseberry Bush – I haven’t tried it. Yes there is
some Sav Blanc which is very good, but it usually expensive.
My stepfather Sam was in the wine and spirit trade and had a small library where
the maps of French vineyards fascinated me. The arcane codes of grape, geography
and classification were something that intrigued me and convinced me that French
wine was intrinsically superior to anything else made anywhere in the world.
And given the wine made in New Zealand in the 1960’s resembled paint stripper
this was not difficult to believe.
I had yet to realise that the French believe that anything they do is, by definition,
better than anybody else and had convinced the rest of the world that in matters
of food and wine this was a truth universally to be acknowledged. The French
do make some very good wine, but they make as much undistinguished and indistinguishable
wine as anybody else.
The Gresham Hotel was the source of my only truly great wine bargain. The cause
was one of last meals in New Zealand before I headed off to the magical Land
of Oz to do a Post Graduate at the yet to be constructed National Gallery of
Victoria Art School. A special wine was required so I meandered down to the
Gresham and asked if they had any good red wine. “Wait a moment,”
said the barman reaching up to a distant shelf, “We’ve got this
old bottle of French stuff. Bugger, it doesn’t have a price. Why don’t
we say six dollars?”
It was French and it was Chateau Margaux and today a Chateau Margaux would cost
you about $1,300. The next day, not quite believing my luck I went back to see
if there was any more. Strangely the barman was not there having lost his job
the previous day for an unspecified reason that I can only guess may have been
to do with the sale of a rather good bottle of red wine.