
The Saga of Wasp  
and Other Stories

Dave Mullan

e-Book edition, Smashwords 2015

ISBN 1-877357-15-2

ColCom Press

28/101 Red Beach Road,

Hibiscus Coast, Aotearoa-New Zealand 0932

colcom.press@clear.net.nz

Copyright 2015 Dave Mullan

Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedication

Even as I type this, Bev,

you are busy in our new kitchen,

stirring up something that

will be great to eat....

For all the hours I have been

shut up at the computer

while you held our modest

household together,

Thank you

# Table of Contents

Preface

School Days

—How to avoid physical education

Light the Blue Touch Paper

—Explosives in the CBD

Heating Things Up

—Winter in a forestry hut

Chain of Events

—Surveying in the bush

The Culinary Bushman

—Amateur cook in a bush shanty

Taking a Bead

—Rifles I have owned

In Praise of Frosts

—Driving to work in the bush

Ruapehu

—Tongariro and Ngauruhoe on five grapefruit

Technological Virgin

—Be careful with tape recorders

Off the Back of a Truck

—I swear it tried to kill me

An Easter Reminiscence

—Wellington Young Men's Easter Camp 1955

The John McGlashan Waterfall

—Youth Conference

College Capers

—Life in the Theological College

The Mile Must Go Through

—Vacation job with the Post Office

To Catch a Mouse

—Managing while Bev is away from home

Nanaimo Bar

—Another adventure in cookery

Let's Change the Tune

—Choosing the hymns for Sunday

Phoning Home

—Communications in the United States

Fawlty Towers, BC

—Restless night in a hotel

Do you take?

—Wedding celebrant blues

Napier Holiday

—The key to the vacation accommodation problem

Medium Rare, Please

—Taking the waters at Ngawha hot springs

Farewell at Conference

—Our first attempt at stand-up comedy

How Times Have Changed

—Three generations of child minding

The Sydney Car Chase

—"Just follow me—you'll be right"

Under the Rakaia Bridge

—No place to spend the night

Balinese Guest House

—Promotional spoof

Kegel Exercises

—Preparation for surgery

On a Scale of One to Ten....

—Advice for the surgical ward

Alarming experience

—Strange noises in the night

Text Mess-aging

—Oldies learning SMS

Do not Write Down Your Password

—Letter to the bank about passwords

The Saga of Wasp

—My very first car

About the Author

—And his work and writing

Dave's General Books

Dave's Church and Ministry Books

# Preface

There's not much to say about these stories really. They were inspired firstly by Dad's own remarkable effort in putting together his life story. He taught himself to type at 80 and we published No Standing Stone soon after. I was really fascinated with what we turned up as we dug into his past. He seemed to have had so many experiences that are no longer possible for anyone these days.

Then I began to realise that I too had some distinctive experience, especially in the dying arts of the indigenous forest of this country. And once I got started I found there were other current events worth writing about just for fun. So these tales have been allowed to trickle along in odd moments whenever I've had a bit of time to spare and could put my hands on a keyboard.

A couple of efforts were somewhat tentatively submitted for magazine publication. One was actually accepted for publication by The Listener. Two months later a different person sent the MS back with a note regretting that they had decided not to use it as it was a little too "orotund" for their readership.

Gosh, orotund! I had to think about that. As a novice writer I couldn't afford to inflict anything like that on the Listener's respective readers, could I? Actually, I didn't know what he meant. And if I was so stupid I didn't know what orotund prose was when I'd actually written it myself, I'd obviously got into pretty deep water.

So, as I have found many times before, publishing your stuff yourself is the only answer. You, Dear Reader, now have before you a revised edition of a Collector's Piece of rare quality. You can be sure it'll be rare, anyway—in 1991 I printed only enough of the first edition to meet our Christmas gift requirements for the next year or two.

Happily, some recipients found it more interesting than the average Christmas card and we found a copy or two for their friends. In 2014 an enlarged edition was produced with much advanced publishing technology. Now this e-version becomes the apotheosis of my modest publishing career.

And—for the moment—it's free!

Dave Mullan

ColCom Press

Hibiscus Coast Village

28/101 Red Beach Rd

Red Beach, 0932

Aotearoa-New Zealand

March 2015

# School Days — 1951

I'm not a very physical person. Not in an organised way, anyway.

I wasn't too bad at softball thanks to pleasurable hours of coaching at home from Dad. He could hardly spare the time but probably saw a need to encourage some kind of physical activity in his recalcitrant son. So softball was OK. But certainly not rugby football, thank you very much. A game for hooligans, I thought. And in High School, when Physical Education began to get serious, I responded to that part of the official curriculum with an equally serious desire to avoid it.

Happily, at some stage in my fourth form year I grew a massive verruca on the edge of one foot. I can't now remember which foot it was on now, which is rather strange because I really owed it an enormous amount. It must have sprouted out of a psychological need. It served me well.

Every week I had to take it to Lower Hutt to Miss Page and sit in her great chair while she chopped and cut and scraped at it and then put some smelly ointment on it in a hole in a padded bandage and bound everything up together. It was fairly painful—especially when walking towards the gym for PE. And the treatment itself was no sinecure, either. But it was worth enduring all this discomfort for what went with it: a note excusing me from physical activities of all kinds. Undated!

I was fit enough to bike three or four kilometres to school, to run round the grounds during the lunch hour, to walk endlessly around Lower Hutt shops admiring toy cars that I would like to have (I did get one once; it was bright green with black guards—a Lagonda Sports)chasing my younger brother and sisters around the house and beating them up when the occasion seemed to warrant it, and various other vigorous activities. But I was not fit enough to participate in Physical Education. The note said so. And it had no sunset clause incorporated in it.

At first I hung around the gym with others who had also scored a written excuse ("What's the trouble today, Mullan—got your period?") but it was pretty boring. I mean, if you don't like dragging your weight up to chin height on a beam, endangering your vital parts by extravagant leaps over a "horse" or tumbling purposelessly forwards and backwards on mats that have long since lost any softness they once might have had in them it's not much fun watching others do these things. And, if you do take some enjoyment out of watching all this frenetic stuff from the sideline and you show your pleasure in any way, they're liable to give you hell afterwards. So I explored some alternative venues for my prolonged spell of "Excused PE".

A couple of other mates who probably had less excuse than I did were of a similar mind about PE and we considered various options that might be open to us around the school. Once or twice we actually left the grounds and went off up town but this was a very tricky business; we were very conspicuous in our school uniform so it was better to stay off the streets altogether. Even around the school we were liable to be accosted by people who might have taken upon themselves the right to judge whether or not we were where we should be. So there was a bit of a problem.

The school's laboratories proved to be our answer. Each had a secluded store room at the back and it didn't take long to check out which lab was free during our PE periods. It was then easy to move in and make ourselves quietly and comfortably at home in the back room for the period. A cupboard there contained a 35mm filmstrip projector and boxes of those latest aids in the educational development of the younger generation. We feasted on all sorts of material from rather boring history to rather more interesting biology, especially where it involved the human species. And PE came to be a much-anticipated period in our timetable.

The written authorisation for me to not attend PE was accompanied by bandaged evidence for several weeks but not long enough to suit my personal tastes. However, the instructor never called a roll and just accepted whoever drifted along to the class. He just seemed to have an idea that the numbers were about right. And I was absent with a good excuse for a pretty long time. Come to think of it, perhaps there were two or three there who were dodging biology because they preferred PE. Anyway, it had become a habit and I didn't attend again for the rest of my time in school.

Of course, when the whole school had to go on a long-distance jog around what seemed like most of the Hutt Valley it was inevitable that I should turn out to be a poor performer. But this simply confirmed my judgement that such activities were not for me.

Of course, there were other things to do in school. I spent an awful lot of my time getting beaten up by various people. Some of them would wander around the grounds obviously wondering what to do with the rest of the lunch hour. A glimpse of me and their problem was solved:

"Hey, let's beat up Mullan."

"No, let's get his trousers off and see if we can name the parts."

Either way, I didn't care for it and tried to be somewhere else most of the time.

I volunteered for the Air Training Cadets as it seemed that they did a little less square-bashing than the Army Cadets. Though that would have been no great problem as I enjoyed drill in Boys' Brigade and our Company often scored well in the Battalion Competitions. I got to spend a couple of sessions on the old rifle range with very dubious .22 rifles on which I couldn't give any kind of satisfactory performance. Our Unit visited Paraparaumu Control Tower once and actually saw an aircraft land there ("I say, chaps," said "Fish" Salmond, our enthusiastic teacher—who surely must have been ex-RAF—"There's a DC3 expected to arrive in half an hour; we can stay and see it if you like."

Big deal—while camping at Paraparaumu Beach that summer holidays I'd biked down to the airfield, walked through the terminal building—such as it was in the 1940s—and out to a Lockheed Electra on the apron. Accosted by absolutely no one I climbed aboard and took Box Brownie photographs of the cockpit layout. I should post them on my blog.

One of the things we spent a little while with in Cadets was a World War I battery-operated signalling kit. I had learned Morse code from a former Post and Telegraph operator in Boys' Brigade so this equipment was a fascinating outfit. The lamp was set up on a tripod and could be focussed precisely to communicate over a distance of several kilometres in good conditions.

Once we appropriated two of these heavy units—they were optimistically labelled "portable"— and lugged them to our respective homes for the night. George and Russ climbed onto the roof of George's Petone home and Ken Stevenson and I went up the rough road to the Epuni Reservoir. Ken had been allowed to come out only on the understanding that he was to be home by 8pm. Something about homework, I suppose. No wonder he did so well in education later on.

Anyway, by the time we had got up the hill, rigged up our equipment and identified our partner light blinking faintly among all the lights that even then flooded the valley, time was getting on. We spent a lot of time sending AR "I have a message for you" and K "Go on" and so forth but eventually our first successful transmission took place: Dah-Dit Dit-Dit (i.e. NI telegraphic shorthand for "Good Night". Then ensued a long exchange for which the P&T didn't have enough abbreviations. Apparently they never had to say to another telegram operator anything like: "Thanks for the chat but I'm sorry I have to knock off now and go and get my homework done". But we did and into the bargain we were frozen to the bone crouching over the ancient gear. But as we rode off home in the frosty night we were satisfied that if the security of the city depended only on visual communications at night we could fill the bill if asked. "There'll be no danger of a sudden invasion on Petone Beach in a power cut—Mullan and his team will establish communications and save the good people of the Valley from disaster."

We'd had no difficulty in removing the signalling units from the stores. We'd just "forgotten" to put them back after a Cadet exercise one day. Nobody checked. But it was a lot more difficult to get them back in. Eventually, being unwilling to physically break into the store, we had to "confess up", saying untruthfully that they'd been left around the place for a few days.

One PE period we were discovered in the back room of the lab. It was the only occasion when we'd found the cupboard containing "our" projector was locked. Darned cheek, we thought. We had got hinges off with a screwdriver and were absorbed in our usual show when "Pop" Marwick walked in and went to the cupboard where he had locked some examination papers for next day. To say he was dismayed to find the door off the hinges would be to put it very mildly. Fortunately the papers weren't for us and he grumped and growled a bit and went on his way.

We carried on undisturbed in the lab room for the rest of the year. But I thought about it a lot. Some appreciation seemed called for. So, noting that Pop coached the bottom team in hockey I joined it out of gratitude. I really hope he appreciated my sacrificial offering.

# Light the Blue Touch Paper — 1952

When a sharp explosion shook the downstairs office where Bev worked in Wellington's Featherston St her boss was all set to call the police. The windows had rattled vigorously and flakes of plaster fell round the place. By all accounts it was all very exciting. The more worked up he became the more Bev's face became red. She had some idea about what had happened.

I was introduced to explosives in the course of absolutely legitimate but quite novel pursuits. As a fifth former I had been offered some casual Saturday employment with Les Ingram's well-known Home Services in Lower Hutt. We pootled around in his battered but venerable Model A wagon and attended on those who were rich enough to pay us but not rich enough to afford permanent gardeners. An excellent drystone retaining wall for the venerable Todd sisters' garden sticks in my memory as one of the most significant enterprises of my working Saturdays.

We dug gardens at a steady rate of ten square yards an hour on reasonable going. We cut hedges by hand. Les had one of the new-fangled electric clippers but both he and I could beat it on a measured length of hedge because we were fussy about the tight clusters of old cut stems that could only be removed by hand. The electric clipper, he reckoned, always left you with an increasingly larger hedge. We also put down a great lawn—what Les called "a fine Ingram sward".

And, memorably, we split logs. My first day with Les found me on this rather exciting enterprise. I think he enjoyed it at least as much as I did. There was no great rush to the axes and wedges for light and medium logs. But when a really large stump needed to be opened up with the log gun we were both there ready to do the work.

To dribble the innocuous looking grey pellets into his battered old log gun was mysterious. To hammer the whole shooting match into exactly the right spot in the end of the stump was both an art and an anticipatory thrill. And to light a short wick of slow burning fuse and then scramble away out of harm's way lent an improbable air of drama to a casual Saturday morning's work. And to be paid twenty cents an hour to do it—well, wonders never cease, do they?

Few other jobs that we did touched me as did this one. That Saturday in 1950 something was born in me that has yet to wither and die. With few opportunities for expression its fuse goes sputtering on through the dim mists of passing time and could easily set something off in me again. It's a pity that the skill and passion developed in those days could never really find expression in the service of the Methodist church. I'd have been good if they'd needed anything blown up. Come to think of it, I've probably done a bit of that for them over the last half-century...

Certainly in 1952 the literal aspects of this dubious proclivity got going with a vengeance. I was by then working in Kodak's Cine Process department. We processed virtually all the 8mm and 16mm black and white film shot in NZ. Even the National Film Unit, when it occasionally used 16mm came to us to have it processed.

Onto the reel of each day's films went a process test strip from the Great Yellow Giant in Rochester NY and the strips and our analysis of them went back there for comparison with Kodak's official standards and with twenty other processing labs around the world. We held our end up pretty well, too, often scoring at or near the top.

This was no mean achievement because our machines were even then quite ancient having been manufactured in 1916 soon after the 16mm format was first developed. Their elementary photocell printers had been cunningly adapted to handle 8mm when that medium was popularised in the late 1930s. On the 3rd floor Margaret slit these films neatly in half and joined the two pieces together for the customers. Usually the two halves of the film turned out the same width and ran smoothly through the customers' projectors. But not always, it should be conceded and the corner of the second floor was occasionally blue with Margaret's language when the splitter let her down.

The cine process department was right down in the basement of the old Kodak building in Victoria Street. Above it there was an entire floor devoted to the chemical side of the business. Great earthenware vats were used to mix and contain the chemicals that were piped down through control valves at exactly the right speed of replenishment into the processing tanks.

An ice truck delivered 50kg slabs of ice twice weekly. Getting these broken up on the loading dock and upstairs into the ice chest was a bit of a challenge. But ice was vital as the potassium permanganate solution had to be kept cool until it found its way into the processing baths below. A solution of what was commonly known as Condy's Crystals, it was a powerful bleaching agent and was used to initiate the process of reversing the negative image to a positive one.

We were to discover it had another interesting property. I can't take credit for the knowledge that gave birth to the clandestine operations that began to "develop" in the Cine Process department but I certainly gave it some encouragement. Crystalline potassium permanganate, when ground down very finely with pestle and mortar and mixed 50-50 with another powder that was then readily available from a chemists' wholesaler, makes an excellent explosive. It has about the same properties as blasting powder. And it is relatively easy to handle and more or less inert most of the time. Even when actually set alight it goes off only with a bit of a fizz and a few sparks. But when placed under compression it goes off with a very satisfactory bang.

We made up some neat little packages in cardboard tubes, rather like some commercial crackers. In our lunch hour we'd depart for a lonely beach some place—Moa Point was much favoured as it was pretty desolate and there was plenty of opportunity to see unwanted visitors approaching—and scare the seagulls off. If they'd had the airport there then there would have been no birdstrike problem.

We dropped some into the harbour off Queen's wharf but we had a lot of difficulty getting them watertight despite layers of melted bitumen. And there were always crowds of lunching office workers all over the place. And when the bombs did go off under water it was pretty unspectacular anyway.

But hooning all over the city in a short lunch hour wasn't very practicable, nor was Jack the supervisor too pleased about having two of us out at the same time because it took nearly half an hour to become dark-adapted after being out in the sunlight. That meant that our lunch hours became spread over a good part of the time the processing machines were running in darkness.

A search for a more convenient venue led to the light well at the back of our building. It was a space a few metres square between three buildings of more than six storeys and there was nothing at the bottom of it. It proved to be possible to drop a generously-fused charge from the fourth floor Kodak fire escape into the light well, scramble back through the window and run down five flights of stairs before it went off.

These little units were not so large as to attract significant attention but vigorous enough to make their presence felt. Few windows actually opened into the light well so nobody much picked up the tell-tale smells of our exploits. But they heard the noise all right. The whole affair became a talked-about mystery that gave the perpetrators a lot of satisfaction over several weeks. We allowed the charges to get a little bigger and got a buzz out of the sense of mystery that hung around the place as our activities began to be more widely noticed.

But the day that we shook plaster off the walls in London and Lancashire Insurance Coy we knew we had gone over the top and we were wise enough to stop—dropping bombs down the light well, that is.

We turned our attention outdoors again and started some larger designs. We borrowed the firm's titling camera and made up an impromptu movie of a very impressive explosion at the south end of York Bay. Another very large creation involving a pound or two of the firm's chemicals was buried in three feet of gravel and large stones at Moa Point and threw a shower of rocks over 100 feet in the air and even further around. At what we thought was a very healthy distance away we found small stones raining down all round us.

We developed no spectacularly beautiful fireworks that might have added to the beauty of our rather prosaic Guy Fawkes' Days in the 1950s. Nothing that we made ever whistled or screamed. But we made some beaut bangs.

I did a bit of homework on the more creative side but never with any success. Dad mentioned recently that he had got the impression that something was going on in his shed. He said he was always grateful to come home and find it still standing.

My brother Peter and I were working with a "Kodak" mixture one day igniting it on a board. I was always fascinated with the way the stuff just fizzed and burned when it wasn't under compression. I was experimenting with adding a few things to brighten the display a bit. It was beginning to look pretty good and I hopefully trickled some more of the basic mixture from a large jam jar in my hand onto the smoking remains on the board for another try.

All at once the stream of burning powder flared up into the jar and ignited the half a cupful in the bottom. Some of this was pressurised by the burning mass on top and there was a dramatic flash. I was somewhat shaken by the blast but much more by Peter screaming out "I'm blind! I'm blind!" I mean, this could have been serious. I wouldn't half cop it when Dad got home.

No great damage was done. I miraculously restored my brother to sight with a bit of a wash under a tap. We tidied up the shed and agreed on absolute secrecy so Dad wouldn't be anxious. Though now I appreciate that either we shouldn't have bothered or else should have done a more thorough job.

But one thing made me think about giving up exploding things around the place. Of the glass jam jar I'd had my fingers wrapped around we couldn't find a single piece of glass big enough to pick up.

# Heating Things Up — 1953

In early 1953, at 17, I left home and I moved to Karioi Forest in the central plateau. I was to live in many forest communities over the next three or so years, but like first love this one had some special qualities.

It was No 8 camp, roughly halfway between Waiouru and Ohakune Junction. Actually there was only one camp but as the forest had been planted the camps were shifted and when it was all done No 8 stayed. It had doubtless been upgraded over the years and had settled down to routine life in the lengthy period while the forest was growing to the maturity that would bring it into the permanent cycle of production and renewal.

When I arrived in 1953 the camp housed a motley collection of people who pruned and trimmed and thinned. Two of us had just been accepted as junior labourers—about the lowest form of forestry life—and had travelled up from Wellington on the Railways Road Services bus. Dropped off at the forest office out on the main road we'd been transported out to Karioi in a brand new Austin A70 ute. It seemed another half day's journey. By the time we arrived and were allocated our huts it had been a long day.

Sleep came easily that night. But it didn't last long. I was vaguely conscious that the main trunk line was somewhere near to hand but hadn't paid much attention to its exact location. Nor was I to know that the Karioi straight was one of the few places where the K locomotives and their reasonably light overnight expresses could actually get up quite a turn of speed.

Goods trains lumbered past several times during the night but the schedule of the two Expresses and the following Limiteds was what marked out the nights for the first three weeks. These Auckland to Wellington and return passenger trains were key transport for passengers, light freight and the famous Railway Travelling Post Office. I was to become more intimately acquainted with these while driving for the Post Office in Wellington; I often had to go to the trains to deliver or collect their night's work.

But in those first days in Karioi they were mysterious and majestic in their roaring rush—right through the middle of my hut. The long straight from Tangiwai to Ohakune Junction provided a rare opportunity for North Island trains to move along a little and I think they reached their top speed as they passed within a few metres of my hut.

They didn't just shake it as they passed, they seemed to demolish it. Everything shook and rattled and groaned and squeaked. To a quiet city boy whose idea of noise was to go to the Taita speedway once or twice a month it was an awesome experience. For nearly three weeks these visitations punctuated my nights with this roaring trumpeting passage. Spread evenly between 11pm and 3am they saw to it that good sleep was kept to a minimum as my little hut trembled in every inadequate joint.

In due course I got used to them. But I never quite got used to the hut's heating system. At Karioi I didn't have to depend on it, because although the altitude of around 1500 feet made for cool evenings the year was still young when I was moved on. So the idiosyncrasies of my Hot Dogge wood-stove in the corner of this particular hut were of no great consequence.

Midwinter at Taurewa, however, was different. Here the temperatures dropped very smartly when the sun went, even quite early in the autumn and in winter, well, you knew it was a cool part of the world. Situated on the northwest slopes of Tongariro the camp still existed. It was taken over by the Avondale High School as an outdoor centre, but when I last saw it, bore little resemblance to the bleak treeless environment of the early 1950s.

The huts, for their day, were good. None of your ex-army stuff here, but properly designed flat-roofed huts with an overhang at the front to give a little protection to the door. And decent stoves, too. At least, so they appeared. There was a miniature oven that could be used for a spot of baking if we felt inclined. I turned out a fancy batch of scones in one in a hut at district headquarters at Ohakune Junction. Actually I loose the word "fancy" a little lightly; indeed, the word "scones" was necessary for people to know what I'd baked. Small wonder that nobody much felt inclined to venture into the culinary arts with these sullen stoves.

At Taurewa there was no oven. Nor was there a firebox capable of handling a decent fire. It was a very small stove, and given the climate, this was a problem. Crisp frosts would leave one's hair stiff and crackling just in the short walk from the ablutions to the cook-house for breakfast. A freshly washed sheet (rare item, that) when hung out in sunshine could freeze solid in just a few minutes. You could hear it crackling in the freezing breeze off the mountain.

So some kind of heating was necessary in the hut, notwithstanding the rather elementary stove supplied for the job. A problem was that there was virtually no good firewood. At Erua, we had been given time off to collect matured maire from the bush. Apart from the hazard of taking chunks out of your best axe it was marvellous stuff, burning readily with enormous heat.

At Taurewa there was no shortage of decent firewood, even cut to length and trucked up to the camp and tipped on the ground. When you broke a few pieces out of the ice and split it up into slivers not more than a centimetre or so thick and stacked it all round your stove for a few weeks you still had only a modest chance of creating a fire.

A better system was to give your wood a spot of assistance. At some stage during the establishment of this fairly new pine forest someone had spoiled a drum of diesel by letting water get into it. It had stayed out on the forest track and its contents, while unsuitable for a diesel engine even if there had been one still on the station, had been found to be very satisfactory for helping the odd stove fire along.

After a while it became routine to dry our wood as it burned rather than have a mess all round the hut. We'd just throw in a few extra fine splinters, flick a little diesel around out of a beer bottle (there seemed to be a good supply of them, too) and a fire would be underway in no time at all. Sometimes you'd put on a bit much and as the diesel got hot there would be a very lively conflagration but usually half a cupful spread over a good supply of firewood was fine.

Among the various extramural activities with which the spare hours were filled at Taurewa were included the local movies. Ted Phillips used to come over from Taumarunui on a circuit of about five shows, with one projector in the station wagon with him and one permanently mounted in each country hall. I used to give a little amateur assistance in what passed for a projection booth. On one memorable evening I ran most of the changes for The African Queen. Unsophisticated but appreciative, the workers, their families and the community's dogs packed the hall every Saturday night.

I also did a bit of amateur photography and on many a night nearly set the place alight with coats and cloths covering the light from the burning stove while I loaded a developing tank. For printing, though, the warm red glow was quite an acceptable safelight. With wildly fluctuating temperatures and primitive conditions my photographic achievements were on a par with the work of the famous Burton Brothers. They, at least, had equipment that was designed for portable use in rough conditions.

Another hobby that hadn't worked out too well in the appalling road conditions in that part of the world was my bike. This was a regular sports bike with Sturmey Archer three speed hub. It also sported a 48cc two-stroke Mosquito motor that fitted under the pedals and friction-drove the rear wheel. It was not quite at home on the roughly metalled roads around the central plateau and keeping it running was a challenge. But it was better than walking. Once I took it down to Wanganui through the Parapara in only six hours for the 80 or so kilometres from Raetihi. With the baffles out of the muffler it could get up to around 50 kph if one dared to try to stay aboard and could cope with the racket.

It had an overly modest fuel tank. For a unit that was advertised as doing 120 miles to the gallon it was heavy on the juice and I always had to have a bit of spare on hand. Petrol and oil hand-mixed at the ratio of eight to one (give or take a bit) tended to accumulate around the place in handy-sized containers. And it was a full cup of one of these that I picked up instead of diesel to start my fire on one exceptionally cold and wet night.

Nobody came to investigate the explosion that followed the application of a casual match. But it must have been substantial for I found myself and the firebox door and grate cover all spread firmly against the far wall of the hut. And the fire was blown out.

It was a chastening experience. I resolved to be a lot more careful around the place and desegregated my containers a bit. I also looked for an alternative to the stove. I figured that it was too slow to get started, too inefficient when it did start, too bright for photography, too hot when it had been going for a while and altogether too much trouble. I would give it up except for special occasions.

Buying an electric heater was an option, but expensive. There had to be a more economical option. I thought about the problem for some time and a solution eventually presented itself. I bought a 750w element and hung it on a couple of wires from a plug in the light socket. The insulation on the wires got a bit hot and smelly so I stripped it off and left them bare.

This contraption met most of my criteria. It was quick and easy to use, efficient and readily controllable. To a point, that is. It was a bit temperamental about being touched. It flicked me across the hut once or twice when I accidentally came into firm contact. This was, however, quite a gentle experience compared with the firebomb and once one got over the surprise each time it became a manageable routine.

With this one minor failing the Mullan Hut Heater Mk I gave good and satisfying service and winter life in the hut became almost bearable.

# Chain of Events, — 1953

After our first introduction to Forest Service work at Karioi Forest Pete and I were moved to a brief surveying assignment.

Instead of working down rows and rows of identical radiata pine tree we were soon scrambling through second generation cut-over that had been milled in the early 1900s and left to regenerate itself. Most of it was fifteen metre high secondary growth that ordinarily would have existed under a tall canopy of mature trees but as a result of the milling had been freed to grow to unaccustomed height and quality. It produced a verdant mass of small trees, thick bushes and tangled vines quite unlike the original forest floor.

We were picked up at No 8 camp each day after the pruning gangs had gone off to the work that we were only too happy to leave to them. We were taken to Rangataua, nearer to Ohakune.

Our task was to survey boundaries in these old areas. I never did find out why anyone wanted it surveyed but was happy enough to go along with it. Quietly spoken Ian Ralston was in charge and this uncharacteristic forester gave us a kindly introduction to the work and the deep bush. This rather gentle beginning was not to last and I served in surveying gangs under others who made rather more vigorous—if somewhat less understanding—contributions to my acquisition of the dying arts of the indigenous forest.

Bill, not much older than us, was tough as a post and about the same build. Delightfully droll, he had a sophisticated turn of dramatic language when necessary. The word euphemism wasn't in his vocabulary. It wouldn't have been if he knew what it was, either. To him a spade was a fuckin' spade, whether he had fallen over it or not. He was straight.

Once we came across a large kaikawaka tree that stood in the path of a survey route we were making. The rule was that you traversed around any large tree but Bill wasn't of a mind to follow this rule. It was petty, he thought. He was a bushman not a lady gardener. In less than half an hour he chopped through its 650mm diameter with only a straight-bladed slasher, dropping its full eighty-foot length right along our route so that it cleared a considerable amount of track for us in its death.

Ron was a lot older than us, indeed he seemed ageless. A bit stooped but wiry and sharp-eyed, he was one of those extraordinarily well read characters who turn up in the most unlikely places. Living alone in whatever little hut the Forest Service made available to him he had become a passionate devotee of the Golden Trashery of Ogden Nashery. He not only knew scores of the little ditties by heart but made up many of his own.

His rhyming couplets went with us everywhere. Most of a winter was addressed to solving—in beautifully scanned rhymes but invariably less presentable language—the hilarious antics of Otis the butler who did unspeakable things in places that he certainly oughtn't to have. Easygoing and totally impervious to instructions, requests, threats or blackmail from the office, Ron ran his little gang with disarming charm.

The fear of Maurie Hack was instilled into us by others months before we met him. Ron would say, "You think life is hard on this gang; wait till you have to work under the famous Mauricious Hack!" To find ourselves unexpectedly assigned to Erua Forest and Maurie's leadership was more than just a surprise—it was somewhat frightening. We needn't have worried; this gentle family man remained good-natured in the face of the most determined assaults on his patience.

We recorded 31 wet days on end while we were at Erua. A "wet" day was one in which rain came on while we were out in the morning and continued until 2pm. The rule said that the rest of that sort of day was to be written off and we could go home and dry out. But if it was wet before we were due to start we could be employed in maintenance work around camp and we would have to work a full eight hours (well, as full an eight hours as we ever worked) instead of doing "wet" time in the bush. Either way, it never bothered Maurie.

Under the tutelage of men like these we loaded up the truck each day with the appropriate paraphernalia. Hand held ex-army compasses—everything about the Forest Service in those days seemed to be ex-army—were considered to be accurate enough. While we faithfully recorded all our measurements in degrees and minutes the latter were always 15 or 30 or 45 being simply the quarters of a degree. That was about as fine a measurement as the thickness of the needle would allow. You couldn't hope for more in the circumstances.

We carried the ubiquitous "chain", a brass reel of flattened steel wire marked off in chains (22 yards or about 20 metres). At the outer end where the measuring was done in links, or one hundredths of a chain. The marks were metal sleeves that were fastened to the wire itself.

The leading hand had a beautiful pocket aneroid barometer. When corrected for barometric pressure at home base at the beginning and end of the day, this could record height above sea level to within a few metres. I used to worry about what was happening to our contours if the barometric pressure went up during the day while we were away and then sank again before we got home. It seemed to me that there was a good deal of room for inaccuracy in what I liked to think should have been models of the surveyor's art. I couldn't believe that the famed National Forest Survey, carried out during the 1940s, was completed with instruments of this kind. I coveted one of these things but never actually got my hands on one. Come to think of it, we rarely saw it; I think the leading hand only took it out when we weren't looking.

He was only person who mattered in this little gang. The rest of us attended to the prosaic task of pressing forward into the bush and carving out a path through the fifty year old wilderness. We were supposed to be able to wield a slasher to open up the track, find dry wood for a fire and make a brew of tea several times a day, dash back to the truck a mile and a half through the scrub to collect some item accidentally left behind in the morning, and respond over distances of anything up to a couple of hundred yards to the leading hand's provocative comments on religion, politics and head office or Ron's rendition of the latest sexploits of Otis the butler.

The track itself was not your ordinary bush track. The basic rule was that it had to be cleared of all growth to a width of six feet at ground level. The latter was interpreted pretty literally; every stump had to be reduced to mere inches from the ground. Usually there would be one junior member of the party whose prowess with a slasher was well known and this would be the person who would tackle the large trunks. I tended to wind up with the small scruffy stuff and that was quite difficult enough.

The requirement about care with cut-off stumps was illustrated by the terrible story of a slasher hand who sat down on one unexpectedly. In describing the episode in polite company back home his mate explained graphically that he had fallen backwards and the stump had gone" right up his arse". A lady present demurred "Rectum, my man, rectum" to which he responded "You bet—it fuckin' near killed 'im!"

But at least the largest stumps stayed still while you hacked away at them. Unattached supplejack vines which gave no resistance to a slasher were much worse to deal with. They required the sharpest tool and the most carefully timed swing which reached its peak of speed and power as it connected with the vine. It should then dissipate its energy swiftly before the slasher came round the back of your head and opened it up behind your ear. To tackle these, a light curved blade often worked best. But for handling the heavier growth a thick-backed straight-edged "Hedgehog" on a shortish stocky handle was supreme.

Both were sharpened with a round flat spat-on stone. The occasional time a stray piece of metal or a dark flinty trace in dry maire caused a half circle to fly out of the slasher you were in for a lengthy bout with a file to re-form the blade before you could resume fine honing it with the stone. A test of a properly sharpened slasher was whether or not it could shave the hairs of your arms. I never could find out if my blade was sharp enough, of course, lacking the necessary growth to check it.

Brewing up was a ritual. An old white pine log left on the ground after milling operations fifty or more years before was ideal. Flicking a few chips off the outside would reveal perfectly dry timber even after years of drenching wet weather. White pine posts were said to have stood 80 years in wet ground suffering no signs of rot or softening. This extraordinarily valuable timber had been milled primarily to make butter boxes because its other significant property was that it imparted neither odour nor flavour to anything near it. It was also great to whittle. Carefully finished off and rubbed by hand, it developed a beautiful sheen.

This outstanding timber was much prized for firewood for the brew-up fire. Once I saw a leading hand crash around in the bush for 25 minutes to find a good log. We didn't even realise what he'd gone off for—it doesn't always pay to follow or ask when one person goes off alone in the bush—and by the time he got back lugging a huge log of white pine we'd got the billy boiled and the tea made.

Making the fire was relatively simple. Firewood was split into really small slivers and laid over two greenish logs about three inches thick laid ten inches apart. Although a bundle of dried grass held in the hand would now be enough to get the fire started it was more common to use a single sheet of newspaper. This was rolled roughly into a taper, lit with wooden matches (wax matches were forbidden in a state forest lands being too prone to inadequate extinguishing after use—but more of that anon) inserted between the logs under the fire and shaken vigorously to create a draft. In seconds a really good fire would be away and if you hadn't already stuck a (very green) forked stick into the ground, filled your billy (yes, that's what we had to go back to the truck for) with water from the nearest stream (about 300 yards away across two gullies involving a trip that couldn't be made without a slasher) then the best of its heat would be gone by the time you accomplished all those things.

A lid was never used on the billy. Instead you placed a green twig across the top to prevent smoke getting into the water. Like that theory that says that a full cup with a spoon standing in it can be carried without spilling, it was only partly effective. Once the water came to a good rolling boil, but before it was completely aerated you threw in the tea. One teaspoonful per man and one for the pot? No way, you just threw in a handful.

The brew would then be boiled feverishly for a moment or two then removed from the fire and sat on the ground to cool. The billy had to be tapped on the side with a stick 27 times to make the tea leaves go to the bottom. They did. The brew was then poured off quickly into each person's metal or enamel mug (no china in the bush, thank you) and those who felt it needed improvement (invariably every member of the party) added about a half a cupful of sugar. "That's what I like to see," Bill would say, surveying this aromatic but less than perfectly translucent liquid, "A nice drop of brew—the colour of good wine."

In years to come I would make tea for the Methodist Church's Faith and Order Committee meeting. I would solemnly count the persons present for tea (no coffee was offered in the early 1960s) and go off into the kitchen. If they gave time to think of the commissariat the more senior members of that august body might have presumed I was counting out a teaspoon of tea for each person and one for the pot. Not me: it was "one handful for the meeting and one handful for the pot." It worked well enough but I missed the smoky flavour and the syrupy goo at the bottom of the cup.

When we were not brewing up, enjoying the meal itself, or sleeping it all off afterwards, we carried on with the survey. We would cut a few dozen metres of track, mount a new marker and proceed to measure back to the previous one. You would tie the loose end of the chain to the new marker and head off back down the track to the last one. The wire was run out over your shoulder as the chain itself turned in your hand. Arriving at the previous stake you would swing the contraption over your head and bellow out up the track. At the tail end of the chain the leading hand would pull more of the slim metal trace through your hand and out of the reel—unless you had accidentally applied the brake, dropped it on the ground, or caught it in your trouser belt—and you would watch out for the first 22-yard marker. This you would hold firmly against the tip of the stake that was sharpened to present a flat blade of surface front and back so as to be easily seen. The boss would then pull it tight on the stake at his end and noting which chain marker you had stopped at would add his measurement of the last part of a chain in links. Once the measurement was made you swung the chain down into your left hand and wound it back on the reel.

You wound with your right hand and used the fingers of your left to guide the flying slim steel strip neatly onto the drum without kinks or overlaps. You wound smoothly and steadily and not so fast that the tiny leather thongs on the far end would flick around some stump on the track (STUMP on my line? Never!) and catch up tight. If that happened the momentum of several pounds of steel wire tearing along the forest floor could snap the chain.

This was the ultimate disaster. If a member of the party were to get accidentally mislaid one had the impression that the leading hand would simply fill in a small report back at the office:

MISSING ITEM, 27 Msc 1953,

One only Junior Forest Labourer.

Lost while on survey.

Requisition for a replacement has been filed.

But if you broke the chain, that was a serious matter. Indeed, the reason why some Junior FLs went missing was probably because they'd broken the chain. It would be seem to be better to take your chances with the bush than face the leading hand's wrath.

Actually, the matter wasn't all that serious. If you had this kind of disaster you didn't have to pack the job in for the day and go home. Not immediately, anyway. There would be recriminations, of course. Your parentage would be analysed, your personal habits commented upon and some interesting language would echo around the bush for quite a few minutes.

However, the problem could be tackled. First, you made a brew; that always helped. Then, from a mysterious inner pocket the leading hand would take the repair kit—a box of the absolutely forbidden wax matches and a spot of solder. There was a bit of emery paper and some tiny sleeves like those that marked the chain lengths on the steel itself. These could be slipped over the sandpapered broken ends and the heat from a wax match or two was usually enough solder them together. A better repair job could be done at the workshop but this would keep you going for the rest of the day.

When the chain broke a second time in the same place you would accept that you'd made a bad repair and try again. If the new break was in a different place and it was after about two o'clock it was a sign from the heavens.

"I think it's just about to rain," Maurie would say, "Perhaps we'd better head for home."

# The Culinary Bushman — 1953

For a junior woodsman, you might have thought I would make a good kitchen-hand.

I lacked weight and stamina. I'd been in Kodak's cine-processing darkroom for a year and wasn't very active when I was in the daylight. So spending a full eight hours a day on the handle of a pruning saw came hard to me. Pete was straight from St Patrick's College in Wellington where he had been in the First Fifteen and about everything else that was vigorous and bold. He was a Mr Hunk; I was a teenage stripling.

My childhood had been, I guess, a fairly sheltered existence. Our clean living family wasn't into alcohol and the question as to whether or not I might drink never really came up there. Pete was a practising Catholic—but of sorts. A school prefect, he was a favourite of the teaching brothers and would share with us mysterious and scandalous stories of their favourite tipples after football and school duties.

When it came to conversation I was also something of a slow starter. Any contributions I cared to put tentatively together about a Sunday School picnic or the latest trends in music for the Junior Choir tended to be of comparatively little interest to my new-found mates in the bush. And Pete's jocular invitations to yarn about my favourite pub, All Black or racehorse yielded about as little enthusiasm on my side. So conversation hung in the bush air like flies over possum dung in the bush. And it had the same quality about it.

Now in the bush if you didn't go much on physical activities, were not a heavy drinker and couldn't even hold up your end of a basic conversation you were not apt to be taken too seriously. So I didn't make a great deal of progress in relationships with Pete. We lived together in close quarters for several months, worked together on a number of different projects in various localities and separated at the end of that time without so much as an exchanged address. And I'm sure he's never looked for me in Lost Friends.

Anyway, back in the spring of 1953 he and I were rescued from the planting gang at Taurewa to resume work in the native bush. It was probably because the planting season was virtually over. But it was rumoured around the Service that no other gang had accomplished so little planting per hour, nor brewed so many billies of tea per day, nor taken so much time to travel the six or so kilometres to work each day. And certainly it was an unusual accomplishment to lose track of no less than 13,000 seedling trees. These had disappeared from our area over one weekend. Tyre tracks from a very large truck were mute evidence of a theft that must have involved someone in a considerable amount of work. But nobody ever was found sidling up to a pub bar, "Want to buy some cheap radiata? Fell off the back of a truck."

Furthermore, our planting gang had the dubious distinction of having let one of our four-times-a-day smoko fires get out of control. The heavy frosts followed by sunny days had dehydrated everything and the fire raced through the dry tussock and wiped out several acres of newly planted trees. That was another few thousand young trees lost. It was the job of the Forest Service to prevent fires, not start them, we were succinctly informed later, when the obvious evidence of the fire could not be concealed any longer.

So, for whatever reason, the powers that be had decided that Pete and I needed some new experience. We bade farewell to Ron and George and Felix and the relative comforts of Taurewa camp. We would especially miss the fine catering at Ketetahi Timber Company's mill cook-house, long since swallowed up into the pumice and manuka.

The new job was several miles northeast of National Park township, in some fairly raw indigenous bush. With this project there was a difference. Everywhere else we had been that year there had been an established camp complete with electricity, ablutions with hot-water and a cook-house and paid caterer. Not this time. We would be based at Erua but we'd be camping on the job for two weeks at a time using a primeval bush hut complete with a corrugated iron chimney over an open fireplace at one end.

The job was cruising. Three of us worked together marking and measuring native trees for logging or valuation purposes. While in those days it probably hadn't occurred to anyone of importance to ask whether the trees should have been cut down indiscriminately it was still necessary to do it with some calculated care so we had to identify every millable tree and measure it.

Using compass and chain we cut straight lines through the block to carve it into strips of a manageable size. Then we progressed along each line and tallied all the usable trees by species and size. With a slasher one of us cut a flat "plate" on the base of the tree and using a scribing tool that cut grooves in circles and straight lines carved an assigned number into its base.

The other cleaned the loose bark and vines and other hangers-on from the trunk at breast height and skilfully threw a metal measuring tape around it and called out the measurement. Meanwhile our respected leader was standing off with a notebook writing down the number, DBH (diameter at breast height) and the estimated length of log available. All this could be converted into super-feet of millable timber and used as a basis for issuing logging contracts later on.

If that all sounds simple enough it was—in theory. For your average pine tree it would have worked fine and we could have made quite quick progress. But the country was very rough and the indigenous trees were often ungainly and unevenly scattered. Some very fine native trees were still to be found around the central plateau in those days and they could be immense. Once, in behind Erua, we measured one rimu that was about 8 metres round at breast height; it had five separate trunks all of which branched out to make a total of 13 millable logs.

Estimating the height of a straightforward single trunk was not all that easy, either. The quickest way was to have the tape man stand at the base of the tree to give a guide to about six feet. You could then estimate upwards by his height to the point where the top stems spread into branches too small to include in the tally. The most accurate way was to use long cloth measuring tape to measure horizontal distance from the tree to the leading hand. The leading hand used an Abney level to sight 45°up the trunk. That point would be exactly the same distance above the end of the tape as the Abney level was away from the tree. But if the terrain wasn't reasonably level for the appropriate distance away from the tree the tape man might find himself clinging to the sheer side of the tree to lift the tape high enough or digging a hole around its roots to get low enough to find a level. At its best the measurement was reasonably accurate for the main stem but for top logs above the main trunk itself there was nothing to do but guess. It was an art.

And arriving at the diameter of a tree was a problem all of its own. While the leading hand needed only to stand in the middle of a clump of trees and say "Right, that matai there, that'll be No 273" the other two had to cut their way through the undergrowth just to get to it. By the time they did they would sometimes arrive at the wrong tree. At the proper tree they might then have to cut a track anything up to twenty or more metres to get a straight and level sight for the Abney level and hold the long tape to get the height measurement. After that the boss wanted to know what the DBH was and it was all hands to clean the junk from around the girth to get an accurate measurement.

With practice you could fling a metal tape around quite a sizable tree and with your other hand safely catch the flying end as it slapped against the trunk. If there was plenty of room you could get more than a couple of metres of tape successfully around a clean tree. If there wasn't enough room you could catch it on seven adjacent bits of undergrowth, hit yourself in the eye, wind it around your mate who was cleaning bark around the back, flick it into his face as he looked up to sing out "Right, try it now" or even catch it on his swinging slasher as he tried to blaze a good plate. All too often you could rush up to a clean looking tree, fling the tape round, catch it and turn in a quick reading only to have the boss point to a top hamper which included a whole lot of foreign looking growth. No, it was not a biological freak—there was a massive rata vine growing up the back of the trunk and you'd included it in your hasty measurement.

Meanwhile one of the team was preparing the plate for the number. You had to find a good place to do this; if the timber was too gnarled and knotted it was not only hard to cut a neat plate but impossible to use the scribe to leave a readable message. If you went too low it might get buried in descending detritus as time went on. We had, of course, no idea when this timber would actually be milled. And you had to check right around first. One of the tricks of the trade was to lead an unsuspecting new hand up to a tree on the edge of the current strip and to wait until he had almost cut a perfect plate before telling him that we'd got that one yesterday down No 4 line. By time we got all that sorted out and got a good plate ready we'd have forgotten the number so would yell out for it again but the boss would be 50 metres away in the scrub identifying the next tree.

And each day on a camping assignment someone had to knock off early and walk back alone down the tracks to the campsite and put together something of a meal for the gang.

When my turn came for this chore it should have been my great moment. I was OK on some of the lighter bush work and had become very proficient at estimating heights and log lengths. But I wasn't much good at cutting track or lopping a six inch thick rata vine off a rimu. So it should have been a chance for me to shine. The townie who didn't swear, drink, tell stories or climb a hill without puffing could surely cook. "Nothing to it," said Maurie, "There are spuds and beans and some nice steak there. Just boil the veges and fling the steak in the pan."

Well, it should be recorded that I had never seen a piece of fillet steak before that year. Steak in our house was stuff you cut into little bits and stewed with a nice bit of kidney for hours or occasionally made into a pie. Any other steak was something you read about in books or saw people eating in movies.

I knew, however, what a pan was and I had seen Mum cooking lamb's fry, so I had what I thought was a passable acquaintance with the necessary procedure. I could certainly cope with boiling the beans and potatoes.

I cranked up a roaring good fire in no time at all. It filled the entire hut with smoke but that was par for the course on still afternoons. I hauled the meat out of the makeshift safe and checked it for blowflies (you checked everything for flies, even your Swanndri jacket if you were careless enough to leave it on the ground instead of hanging in a tree), doused it generously with flour and spread it out in the pan. It made quite promising noises. I didn't have a problem about the amount of time it would take to cook; I just assumed it would be quite a lot. And I planned to give it a bit more to be sure it was well done.

I then looked for some spuds to peel. I had a passion for chips so decided they would be better that way so I got them started in another pan. They were coming along nicely as the beans were cut about a bit and brought to the boil. I turned the meat over and back while all this was happening. I noted that it seemed to be getting smaller.

A good piece of steak was a treasure in the bush. If a truck was passing a butcher shop, steak would be bought in bag-fulls and toasted on a forked stick next to the smoko billy. To return to a bush hut after a heavy day knowing that a steak was about to be served was a very special moment.

So on that fateful day the rest of the gang had every reason to believe that the city boy who wasn't much good at most of the heavier arts of the bush would at least be able to turn out a decent feed.

It was not to be.

"Well," said Maurie, a bit later on, flicking his tiny portion of charred and inedible gunk into the fire, "You sure can cook a mean chip, Dave."

# Taking a Bead — 1953

In 1953 I acquired a rifle. It wasn't actually much of a rifle but what did you expect for only seven pounds? Even if that was two whole weeks' pay for the most junior step on the forestry pay scale.

It was an ex-wartime Short Muzzle Lee Enfield .303 and that wasn't World War II, either. It must have been as old as my father. Its stock had been cut down from virtually full length and re-shaped to lighten the weapon and improve its appearance. It seemed to be in pretty reasonable condition from what you could tell by squinting down the barrel and stroking a few shells through the action.

Several of the others in the camp had deer-stalking experience and could tell of vast numbers of impressive heads that had been taken. None was around to prove it but recollections of "fourteen pointers" and that sort of stuff made great stories in the ears of an impressionable youngster from the city. So this rifle was a highly desirable purchase.

Once made, the transaction had to be registered and this involved a visit to the local constable. A bit of an identity himself he had a reputation for not standing any nonsense around the town but had his own way of solving problems. Rumour had it that on being summoned to attend the midnight passage of the main trunk express to remove a stroppy passenger from the train he got into a fist-fight with him on the platform. Station and train staff gathered around, laid their bets, and watched the fight. This midnight stop of the overnight Limited held a little more interest than most. The protagonists' battle surged backwards and forwards across the platform and came to an inconclusive end when the upholder of the law ushered his subdued opponent back on the train saying, "Best fight I've had in ages."

Registering my rifle was a less confrontational affair and soon I was the possessor of a small piece of official looking paper which entitled me to cart around this derelict of a war long forgotten.

Out in the cut-over on the way to work we all took turns at a spot of target practice. A white handkerchief—supplied from my pocket somewhat reluctantly—on a log 100 yards away sufficed for the target. I needn't have worried about the hanky; nobody had much success in damaging it. We cut the range down to about 75 yards. But we still weren't doing too well.

Then someone got the bright idea of looking through the barrel and along the sights to see if the thing pointed straight. This was not as definitive as the constable's battle on the station platform so we shortened the range to 50 yards and pooped off a bit more ammunition.

Eventually at 25 yards even the better shots among us were still scoring only moderately well. We all agreed that there was an air of uncertainty about the rifle's accuracy. And we did find that the projectiles were turning end over end at that range. This weapon would be no great threat to the animal kingdom.

At the end of the year I hadn't fired it at anything with such success as warranted a mention in my diary—and as I was leaving the region was persuaded quite willingly to part with it for the same price I had paid and salted the proceeds away for purchasing something better. George was an engaging young fellow of Maori and Italian extraction and he had the same hopes for it as I had once had and who was I to disillusion him?

A few months later, in West Otago, a second firearm entered my life under similar circumstances. Bill was returning to the city and his semi-automatic .22 sporting rifle was up for sale. It would, I was assured, pump several shots into the stoutest stag and be every bit as effective as a heavier hunting rifle.

A slight problem: it was not registered. I should have realised that was why Bill wasn't taking it back to the city with him. "Nothing to it", he said, I would have to pop into a convenient Police Station some time and present the thing and they would take its numbers and my particulars and make it all legal. Simple. But a fee was involved in this exercise and there seemed to be no hurry about the matter so registration was deferred for the time being. After all, if there was nothing to show it existed how could it belong to me anyway?

When I did get round to the legalities in Lower Hutt the Police were much less than enthusiastic about it. There was no way I could simply present for registration a rifle that, as far as they were concerned, didn't exist. They didn't want to know. Such a thing as an amnesty on unregistered weapons had never been heard of in those far-off days. "Best thing for you to do with an unregistered rifle, mate, is drop it in the harbour."

I dropped it into my baggage instead and returned south. It was accurate and satisfying and in the bad old rabbit days of West Otago—they used to reckon that as the daylight express went south through West Otago the entire surface of the ground moved away from the tracks—it accounted for its share. One memorable evening I shot over 70 in an hour and a half—sitting on the step of one of the forestry huts in the camp.

On several occasions I got up before dawn and walked to the top of Dusky Forest to watch for deer returning to the forest after browsing in the steep and verdant valley of the Pomohaka River. On one such occasion I was treading softly on the grassy verge of the road into a light breeze and in total darkness, knowing only by the absence beneath my feet of either gravel on the roadside or pine needles on the forest side that I was keeping to the grassy part. I walked right into the backside of a deer. The expression that comes to mind is "I don't know who got the greater fright" but there's no point in embellishing the story. Nobody believed me then; I guess they won't now.

In the height of the roaring season I practised my own version of an angry stag's challenge and once managed to call one to within about 25 metres of where I stood. It was in young pine forest and the ponderosa trees let in a lot of light so that the area was thickly clothed with secondary growth. All I could see were his antlers moving this way and that as he listened for the next call I was too scared to make. His was a fine head and missing a neck shot at that range, even when I couldn't actually see it, was the unforgivable closest I ever came to bringing down a deer.

But rabbits continued to provide challenging shooting and I got quite a bit of practice. Once a cheeky shot at a California quail knocked the unfortunate bird off a fence post. The camp cook trussed the little thing up and put it in with her roast. Mrs B. was not your average bush cook and routinely insisted that we all sit at the tables waiting for our meals until she was ready. She then processed into the dining hall with each man's dinner and with a flourish swept it down to the table before him announcing, quite unnecessarily, "Your dinner, Johnnie" or whatever. Hers were excellent meals, generously and carefully served and we were happy to put up with her little quirks. On this occasion there was no respite from the routine; all seven dinners were brought in one at a time, mine last. Out it came, roast veges, topped with a complete stuffed quail. "Your quail, David".

It had a remarkable amount of tasty flesh on it for such a small bird. The others asked how did I manage to shoot it with a rifle without totally destroying it. Had I, perhaps, just scared it to death? "Oh, no" I said, "I shot it through the eye."

In later years I shot again but in quite different circumstances. As a Territorial Force Chaplain in the Army I was familiar with the weapons with which the soldiers were issued but they were of academic interest only. Chaplains did not carry weapons as a matter of church and army policy, certainly in peace time. But the Vietnam War was hotting up and it was apparent that NZ fighting units might be committed to support our non-combatant Engineers who were already there. At a chaplains' conference we were shown a display of weapons of various kinds. The NCO conducting the display picked up a Browning pistol and said "This is what you chaplains will be using..." and, faltering, changed the subject quickly.

At a later course we were given formal instruction in the use of this hefty piece and we were even allowed to poop off a few rounds at a target. This was the figure of a man at about half size but only about ten metres away. I considered that I should have as good a chance as anyone on the course of getting a shot home somewhere in the great black target area. Ever so gently, I squeezed off a shot (as they say in novels). But the pistol kicked up in the air and dust was kicked up from the ground just in front of me. It was a bit mortifying. Anyway, I thought, it's against my principles to carry a weapon as a chaplain.

One weekend my unit held a training camp at Whangaparaoa. We had an exciting time in and around the old fortifications at the end of the peninsula. We were to defend the top of the hill and a group of Regular Force infantry was brought in to attack us. It was a night exercise and there were a few blank rounds of ammunition and some Friebe flares to lend some realism The defenders had the easiest task as the massive concrete emplacements provided secure protection. Before long several of the attackers were captured. They were popped into tunnels behind the gun pits while the war carried on unabated.

An umpire on the defenders' side was keeping a rough count of the prisoners and soon discovered that there were an awful lot of them considering the noise and commotion still going on out front. Had someone sneaked in reinforcements? It also seemed as if some of the enemy were throwing themselves forward with more desire to be captured than to seriously threaten the objective.

By the time the prisoner count had surpassed the total number of people who were in the attacking force it was time to investigate. It was discovered that the prisoners had moved back into the tunnels in the darkness; exploring around by feel they had found an exit lower down the hill. But this means they made regular escapes and rejoined the attackers only to be captured again.

Over part of that weekend my job was to conduct padre's hours with each platoon of soldiers in turn while the others did their qualifying shoot on the rifle range. Our people were Army Service Corps—drivers, cooks, and stores workers—so they did not ordinarily do intensive live shooting so this was an exercise that should have been much enjoyed by all.

But this particular weekend occurred the same weekend that the Government announced that 161 Battery would be sent to Vietnam. Every man in the camp that weekend realised that the business of being peacetime conscripts could lead them very quickly onto a war footing. The morality of our involvement in Vietnam was an issue with every group I faced that day. I was challenged for appearing to try to justify what the men felt was an immoral government decision. I was accused of being a puppet of the army high command. I was warned that my church would throw me out anyway. I never had such lively padre's hours. I didn't have much wisdom to offer but it was a demanding and draining day.

At the end of the afternoon, as the soldiers were leaving for a shower and evening meal, the Officers and NCOs who had been handling affairs at the mound and targets all day moved in to give themselves a quick run through the qualifying sequence of a total of 50 shots. Some were taken lying down, others kneeling and standing and they were at different targets and in varying sequences, and groups and time limits. As I was leaving them to it someone called out, "What about the padre?".

My immediate reaction was to say "Oh, no thanks, you know we're not supposed to carry weapons." But today, to hell with it. I picked up an SLR (self-loading rifle—weapon of choice in the 1960s) for the first time, got some quick coaching in what made it work and shot the qualifying score of a Marksman Class I.

# In Praise of Frosts — 1953

I loved the hard frosts. I didn't particularly care for the cold and that was a problem because it always seemed to go with the rock hard frosts that were to make such a contribution to my welfare. My ears got as cold as anyone else's. My fingers tended to turn to frozen extensions of the slasher handle I grasped and my joints ached and teeth chattered just the rest. But I had a very special reason for appreciating the frosts that bit down into the ground for 200mm and set everything to solid concrete.

We were based at the headquarters office of the Ohakune District which meant comfortable huts and a bit of town life at "The Junction" as the railway end of Ohakune was known. The job was a forest survey around the edge of the Tongariro national park on the southern slopes of Ruapehu. Someone in high office had apparently decided that the cost of transporting us to the scene was more tolerable for all concerned than the cost and inconvenience of having us camp in the bush. Personally, I couldn't have agreed more.

So daily for several weeks we clambered aboard the war-surplus Ford V8 that was allocated for the survey. It had been an army staff car once and was the original station wagon. Based on a 1939 V8 car front end but with a wagon body that had once been beautifully timber framed and varnished but was now drably, vaguely grey-green. It had a rough life in a few years in the Forest Service's employ but was still pretty tough. It also carried back seat passengers which few forestry vehicles did in those days. So three or four of us used it to drive to work.

It was not quite that simple, actually. We drove as far as we could. Along the main road to Horopito, then to the right over the main trunk rail line and onto barely distinguishable roads to where the logging tracks began. These ran for some miles over fairly flat cut-over swamps. It was at first difficult to find the route and a wrong turning could peter out into nothing in a few hundred metres, necessitating retracing our path to try again. Then, as winter progressed, the tracks became increasingly wet and the holes deeper and wider.

On many long stretches "corduroy" had been laid—short lengths of timber put down crosswise on the track to make a continuous path of wooden deck. This had been painstakingly constructed years before when the loggers had been active in the region and now it was rotten in spots. For the most part our fairly light wagon was able to stay on top, but when a patch of corduroy failed we quickly discovered that there was nothing underneath it.

Then the truck would sit down with its chassis on the corduroy but its rear wheels spinning free in water. We had to lift it with the jack and place fresh timbers underneath and rebuild the road under it. This could be an hour-long operation so we never resorted to it before exhausting ourselves with a great deal of pushing and heaving and rocking and a lot of abuse of the engine and transmission not to mention the English tongue. The best place to push was at the rear, of course, so that's where my station was. But it is in the nature of things that most of the flying mud and slush that is thrown up from this sort of exercise goes to the rear. It tended to collect on me.

Worse, if the truck did get out of one of these holes after deluging the pushers with mud the driver would not be likely to stop until on a really secure piece of road from which another start could safely be made. So it was usually a bit of a hike to catch up with it.

Thus we proceeded for several miles in open country. Then the tracks wound uphill into partially uncut bush. On what was really now just a clay walking track the V8 could sometimes make good three or four miles on the flat. Progress was at a walking pace but some very gentle work on the accelerator and steady driving could save us an hour's walk or more. But as soon as we came to the slightest rise the wheels would fail to grip on the muddy surface. Eventually there would be nothing for it but to walk. The truck would be abandoned where it had finally given up the ghost and off we'd hike towards our still-distant objective in the hills.

Now in the matter of walking the people of the bush are trees, vines and weeds. I was not a tree—one of those great hulking brutes who stalked about the bush kicking wild pigs on the snout and eating their still-warm livers raw for breakfast. Nor was I a vine—one of those wiry fellows who were the antithesis of the brawny bushman but whose skinny appearance belied an extraordinary resilience. I was a weed—they survive only around the fringes of the true bush and are trampled as others pass on their important occasions.

For instance, we were shown how you could get water from a lawyer vine using your slasher. You make a quick slash low down in the hanging vine to sever it, then another quick slash to cut it off higher up. The free bit of vine would then drip fresh water into your mouth. Very refreshing, they told me. But be careful you always make the bottom cut first, otherwise the water will run downwards and you'll lose it. Well, my bottom cut wasn't too bad because I could chop into the ground or across a log. But severing the loose, hanging vine while it flopped around above my head was a demanding task and by the time I'd achieved it the section of cut-off vine was dry. It had been weeping for ten minutes while I beat it to death. So, I was no great exponent of the art of the slasher.

Nor was I much good at anything else. Such accomplishments as I possessed had little relevance in this alien world. And I was certainly not very fit. So, each day, when the truck finally came to a shuddering halt and we would start out on foot I would get left behind. Certainly I'd had a full year in the depths of Kodak's cine processing darkroom in Wellington. True, also, I was not the athletic type; I'd gone to some trouble to avoid that sort of stuff at school. So it was not entirely surprising that I should find myself dragging the chain a bit when it came to the heavy walking.

I was regularly, chronically left behind. One of the rules of the bush is that you never walk within five metres of a man carrying a slasher. In my case the safety margin seemed to be spread out to about 500 just in case. Every time we walked anywhere I'd bring up the rear. Up hills and down banks, along the flat, in thick bush and wide open tracks I'd get left behind.

If we started out together I'd fall behind the cracking pace within 100 metres. Even if I got away from the truck first I could only keep a lead on the others until they called out that I'd gone the wrong way. If anyone's billy lid caught on a passing vine and flicked into an adjacent ravine it would be mine. If anyone had done up his bootlaces carelessly so they would catch on a cut stump in the track and fell him instantly it would be me. If some fool put his foot on a log that four others had stepped on without incident and it collapsed sending him into a bush lawyer which from which it would take a couple of minutes to extract himself that fool would be me.

When the party stopped for a breather each half hour on the route I wouldn't be within sight. By the time they'd had a smoke and shared a dirty joke or two I would be visible—or perhaps audible—back down the track. When the others were all refreshed and ready to move again I would catch up and we'd all set off once more.

Like all the best bushmen I carried a pikau on my back. This was a sugar-bag with a rope tied around two stones in the bottom corners and looped around the top to make a simple shoulder strap. I was smart when making up mine: I used a thick rope so it wouldn't cut into my shoulders. The trouble was, the thick rope didn't tie too tightly round the stones and they would come out and get mixed up with my bread and butter. My pikau would fall off one shoulder and swing round and tangle with my slasher. This would be dragged to one side and would catch on a passing tree and come round with a quick belt to the back of the legs.

The traditional diet for these trips was bread, butter, golden syrup and steak. In those early days my pikau was loaded with a full fourpenny loaf of bread, a full pound of butter, and a full tin of syrup. It wasn't just that I couldn't afford the steak: I wouldn't have been able to manage the weight. In any case, I was always so far behind at lunch time from carrying all this lot around that by the time I caught up to the others and knocked off lunch was over anyway.

And we took a full hour, usually. Even the day when we spent three hours stuck in a patch of submersible corduroy and found the bush track impassable so that we had to walk about 8 miles in and got to work at a little after 11am we still knocked off for a full hour for lunch at noon. Then about 1.45 it seemed a good idea to start for home in case the return trip might take just as long.

It didn't, of course. Downhill, even ever so slightly, the wagon rolled along in great style and sheer inertia was enough to carry it through many a slushy spot which would have brought it to a sudden halt going the other way. The driving wheels did not need to have any extra traction so they were less likely to slip on a mossy bank or lose their grip on a rolled log in the corduroy through the swamp. We would be thrown about a lot with the greater speed over the appalling surface. But we were homeward bound and nothing would stop us.

And each night I would hope for a hard frost. Why? Well, on frosty days it was a certainty that we would be able to drive further into the foothills. The ground was frozen so hard that the softest mud patches were turned to concrete. Yesterday's outgoing tracks were frozen into firm ridges and the smallest pebbles and twigs would provide a grip on the rock-hard surface. Every metre uphill bouncing around in the back of the straining wagon was a couple of steps I would not have to take myself. Sometimes we made four or five miles in the truck instead of on foot.

I loved those frosts.

# Ruapehu — 1953

Throughout my year as a Junior Labourer around the Central Plateau, the mountains dominated my life. I photographed them from every possible vantage point. I worked on their flanks and I climbed two of the three. In one day.

Harold, the Professional Forester, sometimes took Pete and me under his wing as we were both known to be offering as trainees. On one occasion he extracted us from some boring pruning work. He drove us further up the forest to a profile cut in the ground in the middle of the forest. This was a clean face on one side of a hole about two metres deep and in it he could trace for us the geological history of the area. Here was residue from this eruption, here was the deposit from that event, down here this stratum was laid down by the Great Tongariro Ash Shower. It made what was on top of the ground seem pretty impermanent.

In Karioi Forest on the south slopes of Ruapehu he showed us a huge boulder on a firebreak several miles from the crater. This boulder was as big as a small house and we were told that it had been thrown out of the mountain in the 1946 eruption. Ruapehu became a little active that year and on several occasions a plume of smoke and steam was sent up. Nobody understood what was happening at time except that climbers reported that the crater lake seemed to be getting larger and deeper.

Later that year I was at Taurewa on the planting gang and Ngauruhoe, a much younger volcano, commenced a series of very spectacular eruptions. Steam and ash billowed up to several thousand feet for many days. Red hot boulders were thrown out and down the slides of the mountain. None of them was the size of a house, not even a doll's house, probably. But it was all very dramatic stuff.

So it was with not too much common sense that, once the eruptions had subsided, I embarked on a one-day solo climb to Ngauruhoe's crater. As the cookhouse didn't provide lunches on weekends I gathered up five grapefruit for the day's rations. That was modest enough but in the matter of climbing gear I was even more limited: I had only my regular boots and certainly no climbing gear for the icy conditions around the tops. I did carry a spare pullover and, of course, my camera. The whole lot went in a very small bag that I usually carried my lunch in. Dad had made it for me when I was much younger.

The first stage of the trip was to cycle to the Forestry Lookout. This was between Taurewa and Tongariro on a side track off the route into the Mangatepopo valley at the base of the mountain. I had a regular sports bike which I'd fitted with a "Mosquito" engine. It was the best of the power cycle units, being mounted low under the pedal crankshaft and, at 48cc with no baffles in the muffler, could push me along at 50kph. With a following wind. Up the tortuous track to the lookout I pedalled vigorously along with it in bottom gear. It seemed slow but I should think I managed a much better speed than if I'd walked. Possibly not. It was fairly slow going in many places.

I stashed the bike at the lookout and followed the foot track on to the Mangatepopo Hut—"Base Camp", I suppose. These days there are tracks and signs and "intentions" books but then there was the old Mangatepopo hut at the end of the formed track and that was about it. I think I told someone back at Taurewa where I was going and that I'd be back for dinner that night but I'm not even sure about that now.

From the hut there was a very steep climb onto the ridge top which provided an easier route for a while. But as the ridge dissolved into the side of the mountain the unmarked route became a straight-up-the-side scramble on loose rocks and then snow. Tongariro's peak was covered with a generous mantle of snow which had hardened off in the sunshine and re-frozen at nights and it was fairly slippery but I managed an incident-free climb to the peak. I planted a couple of grapefruit in the snow to chill them and took several photos before dining on this meagre meal. I then headed off down the main ridge to the saddle between Tongariro and Ngauruhoe.

This ridge was very sharply defined into a knife edge by the windblown, frozen snow. To the right there was a sharp descent back down an increasingly steep slope. To my left, when I could take my eyes from the views of the coloured lakes and the vast crater, was a near-vertical drop of about 1500 feet to the crater floor. Tongariro is much steeper on the inside than the outside.

The ridge route down was manageable but not comfortable and I had to kick footsteps in the frozen snow all the way. Once I lost my footing and went down on my backside and slid for several metres, stopping myself only by digging my thumbs into the snow crust. I lay there for a full minute, close enough to the steep edge to be able to see down it into the crater valley below. Then I carried on down the steepest part of the ridge edge and was soon onto more friendly terrain, heading over to the foot of Ngauruhoe.

This was a mountain of a different kind. The angle of the slope of this perfectly formed young volcano was almost exactly the same from bottom to top. The lower part had a lot of old lava flows which were unpleasant to pick my way through, but the rest of it consisted of loose round scoria stones which rolled and moved every time I put a foot into them.

In later years I was to take our son Paul up here when he was about ten. Coming down from the crater he lost his footing behind me. But he was not heavy enough to fall into the mass of gravel but motored down on top of it as though it was all ball-bearings. No amount of grabbing or kicking would stop him. He came past me like an express train and I grabbed as his jersey as he went past and swung him round and anchored him. He has never really expressed appreciation for this, actually.

Anyway, back in 1953, I found it pretty hard going up this loose stuff and took far longer than I expected to get to the edge of the crater. But it was worth it. That sight was what today they call an awesome experience. I went down into it to get closer to some of the fumaroles at the bottom but wasn't inspired to stay there for a long time. We had seen some magnificent displays from this crater only a few weeks before—not to mention red-hot lava actually flowing down the sides. This was not a visit to be prolonged. Indeed, the climb out of the crater seemed to be tackled on winged feet; I have no recollection of it being in the least difficult to manage that last climb of the day.

After that, it was all rather anti-climactic. I retraced my sliding steps down the mountain, joined up the Mangatepopo track, collected the bike at the lookout and got back in time for 6pm dinner at the cookhouse.

"Did you have a good climb?" Well, what do you say? Suffice it to say that I was again reminded of the power of nature that is resident in these central mountains that were so much a part of my life when I was 18.

After the varied work of cutting track, surveying and timber measurement around the Erua, National Park and Horopito areas it was something of a comedown to return to Karioi Forest for my last stint in the Ohakune District. Shortly I would return home for Christmas and then in the New Year I was to report to Rotorua for my induction course as a Technical Trainee. The genial Joe Johnston had written from Head Office in the lovely old Katherine Mansfield home. He commiserated with my failure to get into the Professional Division and assured me that there were great opportunities in Forestry for anyone keen to advance. He also reported that he had bought a new Anglia and it would go over the Rimutaka Hill in top gear. He was a charming fellow.

So on my last day as a Junior Woodsman I found myself on the toiling end of a long pruning saw going round and round the marked trees on the banks of the Tangiwai river. I was ending the year, as I began it, with a stiff dose of manual labour. But I was a year older and wiser and fitter and it was the last working day of the year and we were all taking it fairly gently. We sat on the bank of the river and watched the train tracks and I was reminded that those tracks would carry me south home to the family for Christmas that night.

We finished a little early that afternoon, piled into the gang truck and headed back to No 8 camp. Here there was a last meal in the cookhouse, a final packing up of bags and a few goodbyes and we were run into Ohakune Junction for the evening to await the southbound Express. Many an evening we had spent on the Ohakune Junction Platform through that year. This time, it was not to put aboard a letter that would be delivered to Bev next morning, but to climb onto the sleepy train and travel home.

I guess I did it all without thinking much about it. The train would disgorge a handful of passengers for whom this was journey's end. A lot more would grab their last chance of a Railway coffee and a pie before settling down for what remained of the night. Some mysterious person would walk along the length of the train on the trackside tapping the wheels. The Railway Travelling Post Office Staff would gather up the mail and especially the Late Fee bag to which I had made so many midnight contributions over the months. The engine would chuff off noisily in search of a top-up of water and then violently hook itself back up again sending warning jolts along the length of the train. A little smoke would rise into the cold night air and the Westinghouse system would pant briefly and the surplus steam would blow off. Porters would wheel handcarts of baggage and parcels of urgent freight up and down. It all seemed so organised, so absolutely reliable, so everyday.

We had an uneventful trip down to Wellington. The family uplifted me off Platform 9 in Wellington on the morning of Christmas Eve. Pleased to be home, I walked away without a thought for those for whom the same combination of engine, carriages and staff would, in a few hours, provide a setting for another routine trip north. That afternoon it commenced its return journey to Auckland reasonably well filled with a cheerful crowd. Most of them, like me, were ending their year's work and looking forward to celebrating with family and friends in Auckland on Christmas morning.

The new Queen Elizabeth was on her first visit to the country. But that Christmas was a sombre day throughout New Zealand. Around midnight, Train 226—my train I thought of it afterwards—had gone into history as it was building up to top speed across the long straights towards Karioi Forest. Ruapehu's crater lake had reached the limit of its capacity. Moments before the Express arrived at the Tangiwai Bridge a massive lahar swept down the river completely destroying the bridges. Engine and several carriages plunged into the chaos of mud and slush and tumbling water. There were heroic acts before the disaster became known around the country. But 153 people died and some bodies were never found.

The mountains are never to be treated lightly.

# Technological Virgin — 1954

Adrian was an electronic whiz. Johnnie Malcolm and I had a nodding acquaintance with the wonders of audio technology but Adrian could have been an electronics engineer. His time off work was either spent with his tools and equipment working on new projects or listening to classical records in his hut in the middle of the Dusky Forest camp community in West Otago.

To most of the gang his tastes were a distinct oddity. To the station's junior trainees, however, he opened a door into serious music. When standard 78 records were being challenged by "full frequency range recordings" and then, soon, by 33rpm discs of enormous cost he would call us into his hut to listen for the triangle in some obscure orchestral piece. It was new to our taste, too, but we were drawn by it and developed an interest which has remained.

He would then talk to us about audio equipment. We explored the merits of turn-tables, amplifiers and speakers. Devouring and discussing magazines came to be part of our nightly routine. In a life that was centred on a remote forestry camp community where the only excitement was the Friday night bus to Gore to go the pictures, our evenings began to flourish.

I started work on a radiogram. It was to be small and economic as well as portable to fit in with my nomadic lifestyle—I'd already lost heavily on the remains of a car that could not move with me at the moment I was unexpectedly transferred.

The circuit and instructions came out of a popular electronics magazine and the cabinet was my own design. The latter was soon knocked up into shape and later covered really neatly by Dad back home. The chassis was a little more trouble, especially as I hadn't been one of those kids who'd worked with crystal sets since the age of eight.

But with Adrian's help I learned to read a circuit and to tell a valve socket's heater circuit from the B-plus and the thing gradually came together. It wasn't a pretty job, I guess, and the metalwork left a lot to be desired but underneath it looked quite a lot like the pictures in the book and I was confident it was going to be electronically fine.

Adrian was suddenly transferred out and replaced by another senior trainee whose interests didn't lie in this particular direction. It was now a bit more of a challenge, but at last I got the audio amplifier working. It made quite a good job of reproducing the modest record collection I was building up.

The tuner was another story. And that was a problem because radio reception was reasonable in our region and that was something of a priority for me. I'd been introduced to good radio plays and was looking forward to listening to these—quite apart from Randy Stone's Night Beat and a few rather less esoteric presentations. The tuner, though, was the measure of my electronics limitation and resisted all my attempts to find a fault by checking and re-checking my wiring. Eventually it needed a little tickling up from an expert in Tapanui before it would perform properly.

Johnnie Malcolm had also built up a simple unit and now we were setting up an intercommunication unit between our huts so that we could play records and talk to each other without leaving the comfort of bed. It was a bit cumbersome and needed us both to put our individual switches to the proper setting before we could send and receive. But another set of wiring and some extra bits and pieces and we improved the set-up.

After John Walker arrived we wired his hut into the system. We soon found there was as much pleasure to be derived from telling dirty stories as there was listening to classical records. In a life that was devoid of a lot of other entertainment we made our own and learned a lot.

It was a surprise to me that they could hear me when nothing was switched on at my end. This revelation came early one morning when there was a click and John Malcolm's voice came over the line, "I can hear you doing unspeakable things to yourself, Dave". Actually, he put it more succinctly than that, but I guess the general intention of his remark is indicated.

It was about this time that tape recorders began to be accessible to people in the street. The Tapanui radiotrician in who'd sorted out my tuner had invested in one which he hired out for £5 for a weekend. That was about a week's pay. But it looked like it would be a fun thing to work with and we knew we'd hire it some time.

I was a fairly regular attender at the Presbyterian Church at Kelso and when they organised a small singing group to perform at a special Sunday service in Tapanui it seemed a good moment. I took my courage—and my wallet—in both hands and became the operator of this remarkable machine for a weekend.

Never slow to do my financial sums I quickly realised the benefits of a shared enterprise—I arranged to sublet the recorder to the other guys for Saturday night. They planned a bit of a party in the married quarters and thought the recorder would probably have some novelty potential for a lively evening.

All went according to plan. They had a lot of fun recording each other's contributions in prose, poetry and song to what was by all accounts a very convivial evening. They handed me back the machine at breakfast on Sunday morning. They had to get up specially, actually. Off I went to church at Tapanui and set up the microphone in the approved fashion, rewound the tape and prepared for business. Our group did their Brother James' Air and everyone reckoned it was pretty good. I switched the recorder off and the rest of the service followed its course to the end.

After church the grand play-back took place. The concept was new to most people so there was a lot of interest among the dour Scots of West Otago. They listened politely while I gave a brief explanation of the system and rewound the tape back to the beginning.

The rendering of the 23rd Psalm was very good. The singers were able to hear themselves for the first time ever. All were very impressed and delighted. The whole thing wasn't at all bad, and it was obvious that portable domestic recorders were going to catch on.

But, as would be confirmed for me again and again in years to come, any new invention in the scientific area is likely to have an Achilles heel. This will often be the operator and his inexperience. On this occasion it didn't occur to me to stop the machine immediately after the hymn.

The Amen sounded. There was a brief silence as we all looked at each with pleasure and appreciation. Then there was a crashing cacophony in which the words of a song from Saturday night's party came through with embarrassing clarity: "... sweet sixteen and a virgin still."

# Off the Back of a Truck — 1955

When the government radiata plantations were first coming into regular production in the early 1950s pit-props were a profitable sideline.

Dusky Forest in West Otago was one of the oldest forests in the country, some trees having been planted before the turn of the century. So by this time it was contributing quite a few truckloads of merchantable radiata pine to the local mill of Waikaka Timber Coy. Forestry staff did the logging and hauling out but the milling contractors carried the logs themselves on a modern truck (that's to say it was post-war and not more than ten years old) that was more or less converted for logging. It called itself a Reo Speed Wagon and was painted a sporting red.

The Forest Service handled the whole of the Douglas fir thinnings operations itself, however. These small logs went to the rail at Kelso for onward shipment to Kaitangata where they were used for shoring up the shafts of the extensive State Coal mines.

The props were cut by forest labour and brought out to the skids. A pit prop was supposed to be a small tree trunk 2.2 metres long and not less than 100mm diameter inside the bark at the smaller end, so a lightly tapered prop could be picked up and carried easily enough. Some of the lower parts of a thinned tree could produce monsters that were really small logs so the Clydesdales Bob and Mac were available to haul them out two or three at a time. From the skids, another team of two of us would take the props by truck to the rail.

There were two suitable trucks at Dusky. The International KB6 was a fairly new vehicle with dual rear axles under a ridiculously short flat tray. It had a cockpit like a bomber and a bonnet to match; nobody had climbed along to check it but it was commonly claimed that it was six feet from steering wheel to the massive radiator cap. An enormous six-cylinder side-valve engine and a very modest load carrying capacity due to the short deck meant that she could cruise on the straight gravel roads at around 100 km per hour. But the engine was incredibly quiet and the vehicle was considered to handle as well as the Presbyterian minister's new Wholesale 4/44 saloon. And that was a very smooth car according to all who had the privilege of driving it.

The KB6 really was like a car once you found your way around the five speed gearbox. I got my heavy traffic licence on it at Heriot by driving forwards about 100 metres, doing a three point turn and starting on the township's only hill at a gradient of approximately 1 in 30. An easy drive and a great truck.

Our other flat-deck was a 1942 Chevvy that had probably seen service with the US Marines in the Pacific and really deserved to be invalided down to NZ for retirement. In its old age it now found itself doing odd jobs at Dusky Forest. It was a left hand drive so had a few little tricks up its sleeve for unwary drivers. The gearbox was a bit worn and the right-handed gear shift wobbled generously through the gate and was idioscyncratically erratic. However, it continued to give reasonably good service.

One morning in early 1955 I found myself in charge of the pit-prop operation. Trainees were not permitted to drive the KB6 unless the Chev was out of action so it was to the latter that I was directed. I was also given two brand new trainees who had just arrived from civvy street by way of two weeks at the training centre at Rotorua. They were reasonably knowledgeable and keen to the point of anxiety—though from the lofty vantage point of a year's seniority I thought they looked a bit wet behind the ears. I gained a little sneaky enjoyment of their discomfiture at going to the wrong side of the cab as we mounted up and motored blithely off up the narrow road from the office.

In due course we arrived at the assembly point and skilfully positioned the Chev beside the skids. This was a delicate operation as the bolsters were simply U-shaped fittings that sat flat on the truck deck. They had to be beneath the level of the skids so that the props could be rolled down onto them by hand. You didn't want to get a large bundle of props at once as they would fall unevenly and not stack well.

If the thinning crew knew that trainees would be taking the props out they were not above stacking them high on the skids so that the hapless amateur truckies would have trouble. We would either have to climb all over the heap to get the first prop or two moving or else upset the whole stack from the bottom and try to sort the mess out afterwards.

On this occasion the new boys learned fast and the third hand made the job a little easier than usual so one load was soon aboard and out of the forest by the direct route to the rail. Loading the Ub railway wagon was a different proposition as every prop had to be lifted by hand to clear the truck bolsters and be stacked on the wagon.

Judging from the experience of handling some of our bigger props at the rail-head one could imagine that miners working in the confined space of a mine at Kaitangata would have something crisp to say about sizing selection in the forest. If they'd been smart they could have sent them to the local sawmill for sawn timber instead of into the mine for humble shaft props.

Anyway, it was on our second trip down that we were reminded that the Chevvy was not to be taken for granted. The road was good with a very slight downhill slope and we were pootling along cautiously in third gear with just a small amount of brake. All at once, the pedal went straight to the floor. No amount of pumping would restore life to the hydraulics. Within moments my two passengers became a bit anxious. Probably because I was yelling and screaming quite a lot. So the inside one grabbed the handbrake.

This was not a particularly useful move. I could not have gone for my drivers' licence in the Chevvy because of that handbrake. It operated shoes on a drum fitted around the drive-shaft and was strictly a parking brake; when the truck was parked on a flat smooth surface and there was no wind blowing it worked perfectly. But as an emergency stopping device it was strictly limited. I don't think I would even have tried to use it—though the official report of the incident doubtless says that I attempted to stop the truck with it. So it must be true.

What I tried next was a slick double de-clutching change-down into second. What I got was a surprising amount of noise from the gearbox—because of not having quite enough revs on at the critical moment I moved through neutral—and a tad more speed. I gave it one more try and this time over-revved the engine and the gears failed to mesh a second time. I called it quits on second and slipped her back into third. I'm not one to persevere when it's clear that the odds are against me.

By now we'd got up a fair turn of road speed. The hill was dropping away sharply and it was all corners. Soon it would be time to hit the bank. A simple enough operation on a road like that, you'd think. The problem was that in our situation an over-abrupt stop would have an important consequence: the entire load of props, still chained to their bolsters—but not to the deck of the truck you will recall—would come sliding forward and do a lot of damage to the cab. I was not greatly concerned about this because I'd already judged that the Chevvy didn't have a lot more to contribute to life at Dusky. But in a crisis of this kind there are some things that come to one with absolute clarity and what I saw now was that I was still sitting in that cab.

So I dismissed the bank option and rode the beast for another 200 or so metres looking for a solution. A really substantial tree trunk overhanging the road just above cab height would have done. Or perhaps a ground anchor that could be thrown out after being tied firmly to the load so as to pull the whole works off backwards in time of emergency. Once the load was clear of the tray, I figured, we could head for either a ditch or a bank. I had it all figured out.

So I like to feel that what followed was premeditated by myself as the architect of our salvation. Certainly that's what the report says. As the road dropped off downhill rather smartly it also presented tighter corners. On one of these I swung the wheel a little more vigorously and the entire kit and caboodle, props, chains, bolsters and all flipped off the deck and rolled clear. The chains burst and pit-props spread themselves over a couple of hectares of steep wooded hillside.

Freed of her load the Chevvy bucked about but was soon steered into the up-side drain. Here, after a bit of a fight with speed against clay, she quietly expired.

This is the moment when you test the brake again and find everything is OK and have to start dreaming up an explanation for what happened. I was greatly relieved to find that there was still absolutely no pressure there at all. Probably, in that short wild ride, I pumped the pedal so many times that there was no fluid left in the entire system.

So we trickled back to the office very slowly in first and second gear, making child's play of rolling down-changes even into first gear, parked outside the office where the undamaged side of the truck was visible and provoked more than a little curiosity as to why we'd walked off the job.

I left the station next day for a scheduled new career in head office. The trainees were a bit less wet behind the ears. I think that the boss still didn't know whether to believe our story or not. And the thinning crew spent half a day with the horses pulling scattered props out from behind trees and under gullies and up the hillside back to the road.

# An Easter Reminiscence — 1956

Camp Chaplain John Dawson was not going to put up with any nonsense. "Now shut up, you fellows, and pipe down!" he yelled as 100 unruly screaming young men gathered in the dining hall on Easter Sunday in 1956.

We were spending Easter at the Boys' Brigade Camp at Wainuiomata. The site was convenient and well equipped and the BB did not normally make use of it at Easter so it was a good arrangement.

What we did not know was that at their summer camp a few weeks earlier some of the BB boys had made a raid on a neighbouring group of Scout campers. They let some tents down and caused a bit of a ruckus. Rivalry between the BB and the Scouts had always been fairly vigorous so this was a provocative act of war. The Scouts threatened reprisals but apparently nothing had happened for the rest of summer camp and there the matter seemed to end. Now it was Easter and the Methodist young men from the Wellington region were camping at the scene. The Scouts could hardly be blamed for assuming that their summer enemies had returned.

Our camp leaders didn't have exactly what you'd call behaviour problems that Easter. There was a little natural difficulty motivating people to get down to the studies that were supposed to be at the heart of the weekend. It took some firm leadership to hold everything together. So it was a major emergency when at lunchtime on the Sunday someone shouted, "They're letting our tents down".

Not one to let the disciplinary grass grow under his feet, the Chaplain immediately leapt to them and stated in a firm voice—he may have shouted, actually—"All right, fellows, let's not get excited about this. Everybody just stay seated and get on with your meal."

His suggestion was, like a lot of Government assistance to beneficiaries, too little and too late. Boys of all ages were pouring out the doors and a swelling tide of screaming male humanity was streaming down the front steps. Some third-formers fell and were almost trampled underfoot in the wholesale rush to the porch. Others saw the blockage in the doorway and ran along the trestle tables, scattering tinned jam and last Thursday's white bread in every direction and diving out the windows at the table ends. A straggling stream of yelling youthful humanity flowed down the green past the tenting area.

Even one of the camp leaders got into the act. In later years, as Governor General, he would conduct himself with a little more decorum but now he raced to his Austin Devon and loaded a team of wrathful volunteers. They drove to the main road at the mouth of the valley and deployed back and forth, closing off the invaders' most likely escape route.

Here the miscreants were cut off at the pass as the main body of shouting pursuers drove them off the tent flats, through the bush and down to the road. All three were caught and brought in triumph back to the dining hall. It became clear that they were Scouts from the camp down the road. They had seen the camp occupied, assumed it was the Boys' Brigade and executed what they saw as a retaliatory tent-striking raid.

They were marched back up to the camp to rhythmic chants of "Throw 'em in the creek". The Methodist blood was up. Everyone was anticipating a bit of fun. It was too late now for any explanations about mistaken identity. The reputation of the Methodist Young Men's District Easter Camp was at stake and vengeance would be wrought. The young Scouts were beginning to be plainly scared.

With some more effective shouting of his own John Dawson now shepherded everyone back inside. The victors brought the accused to the front and the noise gradually died away. An air of uncertainty hung over the proceedings. Having got attention, John quietly asked the accusers what they thought they were going to do.

He went on to remind us all of the Easter studies we'd been sharing over the previous couple of days. Warming to his task, he pointed out the parallels between our studies and what was happening now. He emphasised the innocence of Jesus and the unreliability of the disciples and the fickleness of the crowd. He laid on especially thickly the responsibility that Pilate refused to accept. Was this, he said, going to be another occasion when the mob would rule? How should followers of Jesus act in this situation?

The whole crowd was eating out of his hand. With dramatic effect he painted skilful images of that other trial 2000 years earlier. With just a touch of melodrama he then put his final question just as Pilate might have: "What do you want me to do with these Scouts, then?"

A guilty silence descended on the whole gathering. John had every reason to be pleased with himself. His point was made more dramatically than all the hours of study and discussion.

Then, in the silence, as his unanswered question still hung in the air, a clearly articulated cry from the back of the hall was plainly heard by everyone present: "Crucify them!"

# The John McGlashan Waterfall — 1955

Youth Conferences in the fifties were events to be remembered.

There were always large crowds. Smaller conferences ran to only 150 or so but the major events were sometimes over 400 people, drawing enthusiastic young Methodists from all over the country for several days' study, inspiration and fellowship.

The youth conference movement also had a reputation as a kind of de facto marriage bureau and it is a fact that many Methodist couples owe that first magic moment to a youth conference. The practice of partnering off was never officially encouraged but nature had its way and nobody could do very much about it.

Bev and I hadn't waited for a youth conference. By the time we went to our first we were already going steady. Steady? No, that's not quite the word for our relationship. But going we certainly were.

So the 1955-56 Youth Conference at John McGlashan College in Dunedin shouldn't have been a particularly special time for us—except for one significant fact. In the whole of our courtship to this point—as, indeed, for its eight or so years up to marriage—we had spent more time apart than together. I had been away in various parts of the country with the Forest Service for almost all of the two and a half years we had been going out together; and immediately after this event I was to go to Wigram for my much-delayed compulsory military training. I would actually have to leave Dunedin a couple of days before the conference ended.

So while we weren't looking to youth conference to engage in the delights of pre-courtship courtship—there was such a thing in those far-off days—we were certainly conscious of the need to spend a little time together. We grabbed one moment as it passed in the lupins on the Warrington Peninsula and then lost it in the lupins as a couple of people came by unexpectedly.

That was it, really. The days slipped by with lectures, music, studies, discussions, lively meal table fellowship sparked off by jokes about Mary Astley's marvellous tartan slacks and Clarrie Wills' hilarious pleas for our "corporation" in getting the meal preparation and dish-washing duties done.

The night before I was to leave, Bev and I had still failed to make a satisfactory assignation. We were reasonably willing to comply with repeated requests for couples not to be exclusive in their relationships. To a point. But another lengthy separation was about to come on us.

The foregoing may now provide the explanation of someone's observation that 10pm seemed a little late to be going out on the adjacent Belleknowes golf course—especially without the benefit of the usual accoutrements of that particular pastime. But we were by now past such taunts and had some ground to make up. So we went to find some. There was a very pleasant spot under the trees on the side of the hill. Soft pine needles, a good view of everything around, and no chance of being crept up on.

Some time later we returned to the College buildings. We weren't exceptionally late out and it was no difficulty to return Bev to the women's dormitory. There seemed to be no reason why I should not effect a similar entrance at the men's without drawing attention to myself.

After several decades of discovering the seamier side of the lives of the most devout Christians I still like to think that what followed was totally coincidental. I do not believe for a moment that the entire male constituency of the youth conference movement had pledged to "get" me. There was no malicious intent in anyone's mind as they set up their evening's entertainment. It just happened. And I just happened to be there as it did.

I approached the building and soon realised it was completely darkened. Not the "lights out" kind of dark of an Easter camp where room or tent lights would be out but there would be plenty of other lighting for necessary night-time journeys—within the building of, course. There were no exterior lights showing anywhere. Absolutely everything was turned off.

Puzzled, I checked behind me around the rest of the campus. There were the occasional lights in the buildings and quite a few outside. Only in this region was there this intense, pervasive darkness.

Coming nearer to the entrance I became aware of something else. It had been raining. The paths were damp. Strange, that, considering we had been out on the golf course for an hour and never noticed it. True love may be blind, but surely it wouldn't be entirely unaware of a rain shower in the middle of a passionate goodbye. It was odd.

The steps of the building were also damp. Wet, in fact, right under the eaves where light rain would hardly fall. The water was actually trickling down the steps, coming from inside.

It's probably being in love that makes one think the most altruistic thoughts at the most inopportune moments. It was obvious to me that a tap upstairs was leaking and had overflowed a hand-basin and was sending a trickle of water across the floor, down the main stairs, and through the foyer out down the steps. I would get up there quickly and turn it off and, hopefully, by morning it would dry out and no one would be inconvenienced. For inconvenience it would certainly be if an incontinent sleeper had to get up in the middle of the night and, wandering to the bathroom in the darkness found himself splashing around in cold water. It would not take a moment or two to sort the problem out and everyone would be grateful to me.

So into the foyer I went. Here the stone floor was awash. There wasn't just a trickle of water coming down the stairs, it was a veritable Niagara. I had arrived back only just in time. Urgency was the order of the day.

The lights, you will recall, were off. I didn't know where to find the switch but I was confident I could negotiate the stairs without risk to life and limb. Also, my eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark and I could see a glimmer of light around the top of the stairs. And heads...

The entire circumference of the rail around the top of the stairs was dotted with silhouetted heads. They were not sharing the usual youth conference backchat; they weren't engaged in studies or other inspirational events. In the oppressive silence, they were positively sinister. They had something to do with the water that was copiously flowing in every part of the entire stairway and foyer.

The other thing that love does for you is to make you think rather slowly. It may bring your best thoughts to the surface but it does so only slowly, and not necessarily in the most propitious order. Sometimes you make a somewhat inappropriate reaction to data and stimulus. This was one of those occasions.

When any intelligent being would have fled, I remained. When any congenital idiot could have perceived the incipient threat in the situation I didn't really take it all in. I stopped where I was.

Nothing happened. No one was waiting to throw water over me. I was not at risk. I had just stepped into someone else's battle and they would wait while I got out of their way and went innocently to bed.

I was partly right. If I was seen, I was recognised as a non-combatant and the waiting ambush held its fire. With water-fights, as with many animal or human threats, the first technique is to hold your ground and fix the enemy with your eye and then, with the force of your superior personality, persuade your antagonists not to attack. I exercised that skill now. It was less than successful but only, I am sure, because of the intense darkness.

The next technique is to engage in a careful tactical withdrawal. You do this very slowly, while the enemy is hypnotised by your power or just confused by your confident demeanour. If you hurry, I told myself, they will let loose. And you still have to pack your bag tonight for a 6am departure for Wigram tomorrow morning. You can't afford to get your shirt splashed.

While my brain was working all these things out at lightning speed over the next few seconds I remained fixed where I was. In spite of my confidence that I had quelled the enemy with my stern gaze it was beginning to occur to me that they probably hadn't even seen me against the dark floor. It might be best just to walk quietly away.

This train of thought was broken into by a screaming figure in swimming shorts. This dervish ran into the foyer from outside and flung a fire bucket of water upwards to the silent figures around the stair-well and dashed for the door again. In an instant he was outside.

On reflection, that would have been a good place for me, too. The bit about quelling them with your eyes only works for so long. And the technique of making a slow and stealthy withdrawal only works so long as the enemy is unprovoked. And the need to turn all the data over in one's mind before taking action is sometimes not as urgent as just moving.

Again, love let me down. I stood rooted to the spot, puzzled, confused and wondering what would happen next.

Nobody else on the premises—and there were many of them—exercised anything like that amount of mental restraint. With a single mind they responded. With no discernible target in mind they might have well missed most of the long-gone assailant's body, even if he hadn't already removed it from the scene of the action.

As it was, I, standing still with staring eyes, addled brain and open mouth, was right in the centre of the foyer. I was a perfect, if unseen and incidental objective—what the military would call collateral damage.

I got the lot.

# College Capers — 1957

Doctor Williams was counting mattresses at the end of the Trinity College year. One or two seemed to be missing. "Of course," said "Palm" Grove, the College Matron, "there's the one that the boys burned."

I went to Trinity Methodist Theological College in 1957 to study for the ministry. At the same time I was doing advanced units at Auckland University so I was reasonably busy and not usually looking for something to fill in the idle hours.

But in an all-male boarding institution there were always a few events to liven up the proceedings from time to time. One was the visit of my fiancée for a holiday week. It was arranged that she would stay with the Vice-Principal's family for the week. I wouldn't have normally expected a staff household to provide this kind of hospitality but Jean and Dave Williams had been bridesmaid and best man for my parents' wedding and, in fact, got together and announced their engagement shortly afterwards. So this rather cushy arrangement was all set up and there was nothing for me to do but see that I collected Bev from the train before anyone else offered to queer my pitch.

She was coming on the Limited Express which didn't get in until around 9.30am but I set off from College good and early, having previously declined several offers of assistance with transport. In fact, I left before breakfast. I was leaving nothing to chance. Some of the students had already met Bev at Youth Conferences, most recently at John McGlashan College in Dunedin. I suppose they sensed she would be a good sport and a starter for a bit of innocent fun.

I pushed off in the brisk winter air and walked deviously down through the Domain rather than down the more direct Grafton Road. Venturing cautiously onto the precincts of the railway station not much before arrival time I was surrounded by second year students and their cars. I was unceremoniously bundled into the back of one, driven back up to the College, stripped of most of my clothing, daubed with all manner of sticky coloured stuff and trussed up in a camp chair on Doc's front porch.

Meanwhile, some of the other second years returned hastily to No 9 Platform to greet a slightly bewildered Bev.

"Dave got tied up at the last minute," they said, "and he said we should come and give you a lift."

"I know you, Jock Hosking," she said without a moment's hesitation. "I'm not getting in there with you lot." But there wasn't much else to be done. I wasn't there. What could a poor girl do except throw herself on the mercy of this bunch of stinkers. I'm told that nobody had to lay a hand on her to get her into the car and in due course we were united in somewhat bizarre circumstances. I forget where it all ended but I am sure we were eventually glad to see each other.

As this caper had been particularly engineered by the second years, my comrades of the first year felt bound to make some response. While the others were carrying out their nefarious schemes on Bev and me, my supporters gathered up all their bedding and hid it in various places around the college buildings. There was a bit of an uproar when this became known but gradually most of the bedding was located and returned to its proper place. Not all, though. At least one mattress was evidently well hidden.

So it was an hour or two later that some of us were standing in the first year corridor, looking out into the quad, when we noticed steam rising off the tiles of the common room roof opposite. It had turned out to be a gorgeous day with hot sun and it was the most natural thing that the morning's heavy dew would evaporate off in little puffs of steam. But these puffs were coming from under the tiles, not from the damp on top. Strange....

The common room was occupied by a few hostelmen. There had once been a huge fireplace at one end of the room but it had been filled in with storage space and a modern solid fuel heater. The chimney ran back up through the old fireplace space. It was a holiday weekend Saturday morning and the hostelmen had nothing else to do so they'd started up the fire and were peacefully reading the paper. They had not so far got caught up in the antics being played out by the div students. But they certainly looked up as the door burst open and a raiding party of first years raced into the room, tore open the big cupboard doors either side of the fireplace and dragged a smouldering mattress out onto the floor. It had been resting up against the flue pipe and become scorched. As if that weren't enough, the ample oxygen in the open room caused it to immediately burst into flame and it had to be gathered up and rushed outside to the quad where both the fire and the mattress were stamped to death.

It wouldn't do to just slip it out the back yard with the other rubbish so I think the next chore for one of the conspirators was to drive it to the tip. So that's how Doc was short of one mattress at the end of the term.

At this point there was a bit of a stay in the inter-year proceedings. You can carry on only so many tit-for-tat pranks in the eternal rivalry of one year of students with another. But the third years made their own contribution in with some prank that was wrought on us first years. Then they waited for our response. We didn't actually do a lot of planning or discussion about it but there was a growing consensus that whatever took place should have an air of subtlety about it. Nothing crude, we felt. Nothing that might develop into a brawl. Not even a water fight in the quad.

It should be said, perhaps, that we were a large group, ten in fact. So we didn't feel any sense of inferiority by virtue of numbers. We also had a reputation for being pretty devout. Many people since then have found that very hard to believe, but as long as such distinction was ours, why should we sully it with some base and pointless fooling around. But our time was to come in our second year.

It was regular practice to have a "crit" service every Tuesday night. Each student in turn had to conduct an entire worship service in front of the whole college—or as many as chose to present themselves for the experience—and then receive criticism on it. In class next morning, three of the student's colleagues would deliver their judgment on the service under various headings. Then the staff member, usually the redoubtable Doc Williams, would follow through. If the students were pretty hard on you, Doc would be likely to be kind. If the students gave you a rave review, well, you held your breath until Doc was finished with you. And, generally, you sought the good Doctor's counselling services soon afterwards. But at least this painful ritual did not take place immediately after the service on the Tuesday night. All that could wait until morning.

Once the evening service was over the students would gather with any visitors, special friends or other hangers-on in year groups for informal suppers. Sometimes these events were combined for special occasions.

So it was that the time came when we took it upon ourselves to invite everyone else to be our guests in one of the lecture rooms for a crit supper. We went to some trouble to prepare refreshments of a little more variety than usual. Complimented on our hospitality they passed around a couple of plates of pieces of home-made chocolate fudge. Everyone enjoyed it and some had more than just a piece or two. Nobody noticed that we and our guests ate only from the yellow plate. "You don't know how much pleasure you're giving us," said one redoubtable prankster. Neither did he know how much he was about to give us.

We'd made the fudge ourselves in the college kitchen during the day. It had taken a long time to get it right. I'd just assumed you threw a few things together and out came the fudge but it wasn't as simple as that. And I'd spent time at a chemist's in Symonds St getting some packs of a small chocolate ingredient that we felt would be vital for the success of our hospitality. Yes, there had been enough chocolate laxatives in one plate of fudge to clear a blocked sewer.

Later that night we were stationed along our corridor where we had a view of the windows across the quad. Time after time a light would go on in a bedroom and then one in the bathroom area and we would signal to someone in the bathroom directly below. He would then furiously wind the handle on a magneto coil, passing a harmless but stimulating shock up a pair of wires to the next floor and into two pieces of fuse wire taped to each side of the toilet seat. We couldn't be sure that our chosen toilet would be in service but the system worked and added a little extra spice to our appreciation of our evening's work.

Next morning several people didn't show for breakfast but some who did turn up complained about having got the "trots".

"I must have eaten something I suppose," they would mutter and we'd nod sympathetically, trying to restrain our glee.

In the latter part of the morning there was beginning to be a steady procession of people asking to be excused and slipping out of a lecture for a quarter of an hour or so. Some of us could hardly contain ourselves as one person after another got that strained look on his face and awkwardly shuffled hurriedly along the benches and dashed for the door.

Lunch came and the conversation dwelt more and more on this strange affair. Suspicion was cast on the college dinner the night before but that obviously hadn't affected everyone. It was a long time before people realised that one whole year of students was untouched. The penny dropped.

It was a triumph of subtlety but not much else. A visitor had a colostomy bag and we found out afterwards that he'd had to perform an unaccustomed number of emptyings. One minister out of town heard about the escapade and wrote to one of the students that we were not fit to operate dust carts. He was right, I suppose, and it was very naughty but it at least brought a swift end to any reputation of holiness among our group.

# The Mile Must Go Through — 1959

He repeated it several times: "In here, you write `Miles'". It beat me. I couldn't see the logic in it.

But in a valued vacation job in the Public Service you did what you were told without too much questioning. This kindly old cockney was detailed off to help the new boy find his way round unfamiliar territory. Filling in a motor vehicle running sheet was a fundamental.

I'd seen them before, of course. The Forest Service used the same Treasury forms, as did most government departments in those days. They were not yet privatised, corporatised or otherwise sanitised. The forms included space for the date, speedo at the start and end of the trip and I'd filled all that in many times. And, of course, I'd written something into the space marked "Purpose of trip". Here, in this space, said old Tom who was inducting me into the particular mysteries of the Public Service Garage, you wrote "Miles". Not, it seemed, the number of miles covered—that was elsewhere on the form. Just "Miles". He repeated it several times to make sure I understood what was wanted.

But I didn't. Now a theological student in his first vacation job doesn't want to sound too ignorant of the basics of working life so I decided not to press my ignorance on him. It didn't matter for the moment; I didn't do much more than wash cars for the first day or two.

I'd been hired on the grounds of having a heavy traffic licence and a certain amount of truck driving experience and being presumably fairly honest. Though the latter criterion couldn't have been too stringently applied in the case of some of the characters I found myself working with.

Of course, if you aspired to drive one of the Chrysler Windsors in the parliamentary fleet, you would presumably be checked over a bit. But the nearest we beginners got to these was watching them drive past our part of the yard. These cars were even washed by their own drivers, who had a way with a mop, warm water and wet wax that was quite distinctive.

I was first entrusted with a little Morris Minor, doing some messages around the centre of town. It was not quite what I'd expected to be driving after all the emphasis on an HT licence but that was OK. They hadn't asked how much driving I was actually doing currently; the answer would have had to be none at all. I had no car and at college there was no family car to borrow so I was not, as they call it in flying circles, current. It would be good to break myself in with a simple little car in Wellington's congested inner city streets.

On my first day I got pranged. I'd followed a truck around the crowded little triangle that used to be on the wharf side of the old Central Post Office. He stopped at the intersection with lower Willis St and then, without any warning—it says that in my report so it must be true—just backed into me. I searched around for the horn button but in my own first car, Wasp, that had been a switch near the door catch so I was out of luck with that at first attempt. When I did find the thing it gave a wheezing whine that could be bettered by any of my grand-daughters' squeaky toys in the 1990s. The truck paused, though, so I thought all was well.

Then he came at me again so I started to read the instructions provided on Morris gear levers. A brilliant innovation that, to have a map of the gearbox right there on the lever. Studying it now, I concluded that reverse, if I was reading the worn markings correctly, appeared to be to the right and down. Probably with a bit of a tug of the knob. Or perhaps a push. Anyway, by the time I'd got all this sorted out it didn't make much difference—I had a truck chassis in my bonnet right up to the little windscreen in front of my nose.

The driver had some abusive things to say about me pulling up behind him when anybody could see he was going to back into that driveway over there. I exchanged a bit of less interesting but more significant information with him and then rang the office. All they wanted to know was that the radiator and fan weren't damaged so I trundled back to the garage and renewed acquaintance with a Treasury form I'd met on my final day in Dusky Forest. It didn't take too much time to fill in as I was prepared to swear that I'd sounded my horn. I soon had another Minor and was on my way. You'd think they had the best insurance company in the world but the trick was that the government carried their own insurance. It must've saved an awful lot of trouble when you think about it.

Presently I graduated to trucks. Naturally, being the newest kid on the block, I got allocated the least exciting vehicles. None of them was without interest. The one that sticks in the memory is the three-ton V8 snub nose COE (cab-over-engine) Thames. It wasn't as old as some of the trucks I'd driven in the bush but it had character out of all proportion to its age. The driving position was never designed for a real person. The starter was concealed down behind the back of my heel somewhere. At least I think it was; I never had confidence that I would be able to find it when I reached down for it. The gearbox was murder and its lever somewhere behind my left hip. The cab was appallingly hot. And the engine started with the enthusiasm and reliability of the Wellington wharfies among whom it did a lot of its work.

It was one of the fill-in trucks for afternoon shifts. I would report at the mailroom at Central to collect a couple of labourers—I suppose they were probably dignified by the title of Postal Assistants as I was by Driver. But, let's face it, we were all labourers down on the wharf. We'd locate some obscure ship that had brought parcel mail in from the other side of the world and watch it until bags came swinging down in a large net. Then we'd make a leisurely task of getting a couple of hundred of them on the back of the truck. They would need to be surveyed for quite a bit after I'd got a net over them and guaranteed that nothing much would be lost along the way. Next we'd have to coax the engine into life. But not waiting around now—it got far too hot in the cab for that, so we were off down to the parcel depot in the Railway yards off Aotea Quay.

Here we'd be directed to throw the lot in a heap someplace in a corner where we rather gathered it would probably sit for quite some time. Nothing seemed to happen much down there.

Except for local mail items that were marked "Fragile"—they were not handled in bags but in great wicker baskets. The only problem was that each item had to be individually handled in the sorting process, so instead of being dragged along the ground in a bag of other things "fragiles" were passed from hand to hand one at a time. The hands were often some distance apart. One busy Christmas I saw fragiles being thrown twenty metres from one heap to another. Bottles were breaking and parcels bursting all over the place but the performance went right on. I resolved never to post anything of any value by fragile mail after that.

Once I had demonstrated a bit of reliability I was allocated to regular shifts which did Quite Important Work. I graduated to a quite modern three-ton flat-deck Bedford and cleared the outbound mail from various postal centres around the inner city. The procedure was that you reversed into loading docks which opened into the mailrooms. A pile of bags would be waiting for clearance; letters were to go to CPO, parcels to the Railway yards down Aotea Quay. The job should have been easy enough but the truck was a bit of a handful when the traffic was heavy in the narrow central city streets.

And the dock at Stout St Post Office was a bit of a stinker. There were two kerb crossings just about three metres apart but the actual entrances were fairly narrow. You either had to pull right out into the middle of the road to back in more or less straight or else your nearside rear wheels had to cut the corner a bit as you backed over the kerb.

At busy times of the day there were a lot of things to allow for as you made your approach. If you went too far into the middle of the road you could hold up traffic in both directions. If you did all your turning as you backed it was a bumpy ride over the kerb into the driveway.

So on one very busy day there was traffic all over the place and I drove up with eyes in every direction. I pulled up on my side of the centre line, well along from the dock entrance. I turned to reverse and the mailbags were loaded up a bit higher than usual, obstructing the view from the rear mirror. The left hand mirror had been wiped out previously but, as long as I could see the entrance on my side I was fine.

I felt the nudge as the rear wheels came up against the kerb and we stopped. I gave her a bit more of a push to climb up. Nothing happened. I could feel the wheels tackle the kerb but they didn't seem to be climbing over. More mail than usual on the back, I thought, so I opened up a bit. Quite a bit.

Now it seemed that something was wrong. Wait a minute. Get out. Walk round the back. Oh, dear, some idiot has parked a car on the three metres of kerb between our two entrances. And it has been fairly determinedly dented in the rear fender.

Back to the office. More report writing. A few words this time about being at fault when you're backing even if people of dubious parentage park their cars where they shouldn't. And, yes, we'll get the truck's mirrors fixed.

The ferry shuttle job was interesting. Two drivers clocked in for this at 6.45am, collected specially equipped Bedford three-tonners from the Garage and reported to the far end of the Lyttelton Ferry Terminal. The end of the cargo shed there was strictly Post Office territory and here we'd have large sides hooked onto the truck to make a dish-shaped platform about four metres square. With this contraption on the back we had to take turns to back under the ferry's winch as it lowered a sling full of sacks of mail. The entire sling was dropped onto the tray and we then quickly manoeuvred the truck beside the open loading platform in the shed. Once the side was lowered a small winch could haul the sling and entire contents into the shed. If you were too close in the side wouldn't lie down properly and the load would snag. Too far out and there was no support when it was lowered.

If all went well it was only moments for the postal assistance to have a ton of mail off the truck, hook up the side again and drop the previous empty sling on the tray. I'd then pull forward to the edge of the wharf. The PO staff sorted the bags into heaps and then the other truck pulled in while I backed to the ferry for the next load. In busy times it was a very smooth and satisfying operation. But our smoothness was nothing to the ferries themselves; whatever the weather or the conditions, the ferry would be backing in and the first weighted line would thump onto the wharf at exactly 7am every morning.

The other early morning job was meeting the overnight rail Express from Auckland. It rolled into town with much less attention to timetable than did the Lyttelton Ferry. But, sooner or later, it was there almost every morning and we had to have several trucks there to clear the famous Railway Travelling Post Office.

Staffed by Post Office crew, these special wagons travelled up or down the North Island every night. They received and delivered mail at every station along the way and their crews sorted every item that came through the doors. By morning all that remained in the large wagon would be stacks of neat mailbags all labelled for their onward movement to city deliveries or points further south.

By this means, for the princely sum of one penny extra for "late fee" I had been able to write love letters to Bev at Ohakune Junction after going to the movies. I could pop them on the southbound train around midnight and she would get them at work next morning. I always thought of those letters when clearing the RTPO at Platform 9 a few years later.

Night shift was a doddle. We reported around 9.45pm and were eventually directed towards a couple of cars that needed washing and vacuuming out. Sometimes they had to have a wax job but for some of the "pool" vehicles that were hired to other government departments it didn't matter too much. We could usually make this work last until about midnight at which time the duty foreman would probably turn a blind eye to our presence until something cropped up. If we were lucky we could get allocated to the Post Office Engineer's Department around at Clyde Quay. Nobody was breathing down our necks there and as long as we could produce a couple of cars that looked pretty clean in the morning we'd be right. But back at the main Garage we'd sit in the "ready room" with our eyes falling onto our laps and imagine ourselves waiting to be called out to fly off to defend Britain against the evil Hun. Well, I did, anyway. Most of the others went to sleep, I recall.

But when the balloon did go up it might be to take a car up to Wadestown to pick up an overseas tolls operator who had to go on shift at 4am or a fellow driver who had to start from home before public transport was available. That was a good lurk, really; I was able to requisition a car on several occasions when I had a 6.30am start. The driver was as happy to have the ride out to Lower Hutt to collect me as I was to be picked up in style. One driver turned up half an hour early and made a terrible racket knocking on the door.

"Oh gee, sorry, Mate—I thought you were Jack Mullane."

"Well, you'd better come in and have a cuppa."

"Gosh, thanks. Of course, we don't get any breakfast on the night shift"

"No, of course. Well, look, I'll just get some bacon and eggs."

Then we'd have a pleasant cruise back into town in the dawn.

I did trips all over town in the middle of the night, finding my way into places I didn't know existed. To all intents and purposes we were the government taxi service and anyone who had a bit of clout could indent on our services.

Sometimes, when the duty uniformed chauffeur was committed we were permitted to drive the better cars for Fairly Important Persons. "Despatch" kept a clean jacket for any of us ordinary mortals who had to be co-opted into special work of this kind. They probably looked for people with clean mouths, too. I got a few of those jobs.

A paying perk was to be allocated two shifts for the week. You could do the six days a week morning shift from 6.30 to 1.30 and proceed to a short afternoon shift until about 5.30. And, if you were in the good books of the chief despatcher, you could every few weeks get a full double: 6.30am to 9.45pm or overnight through until 1.30pm. The work was not too demanding, especially if your "double" included a nightshift, and it paid a handsome bonus in penalty rates even on the modest wages of those days.

One night I had some exciting moments with a Consul. This one was regularly allocated to Child Welfare and its running sheets showed that it did quite substantial mileage each day, driven mostly by the same person. It was on the cleaning roster one night so it was available when I had to go out on a job and I nearly brought it back before I'd got out of the yard. The steering wheel wobbled to left and right with every turn of the road wheels. I put up with it all along Aotea Quay thinking it would smooth out as I got up speed along the Western Hutt Rd. No such luck. The thing was just about uncontrollable and I was very relieved to get it back to the Garage and to report it as unfit for duty. But some Child Welfare Officer had been driving it daily without so much as raising any queries about its roadworthiness.

I was employed at the Garage through several vacations and after my first month my accident record had been just about clean. But there was a nasty round to be done all through the centre city involving 5pm clearances in the worst possible traffic conditions. You started at Te Aro and the instant they came out and threw the 5pm bags aboard you raced down to Courtenay Place and along to Manners St. You also had to go to Featherstone St, the Railway Station, and the Parcels Depot, back to the CPO and knock off at the Garage by 5.30pm.

This was a fairly demanding routine so I didn't want to muck around. At Manners St there was a very tricky entrance down the side of the building off a very narrow street. Traffic was always bumper to bumper here at 5pm and complicated by the fact that tram services ran right through as well. To reverse in here at a few minutes after 5pm each night was one of the thrills of the job.

You had to swing out into the middle of the road and start backing in before the vehicles behind closed up the gap. It was a nice manoeuvre when carried out smoothly. But everything became a shambles if it went wrong.

One day I got it wrong. I got boxed into the traffic and had to back and fill to extricate myself and the Queen's mails. Somehow, somewhere in that tangle I had the distinction of backing into a tram.

There are not many people who have hit a tram and driven away afterwards. I heard a Mk I Consul tackle a tram head on and I looked up to see the car careening backwards seven metres directly in front of the tram. When the Consuls first came out in 1952 their detractors used to say if one had an accident the front end would collapse and the engine would fall out on the ground. They were wrong. I took particular notice of this one and absolutely nothing mechanical fell out on the ground. It all joined the passengers in the front seat.

Anyway, I pranged this tram, broke its headlight, saw a gap in the traffic and made off. Nobody sought me for a fourth time through Treasury's Accident Report Form.

Driving for the Public Service Garage was a great way of paying my way through College. Churches that have been in receipt of my ministrations over the years have no idea how much the oft-maligned public service contributed to the theological education which I presume they appreciated so much.

And yes, I did find out what I was supposed to write on the running sheets. Whenever the job was related to carrying mail for the Post Office it was described as "Mails".

# To Catch a Mouse — 1986

Bev has been overseas for three weeks and I've been left an ample supply of frozen meals so you might think there would be no reason for me to have to go near a shop. That's how it was all planned. But a problem has arisen. There's a mouse in the pantry. And no mouse-trap is to be found in the house. Now I'm definitely no shopper, but needs must when the devil drives. This is how it got described in a letter to Bev....

Dear Bev,

Tonight I went shopping. Can you believe it?

It wasn't exactly deliberate but the idea just sort of snuck up on me. I was posting mail at the shopping centre—silly idea because it wouldn't be picked up until the middle of next day—and I thought why don't I just dash into the supermarket and buy a mouse-trap. Simple. Good idea. Furthermore I didn't have my glasses so there would be little chance of getting distracted from the Operation in Hand. So, bravely, into the supermarket I went. You'd have been so proud of me.

Where do you look for a mouse-trap in this place, I ask you. Well, I got no answer asking you, didn't I, so I asked the guys at the Not More Than Five Items check-out and they told me where to go and I could even follow their instructions. But no mouse-traps. So I approached a likely-looking fellow with a yellow apron on and he said they were just there (stupid, he didn't say but is what he implied). So I apologised for your not being in charge of me and said I'd left my glasses behind so he came and looked.

And couldn't find them. Perhaps over in merchandise, he said. Where's that? Don't you know anything, his eyes said but his voice told me where to go. There was, however, a complete dearth of mouse-traps there too. So I approached—I am getting very blasé about all these approaches, but let me tell you, each cost much nervous energy—another likely-looking fellow in a yellow apron. He made small secret of my stupidity looking for a mouse-trap among the electrical goods. But after listening patiently to my detailed explanation of the position (which, I might say took much less time than the writing up of the situation now) agreed to go off to hunt for Someone in Authority.

Off he went—and found such a one. They both came back and we went over the original counter One More Time. There were no mouse-traps.

That, unsatisfactory though the outcome was, marks my first attempt at real shopping. We may still be trapless but not without distinction. At least I have broken my duck and got into a shop and carried out all manner of researches and negotiations. But what to do now? Well, the local superette was a possibility, but dare I chance my luck again? Might I not wind up a snivelling emotional wreck? Would it not be better to walk home and forget the whole thing. Not an easy question. But what do you think I did?

You're wrong. I went in. And the nice lady at the check-out got me a hanky to dry my eyes, gave me a Moro bar to console me, and found a mouse-trap—with a broken spring. I was ready to say I'll take it. I mean, who needs to spend this much time in two shops for so little. But she spotted the problem and persevered with the search (she was better at that than I) and located one complete with all vital parts.

So, much encouraged, I spotted some NZ Listeners and reached for two with different coloured covers (I couldn't read the dates, could I?) and presented all my purchases proudly at the counter together with three dollars. I estimated the mouse-trap at one and threepence and the LISTENERS used to be a shilling each, so you can see I allowed plenty for inflation.

The Helpful Lady looked at me a bit meaningfully and said did I want the Listeners, too? It seemed obvious to me and she mumbled something about $5.65 which I thought was her way of gently joshing me for being a bit clumsy in the shopping department. But I put down another tentative dollar and she made her joke again. $5, I thought, just for those three little things. Anyway, another dollar went down and she picked them all up and counted them and said, very meaningfully, $5.65...? There was obviously some mistake but I didn't want to embarrass her seeing she had been so helpful so I gave her yet another dollar and dutifully accepted the change she offered. Have a good evening, she said. Well, I suppose so.

But I couldn't help thinking that when you got home I'd have some explaining to do about wasting the housekeeping.

Love,

Dave

# Nanaimo Bar — 1986

Here's another letter to Bev who was away in British Columbia for several weeks... It was here that we first were introduced to Nanaimo Bar, a wondrous three layer slice.

Dear Bev,

You may be interested to know that in simple emulation of the feminine role model so desperately missed from these premises and particularly the culinary department—I went looking through your recipe books. There, to my astonishment, was a recipe for a thing called Nainoma Bar. I kid you not, that is how it is spelled, according to Lucy Bloggs, of Kamo, New Zealand—as if she would know.

Anyway, it immediately conjured up visions of you three amidst the trees on Extrom Road. Tackling a recipe like this would be a pleasant and reminiscent way of passing a few minutes. I thought.

The recipe also looked simple enough to a man who is accustomed to putting together videos out of 157 separate sequences or books out of 464 pages. Only three things to bang together and Bob's your Uncle. I thought.

So off we went with a will, moving carefully and deliberately because of our propensity to move quickly and briskly—-but occasionally erratically—- in matters of recipes, tidiness and sex.

And before long the base came together and went into the fridge. Looking good so far. I thought.

Then the filling was assembled after the custard powder was liberated from the Bin Inn bulk package and the icing sugar was located in a strange place away down out of sight. And I settled for using vanilla essence after looking all round the place for a "valnilla" which was what the recipe specified.

The butter was in the freezer so I cleverly softened it first in the microwave and then mixed her all up together in the cake mixer. Then I needed some hot water. I had no jug cord— as I'm sure I mentioned recently I gave it away to the church Garage Sale by mistake—and as you know I don't like running the tap at the sink because (a) you get several gallons of tepid water first which is actually hot water I've paid to have heated up (good grief, did I pay that power bill last week?) and (b) you can't turn the damn thing off afterwards and the sink and kitchen floor tend to fill up with water during the night.

So I popped a couple of cups into the microwave. They heated up too quickly for the base to cool down in the fridge so I went off and did something else for a bit. Not one to waste a moment, you understand. Then upstairs I came, figuring that I shouldn't put in all the water at once just in case some of my other measures were less than perfectly precise. It can be a difficult challenge to thicken up a sloppy cement mixture and icing would probably give just as much trouble. So, not too much water all at once: just one cupful to start.

One cupful? I hear the Canadian native manufacturers of the celebrated Nanaimo bar say. Yes, that's what I said. Just one. Well, come to think of it, the filling does look more like cordial than anything resembling icing. But presumably the custard powder will set it like trifle. And the icing sugar would also have a setting effect. Well, just give it time. Put it in the fridge before it goes on the base, perhaps. That'll settle it.

It didn't.

What could possibly have gone wrong? When all else fails, check the recipe again: oh, good grief, two tablespoons of hot water! We have a slight problem here—"Notify the guests that the Nanaimo Bar will be served at the House Bar, in tall glasses, with ice."

No, it's not that bad; you just adjust the mixture. You work out how many tablespoons went in via the cup and add the appropriate amount of the other ingredients to adjust it all to the right consistency. It's just like mixing concrete really.

A protracted delay followed while I did a quick calculation which indicated that this process would require about 22 kgs of icing sugar, a cake tin full of custard powder and half a litre of vanilla essence. To accommodate all this we would have to make up about a third of a cubic metre of base, spread this in innumerable sponge roll tins and get it all chilled before the filling could be used.

That seemed a laborious and expensive way of solving the problem. But, we told ourselves, "deductive" thinking is what's called for here—so we deducted from the cordial a sort of proportion of it which could be equated to two tablespoons full of water (supposed to be hot but presumably pretty cold by now) and added to that the recipe quantities of the other ingredients less a proportion allowed for the amount already in the cordial mixture. I ran it all out on the computer's spreadsheet to make sure it was right

It should have worked out fine but it required 14 different additions of a little bit of this and a larger bit of that to get something that looked, tasted and felt like perhaps what the filling should be. After that it was child's play (this is not intended to be a document read by children and interpreted by them as being anti-children or otherwise not totally politically correct nor is the reference to "child's play" intended to be a derogatory or denigrating reference to any particular child or, indeed, children generally) to try out a few dabs on top of the base, chill them, and guess how we were coming along.

Eventually the filling was chilling out in the fridge and I was chilling out in the sun. I needed to catch and restore my shattered nerves.

Now for the topping. "Take a piece of cooking chocolate". Beg your pardon but where on earth would we find that. Ah well, chocolate chips have been used for cooking before today. They'll do. Down they melted with the butter and at last we got the top layer on after a fashion and the thing is fine. Of course, there was the question of a large supply of remaining cordial mixture. On an inspiration we started up the beater again and threw wine biscuits at it three at a time, transferred them to a bowl with half of the cordial and gradually produced an interesting looking mixture which was then pressed into another tray. Part of the rest of the cordial was stiffened up to make an icing of sorts and we now have a new recipe which will be known as "Dave's Tasty Mistake".

Now, of course, is where the fundamental skill of the cookery book writer comes in. What's the good of boasting about this great taste treat you have created unless people can ask for the recipe?

So, as Mrs Beaton began her famous recipe for Jugged Hare "First, catch your hare" the way Dave's recipe will have to start is: First, make up a filling for Nanaimo Bar using two cups of hot water instead of two tablespoons.

# Let's Change the Tune — 1987

We had a bit of a problem at church one Sunday. I had chosen a contemporary hymn whose words and theology were particularly appropriate for the theme. Happily there was no new tune specially written for it. This absolved me from the gut-wrenching decision to ask the congregation to learn a tune which they might or might not use again until this particularly theme rolled around again in the three-year lectionary cycle.

Happily, also, the words were written in a metre that provided a good choice of tunes with the appropriate rhythm. So it was a matter of a few minutes to decide that Blaenwern would do. It hadn't been in the Methodist Hymn Book but we'd been using With One Voice for years and used that tune quite a few times. So the moment came, I announced the hymn, and the organist played—

Something. I had absolutely no idea what it was. The words were not familiar enough to be associated in my mind with any particular tune. I did not have the music in front of me since I was already juggling my notes for the service and half a dozen other assorted items on the table which passes for a pulpit desk as well as a place for communion table and, occasionally, morning tea for the congregation. So the proceedings had to come to a halt while I visited the organist and identified he music so that I could give a bit of a lead.

She is an accomplished keyboard person, a good sight-reader and, in fact, a "tutor in pianoforte" but her very experience on an ordinary keyboard contributed to our problem on this occasion. The elderly American organ was a bit of a challenge.

I didn't get a chance to inspect her selection of stops but it was clear that not only did we have a generous amount of volume present but we also had a wide variety of stops from the full range of this very adequate instrument. There were bassy 16 footers along with tweeting 4 foot stops all mixed up together.

One of the latter had a bit of a cipher around about A so that particular reed spoke off and on for short periods at intervals that were quite unrelated to the number of times its key was depressed on the keyboard. It had a life of its own, that reed, and most of us who played the organ were aware that if you drew that stop you could expect some little difficulties that might cause a strategic change of selection in a hurry. Blissfully unaware of any problem of that kind our organist had added it to her choices for the opening hymn.

Another stop had a note in the same region that had stuck on so regularly and permanently that we had simply withdrawn the reed a little from its slot so that it would not sound at all. This was a bit of a nuisance if you tried to play a solo on that particular bank of reeds but not a problem to anyone who knew the organ. Generally, of course, when you sit down at a strange instrument you would run over the keyboard and check that at least one solo stop was fully functional in the areas that mattered before the service. If you found a persistent cypher you would just stay off that particular stop and use a sister one instead.

Couplers are another problem on these organs and many organists see them only as something to provide a bit more grunt when there's a large congregation. That's more or less true. But adding notes that are an octave or above or below the struck key can make it harder for people to hear the melody line. I think that day most of the couplers were hooked in.

Another idiosyncrasy of organs as a whole is that reeds—and pipes for that matter—have a much larger range of audible harmonics than the piano keyboards. These harmonics are what create the individual quality and tone of any selected note; compared with pure tone from an electronic tone generator they have far more character and interest. It's as if not one but several notes, all slightly different, are being sounded at once. People with exceptional hearing can recognise these; others, like me, hear only one note but can appreciate tonal differences from one A to another on different stops.

She was using our wonderful old organ to which an enterprising technician had added an electric blower. This system was enclosed in a stout wooden box out in a back room and delivered a very generous amount of air pressure to the bellows. I have to say that the whole contraption looked suspiciously like a regular vacuum cleaner inside a box. Whatever the mechanism, it did the job well enough so our organist was at least spared the problem of having to operate the foot pedals as well as manage the keyboard. However, far from helping the situation, this probably complicated matters more than a little. For in her professional concern to sound every note called for in the music, not to mention hauling out almost every stop on the instrument she inadvertently created a concoction of sound that was so muddied that it was impossible to tell where the melody line was carrying the tune.

During the introduction I gave it my best shot but Blaenwern has a wide range and the part that I think was played for the introduction is quite high where the combination of all the actual notes and their couplers and harmonics created a boisterous and impressive level of noise but a totally disastrous absence of any indication of what the tune might be.

It wasn't the first time I had to stop the proceedings and re-group the musical resources. There was another well-remembered occasion in a suburban church back in the 1960s. Here there was a large church with an excellent pipe organ. But on this occasion keyboard skills may have been lacking as it seemed that the chords had to be picked out with great care as they were put down one after another.

That organ was a full-tracker, too, which meant that the actual depression of the keyboard was conveyed mechanically to the valves that opened the pipes to let them speak. Electric or air valves responded much more quickly but the mechanical tracker system produced a more noticeable delay between the instant the keys were depressed and the notes sounded. An organist had to develop a way of playing rhythmically without listening too much to the outcome for if you did listen to the music as you played it you gradually became slower and slower. For hymn singing it is vital that the music be absolutely rhythmical. It may be fast or slow or something in between but it must be regular.

And, this particular organist was slow. Not slow as in giving the congregation time for a quick breath between the lines but slow as in asking the congregation to take two breaths along each line of more than seven syllables as well. I am sure that I wasn't the only preacher who had to reduce the length of the sermons for that particular church in order to accommodate the time taken in singing the hymns. Any visiting preacher who had a lot to say usually had to cut out a few verses of the last hymn or even dispense with it altogether if they were to finish at a reasonable hour. Certainly, many of us felt we should count the syllables and lines and verses so we could keep the total for any one service to a manageable amount.

A further complication was that in the large space inside the church the organist and organ were on one side, the pulpit was on the other. And the congregation was seated in a small bunch somewhere in the middle of the body of the church. The distance between each contributor to the musical liturgy was quite substantial so that there was a discernible delay in transmission of sound from each part of the church to the others. This was another delay that could frustrate the best organists who know that you cannot listen to the congregation's music returning to you from some distance away and time your music to their rhythm. You have to set yours and hold to it. This technicality seemed to be lost on this organist.

Some of this church's worship leaders who were confident singers undertook to compete with the organist in setting the pace. And, with this large and comprehensive instrument, that was quite a challenge. But if you had a strong voice as well as a confident melody line you could try it and there were quite a few occasions on which members of the congregation became spectators of the competition rather than participants in the singing. I am told was an awesome spectacle watching a really good preacher take on the organ.

Alas, I could hold a tune but have no great volume. So when I was scheduled to take worship in this congregation I went with dragging feet. I would do my best with the first few phrases and sometimes the organist picked up my modest lead and managed a better pace. Mostly, he didn't, and the singing became more and more dirge-like as the verses struggled one by one towards the finish line. It was a depressing experience, especially compared with my "home" church where the singing was so well led and so much appreciated by all.

One morning we struggled through two verses of eight lines of a pretty long metre hymn whose words seemed particularly appropriate for the theme for the day. Before the organist could find the notes for the third verse I raised my hands in the air, mustered my best parade-ground voice and cried STOP! I tell you, they stopped. The congregation, the organist, everyone. They stopped. So did Time. It's really true: time can stand still and it did. I didn't want to pick on the organist so I growled at the unfortunate congregation, telling them that we were all singing far too slowly because we were dragging. We were not listening to the organist, I told them. I then asked him to give us a good brisk lead at the proper pace and assured him we would try to keep up with him. I have no recollection that the whole exercise got the right results but if the leadership of worship is about creating memorable moments I did it that morning.

I had another forgettable experience in a somewhat smaller church with a rather mysterious electronic instrument that was capable of giving a good lead to the distant congregation but never did. The organist was probably not a very accomplished keyboard person and the system was full of harmonics and variations which could be made worse by drawing certain stops and on this occasion these were probably doing their worst.

But the big problem was in another change of tune. I'd found some words for a good hymn that I wanted to use and quite quickly located a suitable tune which would be well enough known. I announced the hymn and read the first line or two and the introduction commenced. At least I think it was the introduction. It was coming from the organ, but a very long way away, as though it was apologetic about being in the church at all. So it should have been, actually. It was so tentative that it couldn't even take the initiative to silence itself in shame. It was certainly unrecognisable as "Adoration", the tune set at No 58 in the Methodist Hymn Book for The Lord Jehovah Reigns. Indeed, it was unrecognisable as anything. It had no discernible melody and no rhythm. When they could be heard, chords and notes just seemed to be tumbling about in thin air.

Don't get me wrong. Nobody knows more than me how the first hymn in the service can get off to a bad start. I had only a couple of years' lessons on the piano and at the organ the simplest music can defeat me now and then. Once you get a few notes wrong in an introduction, you haven't really got any chance of correcting the mistakes and getting all your little key soldiers lined up again. Introductions are murder and I know it. In recent years I have taken to playing a solo of the melody line so that people at least have an idea of what we're going to sing.

Had this lady done that forty years ago our problems that day might never have started. But, having played a pianissimo and totally garbled introduction she launched into the first verse with exactly the same ill effect. From the other side of the church I should have been able to give a bit of a lead to get the congregation away. If the organist fails to give a lead the preacher may be able to. But I had no more idea what tune we were supposed to be singing than did any of the congregation. And it was clear that they were pretty deficient in that department. I had looked at several tunes when selecting the one that I asked her to play. At least two were well-known and perfectly singable, even in this musically modest congregation. And to this day I still harbour certain suspicions that she switched tunes herself and played one of the others.

One of the principles of introductions is that you try to give the congregation an idea of how you think the hymn should be sung. So you play the introduction at the speed you expect them to sing it at, not a whole lot faster—that never encourages them to sing faster, actually—and not slower, and certainly not slowing down at the end as that leaves them totally confused as to your intentions. But on this occasion what the congregation responded to was the complete lack of volume and the total lack of any indication of tune. So that's how we all sang.

I wasn't doing much better than anyone else but I had at least got the message that the beginning was pretty low down in the register and went up a third or so for the second note. Somehow I got started on Darwall's 148th as it is called in the MHB at No 678 "Lord of the worlds above". The melody was not right but the chords didn't seem to fit too badly from the little I could hear from away over the other wide of the church. For most of each verse, anyway. But when we got to the end of the words of each verse the last part of the tune to which I was giving such a bold and enthusiastic lead just didn't seem to be quite right. We had a problem

So the first verse kind of petered out and we attacked the second with same lack of verve that had accompanied the first. Once more, I listened to try to hear where we were going and led off—on the wrong tune. By this time things were obviously not going quite correctly. I was convinced that the organist was simply misplaying the tune so that we didn't know where to go. She was now shaking her head trying to make gestures as well as play the notes—whatever they were. But when a strong lead was desperately called for all that she caressed out of the machine wouldn't have helped a shy five year old soloist in the children's choir.

At the third verse the organist stopped and said—though like her playing, she said it rather quietly—"It's the wrong tune". I couldn't have agreed with her more that something was wrong. But since I didn't know what was right I needed to have that information as well if I were to continue to deputise for the organ that was failing to lead the congregation. I waited for her to get the correct music and start again but she didn't. Before I could cross the church to see what we were trying to do she launched tentatively off into verse three and for a third time I tried to identify the tune. It was not quite what she was playing.

There must be few hymns in the book which can be sung concurrently, chord by chord, with so little clash of harmony as these two. For most of the first four or so lines, anyway. Anyone listening from outside would hardly have known that we were at odds with each other until we reached about the fifth line. Then a tuneful ear would have picked up some problems—but only if listening very close to where the organ was continuing to make a totally ineffectual contribution to the proceedings.

But each time we reached the end of the music the most untrained observer could detect that something had gone awry. It did not take great musical skill to identify the problem.

At the end of each verse the tune I was singing still had eight notes of music left when the words finished.

# Phoning Home — 1990

The marvels of modern science are never so apparent as when you are away from home and wanting to keep in touch.

The humble telephone has made advances that would have been undreamed of a few years ago. Just pick it up, punch a couple of dozen buttons and in an instant you've woken up someone you don't want to talk to in a distant part of the world.

But there can be other traps. Once in New South Wales we needed to make a quick call a few miles up ahead. There was a public phone over the road from the motel. But the motel management insisted I use the phone in the room; you can dial it direct, Sir. Very simple. So it was. And next morning our motel bill included an item of $5 for a phone call that the telephone company later told me was worth 65 cents.

In a motel in Brattleboro, Vermont I was prepared to do something as expensive as this. It was important that we make the call so we took our courage in both hands and committed a large part of our budget for next day's incidental expenses. We spent an hour punching buttons in our room and ran up a bill of around $12. That seems cheap enough for an hour's use of a phone, but actually I didn't get to talk to anyone I wanted.

Basically, you should be able to pick up the phone, dial your call, and see the bill soon afterwards on the office computer and then on your room account. In reality, it doesn't always happen just as it should.

In this particular motel there were plenty of instructions about how to use the phone. But nothing on how to call a foreign country. So I looked up the directory. No, first I looked for the directory because, as with many motels, there wasn't one in our room. But being assured at the front office I could make direct calls from the room I borrowed their directory and went to work.

First I got through to the phone company. Sorry, they told me, we don't offer that service to your motel; there's more than one long-distance telephone company. So, back to the office: No? Wouldn't they really? Well, she was sorry but she didn't know who handled the motel's long-distance calls. She was only really sort of baby-sitting the motel, you see. The managers were away for the night.

I drifted thoughtfully back to our room. We'd been driving all day and were tired and hungry and this call needed to be speeded up. Perhaps we could make a long-distance call with operator assistance? Of course, that's it. Simple. Or it should have been. But the operator was the motel baby-sitter, wasn't she. We'd already reached the bottom of the barrel of her knowledge of telephone matters. But, wait, why didn't I call the telephone company operator? Dial 00, she said.

Well, after trying that quite a few times I realised that I'd better put 8 in front of it to get out of the motel switchboard. And at last we got through to the lady with a lot of answers. In fact, the answers tell the whole story, so all I present here is her side of the conversation:

"No, you can't dial international direct—you have to use the operator",

"No, that is not a free service",

"No, we can't take VISA credit cards",

"No, I don't know anything about that"

"No, I don't think I can help you"

"Goodnight, sir. Thank you for calling MCI"

By now there seemed to be only one thing for it. We fell back on the trusty "NZ DIRECT" card which puts you directly through to an operator back home in New Zealand. It'd be expensive, of course, but at least it would be simple and quick and we'd be talking to someone who understood English.

"Welcome to Telecom International; this is Jenny."

"Hello, Jenny. I'd like a Transferred Charge Call to Auckland, please."

"I'm sorry, Sir—we don't offer that service."

That, in brief, is how our daughter found herself accepting a collect international call from the Vermont Mountains.

But even this episode didn't exhaust the capacity of American telephone systems to intimidate us. Some time later I was obliged to make a local toll call and was asked by the machine to put in 95c for the first minute. I didn't have the right change so I just dropped in four quarters and the machine—bless its mechanical heart—acknowledged, "You have five cents' credit for extra time."

I had my quick chat with Frank, ran out of time and went off the air without warning, heard the click of the "extra time" nickel being absorbed into the system, came "alive" and talked on for ten seconds then said goodbye, hung up and walked away.

The phone rang. I swear that the call-box phone on the side of the building rang before I'd got five steps away from it. I picked up the receiver and didn't even have to say an enquiring "Yes?". There was a mechanical monster: "Please put in ten further cents for the one minute extra time". I hung up again and walked off having the feeling that it was watching me and taking down my description.

However, our brushes with the phone company were still not over. I wanted to call ahead to see if Richard was at home in Virginia Beach before we dropped in. I dialled the number and the machine said politely that I needed to put a `1' in front of the number. I did that and it announced, still very respectfully, that it could not get that number from here. So I tried a third time, putting the area code in as well for good measure and the machine, ever so courteously, chimed in, "Two dollars and twenty cents please". This was a call of about fifteen miles across the city so I hung up on it and got my ten cents back.

Ten miles down the road we tried again. Yes, the local information centre assured us, Virginia Beach was a local call from here. So in went the usual ten cents and through went the call. Or so it seemed. There was our ubiquitous friend again: "The call you have dialled costs 25c. Please hang up, insert 25c and dial again". Well, you keeping trying, don't you? I hung up and pushed in the 25c and dialled the number yet again. Nothing happened.

So what's new? I hung up to release the coin but it didn't drop back into the slot. I pushed and pulled all the various things but the quarter seemed irretrievably lost. Darn it, I thought, I'll complain. You dial 0 for the operator and I could surely have no trouble getting that right. Not "1", not an Area Code, just plain "0".

"Good morning, this is Virginia Bell, Janice speaking." Great stuff, that. No pre-recorded voice here. A real person, full of human interest. "Hi, Janice—this is Dave. I've just dialled a local number and got no connection and the machine won't give me back my 25 cents. What can you do for me?"

"Hold the line, sir, (where's the gay camaraderie now; what's wrong with `Dave'?, I asked myself) and I'll transfer you."

On comes another live person. The world is full of them today and I am not yet too frustrated to try to explain my problem one more time. This machine has swallowed my quarter when I was trying to make a local call. "That's no trouble, sir, what's your number?"

"The number I called?"

"No, Sir, your number?"

"The number of this phone?"

"No, Sir (an air of phoney patience in the voice now)—your number at home."

"My number at home?"

"Yes, Sir, the number of your home phone"

"In New Zealand?"

"Are you from New Zealand?"

"Yes, that's right"

"Well, Sir, if you give me your address we will send you a cheque for the 25c."

I am not kidding. I have not made this up. This was not a machine. This real, live lady promised to send a cheque for 25c around the world to my home.

"Well, thanks a lot, but what I really want is my call; can't you just connect me up?"

"No, Sir, you'll have to call the operator for that."

"But the operator put me onto you."

"Well... (a short silence) thank you for calling Virginia Bell." And she hung up.

So back to the operator—at least he seemed to know a bit about things—and this time he dialled the call and eventually I got to talk to Dick.

# Fawlty Towers, BC — 1990

We'd had a heavy first day in Victoria, BC and returned to our hotel room exhausted. Nancy and Mary embarked on the long final walk up the two corridors to their bedroom—we never did find out why we weren't given the adjoining bedrooms we'd requested—and we just fell out of our clothes and into bed.

Just about as quickly we leaped out again. The bed was alive. It hummed, no, buzzed with a loud and insistent noise. It was not impossible to hear ourselves speak but all that we needed to say to each other was we didn't like it. There was no smoke. But just because where there's smoke there's fire isn't to say that where there isn't smoke there isn't fire. Nothing seemed to be on fire, nothing was warm to the touch, nothing jiggled or shook or murmured in the way that electrical things sometimes do when their innards are in bad shape. But the noise continued, apparently emanating from a position in the wall behind the bed head.

We contemplated the possibility that this was a device that was used to discourage people who actually had the temerity to show up with vouchers for 50% off regular room rates. Considering the rates with the discount worked out at a lot more than we'd have paid for a motel along the road that seemed hardly likely. So we took our courage in both hands, deciphered the telephone instructions and dialled "0" on the phone.

Debbie, the night desk clerk, when wakened from dozing in front of her miniature TV set under the counter, didn't really take us seriously for a bit. She probably thought that nobody who was sober needed to call her at this hour. But gradually she absorbed the fact that we had a problem and it was going to be hers. She listened carefully and responded with a very sympathetic silence. With a bit of prompting from our end of the conversation she confessed to be somewhat out of her depth but would have a word with the night manager.

This sounded promising, so we dressed ourselves again and checked that the phantom noise hadn't gone while all these communications were taking place. When, not too long afterwards, there was a knock at the door we were quite hopeful. The manager introduced himself to us. His name, like that of the substantial institution he represented can remain a merciful secret. For the purposes of this record we shall call him Basil. In retrospect it seems appropriate.

We introduced him to our noise. He listened at the window and looked under the bed and behind it and thought perhaps it might be the wiring. I suggested that there might be some faulty machinery self-destructing behind the wall and he said he didn't think there was anything there at all.

While he was cudgelling his brain—gently we suspected—about the matter I casually mentioned that the bed-head light-bulb was missing. He grasped at the simple solution and said he would immediately get a replacement. I pointed out that the failure of the bed-head lamp wasn't really the problem and certainly wasn't a life-threatening matter—or words to that effect—but he trotted off straight away.

He came back after a while with the new bulb and we talked some more about the noise and he listened some more and went off once more. This time it wasn't clear where he was going or what he was going to do so we waited with a little less confidence than before.

Shortly—well not all that shortly actually—Debbie rang up to say that the problem was solved. We were at the end of the building—as if we hadn't found out already that our room was as far from our friends' as it could possibly be. More significantly, she said that Basil had been outside and found that the massive neon sign advertising the hotel was faulty and was producing the offending noise.

"Well, that's good news," said I, "I'm sure you won't mind turning it off for the night—then we can all get some sleep". It was a Clayton's solution. Oh no, she said; there was no switch for the sign. They would have to turn off half the hotel's power. Well, I thought to myself, I don't believe it but that's a small sacrifice for everyone else after midnight; let's just do it shall we?

Presently Basil came back again. "I've found the problem" he announced helpfully, "It's the neon sign on the end of the building and I've left instructions for it to be fixed in the morning." Sensing that we were less than delighted with his discovery and solution (he was not all that sensitive, actually but by this time it's probable that our eyes were beginning to flash a bit) he then looked about blankly so I suggested gently that there would surely be no difficulty about our having another room for the rest of the night would there? "Oh yes, of course," he said—he was always grateful for guests who pointed out the obvious—and off he bustled again.

Back he came with the key for the room next door. Could he help us shift our things? "Shift?" I said, looking round at almost the entire contents of Nancy's Chilliwack kitchen stashed in cartons all over the floor, "It's nearly 1am. We're not shifting, we're going to bed next door." And we did.

Everyone should have lived happily ever after really. We should have been allowed to finish our stay and Basil should have gone to his rest at 8am confident that everything was under control. Perhaps, in fact, he did. But it wasn't.

In the morning the light on the phone in our new room was winking "There is a message at the desk for you!" I leaped out of bed thinking Emergency! Emergency! What had happened to our expected grandchild in Manurewa? Had my employers finally gone into self-destruction? Had all the island ferries sunk so that we would be condemned to spend the rest of our lives in this amazing incredible place at 50% off the greediest room rates in Victoria?

"I have a new room number for you," said the morning girl on the desk.

"We don't need a new room," I said, gently but firmly, "We already have two rooms, thank you and we are just moving out of one now to go back to the first one."

But she had this message which said we had to change rooms. "Yes, I know," I explained, still gently but a little more firmly. "We did that last night and now we're going back to our regular room to put some breakfast together."

"But we have made another room available for you because your one is not usable," she insisted.

"Oh, but I'm sure it will be as soon as the neon sign is fixed this morning," I said, patiently. Well, fairly patiently, I guess.

"But I am afraid I have to move you as I have this message."

"Well, has the new room got a hospitality unit?" I asked. "There are four of us and we booked a room with a kitchen."

"You mean that two others slept in the room with the kitchen?"

"No, they are in 239."

"But you are in 203."

"Yes, but that's just two of us and was just since 1am and we are now moving back to 201."

"Well, do you want a room or don't you?"

"No, thanks, we don't want another room without a kitchen."

I terminated the conversation a bit abruptly as we weren't really making much progress, showered quickly and went next door to our original room which was still humming insistently. I planned to get dressed with all speed, take the keys to 203 back down to the desk and check it out and ensure that we could stay in 201 for our second night. Assuming, of course, that the sign was fixed during the day.

Just after that the maid appeared with instructions to "do" 201. She was surprised to find someone in occupancy and even more surprised to see the car-load of stuff that was spread all over the place. We were obviously not quite ready to leave yet, her eyes enquired.

"Well," I explained, "We weren't actually thinking of leaving this room," But she could do 203 if she liked.

"Oh, no," she said firmly, "203 isn't on my list."

"Well, look," said I, trying to be co-operative but realising there might be no end to the number of staff who would have to be dealt with before we were through, "We had to move into 203 during the night. We'll both be out of there in a tick and you can do that instead."

"What about 201?" she wondered.

"Forget it," I said and went inside and shut the door.

Now the phone rang again in 203 where Bev was getting the message that we had better return to our original room and was hurriedly getting her bra together. She had so far avoided any possible part in the entire pantomime but was not to get off so lightly.

"What are you doing in that room," said an Irish Canadian voice. Bev launched into what amounted to a very comprehensive summary of the foregoing paragraphs gaining confidence as she went.

"Well," interrupted the voice, "You have no business being in there and must get out at once but," lapsing into an imitation of a NZ accent that she'd heard a lot of for the past 37 years, "Would you bring the shampoo next door with you when you come? I left it behind." I was getting into the spirit of the local lunacy.

When I returned the two keys to 203 to the desk shortly afterwards that should have been the end of the whole affair. The hotel would surely get the sign fixed by evening and we would spend our second night in the proper room. But no, the desk had the bill made up for 201 and if we didn't want another room were obviously quite happy to get rid of us in one fell swoop. I established once more that we wished to stay one more night in 201 because it had the kitchen facilities. Everything seemed to be straightened out. We went off for the day.

Late in the afternoon we got back to 201 to find a formal hand-written note was on the bedside table: "Would you please return the keys to 203 at once as we are waiting to put someone into it. Hoping you are having a lovely stay, etc."

I dialled the operator yet again and spoke to Debbie once more: I explained that we had returned the keys before 9am and she said "Oh...." vaguely and that seemed to be that.

It was. Nothing more happened. The neon sign was fixed by evening. We saw no more of Basil or any of his people.

In fact all the excitement went out of our stay.

# Do you take...? — 1991

They'd phoned first, of course, to see if they could book our Paihia church for a wedding without having to meet me before the day. I said there were some things we'd need to talk over first. What things, they said, in tones of the utmost incredulity.

"Well, it's usual for the wedding to be conducted by the minister of the bride's family," I said, realising that this sounded a tad Victorian and struggling to put a brave face on it. As far as you can put a brave face on anything as delicate as this when you're on the phone.

"Oh, that's no problem," she said. "My Mum and Dad christened me a Methodist when I was a baby."

Oh, that's all right then, I thought, I'm going to marry a baby but at least it's a Methodist baby. Even if she doesn't happen to be on our responsibility lists and the name is quite unfamiliar to us.

She sensed there was a bit of a problem and volunteered hopefully, "Kevin doesn't go to church and I'm with him now."

"Er, yes...?"

"Well, we thought that we should start off from scratch when we moved in together. He was a sort of Catholic but he's grown up now and feels that he knows enough about it now. I think he's right. He's so thoughtful about these things."

Sheep-stealing was not going to be a metaphor I could use with this lady but I explained that I wanted to be satisfied that I was not moving into the pastoral territory of another minister or church.

"I guess it's a bit like doctors," I said, "Professionals have a special relationship with their clients and they aren't supposed to deal with people who are under the care of others. But if you'd like to make an appointment with me we can have a chat about all that and we'll see what can be done."

This would not be an easy interview but at least it would give me the chance to identify any matters of what used to be called professional ethics involved (these days the term appears to apply only to matters of sexual behaviour by professionals—an interesting shift from its original meaning). And, of course, the interview would give them a chance to size me up. They could decide I met their criteria of the one who would Tie the Knot for them.

So they have duly rolled up at the parsonage. There are a few preliminary courtesies designed to put each other at ease. Oh, yes, they are at it as hard as I am. Indeed they're really trying whereas I, well, I don't have to sell myself, do I? The probability was that they had discovered that the Registry Office fee was now up to $100 and they'd heard from a friend of a friend that the church would do the wedding for next to nothing. Just a small present for the minister or perhaps a modest cheque. After all, they'd been told, ministers are paid by the church to do this sort of thing and they're always glad to be asked. The church loves putting on weddings.

She gushes on, rather, I thought, like a toilet cistern with a jammed stopcock. Often a good thump on the top of the cistern will fix that problem, and I contemplated it for a few moments. I suppose it wouldn't be quite the right solution in this situation, much as I would cheerfully have applied it. To both of them, for good measure.

Anyway, she—she was still doing all the talking on their side of the coffee table—was now becoming very forthright. They had no contact nor interest in the church at all. She had twigged something of my concern that they might have pastoral links with another church and was now falling over herself to make it clear that they had nothing to do with any church and probably, indeed pretty certainly, never would.

So I asked the question. I didn't really want to hear the answer. I'd heard it a hundred times before and it never seemed to strike the persons concerned as having the slightest phoney ring to it. With varying degrees of ingenuity they would again and again with total absence of guile explain the inexplicable. So why bother to ask it, I thought. But it was a key to the issue, after all. Why, I ventured, did they want to be married in a church?

"Well, it gives it such a nice feeling, you know? Besides, Mum says that's the proper way to do it, not in some hall or rose garden."

"We want to do it right, you see, Reverend." Hello, he speaks, this fellow. He has not read the Government Printer's style book on the technically correct use of the term Reverend but he speaks. He may not have the incisive arguments of his affianced (I suppose they probably aren't in that category, I mean, who bothers, these days?) but at least he speaks.

Asking him to explain just what it is that he thinks is "right" is not fair. It will expose him for what he is. It will probably reveal that, actually, he doesn't want to be here at all. The Registry Office, even at a hundred bucks, would have been OK by him and he is beginning to think perhaps it's time they bit the bullet, got out of this religious hell-hole and pushed off in the direction of the pub to make plans for an assignation with officialdom sometime tomorrow.

But I ask the question. And, poor fellow, he hasn't any answer. He blusters on about being a territorial in the Army and going to Padre's Hours.

"Uh, huh?" Now, why does that sound familiar to me?

But the non-committal verbal nod to show I am paying rapt attention to his every precious thought fails to elicit anything else. He stumbles into silence. There is no answer to the question about why something is right. It just is—if you happen to believe it.

But he has reckoned without the tenacity of his partner. Well, actually what he has reckoned without is the determination of his mother-in-law-elect; but he doesn't know about her yet. Mother and daughter have worked on this, they have Laid Plans, and she soon sorts me out. There may be no explanation of exactly why they want to do what they want to do. But there is no doubt that they want to do it, and whether I want them to or not doesn't have much to do with the situation.

Which, I suppose, is where any marriage ought to begin—not with the church, which has more than enough to answer for as far as marriage is concerned, but with the principal parties involved. Only those two have to make the decisions. Only those two know what is best. Only those two will make it work or let it fall apart on the day. I am talking, of course, about the bride and her mother.

So, I am committed and we set out a schedule of three more meetings. We work through my list of discussion topics, ensuring that I get all the information I need and they get all the advice my years of experience at both weddings and marriage can bring to bear. It's a complex task for I take it very seriously and demand that they should do the same. They will also attend local marriage preparation classes; I don't bother to check up on them but I hear on the grapevine that they made it to three of the four sessions. Not a bad average, I guess, for people who are acknowledging real difficulty in understanding that marriage requires any amount of preparation at all.

They're decent enough kids and have given about as much thought to this exercise as most others and with some prodding from me are beginning to get into some serious issues. They've taken away the wedding kit and they're selecting words that they think will be "nice" and they're discussing whether they will write their own vows or use some from the kit and will they learn them by heart or be coached through in traditional style. The whole thing is at last beginning to look as if it will come together on the day.

Somewhere down my check-list the question of fees comes up. I've left it a bit later than usual to see if they raise it themselves. But they don't, so the list faithfully brings up the question and I make my usual speech. I don't accept fees (is there a glint of avariciousness lighting up their eyes?). There will be a fee of $35 for the use of the church plus $15 for cleaning (or $25 if confetti or rice is going to be thrown). And it would be considerate if they would like to make a reasonable gift to the organist (How much? Well, she will have to get dressed up and come out especially for an hour or more, how much would you do it for?). And there should be something for the flower lady who will do something a little more special than the usual Sunday morning routine ("Can we do our own flowers?" Sure, yes, and if they can be left for church on Sunday morning I'm sure Mary won't expect a gratuity).

On W-day minus 1 we are having our last get-together. I always ask for an hour on the last day. It used to be so that I could tell them some things that it would be dangerous to know before you were married. I developed quite a reputation for my pre-nuptial session in some quarters but all that mystical stuff has gone out the window these days. So my pretext for having time with them at this last possible moment is "so that we can go over the last minute details" of where they will stand and what they will do with their hands and so on. It's what some people call a "rehearsal" except that I don't believe in rehearsals. More marriages are wrecked in the wedding rehearsal than you would imagine.

On one of the few occasions on which I was involved in a rehearsal I was laying out the party which was to fit into a totally circular lawn in a garden: The couple and I had talked about where everyone would stand but had suggested that perhaps they'd better have a rehearsal so everyone could get the feel of it beforehand. So we got together in a large room and I proceeded to plot it out: "Bride and groom will be about here most of the time. The bride's parents will be in this area here and bridegroom's over there and—"

"I'm not going to stand there," screamed the bride's mother and promptly burst into tears. No, it wasn't just tears she burst into, it was great racking screeches and sobs that pierced our skulls. Aghast, all the rest of us looked at each other for a moment and then the bride burst into tears. After my initial concern I had little sympathy for her, actually, for I was beginning to see that I had been slightly set up. But off she went and the bridegroom did his best to console her while a couple of others gathered round her mother making soothing noises. "I won't," she was still trying to say, "I won't stand there like that in front of everybody."

This was no time to point out that if the whole party is in a circle there isn't any front. Besides, that's not really correct. In fact, when you think about it, the whole thing is front. Everybody is at the front—that's what we were attempting to do. Hadn't anybody thought to tell her this in the preceding few weeks?

Anyway, before I could engage her in rational discussion about the definition of the front of the inward-facing perimeter of a circle, (I could see exactly what the issues were and would have been pleased to help her get to grips with them but, on reflection I can see this might have had another effect than the one I desired), the bridegroom's mother, not the most taciturn of all women but certainly one who exhibited reasonably good control over her emotions most of the time, also burst into tears. Memory fails me as to the exact details, but I believe that in the next two minutes every woman present, participant or observer of this event, was in tears. And quite a few of the men weren't looking too sound, let me tell you. In a few short moments this simple run-through had been totally dissolved in a flood of emotion and rendered totally useless. So much for rehearsals.

But I digress. We are in the middle of this last, private, rehearsal that is not a rehearsal. We have got to the end of the fiddly bits and I ask if any announcements need to be made. Wedding breakfast, for instance, I wonder.

"Oh, yes," she says, "It's a long way and we're leaving people plenty of time to get there but we want them to be there ready to start at 7pm. We'll have drinks and snacks and things from about 5pm. But I don't think anyone will get there before then.

"Oh, and," she smiled, embarrassed, "I keep forgetting. Mum says will you say Grace."

Oh dear, I must have forgotten Question 13 on my check sheet. Or else I remembered to ask the question and they've forgotten their answer to it. "I didn't know you wanted me to be at the reception," I said. Then, pointedly: "Did I get an invitation."

"Well, no, I guess Mum just thought... "

Well, we've worked hard over several sessions and we're not going to throw the whole deal now. I may as well go along with it even if it messes up the rest of the day. So exactly where is this distant reception?

"Oh, it's the back road from the caves towards town."

I can't recall any road going back to any town from Waiomio Caves. Kawakawa? Whangarei? Russell? Where do you go after Waiomio Caves?

"No, silly," We're getting to know each other quite well now, aren't we? "It's Waitomo Caves, the road back through the hills to Te Kuiti, about 15 kilometres on the left, the family farm."

Tell you what, kids, I mused, why don't we forget all about the fee. I'll get the church to forego the $50 fee for this junket and you just pick up my expenses for 750 kilometres of car travel, eh?

# Napier Holiday — 1994

We had this great holiday at Napier.

We'd looked for a way of doing something with Christine and Ian and their two children and a house swap seemed to be made to order. Our home at Paihia was an attractive trade and we followed up an enquiry through mutual friends and the arrangements eventually came together.

We took the kids to Marine World and watched the dolphins do their thing and we tried out the beaches and visited about all the swings and slides we could find. Three year old Tim even had a tentative go at motorized four-wheel race with some other much older boys and actually acquitted himself very well. Ian took both of the children onto a really big ride which they were both quite sure they wanted to do above everything else in life. But Lauren decided quite quickly she just didn't like it and on one short round past the anxious mother and grandparents her face turned from happy to terrified. She finally came off at the end of the ride in a state of total collapse. But an ice cream or two, and some distance from the monster, and she was telling everyone she'd been on it.

A highlight was the tractor ride out to Cape Kidnappers and the gannets. The proprietor was in a spot of conflict with Occupational Safety and Health who were convinced that the trip was dangerous and passengers should be seated properly within a protective structure. He was vigorously soliciting our support for the ride just as it was. There had never been an accident, he said. No one had ever been hurt on his trailers, he reckoned. And if we would just sign this petition, please...? But one couldn't help noticing that our dangling legs hung over the side of the trailers only inches from rocky obstructions as we rolled past at a fair clip.

Not to worry; it was a good day and the gannets were marvelous. The trip fulfilled a promise that I'd made to Bev on our honeymoon, that one day we would have time to go there. Indeed, that commitment had been renewed on two previous occasions when we'd passed through Hawkes Bay with (almost) time to spare for the trip. This time we made it and it was a wonderful day for everyone.

One of the conditions of our house swap was that we would look after a hutch or two of pet rabbits. We were not to know what a menagerie of animals this interest would spawn back at Red Beach after a few years. It was a pleasant chore and the littlies loved the rabbits even if their parents were the ones who did most of the work. Come to think of it, that pattern re-asserted itself in years to come when rabbits and guinea pigs came to Red Beach in vast numbers.

While we were having this great time in Napier things weren't going quite as well for our exchangees up in our home. It seems that in the middle of the night when Dad was returning to the master bedroom after a short visit to the bathroom, he missed the bedroom door and attempted to open a door immediately next to it. However, there isn't a door there, there's only the open top of the stairs. He fell down all eleven of them to the half-landing below and did himself quite a bit of very annoying damage.

Back in his stairs-free home at Napier our holiday was coming to an end and we were packing to leave for home. When everything was aboard the two cars we said goodbye to the bunnies and closed up the house. And took the backdoor key with us. This was not through some oversight as you might expect of us if you knew much about our other trips. We have a habit of forgetting at least one quite important item every time we leave home and every time we pack up to return there. No, this time the key stayed with us as we set out for home.

There was a good reason for this. When we first confirmed the house exchange the next question was what to do about obtaining access at each unfamiliar home. We were talking on the phone about the complications of picking up keys from neighbours. What if they happen to be out just at the moment you've arrived after a longish journey? What if someone just forgets who has the key? And did we really want to trust our keys to NZ Post? And so on. In talking it became apparent that our Napier hosts were planning to spend Christmas in Auckland with relations on their way up to Northland to stay at our place. And we were going to be having Christmas at Red Beach with Christine's family. So what could be simpler than meeting briefly in Auckland to exchange back door keys and then proceed onwards to our respective swapped homes? Well, Auckland is a big place. And Christmas is a busy time on the roads. Still, when we got their address it transpired that we knew their in-laws and a personal visit would not be all that much of a strain.

So, on Christmas Eve, when everyone else was rushing to town to do last-minute shopping we found ourselves threading our way across the North Shore to initiate the ritual of Exchanging of the Keys. We found the right place, knocked on the door, and renewed acquaintance with Reg and met all the new family. Eventually the business in hand came to the surface of the agenda and we fronted up with our key. It was a simple affair of a common enough pattern. It had the homely number 13 unobtrusively stamped into it.

We handed it over and received theirs: it was exactly the same pattern, and with the same number. They were identical.

# **Medium Rare, Please —** **1993**

We went to the Ngawha Hot Springs the other night.

They're about forty minutes west of us so we don't relax in the sparkling healing waters very often. But now and then we make the trip across.

And the water doesn't sparkle; it's varying shades of dirt, depending on how recently the whole place was flooded out to a depth of a metre. This because the District Council re-aligned the road and created a massive drain which has nowhere to distribute floodwater except through the property. It happens quite often.

The facilities don't sparkle, either, they're pretty time-worn. On one side, the changing sheds at the old Domain pools burned down a few years ago and have been more or less removed. But the office hasn't been used since the Council got cold feet and closed the whole shebang down on health grounds—well, ill-health grounds, I suppose—and it has fallen on derelict times. They keep passing resolutions that the remains be removed but nothing much happens apart from a plastic warning ribbon around the whole thing. It's an eyesore and a danger to safety but there it stands in its beribboned isolation.

On the other side are the Tamariki Pools which have always been under the administration of a Maori Trust. They have been so thoroughly and consistently inundated that their various walls have collapsed. Some of the pools have had to be abandoned. But the Tamariki changing sheds and administration centre—which is a very charitable way to describe the ramshackle bunch of buildings are still actually standing. So you park and enter at the remains of the Tamariki pools, pay your $4—$2 if you have a Community Services Card—to the charming Maori who is on duty for the day. Then you walk across the rough concrete to the pools of the old Domain Camp next door.

Here you have a choice of about eight shallow pools framed out and bottomed in heavy timbers but otherwise pretty much au naturel. The temperatures all vary between ground temperature and anything up to 48o and so that you don't give yourself a nasty surprise each is clearly named. But now you realise that the board giving the latest temperature for each named pool is actually back at the office some distance away. So putting your toe into the water takes on a whole new meaning. It really matters to get the feel of the temperature before you commit yourself to wholesale exposure. A helpful guide is that the pools which are not already occupied are likely to be either far too cold for comfort or else may braise you to medium-rare in a very short space of time.

Finding a space in a pool which seems to have a bearable temperature, you enter it on the side where the remains of a handrail are still extant. The reason is that this is most likely the side where there will be steps. For it will be very obvious to you by now that the pools are so murky that everything a few millimetres beneath the surface is completely invisible. Most of the time the steps are there and you take them one at a time as you feel your way down to the bottom—quite often a the second step. Nobody much will get out of their depth at Ngawha. Feeling around under the water you find that there is a seat around most of the edges of each pool. There may well be one around every pool but I have not been able to verify that so don't take any chances. Here you now sit and let the healing warmth do its work.

Your companions will probably be mainly Maori. This is because the family that runs the concession for the Trust is quite large and considers that all its extended membership is entitled to free entry. They will be full of information about the improvements that the Trust is going to make next week or in the next few months (but never on a timescale as long as, say, three or four years). They will reveal how each pool is drained every night and the tired old timbers scrubbed. They will tell you confidentially that the local elders have their own session at 7am before the public are admitted. And they will share with you every detail of their lives and loves if you ask them.

Some of this conversation may take place beneath a coating of mud from one of the cold pools. These informal mudpacks are apparently very efficacious for all kinds of diseases of the complexion so the pre-teenagers who are beginning to become conscious of the odd acne problem pile the stuff onto themselves for most of the time they are in the pools. They flush it off with water from a comfortable hot pool, of course, probably the one you are meditating in. And go on their cheerful way, acne-free for another day.

Don't laugh. When you meet pakeha people in the pools they will sometimes be overseas tourists who assumed that the sign on the main road pointed to an up-market visitor facility and once inside are too shy to get the heck out again. Very occasionally they will be locals, like ourselves, who are comfortable with the down-to-earth attitude in the property and its users and just enjoy the hot muddy water.

Now and then you will find dedicated aficionados. There is, for instance, the arthritic couple from Taranaki. They come every year and stay in a local holiday flat and soak in the pools for an hour three times a day for fourteen days. They are convinced that the pain of their arthritis is kept at bay for another twelve months. And there are the two older ladies from Whangarei who come up for two or three days every month and sit in the same pool with little funny umbrella hats on their heads. They will stay in the same position for two or three hours at a time regaling all who will listen with their high opinion of the healing properties of Ngawha.

Our last visit was with Paihia friends who haven't been there for twenty years. In the changing room Bill discovered that evidently his swimwear hadn't been used for about the same amount of time. As he pulled up the string holding everything together at the top it broke off in his fingers. And when he gripped the garment itself to pull it together there was an ominous tearing sound. This did not bode well for an hour or two in the savage waters. However, he managed to get himself into a pool without over much loss of dignity and sat stone still for all of our time there. Indeed, the rest of us were ready to go long before he took his courage—and his costume—in both hands and carefully stood up and stepped out.

Bev was still in the water as I went up to collect my towel and clothes. She had been enjoying the somewhat one-sided conversation of the umbrellaed ladies from Whangarei and they had convinced her that the worst possible thing to do straight after soaking in the pools was to shower it all off. No doubt they had long since lost their sense of smell and lived alone so that Nobody Told Them. But the fact is that the evidence of your dip at Ngawha tends to hang around for at least three days on your person, your clothes and in your car. Most of us plan to have a shower fairly soon after getting home. But these old ladies were counselling Bev otherwise: "Keep that smell," they advised her. "Don't shower whatever you do." "Really?" said my spouse, tucking the information away for future use. Then she saw me moving towards the changing room.

So, from the other side of the complex, as I was getting my things together, Bev bellowed out to me, "Don't have a shower, Dave." She had forgotten that Ngawha hasn't had such a facility since the Council closed down the Domain baths several years ago. She was just trying to be helpful. But her broadcast comment was of enormous interest to everyone else on the entire property though somewhat lost on me.

However, faithful to her sense of propriety in these matters I didn't shower. For several days. Then she told me what to do again, this time more discreetly.

# Farewell at Conference — 1996

In 1995, a couple of the retiring clergy took the opportunity of their official farewells to berate the Methodist Church for various perceived shortcomings. I was aware that I might also be expected to use the opportunity to tell the church some of the things that I had been grumbling about for some years. We made a conscious decision to strike a different note in a time of conflict and division and uncertainty. These are my speech notes.

I have to offer heartfelt thanks for—

Those who looked beyond an apparently confident and sometimes cynical veneer and recognised a sensitive and anxious reality and gave me opportunities to think and grow—and relax.

Varied opportunities of ministering—in church and community, among Maori and Pacific Islanders as well as Pakeha, in a huge variety of settings and congregations.

Pastoral caring of countless officials that was present in almost every situation—and a lot of informal personal support when it wasn't.

Opportunity to first travel beyond NZ

Chance to share in shaping significant theology, policy and polity especially in areas of membership, communication and ordained ministry

Encouragement to explore around edges of traditional church, mission and ministry

(BEV) Now, we want to tell you about houses the church has blessed us with. We can read this in 3 mins and 53 seconds but if you choose to laugh you that'll be in your own time.

(DAVE) We think one parsonage was only built because the supply minister made all the concrete blocks by hand himself. Bev caused a stir among the fundamentalist neighbours when she painted the roof while wearing fairly scanty shorts.

(BEV) At that time Dave voted along with our Synod that another parsonage in the District should be demolished and replaced with a new one. But eight years later it was still there and we were sent to live in it. We went with less than a complete sense of obedience to the will of God and the Stationing Committee.

(DAVE) Actually my Dad was on Stationing Committee that year and is trying to atone by turning up here unexpectedly today... That house was a doosie. It was fully air-conditioned in summer—no two floor boards actually touched each other. And they'd made it up to the required number of bedrooms by dividing one in half.

(BEV) The new partition was erected with the studs sideways to save 2 inches; only the scrim and wallpaper stiffened the structure enough to keep it standing. Even so, neither new bedroom was wide enough for George Laurenson to lie full length.

(DAVE) Bruce Scammell admits to his shame that when burning off old paintwork they accidentally set the place alight and he didn't invite everyone to knock off for smoko for an hour or so.

(BEV) One house required extensive internal alterations that improved it enormously. I would have been really grateful if the project hadn't taken so long: we walked over builder's materials lying in our lounge for nearly ten months.

(DAVE) Another home had a foul smell that made the lounge unusable for several months—

(BEV)—but we never did find Paul's lizards when they escaped from their enclosure... In one home we provided no less than 285 person-nights of hospitality in a year—of course, you could get a substantial tax deduction for hospitality in the 1970s!

(DAVE) Three of our recent homes were equipped for visiting ministers, so they had linen, cutlery and crockery, pictures on the walls and even reading material and TV. It was like turning the clock back but not at all a bad experience. Most borrowed items were carefully labelled and we got used to using the names.

(BEV) It's amazing the pastoral relationships you can enter into when making toast in Hilda, grilling a chop in Mary -

(DAVE)—or sleeping with Jennifer and Ron...

(BEV) In one garden we had a pigeon loft and in the height of a gale that blew roofs off neighbouring homes 14 yr old Paul went out three times during the night and hammered more nails into the roof.

(DAVE) In the morning the roof had held but the entire aviary was a foot up in the air and the birds could have walked out underneath...

(BEV) One house had the luxury of a range hood but we had to remember to keep lids on the pans because the range hood was frequently occupied by rats whose hard pellets fell onto the stove from time to time.

(DAVE) How does a range hood filter work if rat droppings can fall through it?

(BEV) We realised we could discourage the rats by switching the fan on but we were afraid that if we did this when a rat was inside the hood the poor creature could get a really upset tummy...

(DAVE) The consequences didn't bear thinking about...

(BEV) One house had been bought by the local church before the district and national authorities found out about it, never mind approved the purchase!

(DAVE) It failed to meet the church's parsonage standards on about 17 counts but we found it so suitable for us that a few months ago we bought it.

(BEV) So come and see it sometime, won't you?

(DAVE) Dad told me this story he heard from my maternal grandfather. It may offer you some guidance as this week you debate the health of the Connexion:

(DAVE) Little Jimmy was happy: Jimmy and older sister were both given their own cow: they could have butter, milk and cheese...

But then Jimmy was sad: "She says the milk, butter and cheese come out of her half..."

Later Jimmy was happy again: "I shot my half and her half died."

Which just goes to prove: Ka mate kainga tahi; ka ora kainga rua.

Loosely translated: You're in deep trouble if you shoot the front half of the Connexion!

Kia ora tatou katoa!

(The speech was video-recorded and is available on DVD)

# How Times Have Changed — 1998

David, aged 10, 1946

Constructed a simple wooden frame with flyscreen and caught little fish with it in the rock pools.

David went down to York Bay rocks, a ten minute walk through back properties and across the main road where the buses roared past between Eastbourne and Wellington. He stayed there unsupervised most of the day, even going occasionally onto the seaward "fishing rock" where the water depth was a couple of metres. He even went down there after dark in the company of a gorgeous blonde of the same age, Jennifer Day, who had come from England because of the war.

While on holiday at York Bay, David slept outside in a tent on the margin of the bush. He organised midnight feasts there with his younger siblings, well, some of them; the youngest was too often deemed "too young".

When just a little older, he was responsible for taking the three younger children to the zoo for the day. This involved a long walk to the station to take a train to the city and transferring to the correct tram for another lengthy trip to the zoo. It is on record that his mother was "anxious" on these occasions but did not want to "discourage" the kids.

Tim, aged 10, 1998:

Has to have a "proper" rod for fishing for sprats off the wharf;

Would not think of walking a kilometre to play on the beach even if proper supervision and entertainment were available when he got there

Is required by law to be "supervised" personally at all times. Is not free to wander off and do his own thing whether his parents know about it or not and would certainly not be allowed to go off on his own at night

Cohen, aged 11, 2026:

Will require assistance to eat his meals having not experienced the use of a knife and fork

Will be able to lay a legal complaint against his parents for declining to do anything he requests or for asking him to do anything at all

Will probably spend most of his early years in his bedroom attached by umbilical cords to his computer and the internet.

# The Sydney Car Chase — 2001

It was the end of a pretty long day. We'd come up from Canberra to Sydney to see the evening TV telecast of the weather from half a dozen cars from the Variety Bash car rally.

Now we were heading home. Ronni and Bev would go back in the Bash car to her salon where Bev would need to drive the BMW home to Pennant Hills. Paul and I would go to his office where he would tie up some loose ends and he would drive home the demonstrator Ford SUV which had been loaned to the camera crew for the Bash. I would follow in his immaculate Holden wagon. Which, because of its pristine condition and some unproven uncertainty as to his father's competence in Sydney traffic but also the demonstrable inability of the old fella to reverse without hitting something, Paul had up to this time neglected to let me drive.

Mindful of a dramatic occasion earlier in the evening when Paul had been leading Ronni through the labyrinthine streets of inner Sydney and lost her at a traffic light I boldly suggested that if he lost me I would be able to find my way home OK and not to wait for me.

I guess I would have to admit that this was an offer born more of uninformed self-confidence than definitive knowledge but it seemed to be helpful. Nevertheless, I determined that once under way I would stick to his rear bumper like glue, no matter what. There would be no way I would let him get away from me even if he forgot that the responsibility for keeping together lies with the leader rather than the follower. So I backed out into the street and waited for him to come up behind me.

Now I hadn't actually seen the car he was been loaned—it was a Ford make that was pretty new on the market back home—but I knew it to be a very large grey thing.

This was not a busy street, so when the vehicle rolled by me I slipped in behind without hesitation. No problems at the first corner, nor through the traffic in the small chicane near Artarmon shops. As we came up to the pedestrian crossing the light went orange but Paul didn't hesitate. Just went straight through. Well, I was only a short car length behind him so I pressed on through, drawing incensed looks from pedestrians. They considered, reasonably enough, that the yellow light was for their benefit rather than mine.

We followed a route that I'd become more or less familiar with on previous trips from the office so nothing seemed unusual. But Paul was going pretty fast, considering I was following him in his precious and hitherto unscratched Holden. All at once it seemed he had developed a profound supreme confidence in my ability. Who was I to question that, I thought, and resolutely pushed the accelerator down a bit harder.

We turned onto the Princes Highway near Chatswood in country that was familiar enough and headed up the Highway. He cut in and out of two busy lanes with what seemed to be a lot of disregard for his hapless progenitor. But I was not going to be defeated. If this was a test I was going to pass it. If we weren't on the route I expected that wasn't my problem. He had obviously decided that there were some other matters than needed to be attended to on the way home and he would trust me to get in behind and stay there.

So like glue I stuck to his speedy tail lights. With determination I matched him, lane change for lane change, corner for corner.

Corner? Why we were turning off the Princes Highway? That didn't make sense. We were supposed to be going home which, on this route would be several kilometres out on the Highway to turn off at Lane Cove or Kissing Point Rd. Clearly, he had remembered another call he had to make on the way home. Mine was not to reason why; mine was, in the words of the military, but to do or die. Or something like that.

Thus it was that eventually, after many corners of tailgating him, far too close for safety (what are you doing, Paul? I thought. But it's your car, I suppose), I caught him at last. He slowed and turned into a driveway deep in a part of suburbia that was completely unfamiliar to me. It was wise of him to pull off the road as it was very narrow road by now and parking on the road, as I was now doing, caused a bit of a problem to the occasional vehicle that came through. But why didn't he pull forward and leave me room to drive in behind him? I moved a little further along the road and pulled over as far as I could.

By now I could see over my shoulder that he was out of the car and had gone into the house. Just as if he owned it, actually. No formalities like knocking on the door or ringing the bell. Just straight through the door with hardly a backward glance.

So I waited for him. And waited. And waited. At last he came out, went to the car, but instead of getting into it, he picked up an armful of stuff, locked the car and went back inside the house.

I backed up, trying to look inconspicuous, and noted that the vehicle was a Lexus. Surely that was not a Ford label? Wasn't Paul driving a new Ford Territory?

Only then did the penny drop. A half an hour ago I began to follow the wrong car.

It would have been a challenging task getting back to the highway had I not been able to get away with following one simple rule: when lost always drive uphill. That worked and in a few minutes I found the highway again and proceeded in a more or less knowledgeable manner back to Pennant Hills. Paul arrived about the same time, having stopped off for some takeaways. Yes, he said, he couldn't understand why I started before him and turned right in the first hundred metres instead of left...

# Under the Rakaia Bridge — 2003

We were allowing one night sleeping in the van on the way back up to the Picton Ferry. But we'd left Dunedin fairly late and it was not easy to find a suitable spot in the dark. We didn't want to pay for a Motor Camp site just for a quick overnight kip so off-road rest areas and old quarries were all checked out as well as we could as we drove past in the dark.

But it was midnight when we passed through Rakaia and we were ready to stop in just about anything. North of the bridge there is a rest area and I decided that if we got under the bridge itself we wouldn't be disturbed by lights from the seemingly endless traffic. We weren't. The lights didn't both us at all. But 100 heavy semi-trailers and four trains over the adjacent rail bridge did.

Nevertheless, the evening was not memorable for the noise of the passage of nocturnal humanity doing its thing. The fact is that I got the van bogged. Only one wheel, I want you to understand. But it was enough to strand us in the gravel and we couldn't get it out. This was a bit of a nuisance as it meant our bed wasn't quite level. But there was nothing else to do at that moment so we kipped down and shortly I was sleeping the sleep of the just. Apparently Bev lay awake all night wondering how we were going to get out. I had already decided we'd walk back over the footpath-less one mile long bridge to Rakaia with her AA membership card. I didn't realise that it would be raining steadily; anyone would have to be taking their lives in their hands to walk over that bridge in traffic at any time.

Morning came and we both sprang out of bed, keen to get into the day. No, I sprang out, keen to have a leak and Bev was already sprung, having not, as I said, slept a wink, as she said. I had a chicken sandwich and a drink of moderately hot water while Bev continued to do what she'd been doing all night.

Then, without any shouting, yelling, swearing or personal or verbal abuse we got the van out. No, come to think of it, I am simplifying what happened

First I got a large piece of branch and pushed down a high ridge of gravel in front of us so that if we did ever get the van moving ahead again there would be an escape route to a moderately good track kindly carved out by salmon fishing enthusiasts; indeed, this was the track that we should have been on had I not been Highway Happy at quarter past midnight and confidently sailed off it onto what looked like a level, sound gravel bank. It seemed ideal for a Temporary Bed Foundation but, as the above has made clear, wasn't. At least it wasn't in the particular area where the left rear wheel had finished up.

Then we tried some serious rocking. That's to say I rocked the drive forward and back while Bev gave some moral support with a bit of a heave. Often it worked out that she was pushing when I was rocking backwards and when she was falling backwards the van and I were rocking forwards so the technique wasn't an unqualified success. We changed around but I seemed to have the same problem. I was pushing when the van seemed to be going nowhere and just as we got it going in one direction or the other the engine seemed to die and fight against the motion. I judiciously moved to the front where I could keep an eye on the control movements and it became clear that Bev was not familiar with the procedure that should smoothly use the momentum of the vehicle and the rebound the from the edge of the hole to move forwards and backwards and gradually get up enough distance to drive out. Or dig the vehicle into a longer and deeper hole, of course.

The outlook was not good but it was not quite yet time to start walking in the rain. We located all the necessary but somewhat unfamiliar gear and worked out how to jack up the offending wheel. Using the same trusty branch, we pushed some stones and gravel under it. The hole was so deep it was quite a simple task. Then we lowered the jack and started up the engine and gave it a very gentle try. For a short time nothing serious happened. But as soon as I applied just a touch of extra accelerator the same wheel descended by the same route to the same depths in a matter of moments.

Bev volunteered to go off an look for a piece of strong timber about 300x300x5. At least I asked her to and she went off with a strange look in her eye and eventually came back with another branch about 1500x60 circular diameter with a noticeable bend at one end. It proved to be much better at pushing rocks and stones under the wheel the second time we jacked it up.

This effort also proved to be without much fruit. The wheel sank back down to where it was, throwing out one or two larger stones and bedding the small ones into a smooth cup-shaped hollow not unlike the shape of a wheel grave. Bev went off for more pieces of timber, probably to make a cross to mark the spot.

I said that we didn't exchange a cross word during this whole episode and that is true. But when Bev suggested we put under the wheel a piece of shelving that we happened to have in the van, being the offcut from Shirl's bed job, I have to say I came close. (a) I didn't have great confidence that it wouldn't just shatter into a thousand pieces. (b) Women don't know anything much about getting bogged vehicles out of river gravel. (c) I am desperate for shelving for my new workshop and didn't want it damaged.

Actually, as I write I am desperate just to get into the workshop because the automatic garage door opener has gone sick and I can't get the door open and I can't hook up the manual control because you have to do that from inside the garage. It has already happened to our house-sitter who had to get assistance provided by the smallest member of the parish, George Barke, who managed to force the door up enough to get a brick under and insinuate his modest frame underneath. We understand that all went reasonably well with most of him until he reached the position where the door was dragging on his trouser belt and fly and he began to fear for his dignities.

But I digress. Bev persuaded me that we would try the shelf out although already in my mind there were two alternating visions: one of a cunningly stained shelf established in the workshop with all my most prized tools on it—such as I hadn't left behind in Dunedin, anyway—and another of an irate Department of Conservation officer slapping a fine on us for littering the area with a thousand shreds of chipboard to no purpose whatsoever

I jacked the wheel a third time, unloaded about half the stuff in the van and carefully laid my precious board on the ground under the wheel, lowered the jack so that the wheel provided about a metre and a half of level running and away we went. I popped back into the driving seat and Bev disappeared around the back to give that bit of moral support. Joy! Joy! This time there was no skidding sounds from the back. The wheel was driving firmly and all that was needed was a bit of accelerator to move us smartly out of our gravel prison, down the newly made slope and onto the proper track. I fed the engine a little more petrol and it fed the wheel a little more gripping traction and—the board flew backwards and into Bev's ankle

Again, please note, not a dissatisfied word. Well, perhaps that's putting too fine a point on it. But there was no shouting or yelling that could be heard above the noise of the 28-wheeler trucks passing overhead

We now had the answer. A fourth jacking up, a second placement of the board and we were ready to go again. I called Bev back from the picnic area 100 metres away (why had she gone there I thought to myself) and instructed her to stand on the end of the board this time. My theory was not so much that I had confidence that her weight would be sufficient to hold it steady but that at the very least it couldn't hit her if she was standing on it.

This time we drove out without trouble and the van bounced onto the track and without stopping I drove off in search of a safe place to turn. Some time later Bev spied the van cautiously reversing back up the track. I had found absolutely no place where there was room to turn and decided that it was probably safer to turn at the junction we missed rather than keep distancing myself from my beloved who had already spent enough time under the bridge.

I duly arrived back at the scene—still in reverse, you will recall—and swung around at the junction. And got bogged again.

This time a couple of gentle rockings—without any assistance, moral or otherwise, from the valiant co-driver who, it must be said, was controlling with commendable determination any tendency to yell, shout or call down curses on the head of her stupid mate—and I got going again. Then I reversed in what was afterwards described by the only witness as a wild, bounding crashing turning up onto the edge of the track, spun round in a skidding circle to finally face the right direction and found that I was immediately in front of the very substantial mound down which we had sailed without difficulty last night but which now looked like the spur of Hauhangatahi (that is a mountain near National Park; it has a remarkable mound which would absolutely unclimbable by a Toyota Town Ace even if it did have four wheel drive which, of course, ours doesn't).

There was no time for meditation on mountain climbing experiences out of my dissolute past. I put her to the jump and she sailed up like a trooper and I kept on going until we reached the car park to which Bev had earlier retreated earlier. She was content to follow on foot this time, not insisting that I return in the van to pick her up and we proceeded to finish the chicken sandwiches as we drove north. At Hornby we intended to do a little shopping but as it was 7.10am when we arrived we had plenty of time to wash ourselves up and indulge in a second breakfast courtesy of Mr and Mrs McDonald.

When we got home to Paihia three days later, we'd travelled just over 6000 kms. It had been a great trip and you might have said we didn't have a single incident along the way. But that would be if you overlooked the little matter of the night's stop under the Rakaia River Bridge.

# Balinese Guest House — 2003

We spent a few days at the guest house of Paul and Ronni in Northern Queensland. We didn't know what to expect and felt it would have been helpful if there'd been a guide to appreciating the delights of the place.

So we wrote it ourselves.

Boonooloo could be the beginning of the rest of your life. Sitting right on the sun-drenched sands at the edge of the sky-filled Coral Sea and under the protective umbrella of countless coconut palms, Boonooloo is your home away from home. It has every convenience you could want.

Boonooloo is your secret hideaway where the worries of the workaday world are shucked off like dead fronds flying gracefully off a coconut palm. It is the place where your dried-out husk of a life is grabbed and shaken gently and then drenched in the sweet fresh showers drifting in from the sea. Boonooloo is to the city guest as springs are to the desert traveller—old car springs, rusty bed springs, broken clock springs—but you'll come bouncing back for more.

Come in, make yourself at home.

As you unlock the door and step inside this new and invigorating world, you need to let go of the door handle. It may crush your fingers if you close the door behind you while you're still holding it. Put your bags down and stop for a few moments drinking in the fantastic view from the main room as you nurse your bruised knuckles. Proceed to the fabulously well-equipped kitchen facing the ocean, take a spotless glass from the top drawer and fill it from the special freshwater drinking fountain at the double sink. Tear your eyes from the Coral Sea and note that your glass will probably have a dozen large ants in it. Their habit of making a home in the drinking faucet is one of the more curious features of these shiny black creatures. If you can get one to stop swimming long enough to inspect it you will find that they have a sleek beauty that is rare. Not rare, enough, you may feel at first. But, don't worry, in time they will grow on you—on your legs, in your ears, your hair, your eyes, even in your pants—this latter is thought to be because of some remnant ancestral memory of life in the drinking faucet.

If you have figured by now that there might be a better way to refresh yourself you are perfectly correct: a whole horizon of calm sea is lapping at your doorstep a few paces over the white sands. Though it is possible that as far as the eye can see the sea is a dirty brown from the crocodile-invested river a few metres along the beach. It could also be possible that a Force Five gale is whipping up whitecaps to the horizon and causing moderately impressive breakers to crash on the beach every three and a half seconds. But it is true that the noise of the surf pounding the beach, with the screeching of the wind in the coconut palms twenty metres overhead and the creaking and groaning of the house itself can dispel every possible last reminiscence of the clamour of the city.

There is nothing so calculated to wring out of you every last vestige of the pressures of civilisation as elemental fears. At any moment a rogue wave may reach up and snatch you from the security of the structural wonder that is Boonooloo. In such conditions a flying coconut may come down like a cannon ball, inspiring you in all kinds of ways. Or scattered glass from shattered windows pepper every part of the interior of the building.

You retire early on your first night, exhausted from the interminable journey that you have had to make to get here. Perhaps you may be also a little anxious about the prospects of surviving to make the return journey in a few days. Meanwhile you can anticipate nights of sound sleep and days filled with lying out in the warm sunshine, swimming lazily in the sea and making pleasant visits to sights and places hitherto unknown. Modesty does not stop us from claiming that this actually is the scenario—quite a lot of the time for a good number of our guests.

In the morning you will want to take a thorough look around the premises which are to be your home away from home over the next few days. Nothing has been left undone to make you feel as if you belong. In the main lounge are some wonderful pieces of authentic Balinese carving.

Some are there for practical purposes. There is a small mirror that has to be held up by no fewer than eight carved snakes—a commentary on vanity if ever there were one. Against one wall two male figures stand on one leg and rest their respective chins on their hands with their elbows on the floor. The agonised faces they are both making is not due so much to the fact that this position in itself must have caused them excruciating discomfort while the carver was at work as because one leg is actually raised to the vertical position to support an electric light which sprouts out of the heel. Tradition has it that they were Boonooloo guests who felt moved to offer some well-intentioned suggestions for small improvements to the lighting.

Other pieces are less practical and perhaps purely decorative. There is a tasteful small wall carving that shows a topless cook working through her available larder. That she is simultaneously juggling a huge bird, a goanna, a crocodile and a fish does not necessarily limit the range of culinary offerings at Boonooloo, nor the personal style in which they are offered. In the same room, however, there is a pair of conjoint figures obviously designed to offer more a significant message. They are clearly intended to be a couple (though anatomically correct only in the case of the female) and one wonders if they might have been more appropriately installed in the privacy of the master bedroom.

In that room, however, there is a remarkable one-piece carving of a boy and a girl harassing their mother. They are both dressed in clothes which ensure their sex is not mistaken. However, their mother is stark naked but divested of all anatomical correctness, almost a sexless, stick figure. One might have thought that such a work should have been restricted to the single room. This piece could have ensured that any lonely male guest might have been reminded of poor old mum and the kids back home. It would have subdued any thought that it would make more efficient use of the very large bed to offer casual hospitality to a local girl for the night.

The furniture is also of distinctive character. Ample cushions are piled in every direction, giving the impression of luxurious comfort. The seats are, however, set wonderfully low for lounging. They tempt you to throw yourself into them with abandon. This is not the local culture, it seems, as they are firm to the point of being hard as rocks. You will find it advisable to climb up onto them from a reclining position on the floor or else pile up quite a few of the cushions on the seat before sitting.

Once ensconced on one of the lounge seats in the charming conversation area you will realise that a modern TV is immediately to hand. Well, not quite to hand, actually, so you will have to struggle to your feet again to look for the remote control which has not been left where it should have. There is no TV Guide available which is not inconvenient because, in keeping with the Balinese theme, the TV channels have been tuned Indonesian standards. They don't correspond with local TV Guides. A bit of trial and error, however, will demonstrate that you can find a considerable number of programmes available on this foreign network.

If you are fortunate, on about your third or fourth day the weather may improve enough for you to go outside. You may sunbathe on one of the many facilities available. Watch out for the very cultural chaise-lounge on the seaward side of the deck, though. It has one leg which is defunct as a result of a falling coconut. The latter do not just fall, they are ejected under pressure and come to earth with the impact of small meteors. To stand in the vicinity while one of them comes down is literally an earth-shaking experience that does not leave you unmoved. Indeed, thirty seconds later you may still be moving down the beach. Also, coconuts, unlike lightning, have a habit of striking not just once or twice but several times in the same place because of the simple fact that, also unlike lightning, they all come from the same place. So you may prefer to stay away from the chaise-longue on the deck.

Perhaps you will decide to try the hammock which is informally slung between a couple of trees just below the deck. If you are prepared to get into it informally all will be well but if you expect to mount it while retaining any semblance of dignity you may need a couple of helpers. Once there, you sink into it with delight and will feel as if you will never want to move again. Indeed, you may not be able to.

Obviously, the restless plashing of the wavelets on the coral shore is one of the attractions of Boonooloo. The pervasive warmth of the sun, the enervating atmosphere and the inevitable exhaustion from all your trips, outings, picnics and other activities will lead you gently but firmly to the water. A quick change into your swimmers and half a dozen running steps and you're into the warmest ocean on mainland Australia.

Do this only in winter. When the summer brings really warm water temperatures it also brings the stingers who can wrap jellylike tentacles of up to a couple of metres around you and sting you in all parts of your person from all parts of theirs. Always painful and occasionally fatal, stingers are stinkers when it comes to swimming. The summer rule is to swim only inside stinger nets. There are none on Boonooloo's beach. But, if you do happen to be attacked at Boonooloo there is vinegar to hand in the kitchen cupboard. The handwritten instructions on the bottle are less than clear about how much of it the victim should be made to drink. But the chances of getting stung are minimal if you don't go into the water and in the unhappy event of getting a sting local legend has it that your chances of being cured are no worse if you pour the fluid over yourself instead of drinking it.

Space forbids detailed exposition of the wonderful creatures of the night, most of whom seem to wish to spend the night in your bedroom with you; the ingenious security system which is based on the premise that if nothing locks properly then no damage will be done by intruders; the colourful bird life of which its noise is even more impressive than its colour; and the dishwasher, clothes washer and other appliances which are unusable unless you have brought half a dozen kilos of assorted powders and soaps with you—not to forget an appropriate manual for each.

For such is Boonooloo—a place to get away from it all. Even if you really needed to have brought most of it with you.

# Kegel Exercises — 2002

Among the vast bulk of pre-prostatectomy advice one can get on the internet there are a number of pages devoted to Kegel exercises.

These are used by women who have given birth and men who have had a prostate operation. In both cases, the exercises are designed to bring about speedy return of your control of bladder and other interesting functions. You are urged to do these exercises in season and out day and night. If you believe everything you see while surfing the net there are about ten different right ways of doing them. Some of the advice includes the following.

Do them unobtrusively:

Well, yes if it's unobtrusive to have your face turn puce colour at regular intervals. Yes, if it's unobtrusive to be unable to respond to a simple question about your health because your lungs are just about to burst. Yes, if it's unobtrusive to convulsively drive into the car in front of you while doing Kegels at the traffic lights. Yes, if it's unobtrusive to stare fixedly into the distance while one eyebrow gradually lifts until it twitches at its zenith.

Do them going up in a lift with the doors opening and closing on each floor:

Well, let me tell you, for ten years I was responsible for an eleven storey building. Any time the lift doors opened on each floor while going either up or down people phoned me to tell me that the lifts weren't coping. And when the lifts actually jammed between floors, which they managed to do not infrequently, I was the one who had climb nine storeys to the lift tower, switch off all the gear. I then hand-wound the stalled lift up to near the next floor then go down to that floor (if I remembered which one it was) and jemmy open the outside doors. Then all I had to do was climb onto the dusty greasy equipment on the top of the lift and open the escape hatch. After that it was a simple action to drop into the lift and then manhandle all the passengers up and out over the mechanism and to freedom.

My worst nightmares in those days was finding myself clinging to the well-greased cables in a dirty lift-shaft while the lift with ten people relying on me above to save them from a claustrophobic fate begins to slip, ever so slowly, downwards. My weight was just enough to defeat the brakes. There are a hundred floors below us and as sleep locks me into the nightmare, the lift gains speed. It wears out its brake pads and we are all screaming. By the time we hit the bottom the lift, its machinery and all of us are reduced to a small pile of bleeding metal about a foot high.

If meditating on lifts to do Kegels is essential to my regaining some vestige of control over a basic bodily function I think I'll go with the catheter, thanks very much.

Put a hand on the abdominal and thigh muscles to make sure they don't move. And check the anal area to see that it is contracting properly.

Ye gods: put one hand on your abdomen, another on your thigh, also touch the anal area to make sure its muscles move while the others don't, use your fingers on both hands to count the ten Kegels (otherwise you'll lose count due to stress), run a stopwatch to make sure you get the right number of seconds for each contraction and the right amount of time between contractions. And perhaps hang onto the bed covers as they will probably slip to the floor. If you can manage it, continue to breathe.

Practice Kegel exercises before you go into hospital.

Oh. Yes, I'm sure that's a good idea. In the first place, after the operation I can't imagine how anyone would be physically able to do anything like this anyway. Every piece of the body involved in these exercises is going to be cut up and re-arranged, leaving me in excruciating pain, so wrenching it all around with Kegel exercises will definitely be very low on the agenda. I imagine that the Kegels I do before I go in are going to be all the Kegels I will ever do.

And, secondly, the results at this stage are far more rewarding. Starting from almost involuntary twitches a couple of weeks ago I have got my daily rate up to about 100 reasonably good contractions. Very few of ten seconds, I concede, but some of them are, occasionally, as much as six to seven seconds. My thigh muscles lie across Bev's while she sleeps and they barely disturb her. Most nights. My abdominal muscles, such as they are, lie flat and relaxed like dead flounder on the seabed. And my anal area, well, I have a funny feeling about probing around there. Talking about it is pretty personal, but I can say that I have the impression that it gives the odd convulsion in the approved fashion.

I wasn't quite sure about my Kegels until I climbed a tree. I was several metres above the top of the ladder up a conifer that was no doubt planted as a neat little garden specimen but in twenty years had grown into a 12 metre tree with a millable trunk only half a metre from the main structural foundation of our home. It had to go. And it couldn't wait for a year until I was fit again after prostate surgery. So I climbed the thing far as I could, secured myself to it, set up a hauling rope for Bev to nudge the first piece over as soon as I had cut it through. I organised another strong rope to stop the cut-off piece from crashing to the ground and smashing up plants, pots, pavers, railings, decks and other things with which the territory below was littered. And I swung the chainsaw and its extension lead up on yet another rope and settled myself safely in a secure position. That is to say, I tied one rope around my waist instead of my neck where it had got shifted in all these manoeuvrings. Then I carefully got into a good position to manipulate the chainsaw.

After a few false starts because the LCD isolator had triggered itself off or the extension cord had come undone halfway across the yard or the chainsaw brake was still on, I started up and cut carefully into the trunk.

The cutting went smoothly. I scarfed the trunk on the side facing where Bev was standing by with the rope. It seemed a long way away and I tried not to think about her too much. But she was at least clear of the action and all she had to do was give it the gentlest of nudges when I was ready. After the scarf was cut I dropped the chainsaw on its rope out of the way and shifted everything around to make the back cut. Once started, this also went pretty smoothly. In fact very smoothly—and quickly. Just at the moment I was remembering that I hadn't explained to Bev that she wasn't to put any weight on the rope until I had made the cuts. I needed to get the chainsaw and myself out of the way of the treetop before it went smoothly down. Suddenly it was ready to go.

Bev was hauling her generous best on the rope and the trunk immediately started to tilt clear of the still-chewing chainsaw. I got the saw stopped, tried to back off a bit but couldn't because I was pretty thoroughly roped right into the scene of the action and away the whole top of the tree went in a graceful but determined arc right in front of my face. The top sailed out into space and then the whole thing was brought up with a tremendous crash by the securing rope. Its heavy end slammed back into the tree half a metre from where I was clinging to the trunk. The whole of the stumped-off trunk, with me hanging desperately onto it, jerked and thrashed around, the chainsaw went I am not quite sure where, a piece of flying branch ripped my trousers and dug what appeared to be a truly grievous wound in my thigh.

Then everything went silent except for a hideous, booming sound. It was the blood rushing in my ears. And someone was beating my chest with a mallet. No, it was my heart pounding. I trembled and reflected on the stupidity of getting cancer. If I wanted to kill myself all I had to do was try to cut the top off a tree. But gradually I realised something else. In the seat of my trousers I suddenly knew I could do a decent Kegels contraction.

So, I can say without a shadow of prevarication that not only can I do the Kegels exercises but they are working. I have not been incontinent nor even had a tiny dribble since I commenced. They are obviously totally effective and very well worth all the sleep I have lost. Of course, I haven't gone into hospital for the operation yet...

Get plenty of exercise

An American friend tells me that he has an acquaintance who opted to have the radioactive seeds planted in his prostate. It's a very expensive operation in this country and is not covered by the public health system so we didn't give it much thought on those grounds alone. However, this friend of a friend was quite delighted with the treatment and swore that he was jogging within a couple of days of the implantation.

If I'd had those implants, I wouldn't have been jogging. I'd be running, sprinting, even. Anything to get away from my radioactive vital parts. And I'd have done a Kegels contraction with every step.

# On a Scale of One to Ten... — 2002

Yeah, well, hullo there to all the staff in and around Ward 3. This is a great big Thank You for all your help and care last week and to say how much I am looking forward to booking in again with you early in July.

And meanwhile this will just let you know that I got home safely around 1pm Sunday and proceeded immediately to study my "Information on Leaving Hospital". I have to admit that I got into a little difficulty here and there and wonder if you need to think again about how some of these things are expressed.

For instance, everyone who saw me over the weekend emphasised that I should stick to light duties. Well, we are very conscious of this conservation issues. As soon as we got home I went around the house straight away and turned off every light we didn't need. There weren't any, actually, because we'd been away for the week but perhaps you didn't think about that.

Then I decided to update our friends with what had happened so I checked against the list to be sure I got everything exactly right. I was clear enough about Appendectomy—I've now got no appendix. But Laparotomy was not so straightforward because when I mentioned modestly to one or two folks that I'd also had my laparot taken out I got some rather strange looks.

People were also a bit funny about how I'd been put back together, too, because I showed them that the "information" form said "adhesives" had been used to do the job. I had to admit that it was a bit odd having all those metal staples evidently doing the same thing. But my form had Jackie Boucher's signature as a Registered Nurse and who was I to question her opinion on the matter.

Now, as to the "balanced diet". I guess you are already beginning to imagine the difficulties I am having with this requirement. Bev is unclear about how to balance the food. She can weigh items but we do not have a balance scale at all. I wonder if you meant that I should be balanced in some fashion while partaking of the diet but it would seem to be out of the question to eat my lunch while teetering on the back of a chair.

I am afraid we must insist that we come to some more satisfactory arrangement after the prostate operation in July.

Apart from these little details, all is well, and I just can't wait to get back to you all again in a few weeks.

Warmest regards to you all

Dave Mullan

# Alarming experience — 2004

We were fast asleep on the first night at Paul's place in Sydney. It had been a long evening of catching up after spending all day flying from Kerikeri to Auckland to Sydney. And we were also coping with a two hour time change which made our day even longer.

So the plan was that we would sleep in for half the morning to catch up. But nothing necessarily goes as planned. At about 6am we were awakened by a strange noise. There were four beeps and then some indistinct speech. It all sounded like this:

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP TRUMPET BLOWERS WILL NOT FAIL YOU.... BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP TRUMPET BLOWERS WILL NOT FAIL YOU.... BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP TRUMPET BLOWERS WILL NOT FAIL YOU....

This strange noise was repeated over and over again for a full minute or more. It was decidedly queer. But it seemed to be a very long way away and we thought nothing much of it. After all, it was a very tiny noise and not calculated to wake the sleeping, never mind the dead. Possibly some kind of alarm in another family bedroom had gone off. With a bit of concentration we got back to sleep and didn't give the matter much more thought.

Until it happened again next morning.

And the morning after that.

Tactfully, we raised the matter with our hosts. Did someone get up exceptionally early for some purpose of which we were unaware? Had we missed some important event?

No, nobody had an early alarm set. No one could think what was happening. Certainly, no one else in the home was experiencing the visitations that came so regularly to us. They didn't say it but you gathered the impression that they felt that perhaps that the oldies were losing their marbles and imagining the whole thing.

We didn't want to make a fuss about it but next morning, right on cue, the same phenomenon occurred. It was a different message this time as indecipherable as before.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP EVERY PERSON WILL BE SICK.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP EVERY PERSON WILL BE SICK.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP EVERY PERSON WILL BE SICK.

We checked all our electronic bits and pieces. We had two mobile phones, a digital camera, a PDE handheld and keyboard. None of them seemed to be likely to deliver a mysterious and idiosyncratic message on a timed basis. It was all a bit unsettling.

After three or four days of this, we were both waking at about 6am waiting for it to happen. That such a tiny, insignificant emission should have such a powerful influence. Away it went again:

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP SEX FOR TWO PEOPLE.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP SEX FOR TWO PEOPLE.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP SEX FOR TWO PEOPLE.

In spite of some incapacitation due to my prostate surgery, we took the hint but nothing worked satisfactorily. The annoying sounds stopped and, presently, we got back to sleep.

It was some time later that we ran into the former owner of the bedroom in another part of the country. Yes, he reflected, he had left some stuff there some months ago. Perhaps, he thought, there might have been a Pokemon toy in a box.

# Text Mess-aging — 2003

Fairly early in our experience of texting, Bev was down in Auckland while I was looking after myself in Paihia. It was our anniversary, but I'd forgotten that.

Bev and I are passing the special Sunday morning with text messages but they have got slightly out of step.

Last night, late, I sent—

HUNGRY; WHERE DID YOU HIDE THE CHOCOLATE COATED ALMONDS?

This morning the apparent reply came—

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY; HAVE A GREAT DAY.

So I dutifully sent back—

SAME TO YOU.

And then added—

CAT IS OUTSIDE AND WANTS TO COME IN

Now, you need to know that the cat is actually our neighbour's but Colleen goes away for six months each year and has just come back. Gigi isn't quite sure where she belongs so we are supposed to give her the Tough Love treatment. She is not allowed in the house.

The message I got in return was—

TRY BACK OF THE PANTRY SHELF.

Having forgotten entirely about the Chocolate Coated almonds I'd asked about last night, I sent—

SHE DOESN'T WANT TO GO INTO THE PANTRY.

Then from Bev—

LET HER IN, YOU MEANY.

However, by this time—we are both pretty slow at texting—Gigi has stalked off in high dudgeon so I told Bev—

YOU'RE TOO SLOW SO SHE'S GONE OFF.

Perhaps what I could have said, in the context of our Anniversary email, was—

YOU'RE TOO SLOW SO I'VE GONE OFF.

But I didn't and so matrimonial harmony, not to say effective communication, was restored.

# Do not write down your password — 2012

Recently we were required to sign a form that assured our bank that we would not write down our passwords. This has gone a little beyond a word of cautionary advice and reads like a warning that the signed document could be used in Court against us. So we have drafted a letter to ask for some sympathetic review of the situation:

Dear Bank,

In respect of your requirement that our passwords not be written down or stored in a computer, we need some guidance as to how you suggest we remember these. We have checked our memories carefully and find that, between us, we find have about 130 passwords and other verification which are presumably also not to be written down nor stored as above.

If you check our application form for our birth dates you will appreciate that memorising four or six more items of information is now a rather difficult chore (we have to check our birth certificates to get our ages right but we're pretty old). So we have decided enough is enough and, despite our signatures on the application, we are not confident that our assurance on this issue can be quite absolute. So we are looking for ways of dealing with this situation.

One possibility is that instead of writing down the necessary information, specifically forbidden by you, we write it up, as is usually done of notes after a meeting. These are seldom written down but often written up. This seems to us to be the simplest solution to our dilemma.

However, given that we are quite tech-savvy for a couple of oldies, we have looked for more sophisticated ways of dealing with the problem. So, instead of storing the information in a computer, we presume it would be acceptable to store it in a camera, reel-to-reel tape recorder or audiocassette machine. We can also use a personal digital assistant, electronic address book or recording pen. Looking ahead a little, we might use a wristwatch with recording capability or videoglasses which could portray a visual list of up to 250 items page-turned at the flick of an eyebrow.

Just so that you know we are taking your conditions seriously, perhaps you would give us some guidance as to your realistic expectations.

Thank you for your assistance

# The Saga of Wasp — 1953

I never was told why she was called Wasp. It was probably the magnificent headlamps that dominated the otherwise diminutive front end. Like some bug whose eyes are out of all proportion to its body she sported great round black appendages that belonged on a top-of-the-line Ford. On a V8 they had doubtless looked pretty good. On Wasp I think you have to concede they looked less distinguished than grotesque. But then that was Wasp.

She was my first car, if you could call her that. I had been getting around the back country roads on an ordinary sports bike with a 48cc Mosquito engine. It was fun, but less than comfortable in ordinary weather and certainly not too suitable for the frequent rain and the occasional snow around the central plateau of the North Island.

A car seemed to be the obvious solution and, although my fortnightly wages weren't too generous, frugal living had made possible a saving of some £50 over a few months. What could one buy for that sort of money, one wondered to an acquaintance.

"Well, funny you should mention that. We have got this hotted-up Austin Seven which we'd let go for £65. Yes, she needs a bit of work on the body but really runs like a clock. We checked her at 85 mph after working on the engine recently. We hoped to be able to keep her as a fun car but we've had some expenses with the business lately so really have to let her go. It's a shame but she'll be a real snip for somebody".

Well, I mean, how could anyone turn down an offer like that. Especially when they dropped the price to £55 and then to £50 because they understood the urgency of my need. And the limitations of my budget. But, they emphasised, I would have to treat her kindly. She was called Wasp, by the way. Very appropriate name for her, they said. It might have been the song of the engine at the high speeds she regularly achieved. Or, yes, perhaps it was the headlamps, they thought.

So the Post Office in the corner of the Ketetahi general store parted up with some very crisp new notes and I delivered these to the reluctant vendors and Wasp came into my care. She was, basically, a 1928 Austin Seven. The beautiful wire wheels were there in abundance as was that remarkable little side valve engine with the idiosyncratic three-speed back-to-front gearbox. But beyond these basics she definitely had a home-grown appearance about her. I hadn't been too impressed when I first saw her but, like they said, she kind of grew on one after a while.

Her bodywork consisted of flat sheets of galvanised iron rather crudely bent over a simple framework welded up in 19mm water-pipe. The doors were sturdily fabricated in three-ply panels that might or might not have been weather-resistant. This was nailed to frames made out of small wooden battens that could have once been architraves in a NZ Railways cottage. The whole design was not pretty but it was functional to a degree. That is to say it offered more shelter than the slightly motorised push-bike I'd been riding for the last couple of years.

The vendors had said that Wasp had Potential. They were right about that. I drew up a neat design for a wooden framed estate wagon body that would look quite smart. It would be larger, more proportionate, and it certainly wouldn't be a kind of awkward wedge shape with a short tail all up in the air around the rear wheels. It would be thirty years before that sort of aerodynamic design would become fashionable. Meanwhile, I had great plans for that car.

But first the really good part of her needed a bit of a try out. A few short trips around the National Park area showed what she could do and gave me confidence in handling her. They also created a lot of interest for the otherwise blasé residents of the sleepy timber and railway community and gave me another kind of confidence. Appearing with Wasp in public was rather like turning up at your local watering hole after a very disfiguring injury—it took a little determination but after you got used to yourself others got used to you. And, of course, I showed everyone the sketch plans for the bodywork that would be soon appearing.

But a trip a bit further afield was called for. Bev was hoping that I would surprise her and come down to Lower Hutt for a special weekend when a big social event was planned for the local church youth. Coming down unannounced, in my own car, would be a real surprise to everyone, I thought.

I was right. It was. I went home to my family first. They were all really pleased to see me. There were bright smiles in all directions. I felt really quite overcome with all the goodwill everywhere. Dad even put his precious new Consul out on the road so I could use the garage to do a little work on Wasp. It was very convenient being able to do this in the garage instead of out on the road where everyone would gather round and admire my purchase and stop me from getting the work done.

When I had put a few screws back into place I proceeded around to Bev's place where her parents were also in a very jovial mood. Her father was usually fairly taciturn when I was around but he positively beamed bonhomie when he saw me and the car. And as for her mother.... Ten years later this good soul would have an unfortunate intimate accident on our sitting room settee when regaled with off-colour anecdotes by the local Presbyterian minister and when she saw me now I had a first premonition of her capacity for good humour.

It was a magical occasion. It was as if the car had somehow transformed me from a relatively dull teenager to something approaching some kind of celebrity. Everyone I met had smiles all over the faces. They were so pleased to see me independent, assured, confident.

Bev smiled a lot, too, but then she loved to have an unexpected visit now and then and this occasion met all the criteria. And as for the car, she couldn't find words to describe her delight and admiration. On reflection I think there might have been more admiration than delight, but she willingly enough went off to the social with me in it that night.

Her mother seemed to be a little more serious as we went. I overhead her saying to Bev "Is he really going to take you out in that?" It was sensitive of her to realise that I might not want to let just anyone into my proud possession. But she could hardly be expected to understand that there was no way I would not invite my own true love to share with me what was undoubtedly an experience of a rare and beautiful nature.

The crowd at the social were very impressed. I think that's the right word for it. They gathered around in droves. All through the evening people were slipping out of the dance. That wasn't all that unusual, of course. Sometimes the problem with those events was keeping them inside, actually. But on this occasion all the deserters were to be found quite readily, clustered around my machine. Modesty forbade that I should remain on guard to explain its every feature for the whole evening so I was inside when someone came running in to say that the horn was going and they couldn't stop it.

I hardly needed to be given the information. If Wasp had a single outstanding feature beside those two marvellous headlamps it was the horn. In the days when air horns didn't exist there were, occasionally, very powerful two tone horns made available for large motor transports. The first diesel railway locomotives probably had the same items. It was something like this that was mounted in the innermost parts of Wasp's engine compartment and it was sounding its loud and joyful note with some insistence. People had given up trying to stop it and were standing back with respect tinged with a little anxiety. It did seem as if the car might burst something before the horn could be stopped.

They need not have worried. There was no problem. I just reached inside the driver's door and adjusted it outwards slightly. Someone had leaned on it—or perhaps his large trendy tie had brushed on it—and the door moved inwards and activated the horn switch which was a single-throw toggle switch mounted in a position convenient for the driver's right hand.

I saw out the remaining few hours of Saturday night and next day and proceeded to head north on Sunday afternoon. Six or perhaps seven hours should be plenty, I thought. She was a great little runner and bowled along very comfortably at 50mph when the condition of Highway 1 permitted this rather extravagant speed. The suspension was adequate for the modest weight of the body and—even with me and a small bag aboard—we made good time. Until about 1am.

Coming through the Rangitikei area I detected a little diminution in the normally handsome amount of illumination from the headlights. Perhaps the generator brushes were in bad shape and the full charge was not getting through. There was also a little uncertainty about the engine's beat, especially each time the revs dropped for a hill.

Coming through the Mangaweka Hills the engine ran rough as I went up a hill and then stopped quite suddenly. I switched off the lights and sat in frigid darkness attempting to re-start the engine. But now the starter decided to quit. There was not the smallest bit of a click out of it. I had remembered to switch off the headlights in case you're wondering. But when these were turned on again now they were very half-hearted. Then, while I sat there thinking about it all, they quietly expired altogether.

There was now nothing for it but to try to roll-start her. I manoeuvred around on the icy slope to get a downhill run and off we went at a good clip. But there was not a kick out of the engine. At the bottom of the dip I pushed her forwards and back, becoming adept at leaping into the driver's seat and engaging the engine before the speed died. That was no mean feat considering that the roof was only about a metre off the ground and the three pedals so close together that one foot could cover the lot. But, for all my agility, I could not start that engine.

It seemed that nothing more could be done now. In the morning I could get the battery charged and all would be well. I spent a very cold night in several degrees of frost and accepted a friendly tow into Taihape around 7am. There I waited until a local mechanic turned up and he obligingly put the battery on a quick charge that would, he was sure, be enough to get me on my way and the generator should pick up the job from there. I insisted on a fairly full charge and waited until 9am to be sure it would be plenty.

I needn't have worried about getting started. She fired immediately and ran like a clock. Most impressive. Or so about everybody in Taihape seemed to think as I drove through town and headed off up the road. They were watching from every vantage point.

So I motored steadily through Waiouru and Karioi to Ohakune where, inexplicably the engine started to misfire again and seemed quite likely to expire once more. I figured that it would be better to sort the problem out once and for all than continue on into uninhabited parts so I headed for the local auto-electrician. He looked at the car and marvelled and poked around the engine with some things and then said in words that with my forestry experience I was able to interpret as meaning that the generator had relinquished its function in life. It took an hour or so to rectify that problem, give the battery another quick charge and get me spinning along the road in carefree fashion once more.

The loose metal provided a few challenges along the way but I made good progress until just six miles before Taurewa when the engine misbehaved once more. It was running evenly this time, though, and I couldn't quite identify the problem except that there seemed to be more noise. Now in a car where the passenger compartment was virtually synonymous with the engine space you might not think that was particularly noteworthy. But the noise was definitely getting worse and there was something more distinctive about it than before. I stopped and checked the oil which was fine. I looked for bits that might be dropping off. I ensured that the transmission was sitting firmly in its mounts. That last was easy —most of it was accessible from the driver's seat.

But, driving on, I became aware that the noise was definitely worse and was related to the engine itself. Some gremlin had got into the vitals but it didn't seem to be getting any worse. It was only a couple of miles to Taurewa now so I pressed on gently and Wasp completed its first round trip in my hands.

I was not particularly despondent about this little set-back as she was a Project in the first place and this would just make some small changes to the work schedule. It was child's play to lift off the bodywork; this had been cunningly constructed in one single piece held on by four nuts and bolts two of which had gone anyway. With all her innards exposed to view I was able to roll the engine over on the chassis (after undoing one or two things I should think —memory is a little unreliable about the exact details) and establish that a big end had run.

Every forestry worker is an expert mechanic of course and at least two reckoned it was worth attempting a repair with inserts of leather rather than get into the engineering work involved in hot-metalling and re-drilling the linings. It wasn't. Even the high quality leather we used lasted for only about ten seconds. I suppose we should have realised that this was a particularly potent engine and would impose more than the usual strains on a makeshift repair of this kind.

Then events overtook Wasp's brief but chequered career. I had to go off to my forestry trainee induction course at Rotorua, leaving her until I returned. But the Forest Service had decided that my distinctive skills would be better used in the south of the South Island than the northern central plateau and I was transferred directly there without returning to Taurewa.

Dad came to the rescue and persuaded Horopito Wreckers to come and pick up the remains. He even got them to pay £15 for her. She was probably still there when that entrepreneurial outback business became famous as the setting for the movie Smash Palace.

So Wasp's untimely end contributed her little bit to history. And I discovered the source of her name: she had a sting in her tail!

# About the author

Retired Presbyter of Methodist Church of New Zealand. Passionate pioneer in Local Shared Ministry, consultant in small churches, publisher of niche market books, producer of prosumer video, deviser of murder mystery dinners and former private pilot.

Dave trained for the Methodist Ministry at Trinity Theological College and eventually completed MA, Dip Ed as well. He and Bev married just before his first appointment in Ngatea where their two children arrived. They went on to Panmure and Taumarunui. Longer terms followed at Dunedin Central Mission and the Theological College. During this time he was also involved as co-founder and second national President of Family Budgeting Services and adviser to the (government) Minister of Social Welfare in Home Budgeting.

Dave's final four "working" years were part-time, developing the first Presbyterian or Methodist Local Shared Ministry unit in this country and promoting the concept overseas. Retirement has brought a whole lot more opportunities and challenges including publication of over 100 books of which he wrote about ten and a blog in which he tries to write fairly seriously on a range of topics.

An ongoing adventure with prostate cancer brought Bev and Dave to the Hibiscus Coast Residential Village near Auckland in 2014 but in early 2015 his prospects seem much improved.

**Contact Dave  
**colcom.press@clear.net.nz

davemullan35@gmail.com

**Visit Dave on**  
<http://dave-mullan.blogspot.com>  
<http://www.colcompress.com>

# Dave's other general books

**Attwood of Hepburn Creek**. Dave Mullan. The life of Thomas William Attwood, who settled in the Mahurangi 1907, initiated the NZ Fruitgrowers' Federation and represented NZ fruitgrowing interests in South America and UK 1923-1925 and then went on to found the NZ Alpine and Rock Garden Society. Lady Anne Allum of Auckland was his daughter. A5. 134p. ISBN 1-877357-01-4

**In and Out of Sync.** Dave's life story up to 2013. Extracted from a more substantial text, this book presents Dave's personal family background and professional life and ministry. Reviewers have said it offers a significant and insightful view of the Methodist Church of New Zealand in a turbulent and challenging time. A5 220p. ISBN 1-877357-10-3

**John Roulston, Grazier of Calkill & Runnymede**. Dave Mullan with Val Mullan of Brisbane. Our attempt to trace the life of the mysterious and very distant relation from the Upper Brisbane Valley. He left a fortune to family members in four countries when he died in 1929. Most of them had never met him. A5. 122p. ISBN 1-877357-00-6

**The Almost Attwoods.** Ed Dave Mullan. Personal stories of the 143 descendants in the first three generations from James and Emma Attwood of Lewisham. A5. 220p. ISBN 978-1-877357-4-9

**The Saga of Wasp.** Revised and enlarged collection of Dave's short stories, 2014. Some include significant historical material from his early working life with the New Zealand Forest Service. But all were written mainly for fun. Also available as epub, 2015 180p ISBN 978-877357-12-X

These books are available from ColCom Press stock or printing on demand. Some are soon to be made available in eBook format through Smashwords

Contact Dave

colcom.press@clear.net.nz

<http://www.colcompress.com>

# Dave's books on church and ministry

**Diakonia and the Moa**. Dave Mullan. Although published in 1983 this book offers a distinctive understanding of the role of the "permanent" Deacon in the modern church. A5 170p From: Trinity College, 202 St Johns Rd, Meadowbank, Auckland. trinitycollege@stjohns.auckland.ac.nz ISBN 0-9597775-0-4

**Ecclesion — The Small Church with a Vision.** Reflections on the contemporary church and suggestions for revival of the small church in vigorous new styles of Sunday church life, mission and ministry. This book introduces the thinking behind the Lay Ministry Team concept developed for Methodists and Presbyterians in the Bay of Islands Co-operating Parish in 1992. It is being completely revised and updated for e-publication in 2015. A5 140p 978-908815-08-5

**Fresh New Ways — Emerging Models for Mission and Ministry in the Local Congregation**. Ed. Dave Mullan. Papers and reflections from a significant Australian conference, this book details (a) new structures for the church or parish and (b) innovative styles of ministry. A5 130p From: Trinity College, 202 St Johns Rd, Meadowbank, Auckland. trinitycollege@stjohns.auckland.ac.nz ISBN 0-908815-76-X

**Koru and Covenant** : J J Lewis, Len Willing and Dave Mullan offer biblical reflections in Aotearoa and note some links between the Christianity of the 19th Century Maori and the religion of the Hebrew Scriptures. Warmly commended by authoritative reviewers and some years after publication still very relevant. A5 120p. 120p From: Trinity College, 202 St Johns Rd, Meadowbank, Auckland. trinitycollege@stjohns.auckland.ac.nz ISBN 0-908815-60-3

**Mital-93—The Church's Ministry in Tourism and Leisure.** Ed: Dave Mullan Presentations at an Australian Conference are supported by dozens of flax roots ideas that have helped. "A fascinating study... an enabling resource" (Pat Gilberd). 82p. 220p From: Trinity College, 202 St Johns Rd, Meadowbank, Auckland. trinitycollege@stjohns.auckland.ac.nz ISBN 0-908815-22-8

**The Cavalry won't be coming**. Dave Mullan. Introduction to the concept of Local Shared Ministry in which a team of volunteers spearhead the mission of the small church which is discovering that all the resources for ministry are held within its own membership. Being revised for epublication in 2015. A5 134p, From: Trinity College, 202 St Johns Rd, Meadowbank, Auckland. trinitycollege@stjohns.auckland.ac.nz ISBN 0-908815-99-1

As indicated, these books are available from Trinity Methodist Theological College, Auckland.

trinitycollege@stjohns.auckland.ac.nz

Other ColCom Books

During the last 25 years Dave has published well over one hundred titles for other writers under the imprint of ColCom Press. Most were done in very short runs for niche markets and were delivered to the authors. Some may be still retrievable in some form in 2015.
