25August2005

I’ve never been to Canberra. Home of the Australian Federal Government. Those who have been tell me it’s a very boring place. Not dissimilar to Palmerston North but without the clock tower. Apparently it was purpose designed and planned simply as the Australian Capital Territory. When the Aussie states were arguing as to where the capital of the country should be initially no one could agree. So they put a map of Australia on the wall and threw darts. The majority of darts fell roughly where Canberra now is.

Security guards and other parliamentary staff in Parliament House in Canberra in order to bring a bit of Aussie colour to the premises took to calling everyone “mate”. Like the King of Thailand would arrive at the front door to visit the Prime Minister. A state occasion. Guard of honour. Twenty one gun salute. His aides would enquire as to where his Majesty should stand. “Over here mate. Under that jacaranda tree mate.” For a causal visitor seeking instructions of one of the guards on the door as to how to find his way to the debating chamber. “No worries mate. Straight down that corridor. Second turn on the left. Then right. Right ahead mate.” Now all this Aussie vernacular was primarily designed to take away from the overpowering boringness of Canberra and especially Parliament House. But then someone decided the use of the term “mate” in the precincts of Parliament House was to say the least unparliamentary. “It could” said an unidentified spokesperson. “Offend”. So the use of the word “mate” was banned.

Well you can imagine what happened. Prime Minister John Howard, who regularly refers to his best friends George Bush and Tony Blair, as “my Iraqi mates” was horrified. “It’s absurd and impractical to prohibit the use of the word mate. It’s downright un-Australian.” The old silver budgie Bob Hawke (remember him) chimed in. “Mate has been one of the most useful words in my political career. Should be for any politician. If anyone significant in the New South Wales right came up and said “hey mate – how’re you going? – you knew the knife was going to go into your back.” Hawke went on to say how handy mate was at official functions. “It gets you out of all sorts of embarrassing situations.” I know what he was referring to. You walk into a room full of noise and unfamiliar faces. There’s a bloke standing over there to who you were introduced two days previously. Like he’s the Oman of Dubai. For the life of you, you can’t remember his name. So what do you do. Big smile. Hand outstretched. You go up to him. “How’s it going mate?” The Omar hasn’t a clue what the meaning of mate is. But in a split second everyone’s at ease. Bob Hawke says that mate is one of the great Australian words. Probably the greatest. It would have to be the most commonly used word in the Australian language. I reckon it’s the first word any Aussie kid utters. You only have to hear a rugby league player being interviewed after a game. “Mate that was some game mate. I mean to say mate when our number ten was sent off mate, three minutes after half time mate, I thought it was well checkmate …” A liberal back-bencher Bob Baldwin’s thoughts on the ban “I’ve never seen anything so criminal in all my life. It’s a term of endearment.” It can mean bosom friendship or downright disapproval. Like “no way mate. No way.” It’s far more meaningful than those other great Aussie words “cobber”, “joker”, “bloke” or “sheila”. Probably because these last words all have five or six letters and “mate” only has four. Makes it easier for Aussies to pronounce. Well the ban’s been lifted. It’s okay for “mate” to be used in the halls of Parliament again. One commentator suggested the ban had taken Australia back to a land of gutless, groveling, subservient, second rate, culturally cringing, colonial forelock tuggers. Well that’s telling you mate.

18August2005

I bet you let last Saturday pass without giving a moment’s thought for those of us who suffer day in day out our affliction, our handicap. All in silence without seeking sympathy or special benefits from you the righteous ones. Even though you gave it scant notice last Saturday was a real red letter day for myself and those of us who since early childhood have had to put up with cruel remarks and borne the brunt of negative comment about this affliction. The affliction I’m speaking of is, dare I speak its name, left handedness. Last Saturday was International Left Handers day. The day for left handers to finally come out of the closet and proclaim to the world “I’m proud to be a kackhander.”

Once of my earliest memories, I would have been all of 18 months old, was of one of my mother’s sisters looking into my pram as I assiduously beat my rattle against the side. “Good heavens Molly look how he’s holding that rattle. I think he’s left handed”. Shock and awe. Well I had a rattle in my left hand. My aunt’s keen observation was to manifest itself in so many ways as I ultimately grew to maturity. Like attacking my meal of solids, if that’s what you called mashed carrots, silverbeet and potatoes. I took the spoon in my left hand and have continued to do so to this day. And then there was my first attempt at printing. Instinctively I picked up the pencil with my left hand and wrote “CAT”. Just as plainly as any right handed kid would have done. But I was scolded by my teacher “get that pencil into the other hand.” After three years my mother and my teachers gave up. And so it went on. Swapping my knife and fork on the table. Trying to write with ink without blotting the whole page. If I’d been born in China it probably wouldn’t have mattered. I think the Chinese write from right to left or is it up and down? Try beating an egg with a right handed egg beater in your left hand. Or peeling a spud with a right handed spud peeler. Or kissing a friend on the cheek. We left handers are inclined to go for the left cheek and the right handers go the other way. Because of the confusion this created I gave up the kissing habit years ago. I’ve now opted for the hongi. There’s no confusion there. Right on the nose. Perhaps early Maori were all left handed and so they devised a simple form of salutation which suited both left and right handers. And there’s the scissors. Try cutting your nails with your left hand. Or opening a tin of guavas with your conventional can opener. They’re all designed for the Righteous.

Then there’s all that business about sitting on the right hand. Right from Old Testament times. No way would Abraham have had Isaac’s sitting on his left hand or Jacob sitting on Isaac’s left. The lefties, that’s me and about 13% of the world’s population have been given a hard time. We’re the sinisters – the left handers. We’ve had enough. Now we want to celebrate our affliction. We’ve been silent for too long. The time has come for us to shout from the rooftops with banners and T-shirts. “Kack-handed and proud of it.” Up to now the only organisation of the world have gone out of their way to recognise how special we are, are the world’s railway stations. At most of them you can usually find a place for “Left luggage”.

But I’m not really worried. There’s no doubt that we left handers have a far higher degree of creativity than right handers. You only need to look at this column. Week in week out for years now creatively with my left hand I’ve been writing about nothing. And whats more it shows. One task I’ve yet to master is playing a ukulele left handed. The music seems to come out backwards. Meanwhile lefties unite. Ignore prejudice. Push on. By the left quick march. Left, left, left right left …

11August2005

Over the last five weeks the staff at the Canterbury Museum have been producing a set of replica moa bones from the wonderful original boney moa skeleton that they have owned for many years. These replica bones are being cast out of polyester resin and are just about the same colour and weight as the real thing. The bones of Dinoris Robustus. The Dinoris Robustus skeleton breaks down into about 756 separate parts. The prime purpose behind this amazing exercise is to provide a set of moa bones for the natural history collection of Canada’s Royal Ontario Museum. Apparently they’ve got the bones of just about every other extinct animal other than the moa. It’s said they’re in negotiations for a Paul Holmes skeleton. Apparently he’s just become extinct.

Sebastian Denzie, the exhibition’s preparator said “we had our problems. In the end only experts would be able to tell which bones are original and which are replica.” I wondered then having got piles of replica moa bones how you’d reassemble them. Quite easy apparently. “To help the Canadians put the puzzle back together again we label them, number them and then draw up an assembly diagram. The bones are then going to be packed into boxes and freighted to Canada.” Well so far so good. No doubt that Sebastian and his colleagues have done a great job but I’m wondering about the assembly instructions. I mean how would you begin to write a set of instructions for assembling a moa. And how would the Canadians interpret them. Over the years I’ve had to grapple with a myriad of instructional assembly leaflets. I’ve dealt with five piece beach chairs, ten piece barbeque tables and an eight piece reading lamp (still unassembled). In most cases all the instructions were either in Mandarin or Cantonese – take your pick. Then there was the Super Chef barbeque. Complete with rotisserie, castor wheels with brakes, gas tank holder, wok burner, utensil drawer and four gas burners with electronic ignition. Forty five parts excluding the screws, nuts and bolts. I gave up in the end, took the whole lot back to where I brought it. Gave them $50.00 and a non-descript unlabeled bottle of pinot. The next day it was delivered to me all assembled. The barbeque up and burning.

I’m thinking it might be the same for these Canadians at the Royal Ontario Museum. I can just imagine it. The courier arrives with 48 cardboard boxes. “Sign here” says the courier. A bewildered young intern who has just graduated with first class honours from the University of British Columbia in Archeology signs the delivery chit. She tells the Museum’s curator. “So they’ll be those moa bones from New Zealand. Open them up.” It would be just like you getting a new fridge or flat screen TV. Piles of cardboard. Polystyrene bubbles. Metres of plastic wrapping. And then a pile of wooden straw encasing what looks like a big bone. Numbered 68. Then the fun starts. No one in Canada has ever seen a moa. Well not since 1400 AD. So where would you start. The Canadians have unpacked all the boxes. They’re faced with a pile of numbered moa bones. They read the assembly directions. “The foot bone number 78 is connected to the ankle bone number 74. This is connected to the leg bone number 52. And this is connected to the thigh bone number 21” – “oh connect dem bones. Dem bones – dem bones – dem dry bones – now hear the word of the Lord”. Soon everyone is singing. But it’s not helping in the reconstruction of the Canterbury moa. Then one of the interns has a bright idea. After all you don’t get a PhD in archeology without some degree of brightness. “Why don’t we assemble according to bingo rules. Like 66 Clickety Click. Or 53 Stuck in a tree. Or Overweight 28. So that’s what happened. They sat there with the numbered bones and the curator acting as the caller shouting out. Who’s got Cup of tea number 3. Three calls later. Knock on the door number 4. Legs eleven number 11.” And finally the last call. “Strive and strive 75” came the shout. Bingo indeed. There it stood reassembled in all its glory. Well almost. The foot bone was connected to the shoulder bone. The shoulder bone got connected to the thigh bone …

04August2005

Over the last few weeks I’d watched them fall helplessly around me. My family, friends and work colleagues. Coughing, spluttering, sneezing, red eyed, croaking as they all attempted to battle with the flu. I was smug. Well should be. After all I had the flu injection. No point in exposing one’s immune system unnecessarily to microscopic viruses that regularly cause this winter epidemic. To some in extreme discomfort I expressed my sympathy. To others whom I had so wisely warned to undertake immunisation and had ignored me, my attitude was “so let them cough on”. And then last Saturday night it hit me. The virus. Aching bones, desert dry throat, hacking cough all at once. After all the precautions, all the gloating, the flu virus had got me. You remember that argument over the half strength flu vaccine. I bet that’s what got injected into me. Sunday morning there I was on my bed of pain. Not even the Wallabies loss at the feet of the Springboks – after all the margin was penalties and drop kicks – brought relief to my reddened watering eyes. Then of course was the anticipated shafts of pain I was going to suffer for my wounded pride from my family, friends and colleagues as they found out I had succumbed. On hearing the news whilst most expressed sympathy I could sense it was either mock or false.

I’m into the fourth day. My forced inactivity has given me an opportunity to ponder some of the great mysteries of life. Could I share some of this pondering with you? Especially the pondering of Gerry Gilmore, Professor of experimental philosophy at Cambridge University. He’s in Christchurch at the moment speaking about the origin and future of the universe. We’re all the stuff of stars. Apparently we were originally stardust formed after the explosion of two stars. All this happened about five billion years ago. The second star then exploded, threw out matter that formed the solar system and eventually mankind. And the flu. Professor Gilmore’s specialty is reality. He says people have made up religious explanations because there’s no other way. We have to come to terms with our own unimportance. I cough and cough again. No one takes a scrap of notice. I am really unimportant. The Professor’s right. He continues telling us reality is largely made up of nothing. Everything in the universe was a defect of nothing. Once you understand that you will understand everything about Einstein and cosmology. Lying here on my sick bed the last thing that I wanted to understand was everything about Einstein. I never really could understand why he had that strange beard. Was it to compensate for his bald pate? Professor Gilmore continues. “Don’t be confused. It’s all very simple. Zoom in on the piece of paper you’re reading. It’s just atoms with enormous gaps.” There’s almost nothing there. Well this may be true if the page you were zooming in on was the one with the real estate ads. If you’re zooming in on the leader page then you can’t convince me that the leading article is about nothing. “No” says the Professor. “It is all about nothing”. So there you have it. We all came from a puff of stardust. Each one of us just a little Tinkerbell. Of course some of us bigger Tinkerbells than others. Like Paul Holmes and Russell Crowe. In the end we’re all unimportant because we’re really made up of nothing. It’s made me feel a lot better.

I hope you think the foregoing was not the meanderings of one whose faculties have become jaundiced by the effects of the flu, large doses of Panadol and the gargling of Cepacol ® mouthwash. You’re wrong. I’m quoting Gerry Gilmore. Word for word. And his final word. “The long term future of the universe is just cold and dead.” As I lie here having survived another round of rasping cough I agree that he just might be right. But then he might not. I recall a verse of that song “Swinging on a star”. And after all - according to the Professor - that’s where we came from in the beginning. And it goes like this.

And all the monkeys aren’t in the zoo
Every day you meet quite a few
So you see it’s all up to you
You could be better off than you are
You could be swinging on a star

Wish I was, maybe next week.