When an old man dies, a library burns.

Today I learned of the passing of the novelist Tom Sharpe.

Tom Sharpe 1928-2013

Tom Sharpe didn't write literary classics, his works were described by many as ribald farce with plot lines that defied rational belief and an obsession with ridiculing unnatural peccadilloes be they sexual perversion, violence obsessions or outright delusion. My tiny mind has found his kind of writing agreeable for years and I happily reread his books which is a mark of quality of an author, that their works can be picked up and re-read and are just as absorbing as they were when read the first time.


His novels threw the lampoon at the apartheid regime in South Africa, the aristocracy, the police, the establishment, academia and the public at large. He chose his targets and blasted them with a blunderbuss filed with vitriol, satire and lunacy. His style of writing could have been criticised for being formulaic, you always knew what you were going to get when you picked up one of his novels, but I was always surprised and delighted when some ingenious farcical twist would set the page alight. What kind of mind comes up with the idea of a college lawn covered in methane filled condoms that are linked to a massive explosion that destroys the place or a room full of South African policemen with electrodes attached to their genitals while they have pornography played to them as a form of aversion therapy? Tom Sharpe's novels read in a very similar vein to how he described writing them: you find yourself being happily dragged along like a person being walked by an over-enthusiastic Irish wolfhound. There were seldom moments of quiet in his novels unless there was a character who had been stripped, drugged and shot was slowly coming to and attempting to feel their way around whatever B&D dungeon they had been temporarily dumped in for convenience - yes this happened a lot. Some of Tom Sharpe's novels were adapted into television: notably Blott on the Landscape, which was adapted by Malcolm Bradbury and starred David Suchet, Geraldine James and George Cole; Porterhouse Blue with the elegant Ian Richardson and David Jason; and Wilt starring Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith. These also make for timeless viewing.

Like his writing, Tom Sharpe lived his life very much on his terms. The moment when he no longer had to work for someone else and he could support himself with his writing, he chucked in his job. He enjoyed pottering around in his garden, smoking and hoovering up whisky. For a period of about ten years he didn't produce any books, bedeviled with writers block, but he was happy enough to doodle away at ideas until something of quality began to establish itself. In a perfect world, this is what I would like to do myself but my beloved Attila is quite rightly obsessed with financial security. Who knows, maybe it just takes a leap of faith and belief in one's own talent like Sharpe. His self-belief was not misplaced: Tom Sharpe joins the great typing pool in the sky with PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, John Mortimer and Kingsley Amis. I like to imagine it as a massive oak panelled study with an ever-full decanter and a decent fug of tobacco smoke. 
And laughter. Lots of laughter.
Goodbye Tom.

A weekend idyll with enzymes, pub havoc and chocolate croissants

I am a domestic Goddess.
I am sitting in the kitchen watching my Turkish bread rising and I have a batch of chocolate croissants in the oven. This batch will likely be demolished with a flat white of my own preparing and I will have to bake another before Attila the Wife and I go over to Diamond Harbour today for lunch with her cousin and her husband. However, while the rising and baking is going on, there is the opportunity to listen to my friend Charlotte's Queens Birthday broadcast on Radio NZ National (she's not the Queen and while her pronouncements are important, she's unlikely to be summarily declaring that I have a knighthood and she's dissolved the government in favour of a benevolent dictatorship headed by me). I also have the chance to look back over a lovely long weekend.

Friday saw a thankful end to a week where I did battle against an exam on the most tedious topic in Christendom - Advanced Land Law. There are goblin-like pinstriped lawyers in oak panelled offices who have prolific sprouts of coarse grey hair coming from their ears, eyebrows and noses and have been practicing land law for sixty years who haven't completely come to grips with it yet. I never stood a chance and it was a weary and careworn author who, along with Attila the Wife was hosted for dinner by a couple who are eagerly anticipating their nom de guerre for this blog, which incidentally are The Godmother and The Godfather: they happen to be the officeholders of Godparents to Attila the Wife and I rather like the sinister air that this gives them, but in reality in the world of competitive loveliness they are in the top ten in the country and are assured of an Olympic berth when this becomes an event at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.

Enzymes not included.

The word of the evening was 'enzymes'. The Godmother has a book beside her bed on enzymes and this is how we came to have a meal of largely raw food and corned beef, all topped with pro-biotic unsweetened yoghurt. I never had any doubt it would be delicious but still the combination of smearing yoghurt on corned beef pleasantly surprised us. What also surprised me was the notion of leaving a Friday dinner healthier than when we started it, but indeed we were and this recipe has been reproduced by us since then and carries our recommendation. The Godmother has now become the high priestess of enzyme cuisine and while in between cigarettes she waxed lyrical as to how it made her feel better, I doubt I'll be attempting to read the enzyme book unless it also has a plot, some characters including a dangerous, lofty-breasted female spy and no enzymes in it.


This made perusing Facebook of a Saturday all the more pleasurable to see who of my friends got more plastered than James Hardy the night before. Having so many friends in the world of hospitality means that this category of people is extensive. Some choice quotes include these two gems:
"It hurts to live this morning."
"I've been doing some deep thinking and Jewish maths. Realised in my adult life I've spent over 20k on alcohol, cigarettes and gambling. The rest I've squandered."

The Excelsior Building: now home to a flock of rock pigeons.

In our healthier and unfuddled Saturday morning state, Attila felt the need to drag my carcass out on a scenic bike ride through the newly opened parts of the Christchurch city centre. We've done this a few times but it was our first foray into Cathedral Square and down High Street. We rode with a combination of wonder and sadness. Wonder at the sheer scale of the demolitions and sadness seeing seeing so much of my old community destroyed and devoid of life. What was striking was my first look at the other side of the old Excelsior building. I worked in the Excelsior Sports Bar in the bottom floor of the building for a year and a half. I also had the odd foray into the backpackers in the upper two or three floors for reasons I won't go into. Now the building is as you see it in the photo. One wall propped upright by a stack of shipping containers ostensibly to maintain the facade for whatever building is put there to replace it. Whatever is put there to replace it will never come close to replacing the memories and spirit that the building held in the hearts and minds of the residents, the resident boozers and those who found themselves working in the High St Cafe, the Excelsior Backpackers or the Sports Bar. It was built in 1884 and while I was a late arrival to the joint, thinking only to turn up in 2005, I was told a wealth of stories by locals that showed a lasting affection for the place. Some of these stories involved infidelity and arson, others were stories told by locals of bar fights who were helpless with laughter by the end despite, or perhaps because, the person crying with mirth next to them in the bar was the one who broke a pool cue over their back that night. It sounds like nostalge a la boue, but for me, while there are certain characters I am quite happy to see the back of and I hope are murdered in their cells, the balance of stories are of happy memories, hard work and good people. This was an example of the difference between a pub and a bar: a pub has a collective animated spirit and acts as a community; a bar is a place which merely serves drinks and often needs a theme to try and bring people in. 

We named this the pineapple tree because we weren't
entirely sure there wasn't a bloody great pineapple
growing out the top of it. We couldn't be bothered going
to look.

Attila and I pushed on with my head crowded with memories: of the scrum that was the night of the second test of the 2005 Lions Tour where the queue for the bar was the bar itself and the area behind the counter was awash two inches deep with spilt beer, I worked a 20 hour shift that night; of finishing a shift and having a beer under the pineapple tree with my boss, engaging in conversation that was a mix of character assassination, horrifying jokes and muttered imprecations about our employer; of studying at Broadcasting School from 8-4.30 during the day and then working until 2-3am and sleeping in the gaming room and living in a state of perpetual tiredness. I don't miss the hours or the work, but I do miss the community that, although I left that place I went to work for another institution that I grew to love nearby. High St was a collection of characters and walking down the street was difficult because you would constantly have to stop and talk to people.

Following on the theme of pub, last night the Mistress of the Damned and I (I'm the damned) stopped off for a sneaky pint on the the way home. This was a Sunday, but a Sunday of a long weekend and so our local was groaning at the seams with punters all talking and enjoying the band. This is good for the pub but havoc on my poor old deaf ears. The pub has hard surfaces everywhere and nothing that can soak up noise. As a consequence the noise level of the people talking tends to rise to compensate the fact that they can barely hear each other. This rapidly means that all around you people are shouting at each other and the band has cranked their speakers up to 11 because no-one can hear them either. I have to sadly admit that this is a bit much for me and so we left the pub to its pubbing and went somewhere else, which is a shame because when it is quieter I am quite happy there. However, we gravitated to Smash Palace (see links) for a couple of pints, a game of backgammon and some cheerios. Smash Palace is a bar created by the Moore family that is an agglomeration of converted buses and caravans under a haphazard collection of canopies and coloured lights. On a balmy night like last night it really was just the thing and I was surprised not to see more people there. You could make as much noise as you like in the open air and it wouldn't put Attila and I off our game or our discussion about the house we had viewed earlier in the day. We'll probably end up at Smash Palace a bit more often I think...

And so is that was the long weekend that was that will end with lunch in Diamond Harbour and me presenting my pub quiz tonight. I will go back to the grind tomorrow morning content. It is time to put the bread in the oven and the croissants were delicious thank you. I hope your weekend was just as fulfilling.

Idle pleasures for an idle bastard

Attila in typical pose when inspecting housework.

This post finds your author just a bit bored with things. It has been a fairly quiet Sunday and I have been pottering around polishing things and doing a bit of generalised cleaning but I have run out of impetus to do anything remotely productive. Actually, while I think of it, most of the polishing and generalised cleaning has been done toward entirely selfish ends anyway: my bookshelf is dusted and waxed with the books also similarly freed from dust; my shoes have a layer of polish on them and are drying awaiting a treatment to make them the shiniest things in the universe; and everything else such as hanging out washing and cleaning the kitchen have only been done to escape a verbal hiding from Attila the Wife which I shall probably get for doing/not doing something else.

I'm bored.

"Hulk not like Cohiba smell. Smell bad."

I'm bored and I am also procrastinating from doing study for an Advance Land Law exam that occurs next week. Advanced Land Law is the second most boring thing in the world* and I doubt I have retained an iota of information given to me in lectures and readings throughout the last semester. Instead of studying for this exam I would much rather be outside in the fresh air, tainting the drying washing with the smell of a superb, aromatic Cuban cigar while I idly scan a book with a tall glass of rum. It's a funny thing, cigar smoke. It makes Attila even angrier than she usually is, similar to the picture above. I rather like the smell of cigar smoke with its suggestions of sultry Caribbean evenings, coffee, dusty cocoa, nutmeg, sandalwood and dark chocolate. The result of any suggestion of those aromas in the air, on the washing or on me, no matter how many times I brush my teeth, shower or change my clothes afterward, is that I get an endless tirade about how she doesn't like the smell. She doesn't elaborate as to her reasons, she is just completely intolerant. Her diatribe takes place at a vocal pitch that causes glass to consider shattering and at a volume that would have a Scandinavian heavy metal band wide eyed with wonder.

Attila the Wife is currently out of the house, so with that in mind I shall wait until she gets home and I will get my Advanced Land Law book and sit outside with a stogie. I find this will be a nice compromise of forcing myself to do something I hate with the reward of enjoying something I love. The residual satisfaction of irritating Attila will be a bonus that should alleviate some of my current boredom and amuse our neighbours.
*I was going to add what the most boring thing in the world is, but meh.

What do you want to be if you grow up?

"Are you sure that's what you want to be when you
grow up?" "Yep. Definitely taller, you chilly torrent
of dribble."

When I was a child and knew everything, there was one question that would always leave me stumped. It was a fairly innocuous question usually asked by adults who were either making conversation or trying to get some perspective on a piece of some particularly bad behaviour. What do you want to be when you grow up? I could only offer a facetious retort that I either wanted to be taller or older because I had no idea what the answer actually was. As an eight year old this was of least concern. At seventeen and contemplating my final year at school before going out to work, this became quite concerning. I tried to do subjects that would be useful whatever I ended up doing like maths with statistics and biology but my heart wasn't in them and my complete lack of interest led to ignominious failure. My mother wasn't angry, although she had every right to be as a concerned parent, but I could tell she was disappointed. I did rather well at English and Geography (note that they have been capitalised and maths and biology haven't) but they weren't enough to get me into university, thank God because if I had gone to university at 18 I would have wasted my time and someone else's money. 

The author in dress uniform at 
Government House Feb 2002, ready 
to guard the Queen. I'm sure she felt 
much safer for it.

School ended and I mooched. I lent a hand around the orchard sometimes, I played a bit of rugby but doing bugger all was my stock in trade. Eventually fate, guided by my mother who was a careers advisor at the local school, intervened. She decided that I was going to join the armed forces and while she didn't care which one as long as they would have me, my brothers both declared that if I joined the Navy they would leave. I can happily report that both brothers are still career naval officers and have done well for themselves to our family's enduring pride. It just so happened that the Army recruiter arrived in Cheviot first and so after hitting a speed bump in the form of ballsing up an officer selection board, I wound up in Waiouru as a Sapper, Royal New Zealand Engineers where I was to remain occupied amid this august group for five and a half years. I picked up some valuable skills, got into some minor trouble, got out of minor trouble and gained a black belt in drinking. I got to play with things that went bang and things that went boom and I particularly enjoyed doing anything with maps. However, I knew all along that I wasn't the best fit for a military career and that my sub-conscious had been steering me away from doing something that I didn't enjoy for quite some time. Fate crept up behind me with a metaphorical piece of lead piping splitting a disc in my spine so I was medically discharged never to return (although for my sins, I did consider going back in a different role later). 

I won't go through my entire employment history, but since exiting the Army I have engaged in a number of jobs, studied for a couple of qualifications, picked up some age-related wisdom and drawn a few conclusions: I don't want to be a lawyer; I don't want to be a barman; I do want to drink beer semi-professionally; I am happy when I am writing humorous nonsense; I will suffer regular business hours but am over working nights and weekends; and you can stick teaching up your arse - there's absolutely no way I'm doing that. For all my conclusions I am left with the original question of what occupation to enter. I suppose I have hitherto undertaken a path of determining my ideal job by process of elimination but sooner or later this has to end - Attila the Wife understandably wants some certainty and so do I. So what do I want to do if I grow up? My immediate facetious answer has changed to becoming a midget pornographer but I still have little idea of what I want to do for a job. So troops, any recommendations?