16 — THE NELSON MAIL Saturday, February 23, 2013
Honour your lovedHonour your loved ones in print ones in print
and online... and online...
Celebrate and honour the legacy of your loved one’s life and inspire family and friends to do the same.Death Notices published in the Nelson Mail are now available on our website. Th is service allows people, living outside the region or overseas, to view your notice. An online guestbook is also attached to your online death notice which gives friends and family members the opportunity to share thoughts, feelings and off ercondolences. These memories will help preserve your loved one’s story and create a sense of community while offering comfort during a diffi cult time.
For more information on the Nelson Mail death notices online service contact:Nelson Mail on (03) 548 0119 or 0800 800 515 or classifi [email protected] your Funeral Director can answer any questions you may have on the Nelson Mail death notices online service.
www.nelsonmail.co.nz/deathnotices
5172971AA
OPINION
Show me the way toget to Milford Sound
Naomi Arnold
‘‘Oh my gaaard’’: Could there be a nicer place on a summer day than thePelorus River? Photo: FAIRFAX NZ
He had to buy his firstpassport to get to NewZealand. He was 28, froma Minnesota town of 600
souls, and my friend Laurenpicked him up on Raupara Rd atmidday last Sunday. She pulledover when she saw the lone bloke,assessing him as harmless – andthen, as they always do, anotherhitchhiker materialised from theundergrowth.
The boy, Mike, had flown intoAuckland four days before, andsomehow made it overland downthe North Island and across CookStrait. He’d met the girl, 19-year-old German Nadine, in a bakery,and agreed to hitch together tokeep her safe. They had beenwaiting for an hour and a halfwhen Lauren pulled over, andwhen she did, Mike lookedsurprised. He said: ‘‘I’ve neverdone this before.’’
In the car, he explained that hismother had made him vow not tohitchhike in New Zealand. ‘‘I toldher, ‘I can’t promise that, Mom’. Ididn’t want to have to lie to her,’’he said.
His friends back home inMinnesota said ‘‘What do youwant to go there for?’’ when heannounced his plans for NewZealand. But he was determined tosee Milford Sound: the Mecca ofthe Pacific, the best place inAotearoa. He’d almost been toanother country before; once,when he was fly fishing backhome, he’d seen the Canadianborder across the lake.
On the way home to Nelson,Lauren stopped at Pelorus Bridgefor a swim. She led the hitchhikersdown the path to the place wherethe green river slices the rocks inhalf and the sun warms them, andMike gasped at its sudden beauty.
‘‘Oh my Gaard,’’ he said. Shejumped into the water, and hestood on the rocks, shocked.
‘‘Oh my Gaaaard,’’ he said,gaping at her audacity. ‘‘I havenever done anything like thisbefore.’’
That night, the hitchhikerscamped out in the spare room atLauren’s flat, and the next dayNadine left for Motueka. Mike gotup early to catch the NBus, hopingit would take him somewhere
interesting, but it took him toRichmond.
He got off and asked at a shopwhere the West Coast was, thenwalked to the roundabout at thefoot of Gladstone Rd and stoodthere, thumb out, hoping somekindly soul would pick him up andget him closer to Milford Sound.
After four hours, he shoulderedhis pack and returned toRichmond, where he caught theNBus back to Nelson for a look
around town. Later, his heelrubbed raw by a blood blister fromall that hot, lonely walking, heflagged down a taxi driver.
They fell into conversation, andthe driver said he’d show him agood time for $100. The pair spentthe afternoon driving around theregion together, the drivershowing him old childhood hauntsand Tasman School, and pointingout the golden sands, blue water,green bush and yellow sea kayaksof Tasman Bay.
They visited a craft shop, whereMike bought a ring for a girl backhome. But he avoided visitingAbel Tasman National Park. Notime. He had to get to MilfordSound.
The taxi driver dropped himhome at 8pm, just in time forLauren to dish him up some lentilbolognese for dinner. He ate it,bravely, just as he’d eaten thespicy jambalaya the previousnight. He’d never had that sort offood before, he explained. Backhome, he ate mostly peanut butterand jelly sandwiches, turkeybreast, steak, and Kool-Aid, towhich he’d add a cup of sugar forthe taste. But when he decided togo travelling in a foreign country,he told himself he’d stay reallyopen to new experiences,including the food.
The next day, Nadine returnedfrom her trip and asked how shecould get a job here. When she left,she wrote a note that’s now postedon a pinboard in Lauren’s flat.
‘‘Hi, thank you very much forpicking us up, showing us thatamazing river and hosting us sofriendly,’’ it said.
Mike, having visited the iSiteand finally figuring out hispassage to the West Coast, left anote, too. ‘‘Thank you so much foryour hospitality and generosity,’’he wrote. ‘‘I’ll never forget anexperience like this. If you’re everin Minnesota, I’ll be more thanhappy to show y’all around.’’
By now, he should have made itto Milford Sound.❚ [email protected]
A mug’s viewRussell Harding
Floundering in a godless and lost world
In an effort to write informedcolumns that make sense ofour complex world, I stayclose to the news. I listen to
the radio and watch television. Iread widely on the internet. I’veeven dabbled with social media.As a result, nothing makes sense,and I’m beginning to worry aboutmy mental health.
I worry for my health because toswim in the sea of current eventsis to swim in a sea of effluent.These past couple of weeks, Ialmost drowned in the stuff.
Kicking off the headlines overthe past fortnight was NZ First MPRichard Prosser’s Middle-earthwritings about troglodytes fromWogistan. According to MrProsser, a ‘‘Wog’’ is a WesternOriental Gentleman, and a termnot to be offended by.
I learned from Google that,amongst other things, a troglodyteis one of a race of humanoidmonsters from the game Dungeonsand Dragons. This was all I wasgoing to learn from Mr Prosser’swritings.
His wisdom born out ofpocketknife rage swept local newsbefore launching itself on theeagerly waiting wider world.Much was written and spoken, butnowhere did it state that NewZealand’s standing in the worldhad increased, or thatinternational travel had becomesafer or more efficient, because ofthe wisdom Mr Prosser sharedwith us all.
So what other items werefloating out there in the currentevents sea? Well, we learned thatCoca-Cola kills. A coroner’s reportsays so.
Which set Bob Jones off. ‘‘Whatabsolute tosh!’’ he wrote. He threwin a ‘‘totally absurd’’ with a ‘‘damnsilly suggestion’’, and topped it offwith a ‘‘not content to simply dotheir job’’.
Coroners ‘‘suffer from Gareth-
morganitus’’, according to Sir Bob,‘‘namely, an obsession with seeingtheir name in print’’.
The following night, Sir Bobcould be seen on Seven Sharptalking about women. Apparently,he employs a few and is wellqualified to speak on their behalf.
This was on the back of hisprevious week’s column in NewZealand’s largest newspaper,where he talked of ‘‘hogwash’’ and‘‘unadulterated world-classnonsense’’, followed by more‘‘infantile nonsense’’ and a‘‘capacity to spout garbage . . .familiar to us all’’.
He seemed to havecovered it all. Was there anysubject left untouched for acolumnist like me to getoutraged about? Perhapsnot.
I continued my forlornsearch for subject matter inthe 24-hour news cycle sea.Unfortunately, RichardProsser kept floating back tothe surface.
Political commentatorMatthew Hooton said: ‘‘I feel
sorry for poor old Prosser; all hewas doing was articulating thebeliefs of his political party. Ifyou’re a greenie, you spread thegreen message; if you’re in NZFirst, your job is to promotehatred.’’
All this ‘‘news’’ was making mefeel unwell. My doctor did say Ishould try more greens.
I turned from the writings of oneshock jock politician to another.Not Michael Laws, but formerACT leader Rodney Hide. Perhapshe could guide me on this week’ssubject matter.
Rodney didn’t muck about. He
gracefully danced his way into thecurrent education debate. ‘‘Theteacher unions? They’re thebaddest and the maddest.’’
Teacher unions ‘‘dictateeducation policy, destabilise dulyelected ministers of education, andpresent themselves as the arbitersof right and proper schooling’’.Nothing about Hekia’s ownrighteous high heels destabilisingher, Rodney?
He finished with anothercharitable thought on unionisedteachers. ‘‘They’re rich, powerfuland unassailable . . . their drivingconcern is their own power andtheir own budget.’’
Rodney gave me an ice creamheadache to go with my currentevents heartache.
I bravely continued my voyageinto what Colin Hogg calls the‘‘godless and lost world of NewZealand current affairs’’. Andthere it was again. RichardProsser’s bobbing head – this timehanded in on a plate, in a quotefrom a NZ First board member.
According to the board member,Mr Prosser is ‘‘prone to
hyperbolistic feats of expression’’.The quote exploded on mycomputer screen before I wentsearching for meatier subjects.
Meteors in Russia, I hear yousay? I reckon they were a Russiantourism publicity stunt. Horsemeat in Britain? That’ll teachthem for joining the EuropeanUnion. Oscar Pistorius? A storywith legs, but too sad for words.
What about Telecom’s emailsecurity? How about writing aboutthe Living Wage? What about theSalvation Army’s State of theNation report released last week?What about the release of long-delayed semi-legal auditor-general’s reports into issues thatare mostly moral? Followed by aneat policy release on beneficiaryfraud to divert the media’s gaze.
The truth is, I’ve waded throughso much news effluent it’s got intomy brain.
I may have to wait for SevenSharp to give these subjects a gobefore I can understand them.Their graphics always help. Withany luck, someone will tweetabout it to further enhance clarity.
Sustenance for writers
Appendix 1.1Sarah Dunn
Inspiring: Happiness is the right mug at work.
Recently, myworking life hasbeen improved bya new mug. It’s one
of the orange-stripedPopular Penguin mugs,with ‘‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’’ and ‘‘George Orwell’’written on it. The VirginiaWoolf model featuring ‘‘ARoom of One’s Own’’ wouldhave suited me better,really, but they only comein lilac.
This mug is significantbecause it’s the first mugI’ve purchased specificallyfor use at my desk. It’s theperfect size, shape andcolour combination, andthe rescue orange makes itstand out nicely against themess of discarded papersand bits of writing. Theembarrassing amount ofsatisfaction I get from the Orwellmug got me thinking about theways famous writers behave intheir day jobs. Perhaps Orwell hada Work Mug of his own?
In fact, George Orwell, or EricBlair by his real name, was apoliceman before he was a writer.As he was born in India, Orwell’sfamily sent him to train for theIndian Imperial Police in Burmawhen his marks at school failed toimpress.
By all accounts he was anunorthodox but good policeman,learning Burmese very quicklyand getting on well with the locals.There’s even a rumour that he gotblue circle-amulets tattooed on hisknuckles to guard against bulletsand snakebites.
In 1927, he returned to Englandafter a bout of dengue fever andquit the force to concentrate onwriting. His first full-length novel,Down and Out in Paris andLondon roughly describes howthat turned out, but he also had amore comfortable time teaching ata private prep school in WestLondon.
Just a few years earlier in 1917,Woolf and her husband Leonardfounded the Hogarth Press. A
moneyed member of thearistocracy with ongoing nervousproblems, Woolf was not expectedto work for her living and wouldhave had a lot of trouble doing so,but she and Leonard ran theirsmall letter-press with greatsuccess.
She found that the process oftypesetting and printing helpedher think about writing in adifferent way: ‘‘Try to understandwhat a writer is doing. Think of abook as a very dangerous andexciting game, which it takes twoto play at. Books are not turnedout of moulds like bricks. Booksare made of tiny little words,which a writer shapes, often withgreat difficulty, into sentences ofdifferent lengths, placing one ontop of another, never taking hiseye off them, sometimes buildingthem quite quickly, at other timesknocking them down in despair,and beginning all over again.’’
After the Woolfs printed a co-written collection, Two Stories,and other work by Virginia, theytook on work from other writerswithin their group of friends, suchas T S Eliot.
Eliot is a bit special within thislist of writers who had to take
other jobs to pay the bills.His most famous poem isabout the breakdown of aboring and repressivesociety, but in real life Eliotwas a very contentemployee at Lloyd’s Bankof London for a long timeafter his work becamefamous.
Maybe this is where theunassuming, kindly JAlfred Prufrock of hisfamous poem came from,with his ‘‘rich and modest’’necktie and rolled trousers.Interestingly, poet EzraPound set up what couldhave been one of the first-ever attempts atcrowdfunding in order totry and free Eliot from thebank. He named it BelEsprit or ‘‘a fine wit’’.
Through Bel Esprit,Pound and other writerstried to find 30 people topromise Eliot £10 per yearfor a modest £300 annualsalary. Unfortunately,evidence implies Eliotprobably pulled in more
like £500 each year from his workat the bank by the time Bel Espritwas attempted in 1922, and herejected the offer on the groundsthat it was too uncertain.
Eliot made a graceful exit fromthe bank in 1925 to work for thepublishing firm that became Faberand Faber. He stayed there for therest of his career and eventuallybecame a director.
The lesson here seems to be thatwriting is a side project for justabout everybody except those whocan afford not to work. PoetWilliam Carlos Williams and theRussian short-story writerChekhov were both well-respecteddoctors in their time, and even thewild and furious poet CharlesBukowski worked for theAmerican Postal Service for morethan a decade.
Bukowski once said he was‘‘horrified at what a man had to dosimply in order to eat, sleep, andkeep himself clothed.’’ I wonder ifhe would have been happier if hehad a Work Mug.❚ Sarah Dunn’s blog, The BabySeal’s Book Club, is published onnelsonmail.co.nzSteve Braunias has taken a breakand returns next week.
CROSSWORD SOLUTIONS
ACROSS: 1 Coach, 4 Take a secondlook, 14 Suave, 15 Stops, 16Harbouring, 17 Crest, 19 End,
20 Handgun, 21 Traveller, 22 Felled,25 Put on show, 27 Saturn, 28Notion, 33 Balloonist, 35 Tea,
36 Assign, 37 Beer, 39 Rib, 41Biscuit, 42 Tablet, 43 Consulted, 44Upset, 45 Bad dream, 50 Up,
51 Tabulate, 55 Scrim, 58Blackmail, 59 Biased, 60 Allowed,61 War, 63 Ergo, 64 Sermon, 65Apt, 66 Skateboard, 68 Caddie, 69Rescue, 71 Out of date, 76 Seller, 77Stopwatch, 79 Ostrich, 81 Tot,
84 Nests, 85 Arithmetic, 86 Goods,87 Egypt, 88 By hook or by crook,89 Stack.
DOWN: 2 Outlaw, 3 Cupid, 5 Afar, 6Embargo, 7 Scurvy, 8 Chill, 9Neglect, 10 Lack, 11 Obeyed,
12 Dazed, 13 Deadpan, 14 Stilton, 18Automobile, 23 Astir, 24 Trisect, 26Unlaced, 27 Start-up, 29 Inertia, 30Marina, 31 Still, 32 Agenda, 34Team, 36 Abyss, 38 Ridge, 40 Guru,45 Bible, 46 Dragged, 47 Rake, 48Abates, 49 Crown, 50 Umbrage, 52Balderdash, 53 Lookout, 54 Theory,
55 Slimmed, 56 Paste, 57 Sees, 62Canon, 67 Violent, 68 Clutter, 70Catwalk, 72 Unclear, 73 Measly, 74Cathay, 75 Acidic, 76 Stays, 78Prior, 80 Roost, 82 Oslo, 83 Silo.
