Aimless
I may have thought I was on the way up after my stint at the hospital, the magic Summer of ’65 and reverting to my original goal, a degree in agriculture, but I was wrong. After only three days I wanted to leave Massey. Like the previous year I missed the outdoors, and as then I was aimless. Camping out was close enough to remember the smells and the sounds of waves and humming mosquitoes, and yet already it seemed aeons away.
I lived in the hostel for a couple of months, although I have no memory of it, and had a part time job at the University Book Shop, unpacking orders and pricing books. One night a couple of us had nothing to do, so we decided we’d take the mail together to the Post Office. When we got there, my friend told me of the time she’d had a large number of book orders to post, and was throwing them down the chute as fast as she could — Bang! Bang! Bang! — when suddenly a voice issued out of the letterbox, “Not so fast, please!”
That’s one of only three funny stories from those six months, and the other two aren’t that amusing, although they do involve the one thing I owe Massey for, which is curing me of the Demon Drink.
At Easter there was a respite when Ken, Les, David and I camped for a few days at Taupo, but the romantic prospect of living out and roughing it didn’t come off as it had over Summer. There were first class moments, like cooking a meal on the Desert Road with the wind so strong that the flames were horizontal, and so cold that the food, too, was cold by the time it reached the plate. After eating we got scared by a brutish black cloud and went down to the lake. Next day we fed the trout at Fairy Springs, and when one jumped up and caught me by surprise, I yelled “Shit!” so loudly that I startled the tourists.
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Revue
In mid April the cast and crew went to Wanganui to put on the first performance of Revue, in which I had a minor part.
We arrived at one o’clock on Friday afternoon with half the cast already pretty high. We danced and sang Revue songs on the steps of the Opera House, marched down town singing, had lunch and a couple of beers, came back and started rehearsing.
“It was an utter shambles,” I wrote in my diary, “— growing hysteria on the part of Producer and Scriptwriter.”
We broke for tea and marched back down town for sweet-and-sour pork at the Peking Café. Evening rehearsal was complete chaos, with the Producer battling wildly to prevent the Town Clerk throwing us out. At 11 o’clock we went to the motor camp to sleep — seventy all told — and turned in while the Wanganui citizenry kept a close watch, and a lady camper took the numbers of our cars.
Next morning we had fish and chips for breakfast and turned to for rehearsal. No orchestra. We waited. Eventually they arrived and we began rehearsing. Again it was pitiful, the Producer shouting at us, “Do it again, do it again!”
At 11:30 we went for hamburgers and reported back at 12:30 to be made up for a charity performance-cum-dress rehearsal at 2:00. At 2:00 o’clock the curtain went up. It was a terrible performance. The cues were awful, singing disgraceful, and the audience hardly tittered.
Afterwards we went and had a jug each, and tea again at the Peking Café. I tried to eat my Chinese style steak and pineapple with chopsticks borrowed from some girl. Then back to the Criterion for more DB — and more singing to advertise Revue – then back for makeup. I could hardly bear the girl touching my face with the makeup stick. By that time we had five hundred reservations and at 7:45 there was a long queue.
At 8:15 the curtain went up to a full house.
Well! The first act really swung on the crest of an alcoholic wave. It was terrific. The second act slowed slightly, but not overly, and with not too many missed cues. And the audience was great.
We got back to Massey on the bus next morning, about 1:00 a.m., and I slept till midnight. Some of the cast turned out to take part in the Boat Race next afternoon. I just watched. It was rainy and I was depressed and lonely.
The other performances were a mixed bag. Monday night was fairly dead because everyone was sober and rather frightened by the audience of familiar faces. Tuesday was better. On Wednesday I bought a bottle of Port and another of Screwdriver from the pub, meaning to share the Port with a Revue mate, but he didn’t turn up. So I started drinking it on my own.
I was alright until the curtain went up, but then it started to hit me. I don’t remember much of the performance except that it was bloody enjoyable. I played my role with real gusto, ad libbing like hell. I was a real success. In one scene I told someone loudly I’d forgotten to change my pants, and in another I walked over to someone else, slapped him on the back and proclaimed, “Oh God, I forgot my next line!” That was bad enough, but the real trouble was I didn’t have any more lines.
I rode the scooter back to the hostel, how I’m not sure. Needless to say, I vowed not to touch the stuff again.
The Producer survived and went on to a professional career.
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Flatting
At the end of April I moved into a flat with three friends from Northland College. This was when I went completely down the Vietnam rabbit hole, but it was much better than hostel to be amongst good friends.
At the end of June I was having a rough time. On the Tuesday I’d got a ticket from the police for giving a friend a lift to the university on my scooter, and in the evening a Physics test was a disaster. I’d drunk a tumbler of Rum and two of Port, and this combined with some rather awful food and junk made me violently ill in the night. I couldn’t remember a thing next day except that J. helped me through it. This is how you know who your friends are.
Needless to say, I vowed not to touch the stuff again.
Next night J. too got extremely drunk and came home screaming with laughter. He’d been walking down the street, bottle in hand, behind a man who became very nervous. Every now and then J. would start trotting on the spot, and this smartly dressed businessman would look around and start running. J. got ill as well, and went to bed.
§
That was when I realised I was going to fail unless I was careful.
Unless I was careful? It was only a matter of time.
I can’t remember anything — anything — about lectures at Massey. It’s no wonder the powers that be were reluctant to enrol me at Auckland for the third stop on my Cook’s Tour. It would be different today, now universities are funded by head count.
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Judgmental
I was a bit judgmental. On July 7th I wrote that I doubted whether one of my flatmate’s had ever given a thought to his own position in the world. “He’s clever and pleasant and critical of the awkwardness of earnest people, or the earnestness of awkward people.”
I think he may have had another of our flatmates in mind, who I said had a rather simple outlook. “He’s about honesty and friendliness and open heartedness, but he appropriates plants from his employer to start his own nursery. He’s physically strong. Talks about serious things. Holds them in his mind for a good five minutes.”
“J., now, he’s the perceptive one,” I wrote, “J. is mysterious. Quite callous about women, apparently, and quite loyal to his friends. Determined, quick tempered, very friendly, but always amusing himself — often at our expense, I suspect. Yet him I like best. He would be hardest working, most loyal, most intense. I think.”
You might think I was being a bit judgmental until you read what I wrote about myself. I was the worst. Twisted up, logical (sometimes), indignant, exuberant (sometimes), snappy, petty.
I had a point. One night we were discussing racial discrimination and I made an unkind remark to someone, who asked if it was personal. I said no.
“Ian,” J. said, “you’re a coward. It was directed at him.”
Anything I say here [I wrote], anything I write I don’t believe — because it’s not sincere. I’m always acting. My behaviour when I’m drunk suggests that all I want is to get adjusted, and when I am, I’ll be a harmless, merry, happy go lucky fool.
Needless to say, I vowed not to touch the stuff again. And more or less I haven’t since — at least in the sense of deciding to get plastered, get pissed, get drunk. I detest those expressions. Here’s another one: falling off the wagon. I might have fallen off occasionally, but I don’t jump.
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Tinted spectacles
Dad was by this time heavily involved in local body politics, probably sick of milking cows too — he was coming up for fifty — and so he was employing staff. Given that I was only home intermittently, I’m hazy about the details, but I remember Norman from the previous year very well, and a married man who lived in the house that Colleen and Keith would move into a year or so later. We thought he was very hard up, because sometimes after milking you’d see him take home turnips that we were growing for stock feed. There was another young man who nearly got himself injured or killed when a little, old red tractor he was operating tipped over. Colleen’s fiancé Keith also worked there for three months to help out before moving home to work for his Dad.
In the second half of 1966 I remember a young man called Tom and a “land girl” called Carole.
I liked Carole. “Women are like tinted spectacles,” I wrote, “they change the way you see the world.”
Her working gear is blue denim bellbottoms, filthy boots, dirty red pullover, red nylon parka. Her hair is blonde and unruly, and sits stiffly over her shoulders. She says she likes the smell of cows. And hay. When she isn’t smiling, she can look rather pugnacious, but when she smiles her face lights up and her eyes gleam.
She’d been to university too, in Dunedin. We talked about Uni and the UBS, where she’d also worked.
One day we all went to dig for toheroa on one of the West Coast beaches. Dad got most as usual. When we got home Mum made toheroa soup, her specialty — always delicious, but with the occasional grain of sand to set our teeth on edge.
That night Dad and I argued furiously about politics, Vietnam, China, etc., and, “as usual,” I wrote, “I won”. Things were pretty florid.
“Dad, you’re a bloody fanatic, and if you believe what you’ve just said, you’re either a liar or a fool.”
“If that’s being a fanatic, I am!”
“Fanaticism Is absolutely and completely disgusting.”
Afterwards, I went down to the barn to collect the tractor or something, and as soon as I was in the shed broke down. What a shameful thing to say.
§
By early September I’d left university and started working for Ross and Nell Blong on their farm near Ruawai. Nell was sister to Ron Cashin, a friend from Northland College.
Not long after I started working there, Carole and Tom were cleaning up after milking, and Carole was carrying buckets of boiling water to pump through the machine. She tripped and fell, burning herself down one leg and part of the other. She was wearing gumboots, and may have filled them with hot water in the process. She ran screaming to Tom, who dropped her in the water trough. Mum and Dad took her to hospital in Whangarei.
The burns down her leg were bad, and they kept her in a sterile room, so we had to don masks and gown to see her. Mum visited her faithfully, and I did too when I got home from Ruawai. Horrified by what had happened to her, I was nervous as we entered the hospital and put on our gowns, sweating behind my mask and finding nothing to say.
Mum got me to scrub the ceiling in Carole’s room, and she herself wallpapered it in preparation for her homecoming. Carole came back, stayed a week and left. She was too scared to do the work now, and I imagine she just wanted to go somewhere else.
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Back on the farm
Ross was a good boss, although in the Spring the bleakness and messiness of their farm compared with ours could be unsettling. He ran sheep as well as dairy cows, and the early morning patrols during lambing season were a bit grim for someone who wasn’t used to picking up the occasional dead lamb, or helping a ewe give birth. Still, I loved the starry sky in the spring mornings when we got up to milk, and the wind too — it seemed to be always windy in Ruawai.
Come summer I spent a good deal of time breaking in ground at Ross’s back farm, on the Tokatoka Road I think. About 35 acres. I would head out on the tractor at about 7.00 a.m. and return at dusk, eating lunch out there with billy tea. It was marvelously sunny, and dusty, and hot. I used to take off as many clothes as I could and soak up a glorious tan. It was frustrating at times, but my sense of achievement grew and grew as the job progressed.
Occasionally I’d slip over to the Tokatoka pub, whip down a couple of glasses, buy half a dozen cans of Lion or Skol lager, and put them in the creek. I’d drink them as I headed home down the back road after work, singing for dear life. I never used to talk much those nights, so Ross couldn’t smell the beer.
Towards the end of my time I got restless. Ross offered me a job for the coming season at £22 pounds a week, a fantastic wage for a single man, but Dad was talking rather vaguely about me working on the farm. I turned Ross down because of this and eventually missed out both ways. Dad gave my new brother-in-law Keith a job share milking, absolutely the right decision, and it was too late to change my mind about Ross.
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Dad wasn’t well at the time, so after I left Ross in March 1967 I helped out at Hikurangi until Keith could start.
I went from there to a job on a flash town supply farm out among the estuaries of the upper Manukau Harbour, near the airport. It was owned by a businessman with pretensions to be a country squire, so I used to say, and managed by a 30 year-old Massey Diploma boy called Dave. I wanted to come to Auckland to get my life moving again, and I thought that with Ken it just might.
For a month I thoroughly enjoyed the farm work, but heard practically nothing from Ken. My two chief impressions were of the farm at night — it floated like a fairytale ship in the airport lights and street lights and the moon and setting sun — and the beautiful, misty, crisp green mornings as the sun rose again.
There was a hangar across the water from us and they’d test the jet engines there — turn them towards us and blast us with an unearthly roar.