“You know, you were right. I must have dropped them in there when I put the groceries away” This was the start of our psychic relationship. But there was nothing else in it. She wasn’t my type at all; she was loud, opinionated and Australian!
Eventually she moved away to be closer to her mother, who was not too well. Something to do with her heart, I recall. But Trish still kept in touch and would ring me every couple of months or so.
Then one day I bumped into her in the lingerie department at Farmers. I know you’re probably wondering what I was doing in the lingerie department. I’d called into Farmers to get some more socks and undies, and was taking a shortcut through the lingerie department because I knew the meter was running out on my carpark. As I was racing though the aisles not looking left or right I heard my name called. I turned to see Trish standing there holding up a pair of very small, frilly undies.
“What do you think of these?” she says.
“…Umm. Very nice” I say, kind of not thinking beyond these frillies under my nose. “That’s what I thought. I might get these” she says.
We wait in line to buy the $63.99 pair of knickers, and talk about what’s been happening. Alfred is now seven and enjoying his new school, she tells me, and her Mum, unfortunately, is worse than before.
“Got time for a coffee?” she asks.
“Sure”, I lie.
We sat down with our coffee. Trish got herself a muffin as well. I watched as she cut it in half and slapped a huge swath of butter across it, and before you know it she’d shoved a huge hunk of it into her mouth. From what I could make out, through the butter and the crumbs, she had recently moved into her Mum’s place and spent a lot of time looking after the old dear. I’d met Trish’s Mum just the once when Trish was living next door, and even then she seemed to be a frail old lady. Her name was Beatrice, I think, and she had a slight Scottish accent. No, that’s not true. It might have been Irish.
Eventually we got around to talking about me. I told her how my job was still as boring as ever, but I was making more money. And how my wife (soon to be my ex-wife) had broken up with her boyfriend, and was now onto another boyfriend called Richard. Another lucky Dick, I suggested.
“You still taking photos?” she asked.
“Yeah. I’d go insane if I didn’t have my studio”.
I was lucky. Unlike Trish’s old place, I had a double garage. I’d converted one half into a proper studio, even gibbed and painted all the walls myself. It was a real studio, with all the backdrops, lights and props. Word traveled fast - I think I must have photographed all of the local brides who’ve got hitched in the last six years, and then their kids. And, in some cases, their next wedding. I’ve shot quite a few girls wanting to be models, (my wife hadn’t been keen on that), some families and a number of couples. It gave me a little bit of extra cash to spend on my favourite pastime: fishing. Sometimes I’ll spend a whole weekend up north fishing with a mate. Great fun, and between the beers and the yarns, we’d catch a bit of tucker to bring back and throw in the freezer.
“I might need you to take my photo” said Trish.
“Sure. Just let me know. I wont even charge you”. I smiled.
“Maybe I’ll bake you a cake” she said.
“…Umm. Thanks”
I’d tasted her cooking before. Overcooked cabbage, undercooked potatoes and too much salt. I’d smelt her cooking across the fence many times. I remember she had to call the fire brigade once when one of her cooking adventures got out of hand. Fortunately, Mister Pilkington was an understanding landlord.
But I know she made great cake. Carrot cake was my favourite, and a week before she leftCroall Avenueshe’d baked me a carrot cake, complete with delicious icing. I scoffed it all within a few days. It’s the only time I missed her.
Three weeks later to the day, Trish rang me. Could she come around on Saturday to get her photo taken? I told her that was okay with me. My mate was away on business so there’d be no fishing this weekend anyway.
“ okay with you?” I asked
“You mean in the morning, right?”
“…yep”
And so it happened. At precisely her old dunger turned up in my driveway. I watched her get out. Had she lost weight? Maybe it was trick of the light.
Maybe her diet had improved. I doubted it. I put the jug on and we had a cup of coffee together. I could tell she was really excited about getting her photograph taken. After we’d finished our coffees and I’d rinsed the cups in the sink, we went out to the studio. It looked like any garage from the outside, except I’d blacked out the small window in the door with a dark cloth.
“Come In”
She stepped into my world. Trish had never been to my studio before – it was by invitation only. I turned the lights on and I could see she was impressed. There was an audible gasp. Along one end wall I’d a set of six large portraits – and they were big – framed and hung in a row. There was a small desk in the far corner under a portrait of a girl, maybe six or seven and her bicycle. The bicycle had been a present from her father who died a week before the photo was taken. You could see that sadness in her eyes. On the desk was a computer with a large monitor. Just by the door, as you came in was a small refrigerator. It used to hold all my rolls of film, but now I was all modern and digital, it kept my beer cold. It got a lot of use over summer.
At the other end of the studio was the work area. Two large metal stands stood either side, and between then a metal rod was secured. This held a giant roll of white background paper, which curled down and out from the floor. A few metres in front of that stood two tripods either side, with great big black umbrellas on top. The umbrellas were turned facing towards the paper background. Cables came out from each umbrella and snaked across the floor to a powerbox somewhere towards one side. Around the sides of the studio were a couple of spare chairs, a large electric cooling fan, a big aluminium case that contained spares for my lights and a full length mirror.
Trish stood in front of the mirror, looking at herself. I realized she’d spent a bit of time getting her hair nice, and she was wearing makeup. I’d only ever seen her wearing makeup maybe once or twice before, and that was when she had to attend a wedding of one of her old school mates, or a funeral. She was wearing a nice floral summery dress with a few buttons down the front and quite a tight waist that made her figure a little slimmer than it probably was.
While she checked herself out in the mirror, I assembled my camera gear. I own a trusty Nikon D300x camera and a few lenses. They weren’t cheap to buy, but I’d saved up for a while and paid cash for them. I knew that I’d have to get serious equipment if I was going to take my photography seriously. My latest purchase was a wireless slave unit attached to the camera, so I didn’t have to worry about cables all over the place.
“What would you like me to do?” asked Trish.
“We’ll start with you sitting, then we’ll see how we go.”
And so the photo session began. I took a number of photos of her almost side onto the camera – “shoulders back, chest out” - leaning back – “chin up please” – leaning forward – “up straight”
“Awesome! Now let’s do some standing now”
Same routine as before. As she stood up, I gave her the quick once over, as you do. I hadn’t realized how tall she was in her heels. She must have noticed me looking at them.
“Do you like them? I got them especially for the photos.”
They were pink; almost shocking pink, with a glittery finish. Very nice, I thought.
“Shiny” I said. “They make you look taller”
She smiled.
“Can you make me look sexy? I’m going on one of those dating websites and I want to snare myself a man….”
Good luck with that, I thought.
“You’ll meet another Barry and get married!” I said.
“I doubt it”. She didn’t look too happy with me. Barry had been just one of her few boyfriends that had stayed more than one night, but it hadn’t lasted, ending in lots of tears.
“Well, we’d better have a button undone. A bit of cleavage might do the trick”, I said with a smile.
She undid all three buttons, and lent into the camera.
“Is this what you mean?” she asked.
Her bosom wasn’t the biggest I’d seen, but she knew how to show herself off.
I took a whole series of shots. I was sure one of them should entice a man into her life.
By now we’d been in the studio for more than an hour, and I was sure I’d captured the real Trish.
“Let’s take a break, and we’ll have a look at the photos. Come with me and grab a seat”
I walked over to the computer in the corner, sat down, and pushed a cable into the side of the camera. A couple of seconds later there was a beep and the photos started to appear on the screen.
As each photograph appeared on the monitor, I could see Trish’s smile get bigger and bigger.
“These are awesome. You’re a great photographer!” She grabbed my arm.
“Thanks....”
After we’d looked at them – twice – she seemed most pleased, and I burnt a copy of them all on DVD for her.
We went back to the house for a coffee and she told me her plans for her future.
“When my Mum goes – and I reckon that’s not far away – I’ll sell her house and move up North for a while.” She said it matter-of-factly, but I couldn’t help feeling there was an underlying sadness.
“Alfred’s having a bit of a hard time settling in at school, and I think a new start would do us both good....”.
She told me all about her Mum’s illness and how she was saving for her funeral. Next year Trish was seriously thinking of going to Polytech to study nursing. And after that?
“Maybe I’ll become a Doctor?” We laughed. We both knew that was unlikely to happen.
Four and a half months passed before I next heard from Trish, which was quite a long time. It had started out as a normal day. I’d cleared the mailbox, and there were the usual mail. Bills from the phone and the gas company, a “special offer” on something or other. But in amongst all of these was a bright green envelope with a handwritten address on the front. I opened it, expecting to be disappointed, but it was an invitation to a wedding.
I immediately telephoned Trish. I didn’t need to tell her who it was, we’d spoken on a regular basis so she recognised my voice.
“What’s the story?” I asked. I wasn’t going to beat around the bush.
“You know how I put my photo on the internet dating site? Well, I got quite a few replies.
After what you said about me meeting a Barry, I was determined to never date a Barry! I went out with a few blokes, none of them called Barry. I had some interesting dates. One guy even took me to the opera! Imagine that. Nice chap he was, too..
Anyway, eventually I met my best friend. A lovely, caring guy called Tony. We hit it off like a house on fire. We went to a lot of movies; he even took me away for the weekend to Rotorua. We had a great time!”
I could tell by the tone in her voice that she was excited. This was the most animated I’d heard her for a long time.
“So why aren’t you marrying Tony?” I asked.
“ You noticed...”
The invitation read “PATRICIA JANE MATTHEWS and BARRIE JOHN SMITH invite you to their wedding”. I wondered who this Barrie was.
“As I said, Tony and I were getting on really well, having some laughs, you know. Well, one Saturday a mate of his was celebrating his thirtieth birthday, and Tony asked if I would be his “date” for the evening. Naturally, I said I would.”
“At the party there were about twenty or so people, mainly couples. There were a few single guys, and one of these singles was a tall lanky guy called Barrie. We got talking, and it seemed like we had a lot in common. Anyway, we’d both had a few glasses of wine – it might have been more than a few – and before I knew it I was back at Barrie’s place and were in bed together.”
“You woke up next morning in this strange guy’s bed!”
“But he was really sweet about it. He even made me cooked breakfast. I wrote it off as one of those things that happen. We shared a coffee and I left.”
“...But...” I said
“But – and this is the strange bit” Trish said “ I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Should I call him, I thought. After a day of this, I decided it was time to do something about it So I rang him. He was not surprised I’d called. You know what he said to me?”
“What?”
“He knew I was going to call. He said he had had a premonition!”
Maybe he really was a spy? His office was in town, on the second floor of a three storey building; which was quite high for Hamilton in the 60s. We would sometimes go into town on the bus with Mum and she would point it out to us. But we never went inside. Going into town with Mum was a treat and we always ended up at Adams Bruce. This was a heavenly place. Along one side of this long narrow shop were cubicles with seating. The other side was the counter and the glass cabinets. The glass cabinets contained biscuits of every colour I could imagine at the time. And chocolates. You could buy individual chocolates or whole boxes of Queen Anne chocolate assortments. We couldn’t afford chocolate: our pleasure was ice cream. You could get a big double header cone with real creamy ice cream for sixpence. My Mum would buy us each one and we would all sit in a cubicle. My Mum didn’t have one. She would delight in having some of ours. Adams Bruce biscuits were almost like shortbread or milk biscuits. On rare occasions I remember my father would bring us home a big bag of broken biscuit pieces.
My Mum never drove. We always only had one car, usually a good solid English model. Always second hand. When I was really quite young I remember we had an Austin van. It had no back seats so Dad added a plank of wood for us to sit on. No seatbelts, of course. Once in a while all six of us would go to Raglan in that van. At that time, much of the road over the hills was unsealed so it would take us all day to get there and back. This adventure would probably only happen once or twice a year, mainly because Dad was working. During the school holidays we went to the movies at the Civic, The State or the Embassy, and played with the rest of the kids in our street. Our house was a state house, and we had a very large back yard. When I was very young I thought planes could land there. All the kids from the street descended on our place over summer. Dad kept the lawn immaculate, and was always mowing it with his roller mower. I can still picture it now: Dad pushing the lawnmower, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, an old shearer’s shirt and long trousers. Dad did not wear shorts very often. One of our neighbours was Mrs Martin and she did not like us very much. We were always kicking or throwing balls over to her place, and the older boys would either crash over the hedge and retrieve the wayward ball or go around and grab the ball without asking. I was younger, and when it was my turn to fetch the ball I would knock on her door. I remember one day knocking on her door, and when she opened it, behind her I could see a large sink full of balls she had confiscated from us. We must have really annoyed her. Eventually, Dad erected a big mesh fence above the hedge to try and catch the balls, but we somehow managed to send them even higher. So we were going to be in Mrs Martin’s bad books for a bit longer.
Going on holiday to Waihi – our favourite holiday destination – was a gigantic undertaking. Holiday homes for rent would be advertised in the classified of the newspaper, and Dad would have to make several long distance calls to make arrangements. He hated having to spend money. Often when we were away on holiday, Dad would have to return to the city to work, and for a couple of weeks it was just Mum and us kids. My sister was the eldest, so she tended to mix with the older boys and girls on the beach, and they listened to pop music. I was quite content on building sand castles and finding strange looking shells to give to Mum. My sister loved Waihi. She had boyfriends by now and she would spent all day on the beach. One of her boyfriends was a minister’s son, and I remember he rowed all the way across the estuary from Athenree to see her. And back. Mum thought that was so romantic.
Summer holidays always seemed long and carefree. Towards the end of each holiday, Dad would return from the city. We would usually go to the cinema at the afternoon matinee, which was special features for children. There was only the one cinema at Waihi beach. Every Friday and Saturday night in the vacant lot beside the cinema the local Lions Club would have a spin the wheel quick fire raffle. A huge crowd would gather. This was Dad’s domain. Several sellers would walk through the crowd selling coloured wooden bats, each with a different number on them. As he walked up to Dad, the seller would offer him a choice of numbers, Dad paid his money and chose his number. When all the bats were sold, the sellers would signal to the guy up at the front who would call out “All sold. Ready to Spin?”
I would look at Dad’s bat – it usually had a number seven on it – and then I’d look at the wheel as it spun in front of the crowd. As it slowed it would clap-clap-clap until it finally came to rest on a number. “Number twenty six!” the guy at the front yelled out. There would be a shout from the back of the crowd. Someone had just won a meat pack or a box of biscuits. The sellers would quickly gather up the bats from everyone, and repeat the process. Dad always came home with something for Mum, even if it took him all evening.
When we were older, we started going to MountMaunganui for our summer holidays. I must have still been quite young because one day Dad had to carry me all the way down the Mount because it was so hot. I guess all that secret agent training made him stronger than he looked.
Every Friday night in our house it was fish and chips for tea. We were brought up as Catholics and we were not allowed to eat meat on Fridays. I never knew why. The local chip shop was only a five minute walk away, down the end of our road then down a main road to the shops. The shops consisted of an IGA grocery store, run by Mr Gilmour, a stationery shop – that’s where I got my War Picture Library comics from – that also had a lending library, Radford’s dairy, Petersen’s the butcher, and the fish and chip shop. On Fridays the chip shop was always busy. Threepence would buy you a big lot of chips rolled up in newspaper, and we would also get a piece of fish each. On a good day my older brother and I would be allowed to go get the tea. We knew that for a halfpenny, you could buy a bag of broken bits. These were all the bits of batter that had been fried and broken off the fish, and chips that were too small. This all came rolled up in newspaper, and we would open one end and feast off that as we walked home. We would hide the finished newspaper in the neighbour’s hedge so Mum wouldn’t tell us off.
On most Saturdays Dad worked for the Totalisater Board. That meant he went to the horse races and was the man behind the small window who sold you your betting ticket. Or he would give you cash if you were lucky enough to have won anything. He had to handle a lot of money, and would cash up and balance at the end of the day. If he was short he had to put it in himself out of his own pocket. Dad was very careful with money. He would have to travel around the district, Paeroa, Te Aroha, and Te Awamutu to different race meetings, and quite often we were in bed when he came home. Dad didn’t bet on the horses, I think probably because he wasn’t allowed to as part of his job. We never went to the races.
Every Sunday he worked at Answer Services. I went to see him at work there only once. He let me spent the whole day with him. It might have been my birthday. His job consisted of answering the telephone for other people. He had a small first floor office, with just a small window. This looked out onto a car park below, so we could keep an eye on our car. There was a single small fan in the corner. Along one wall was a panel with rows and rows of holes, each hole had a small card under it with a name written on it. Beside each hole was a small light. I watched as one of the holes lit up. Dad pulled a cable from beside him and put it in the hole. He had a headset on. “Welcome to Hamilton drainage” he said. Every time a light came on, Dad answered with the name of that company. And he did this all day. As well, he would answer the calls for the local taxi company, and radio the taxis to send them to their customers.
“Commercial. Any cars for commercial? Victoria. Any cars for Victoria?” And he would rattle off a list of taxi ranks until someone answered.
“Thank you two seven. Fifteen. One Five Clarkin Road to the Hospital”
Dad always spoke like this, repeating all the numbers, and spelling out strange words, B for Bravo, C for Charlie etc. Maybe all secret agent fathers talk like this.
He’d brought a thermos with him and some sandwiches for the both of us. At the local radio station rang up and Dad would give them a live report on air of what’s been happening. Obviously Hamilton was quiet most Sundays – the shops were all closed – but Dad was monitoring the Police and Fire radios so he could always make up something interesting for the listeners.
Oh, and as well as working for the Health Department, the Totalisator Board and Answer Services, Dad also audited the books for the local workers credit union.
At one stage he also had an evening cleaning job working for Crothalls. He was the boss of a handful of cleaners and would have to go around making sure they did their job. And if someone called in sick or did not turn up, Dad would have to do the cleaning for them. He even got Mum to help him sometimes. He had keys to most of the banks in town, shops and a few Government departments.
I was beginning to have suspicions. Dad went by two names. My Mum called him Jerry and so did most of his relatives. He’d always been called Jerry since he was a boy. But interestingly, other people called him Morrie. I knew his real name was Maurice, but I never heard anyone call him that.
Dad was an accounts clerk, although he never qualified as an accountant. The hall cupboard was filled from floor to ceiling with accounting texts books that he must have read at some stage. We were not allowed to go into the hall cupboard. They were not new books, and I guess he bought them second hand. Dad loved second hand. He would frequent all the auction houses for a bargain. He had a habit of buying things that were cheap, but just needed a little fixing, one day. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to have the time to get around to fixing them. I remember one day looking in the garage (which he built) and realising there were nine vacuum cleaners lined up on the wall. None of them worked.
Later his day job changed to working for the Ministry of Transport. As a kid that seemed to be a great job because Dad got to sometimes bring home a black and white traffic cop car. Well, it was like a traffic car except it didn’t have the flashing light on top. But it still had the official transport ministry crest on the side of the front doors, so my mates from school were impressed.
My father was an optimist. He would declare over breakfast, with a half smoked cigarette in his hand, that today he would find a ten pound note in the street. And he would. Sometimes it took a week. But when you are a child you have to believe your parents. My father was very believable. It wasn’t until I was much older that I learned the amazing truth about my father.
He might have found a tenner in the street, who knows? But he had no real luck at the lottery. In my day there was the Golden Kiwi and the Tatts. The Tatts was Tattersalls, and it was Australian dollars that you could win. The tickets were much more expensive that the Golden Kiwi but the prizes were greater. We used to visit Mr Osborne the barber to get our tickets. When I was older I would get my haircuts there, until he retired. But Mum and Dad would cut our hair. We would sit out on the porch with a towel around us and Dad would attack us with a pair of scissors, short back and sides. The Golden Kiwi was drawn whenever all the tickets were sold, and you would check the results in the Saturday paper. There were no Sunday papers, except for the “8o’clock” which came out on a Saturday night. Paper boys would be waiting outside all the cinemas as you left the movie.
“. . Newspaper” they would call out, and people would hand over their sixpence for a copy. Dad quite often worked at night, so he would sometimes bring the paper home, but usually we’d buy a copy at Radford’s dairy on the way home from Sunday morning church. Just about every week, we would also get licorice pipes from the dairy. These were big fat licorice in the shape of a gentlemen’s pipe, and they would come in a paper bag. It made going to church an enjoyable experience. Dad was always late for church. This annoyed my mother, who was not Catholic. We didn’t live far from Saint Josephs, and we would walk even when the weather was bad but because we were late so often, we had to wait outside until the usher at the door – usually Mister Frainey – would beckon us in. Maybe it was Dad’s intention, but by this stage we’d missed the first collection. Dad always gave to the church, but how much I don’t think my mother even knew. The second collection would come around and Dad would place his small manilla envelope in the collection plate and hand it on to the next parishioner. It could have been empty.
When I was very young we didn’t have a refrigerator or a washing machine. I remember we had to buy meat at the butcher’s, next to the fish and chip shop, and cook it within a day or so of buying it. We had a cupboard which my parents called a safe where meat and other perishables were kept. My mother cooked for us every day on the old electric oven which had come with the house. I remember vividly the day Dad bought Mum a brand new oven. It was her Christmas present. It is the first new thing I remember Dad buying. Our most popular dinner was corned beef and cabbage. We always had mashed potatoes to go with it. Mum would mash potatoes and carrots together so you got this multi coloured scoop of potato on the side of your plate. My parents had Coleman’s mustard as well, but I didn’t like it. We sometimes also had homemade steamed pudding with custard.
Wash day was quite an event. In the laundry there was a large round copper filled with water, which was heated below by a fire that Mum had to light and keep going during the day. There was always a lot of firewood piled up beside our back door. When the water in the copper was hot enough Mum could put all the clothes in, together with a cake of Taniwha soap. She would have a big wooden spoon which she used to stir the clothes until she was sure they were washed. Beside the copper were two large concrete tubs. These were filled with cold water. Mum would take the soapy clothes out of the copper and put them in the first tub. She would wring out all the soapy water before putting the clothes in the final tub of clean water. And then she would put everything in her cane wash basket before heading out to the clothesline. She would then repeat all of this for the next load of washing. Most days we were at school while this was happening, so usually we didn’t see what Mum did during the day. But during the holidays it was a different story.
When I was about seven my Mum was given a second-hand wringer washing machine. This made life a little easier for her. And I think we got a refrigerator about the same time. I had never seen ice in our house before that. The refrigerator was not new either and so it had a tendency to freeze up and huge lumps of ice would form. The best thing on a summer’s day was chipping these big ice lumps out of the refrigerator and tossing them out onto the grass. Sometimes it took an hour for them to melt.
Dad liked cars. Every January the boys of the family, which included Dad, would travel by train to Pukekohe to see the New Zealand Grand Prix motor racing. It was always a long, hot day and pretty boring when you are just a youngster. However, I always looked forward to the trip. Not just because this was one of the few times we boys got to spend a bit of time with our father, but because I saw it as an opportunity to make some extra pocket money for myself. If you collected empty soft drink bottles that people had discarded on the ground, you could cash them in. Although the money wasn’t much, probably sixpence for twenty bottles, by the end of the day you might have cashed in enough to have a few shillings. That was a lot of money for someone my age. For a penny you could buy a big bag of sweets.
Over the years, Dad owned a number of cars. There was the Austin van, followed by a Standard Vanguard, which, after a number of years was upgraded to a more modern Standard Vanguard. The engine in the Vanguard cars were based on those fitted to the Massey Ferguson tractor. Or so Dad said. After the Vanguards we had a series of Vauxhall Victor cars. These were smaller than the Vanguard and prone to breaking down. Dad’s greatest achievement was the day he brought home a Triumph 2000. Not new, of course, but this had a 2 litre engine, and a luxury interior. Like all of Dad’s cars, he did all the running repairs and maintenance. It was only if something major needed fixing that it went to Grimmer Motors up the road. But I was sure that when Dad was at work he drove sports cars just like all the secret agents did in the comics I read. Mum was happy when Dad was tinkering in the garage, although he always came in late for dinner, and she had to keep it warm in the oven. Buying a car was a long drawn out process. Dad would visit all the car sales yards in town several times. And the next week he would repeat the process. He would take the whole family on evening excursions to places like Te Awamutu or Cambridge where he would get us to hold the torch while he looked at cars. He always carried a lit cigarette, and dropped ash on his trousers. On journeys, Mum would be constructing roll-your-own cigarettes and lighting them, before handing them to Dad as he drove.
He was a chain smoker, so she never stopped, no matter how long the trip. I remember being at the cinema once with my parents, when Dad went to light up a cigarette while we were watching the movie. Mum only just stopped him in time. I don’t think he realised where he was, he was so used to having a cigarette in his mouth.
I would love getting the mail from the letterbox, and sometimes I’d sit out by the roadside waiting. Quite often there would be two deliveries in the one day, especially nearer Christmas time. The postie would have a whistle to let you know you had mail. About five or six times a year there would arrive a plain brown envelope addressed to Dad. It had “O.H.M.S” printed on the top left corner. This was an official Government letter, and it meant more than likely Dad would soon have to travel by train to Wellington to attend a meeting. Mum told me that O.H.M.S meant On Her Majesty’s Service.
As a child I never got a lot of mail, just the odd birthday card, and Christmas cards from Uncles and Aunties that lived out of Hamilton. That is until I became an official Cadbury’s chocolate taster. I don’t know how it came about, but for about a year I was one of only a handful of children in New Zealand who each month were sent a package, the size of a small shoebox, crammed full of chocolate. But it wasn’t just for eating. I took my task seriously. Every month I had to taste the chocolate, file a report and fill in a form, and post it back to Cadbury’s head office in Dunedin. This was my first real job.
At Christmas we would always get a parcel from my Grandfather and Grandmother, who lived in Kent, in England. It was usually a large tin, covered in cotton material, which had been hand sewn around all the edges with thread, to protect the contents. It usually took about six weeks for parcels to arrive by sea from England. Inside, my Gran and Pop, as I called them, had presents for everyone. I usually got a Dinky toy, which was much sought after. In the shops, shipments of Dinky toys only came a few times a year. There was always a buzz around the school when someone had found out that Woolworths had got more Dinky toys in for sale. I was one of the luckier kids at school, because I had grandparents in England who sent me Dinky toys.
Mum and Dad had friends in Fielding, Jack and Gladys Dennis who had a farm, and maybe once a year we would travel down there and stay with them. They had two children, a boy and a girl, so we had someone to play with. Kevin had a great collection of Dinky toys, including lots of army vehicles. He even had the tank and tank transporter, in military green, which cost a million pounds to buy. My army toys were limited to Jeeps, a couple of small trucks and a howitzer gun, which attached to the back of a Jeep.
Because they lived on a farm, they didn’t have their own telephone line; they had a party line, which meant they had to share it with their neighbours on the same road. It was a little annoying, but fun also. If you wanted to make a call, you had to lift the receiver and say “working?” If there was no reply, you turned a handle on the side of the phone and eventually you got to talk to the operator at the telephone exchange.
“Hamilton 59398 please” I would hear my father say.
The fun part was listening in on other people’s conversations. Unfortunately, farming folk are not very exciting, and their conversations usually revolved around the weather, their livestock, and, if it was a woman talking, recipes for making cakes. We got told off if we were caught using the telephone, so it was a rare occasion to be able to listen in on someone.
I’d been brought up in a town, so I wasn’t really used to the farm life. But my brothers and I seemed to have a lot of fun, climbing fences, and chasing sheep. I’m not sure what my sister managed to do, because she rarely played with us boys. I suspect she was inside baking cakes with Mum and Gladys.
Gladys was an amazing cook. Everything was made on a wood fired stove. There were always biscuits for us kids, and every evening we all set down at the big wooden table in the middle of the kitchen, and we had a roast meal, usually lamb but sometimes beef, all served with roast potatoes, peas, pumpkin and gallons of rich thick gravy. Everything came from the farm, including the milk. I can still taste farm milk. It’s thick, and it has a head on it, and it’s creamy and comes in big metal buckets, straight from the cow. I learnt very quickly that porridge tastes better with fresh farm milk. Gladys also used to make her own ice cream, and of course most days we had scones for morning tea, with homemade jam and homemade cream.
My second real job was collecting money for the Waikato Times. I must have been twelve at the time, not physically fit enough to do a paper round, but able to be a money collector. I was given a little notebook with people’s names in, and the amount they owed. On the Saturday morning, I would go to the various houses, knock on the door and collect the money. If there was no one home, I would make a note in my notebook, and they would have to pay double the next week. It was usually cash, but sometimes one of the older people would write me out a cheque. It would take me a few hours to make all the collections, and when I got home I would have to balance the cash with the amount I should have collected. Then I would take the money and the book around to the Waikato Times agent, who lived in the next street over.
One day, Mum got a phone call from the agent. I had been dreading this, because I knew what I had done. After she had hung up, she came and saw me. She told me that he was concerned that I had not collected from some people who were home at the time. They had rung the agent to complain. I had written that they were not home.
“And strangely, all those houses seem to have dogs” Mum said. There it was. It had been said. I looked sheepish and didn’t know what to say.
I was fired, and all because of dogs.
I had been afraid of dogs all my life. None of our friends had dogs. We had a cat or two, but never a dog. One of our cats was called Paderewski, named after a famous Polish pianist. The other cat I remember was Sam, who later became Samantha when we realised what sex it was. When I was about five or six I was walking home from school along Tranmere Road, not far from our house. I knew there were a number of dogs in the street, and I usually crossed the road whenever I saw one. But on this particular day, I wasn’t quick enough. Standing in front of me was what seemed to be a monster German Shepherd dog. And it was looking at me and barking. I was petrified. The dog was slowly coming towards me growling. I started to cry. Fortunately, some other boys came along and shouted out, and the monster dog turned and ran away. Up until then that was the scariest moment of my life.
Our neighbours were called the Wards. They were older than me, and we rarely went over to their place. Some of the older kids did, however. David Ward had a hut. It was bigger than a garden shed and made out of wood, which means his Dad probably built it for him. It wasn’t a tree hut, it was on ground level in one corner of their section, close to our boundary fence. It also had a tunnel. A real tunnel. I only found out this by accident, when one day my older brother went over to the Wards and took me with him, reluctantly. Mum had told him to keep an eye on me while she went to the shops. The tunnel was under the floorboards, and went all the way until it came out in the thick of the hedge which separated our two properties. It was quite a secret and they told me I had to say nothing about it to anyone. I thought my Dad knew all about secrets, but I was sure he didn’t know about this one. Because I was small, they let me climb through the tunnel, but I was a bit reluctant. I’d always had this recurring dream about a tunnel or cave falling in on me, and this seemed to be tempting fate. I eventually climbed through, but I didn’t like it.
What I did like was when the Wards moved away, and we got new neighbours. Not because I didn’t like the Wards, but the new neighbours were even better. The Rules had two boys, Lindsay and Andrew and a girl called Chrisanne. She was about my age, and a real tomboy, so it was like having another boy my age to play with. Only she liked to do some interesting things. Because of my asthma as a child, I didn’t get involved in much sport, and I was more than happy at times helping Mum with the baking, while the other kids were out playing. Chrisanne liked to cook also. Our greatest venture together was making crabapple juice, made from the crabapple trees in her garden. After making a large batch one day, we decided to set up a little stall at the end of her driveway, so that people passing by would stop and buy a drink. I don’t know if we made much money, but we said hello to a lot of people.
Sare Crescent was like most streets of the 60s. There were a large number of children, as a result of the post-war baby boom, but most of the families were not hugely well off. We all managed; the fathers all went off to work, while the mothers stayed home and cooked, cleaned and looked after their children. All the fathers seemed to have jobs. Dad was only one of a few in our street that owned a motor car, but he usually took the bus to work during the week. If the neighbourhood children were not playing in our backyard (Mum tells me we had one of the biggest in the street) we were out on the road riding our bikes or scooters, with someone on lookout for cars. It was not a very busy street, but sometimes we had to rush off the road as a car came hurtling around the corner. It was a crescent shaped street, so we couldn’t quite see around the corner. The other end of the street joined Clarkin Road, a main road heading East. At the other end was Heaphy Terrace which was one door down from our house. On the corner were the Wards, later the Rules, then us, then Mrs Martin (the ball lady), the Kingstons (where my plump friend Lester lived) then the Cox’s. The Cox boys were a bit older then me, but they still came to our house to play.
One day when we were out playing, we could hear the sound of a fire siren in the distance. It seemed to be getting closer, and closer. We were playing out the back of our house at the time, when we heard the fire engine turn into our street. We all rushed out to the street to see it parked outside the Cox’s house, its lights flashing. I couldn’t see any flames, but the firemen were running hoses into the house. The fire engine in the street was the most exciting drama that had happened for some time. Eventually the firmen left, and we found out later that the Cox’s chimney had caught fire.
About six months after this incident, there was more drama in our street. It was evening, we’d had dinner and I was sitting in front of the fireplace in my pyjamas. We were playing Scrabble in the lounge, while Dad was in the kitchen, having a smoke, reading the newspaper and listening to opera (his favourite) on the radio. Just then, we heard an all mighty crash on the road outside. We all got up, and headed for the front door to see what the commotion was all about. It was dark, but already a couple of the neighbours were out there with torches, and you could just make out what was happening. A car was stopped in the road, its lights on but its motor silent. Everyone was looking at the front wheels, and as my eyes got accustomed to the darkness, I could make out a shape under the front of the car. Dad had raced to our garage and got a torch so he could help out. We stayed on the opposite side of the road and watched. A motor scooter had cut the corner of the street, and crashed straight into the car and ended up under the front wheels. As Dad got to the car, he turned on his torch. This was an amazing light and it lit up the whole scene, and you could see the person under the car. Dad held his torch back so everyone could see. There were men pulling on the metal of the scooter, another one operating a jack on the side of the car, and suggestions flying all over the place. Eventually the fire brigade arrived, their flashing red lights lighting up the whole street, followed by an ambulance. By now, everybody in the street was out on the footpath having a look. They managed to extracate the scooter driver, and placed him in the ambulance, which sped off, sirens wailing in the night. The car seemed to be drivable, although the driver standing on the other side of the road seemed pretty shaken up. After the fire engine and ambulance had left, some of the men finished by sweeping up the broken glass in the street. The car driver had gingerly driven on his way, and Dad came back to our house. I had never before seen the torch he had been using, but I noted that it had a long fat black handle, similar to a baton, and the glass front on it was extremely large. The light beam that had come from it was so extremely bright, and I imagined it would be ideal for signalling to a light aircraft overhead as you waited at a deserted, makeshift, out of the way airstrip in the middle of the night. The sort of thing a secret agent would keep in his garage.
