Monthly Archives: November 2009

Part 2: The house that wasn’t there

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Simon and David were two businessmen in their mid 40s. David was visiting Christchurch and it was Simon’s job to give his colleague a tour of the city. Today they were visiting the Canterbury Museum and had stumbled across the Bluff Paua House exhibit around the same time I did.

But before we were allowed into the replica of Bluff couple Fred and Myrtle Flutey’s front room, we were first ushered into an anteroom and were required to watch a context-setting audio-visual presentation to help explain why there was half a seaside house filled with paua shells inside a museum in urban Canterbury.

“It’s Kiwiana, David,” Simon explained as the video started. “I thought it was just a house with a few pauas,” David said.

I’m suspicious of anything described as Kiwiana, because it all seems to just be things from the collective childhood of Baby Boomers. The video name-checked all the usual suspects – Jandals, pavlova, Buzzy Bee and, of course, paua shells. David was suspicious too, so Simon further explained, “It’s part of our heritage – Lemon & Paeroa, tomato sauce, fish and chips.”

The video over, we made our way into the replica house. It smelt clean, un-lived-in. “It’s quite a small lounge, isn’t it,” Simon observed. Well, it’s not like anyone actually lives there.

Simon and David didn’t take long to see the paua room and they soon headed for the exit. Taking one final look around, David said, “It’s ‘Fred’ and it’s ‘Myrtle’ but it’s just a bunch of paua shells.” And I realised this was true.

When the Fluteys were alive, to visit their crazy paua-shell house you had to travel all the way to the bottom of the country – the bottom of the world! – and then go inside this eccentric old couple’s actual house, with the knowledge that this wasn’t just a museum space; it was their real living room.

Reconstructed as a museum exhibit, it comes across more as a memorial to both the Fluteys and to Kiwiana. It’s a crazy frozen moment of something that doesn’t actually exist any more.

But in the absence of the Fluteys, has Canterbury Museum now taken on the role of the eccentric collector/hoarder?

Here’s this serious museum with its dioramas of pre-European Maori, collection of taxidermied birds and hall of Antarctic exploration, and yet there, lurking in a corner, is a pretend house filled with paua shells and other kitsch objects. (Even Te Papa at its most manic was never like this.)

And like the Fluteys, it almost seems that it’s something the museum hasn’t set out to do deliberately. It’s just found itself with a big collection of shells and done the museum world equivalent of opening your seaside home to busloads of tourists.

So let’s stop pretending that the paua house at Canterbury museum belongs to Fred and Myrtle. No, Canterbury Museum is your great-uncle who has built a replica house in his shed and is arranging shells on the wall for the tourists.

Shrine

Part 1: Four days, maximum

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Wellington is quite a nice place, Ron the taxi driver tells me. Well, at least it was the last time he went there – which was in the ’80s, when he was in the circus. Though, he says, he did have trouble finding a hotel that would serve him a drink.

The pressure of conversation is weighing on me. It’s a long way from Dunedin city to the airport. I know what I’m supposed to say – “The circus, Ron! You were in the circus? How does a bloke like you end up in the circus?”

But I couldn’t. I was too tired. It was too early in the morning and I was fighting off a cold that had emerged a couple of days earlier. All I wanted to do was get on the plane and fly back to Wellington, with all its bars and circuses.

The last time I’d been in the south of the South Island was on a family holiday in 1993, which I like to remember as being full of majestic scenery, with REM’s “Automatic For the People” playing on my Walkman, but yet my diary insists that it was the most boring holiday ever and that I listened to that new Nirvana “Incesticide” album.

So, the South Island held a strange allure. It was big, empty, full of tourists and I was going to go there on holiday some day. No. We were going to go there on holiday some day. No. I was going to go there on holiday some day.

Then Megan and Ned in Christchurch announced they were getting married on Labour weekend, so there was my motivation to finally get down to that part of the country – four days in Christchurch, four days in Dunedin.

…
I climbed to the top of the Christchurch Cathedral tower to orientate myself with the city. After being shamed out fitness-wise by an old lady, I discovered that Cathedral Square is essentially hemmed in by tall buildings, obscuring any panoramas that may have previously existed.

But maybe the cathedral itself would offer some sort of insight into the Christchurch character. In the sacred space of the cathedral, a talkative fellow observed, “People kept asking, ‘Who are you?’ And John Lennon said, ‘I am the walrus. I am the egg man.’ Yeah, well, what is the egg man?” Hey, maybe John Lennon was right about the whole “bigger than Jesus” thing.

I stumbled across a little area by a pedestrian mall. Loud classical music was being piped out into the space – youth repellant! Because classical music is so naff, drunken youths won’t loiter around that little area. They won’t sit around drinking cans of cheap beer and yelling “Are you drunk yet! Are you drunk yet! Oh, get some more inside you!” They won’t scare off the tourists.

I found the Whitcoulls that I’d last visited in 1993. Back then, I bought an issue of Film Threat magazine, which introduced me to the radical idea that there are good films that never make it to your local multiplex, and the even more radical idea that if you don’t like the films out there, you can make your own.

So I checked out the magazine rack, wondering if I’d have a similar inspirational experience. But the only magazine that caught my eye was “Ponies!” magazine, and that was for all the wrong reasons.

Back in the Square, some tourists were talking to a local (or was he talking to them?). “If you’re serious about seeing Christchurch, you need five, six days minimum. You can’t do it in four.”

But I only had a total four days to see Christchurch. What if I missed out on some vital Cantabrian experience because I was selfishly flying on to Dunedin? What if I never experienced the real Christchurch and was left with a false impression of the flat city?

Well, I had three more days to find out.

The All Whites have ruined sport forever

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I was happily doing my year of live sporting events – a bit of cricket, a Phoenix game, a dash of roller derby – when my football-loving workmate said she was organising a group outing for the All Whites versus Bahrain FIFA World Cup qualifier match.

I have a vague memory of the last time the All Whites made it to the World Cup, in 1982. I was seven years old, and I remember being aware that this New Zealand sports team was doing quite well in some sort of international sports event, sort of like the Olympics, but only with soccer.

It took me a few years before I realised that rugby union was actually the sport that New Zealand was (then) really good at, and that its football prowess was just an early ’80s one-time special.

In “Heading For the Top”, one of the two ’82 World Cup anthems, Ray Woolf sang “We’re heading for the top and aiming for the future and we won’t ever stop while we are in control.”

Evidently control slipped away and the World Cup became something that Brazilians and Argentina were really good at (and England wanted to be really good at) but not something that New Zealand could do.

But somehow, a generation later, the All Whites were doing all right and had ended up with this magical match scheduled against Bahrain.

Hang on – let me just look at up Bahrain on Wikipedia. Ok, Middle East, constitutional monarchy, small island nation (OMG! Same!!!), largely Muslim, “many tall skyscrapers”, oil.

A planeload of Bahraini supporters came to town, with the curious sight of a young fellow in Cuba Mall decked out in a chavtastic red tracksuit, phat trainers and a white keffiyeh. Yeah, life’s pretty sweet when you have oil.

I figured that if Bahrain had supporters decked top to toe in team colours, it was the least I could do to dress in a bit of white. A look inside my wardrobe revealed two white tops (one “I work in an office and I hate my life” the other “I am wearing a tuxedo but I am a lady. Is this not outrageous?”), and also a white Teletext branded skivvie, which just deserves to die.

So I went off to the Warehouse and picked up a white tee for $9, and teamed that with some white sneakers. But I didn’t wear any more white because I’m like a vampire and would probably burn up. (The top and sneakers just let me sparkle, like vampire Edward.)

With my pale threads, I headed off to the Cake Tin, where I found myself surrounded by people in white Afro wigs, white sheets, white industrial coveralls, fake sheiks in white robes, as well as those donning official garb.

I joined my group in the stands, cheered on the ’82 All Whites, and found myself getting all emotional during the singing of the national anthem. Then suddenly the game began.

I found it easier to follow than I did during the Phoenix game, but our seats were low and almost behind a goal and so it was sometimes hard to see what was going on. But the reaction of the crowd – cheering, booing – was a good indication of what had happened.

Near the end of the first half, the stadium suddenly erupted in massive, massive cheers. It was goal, an absolutely necessary goal. I yelled. I jumped up and down.

The second half was a great big bucket of tension. Oh God – a whole 45 minutes in which the All Whites had to ensure that Bahrain did not score. The tension was racked up to an almost intolerable level with a Bahrain penalty shot that goalie Mark Paston – yes! – saved.

Somehow after that, the time flew by. The last 10 minutes of the game (so marked by the White Noise supporters’ top removal ritual) were a mix of impending euphoria and more of that deliciously sickening tension.

The three minutes of overtime felt like the entire stadium was balanced on a knife edge. But then it happened. The game ended with a score of one-nil to New Zealand.

The entire stadium (except for the now sullen red corner) erupted in a mass of cheering and smiling and yelling and stranger-hugging. I found myself jumping for joy – and I can’t actually think when the last time I jumped for joy was.

I decided to walk home instead of taking the bus. The streets were filled with happy, happy, happy people celebrating their arses off. After 27 years, New Zealand was going to the World Cup.

But I realised that as far as my life of sport goes, there’s never really going to be another sporting event like this. Pretty much everything else will pale in comparison – not even New Zealand in the 2011 Rugby World Cup grand final could even come close.

Well, the All Whites World Cup qualifier of ’09 may have ruined all other live sport for me, but it was worth it.

Adulation ruling the nation