COLUMNS

A COLLECTION OF MY COLUMNS FROM A BUSINESS NEWSLETTER IN NEW ZEALAND.

The Greatest Invention of All Time

I’m working on it.  OK, not so much working on it as thinking about it. 

Imagine you’d invented the paper clip, or the Post-It note, or the ring-pull for beer cans.  And every time someone purchased one of those ubiquitous little items, a hundredth of a cent in royalties appeared in your bank account.  Every time!  And while you were buzzing by in your spanking new Ferrari F12 Berlinetta, every poor bugger in a tired old Toyota Corolla would mutter, “What did that lucky bastard do to get that?”

The answer would be “nothing much”, but many, many, many times.  That’s the holy grail of inventions: something simple that everybody uses every day, over and over again.

Well, I know what the next such invention will be.  I just haven’t actually invented it yet.  But I’ll tell you what it is, as long as it stays strictly between you and me.  You can’t tell a soul.  Promise?  OK, here it is …

The next big invention is an unbreakable login/password gadget for websites.  One that you don’t ever have to remember, but that is absolutely rock-solid safe even in the hands of a total dipstick like yourself.  Or me.

I was a late starter with Information Technology, and had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the Internet, email and online banking.  Until just last year, the only thing my phone could do was make a phone call, and even then it was generally made – quite unintentionally – to the last person who’d called me.

But I’ve caught up with a rush.  I’ve got a laptop, an iPad, an iPhone, and nearly everything in my life is now done online.  I have even begun to inhabit the Cloud (if you don’t know what that is, don’t ask, because it’s totally incomprehensible – there is not one person on the planet who can explain it, much less point to it and say, “There it is, mate: that’s the Cloud!”)

Anyway, I digress.  As I so often do.  Oops, I just did it again.

All this cyber stuff that I do, and that you do, and that literally billions of other people now do, is controlled and protected by passwords.  And that’s where my Ferrari F12 Berlinetta comes in. 

We’re told we must never use the same password for two different purposes.  And we also mustn’t use anything simple that we could be expected to remember, because your birthday or your dog’s name is too easy for crooks to guess.  What we need, they say, is a nine-digit password containing three non-sequential numbers, three alphabetic characters (including one vowel, and one upper case letter), and three non-numeric, non-alphabetic symbols.  Ø™@.   Like that.

Now, if you’re like me you have at least twenty different online places you have to log into (bank, emails, PayPal, TradeMe, and the Justin Bieber Fan Site, for example).  It’s impossible for anyone to remember twenty different combinations of hieroglyphic gibberish.  No chance, even for Mensa members, which you may well be, but I am not.

So the solution is to say, “Bugger that!” and just use your birthday for the lot (this option is chosen by 51% of the world population).  Alternatively you can choose different passwords for everything, and write them all down somewhere nobody would ever look, such as inside the back cover of your diary (the option chosen by the other 49%).

And therein lies my business opportunity for the greatest invention of all time: the Dipstick’s Password Gadget (DPG).  That’s what I’m going to invent.  I figure there are about 3 billion digital users (all dipsticks), each with twenty separate passwords, each used on average twice a month.  That’s 120 billion logins a month.

At just a hundredth of a cent royalty to me every time, 120 billion logins using my DPG equals 12 million dollars going into my bank account every month.

That’s thirteen new Ferrari F12 Berlinettas a month.   I could buy a new one every 3 days!  I’d never have to pay another parking ticket again; I’d just abandon my car in the damn loading zone.  They could have it. 

Shintaro – you die!

When television and I were both very young, I was obsessed with a Japanese series called The Samurai.  The hero was Shintaro, who posed as a poor and lordless samurai, but was in reality a secret agent and master swordsman. 

Shintaro’s faithful sidekick was a little bloke (sidekicks are always smaller, and less pretty) named Tombei the Mist.  The principal bad guy was called Kongo, and he naturally had a numberless horde of evil black-clad ninja followers, all specially trained to die under Shintaro’s flashing blade one at a time.  They never attacked Shintaro en-masse you see, but instead clustered about him scowling and muttering while he calmly despatched a succession of single assailants.  They never figured out that 2 or 3 blokes attacking together might have overwhelmed Shintaro.  Instead, each waited his turn to die solo.  Very orderly.

The series was black & white, and apparently made on a miniscule budget.  It was dubbed into English, though hilariously badly; Shintaro would sometimes deliver 30 seconds of vigorous lip movement but the accompanying English audio would be just one or two words, so that it appeared as if our hero was mostly being operated by a negligent ventriloquist.  As for the bad guys, they’d visibly jabber for five minutes and all that the English audio ever said was, ‘Shintaro – you die!’  Though of course he never did.

There were no special effects as we know them now; when a ninja sprang astonishingly backwards from the ground up to the 20-foot roof of a building, it was obvious even to someone of my youth and innocence that the guy had actually jumped down, and they’d simply run the film of his improbable leap backwards.

But here’s the thing.  I didn’t care at all that it was cheesy.  Nobody of my generation cared.  The series was a huge hit in Australia, where I lived at the time, and in New Zealand.  But nowhere else outside of Japan.

I still wonder to this day why The Samurai should have appealed so much to the youth of the ANZACs but to nobody else.  Maybe it’s because of our antipodeans isolation of the time.  It was our first sustained glimpse of a non-Western culture, and for most of us, including me, the first inkling that such exotic cultures even existed.

Much later I came to realise that The Samurai was largely just a fairly standard cowboy movie, but with different costumes and weapons.  But what weapons!  The dreaded samurai sword of course; the ninja’s razor-sharp steel throwing stars; and the added magic of … well, magic!  Those impossible 20-foot backwards leaps up onto the roof tiles; the ability of Tombei the Mist to be invisible to the black ninjas simply by stooping into a strange hunched posture while scuttling about apparently in plain view; and the mysterious power of one especially evil ninja clan to instantly hypnotise people with nothing more a squint-eyed sidelong glance filmed in close-up.  It was another world.

There’s nothing on TV now that can compete with The Samurai.  And nor can there ever be again.  The digital age has made our present youth, in fact has made all of us, so blasé about the amazing and exotic that now nothing is amazing and exotic. 

I think it’s a shame.  But sometimes, when I see crystal-clear, wide-screen nuclear submarine battles filmed at the bottom of the ocean, or extravaganza scenes showing whole cities being convincingly engulfed by tsunami tidal waves, I long to see instead a flickering, jerky black and white film of a bloke leaping backwards into the rafters while taking a whole minute of jaw-waggling to shout, ‘Shintaro – you die!’

Why is the music so loud?

You’re watching a movie at home.   And as usual you’re straining to hear what the actors are mumbling to each other, so you have to turn the volume way up. Yet still you must regularly turn to those watching with you to ask, “What did he just say?  What was that about?”  (They can’t tell you of course, because they can’t hear it properly either.)

Then the director slots in a bit of background music to make absolutely sure that even any viewer who’d had a frontal lobotomy earlier in the day will still be able to grasp the fact that something portentous is happening.  

And here’s the thing:  the ‘background’ music is deafeningly loud.  Loud enough that you instantly reel back in alarm, scrabbling desperately to find the damned remote control you had flung aside in panic as you clamped your hands over your ears.

Why is the music so loud?  How can the director possibly believe that the music has to be played at three times the volume of the dialogue to be meaningful?  Why should it have to be any louder at all?

At first I though it was just one of those many things that make no apparent sense, and have no possible justification.  But I have begun to detect a pattern.  In fact I have actually cracked the code: the volume of the music is always inversely proportional to the believability of the action on the screen. 

The ‘dramatic’ moment may be the most absurd, improbable nonsense you ever saw; the ‘romantic’ moment may be stomach-turning piffle; the ‘scary’ moment may in reality be laughably predictable; but if we just crank up the volume the suckers will be too startled to notice a thing, and they’ll buy into whatever rubbish we dish up.  And that’s why the music is so loud.

It’s much the same with the station promo spots on TV.  Why should they be broadcast so much louder than the programmes?  It’s madness.  Yet when someone makes a complaint about it, the TV station spokesperson swears, hand on heart, that the station promos are not played any louder than the programmes.  Yes they are.  And they know that they are.  And they know that we know they are.  But they deny it anyway.  It’s insulting.

All of which of course brings me to politics (insulting and politics so often seem to go hand in hand).  I haven’t written much about politics since She Who Must Be Obeyed jumped onto her broomstick and flew off to the UN, but events in NZ, in Australia and in the wider world just lately have highlighted once again just what truly appalling people these politicians are. 

I was watching a US Presidential candidate speaking on CNN a few days ago and he was just perfect in every possible way.  He was handsome, tall, beautifully dressed and groomed, deeply grave and impassioned at all the right moments, yet he also grinned in endearingly boyish style when asked a question by a cute woman reporter.  Even his tie, which was dark blue with little white spots of course, was just very slightly loosened to project that subliminal hint of a ‘working man’ (this in spite of his actually having been a management and investment consultant in real life and thus spectacularly unacquainted with work).  The guy had only one wee fault: he was so obviously and completely phoney that surely not one person watching – actually, not even one household pet watching while drooling on the rug – can have failed to see it.

But of course that doesn’t matter.  As long as he looks the part of President of The Free World – in fact as long as he looks like someone that Spielberg would cast for the part – that’s all we require.  He’s not expected to have any actual substance, because nobody in their right mind expects that of politicians any more.

Apparently the belief is that we won’t notice a thing wrong with our movies, TV stations or politicians, just as long as the appropriate background music plays on cue and is really, really loud.

Why I like Billy Bowden

Sport is boring.  And the more we see of it – the more saturation live TV coverage we get from every corner of the globe; the more incredible super slow-motion detail we can see of the action from every possible angle – the more boring international sport has become. 

How has this happened?  I reckon it’s because there’s a paradox involved, along the lines of ‘Less is More’.

As a kid I listened to the Wimbledon finals with my Mum in the middle of the night.  It was thrilling.  I leaned closer and closer the radio as each rally unfolded, desperate to suck in every clue from the pitch of the commentator’s voice and the roars of the crowd.  I’d be exhausted by the time the match ended in the early hours of the morning, but I still wouldn’t sleep a wink.  The experience was just too electric, and was somehow heightened by the absence of explicit detail.

Same with cricket.  I loved it on the radio as a kid.  Did you ever hear John Arlott describing the cricket on the wireless?  It was literally unforgettable stuff.  And to this day I still much prefer the radio commentary to the TV coverage.  Even if you do want to watch it on TV, try turning the sound down and listen to the radio commentary instead while you watch.  It’s amazing how much more absorbing the game becomes!  Even England’s play becomes very nearly interesting.

But it’s not just radio coverage that makes the magic.  I was also a big fan of Grand Prix racing, in the days of Jim Clark, Graham Hill and Chris Amon, and I certainly never heard that on the radio.  It was TV or more frequently film coverage back then, mostly in black & white, and with a whole race covered by about three camera positions.  And yet it was absolutely riveting. 

Now we have literally dozens of cameras covering a Formula One race, including one or more mounted in nearly every car plus a snazzy on-screen graphic showing every gear change and the exact RPM at every point on the track, as well as a mini-cam tucked down the front of Fernando Gasolini’s underpants.   And yet the whole thing has become as boring as bat shit.  The more they show us, the less it all seems to matter.

I know that just lately I’m nearly always banging on about the good old days in my front-page ramblings in this Newsletter, but it’s not really the days of yore that I’m pining for.  What I miss is the innocence and the unbridled joy that made international sport such fun when we had to use our imaginations a bit to experience it.  Before sport became a business and a ‘brand’, and everything revolved around the sponsors, the product endorsements and the TV scheduling.  Before international sports stars had their own management teams and media handlers, and before they gave interviews in which they referred to themselves in the third person.

Which brings me to Billy Bowden.  I don’t know if Billy is the best umpire in the world as far as correct LBW decisions go.  He’s pretty good as far as I can see, and fairly consistent too: certainly as good as any other in the ICC’s Elite Umpires Panel.   But Billy cops quite a bit of criticism for being an individualist, and some of it from greats of the game.  Martin Crowe, for example, has publically referred to Billy as ‘Bozo the Clown’ for his bafflingly eccentric signals.  Now, I deeply admired Martin Crowe as a technically sublime batsman, but I’d much rather have watched Doug Walters or Brendon McCullum batting any day.  They brought passion to their cricket, while I always had the impression that M. Crowe brought a briefcase.

So I believe that Billy Bowden is the best umpire in cricket for one simple reason:  he loves his cricket, and he commits himself to joyfully expressing and communicating his love of it.  Billy reminds me that what I first loved about the game was not how much of it I could see, but how much of it I could feel.  I reckon Billy Bowden is the best thing to happen to international cricket since the wireless.

They don’t make them

like they used to

I’ve reached that age when fond musing about the way things used to be has become a favourite pastime.   I love to grumble about modern music, modern gadgets and modern everything, really.  It’s the Grumpy Old Man syndrome, and it’s rather fun. 

Well, it’s certainly fun for me, although I imagine that it’s torture for any young whippersnapper obliged to listen to my curmudgeonly complaining.  They groan and roll their eyes, to which I say ‘Pshaw!’ and other crusty exclamations.  Which doubles my fun.

But I’m right, of course, as you well know.  Newer isn’t necessarily better.   Sometimes it’s not even close.

Some readers may recall that photography is my hobby, if only because I occasionally slip one of my ‘interesting’ photographs into this newsletter.  My pictures tend to be a bit curmudgeonly too, and look to many bewildered viewers like they were taken in the 19^th century rather than the 21^st.  Others take the less charitable view that my second hobby must be drinking.   

Photography in the digital age is a wonderful example of the relentless quest for progress through technology.  The big names in cameras, Nikon and Canon etc, now bring out a newer and better model every few weeks.  And it’s always so tempting to believe their hype that the latest model is finally the ultimate camera, and that it will transform you from a hopeful hack to a celebrated genius at the stroke of a credit card.

I recently succumbed, and bought a new camera.   It’s the gleaming jewel in the picture.  

But here’s the thing; it’s not new at all.  It’s not even digital; instead it’s a film camera (remember film?)  It’s also a quite expensive camera, but I got it very cheap because hardly anybody wants these cameras any more.  In its heyday it was the tool of choice of top professionals: many of the great fashion, portrait and fine art photographs of history were taken with this kind of camera.   It’s entirely manual; there’s no auto-anything at all.  You even have to wind it via a little crank between exposures.  And you only get 12 exposures, rather than the thousand or more that will fit onto the latest digital cards.

So why?  Why would I want it?  Because its huge medium-format film provides a level of resolution and image quality that the latest mass-market digital cameras can’t hope to match.  And because it encourages you – actually, it obliges you – to think and to make choices and decisions about taking a photograph.   And in doing that, it decreases your output but increases your involvement and satisfaction.

It’s also an object of considerable beauty in itself, to those who admire craftsmanship and precision.  It is durable and solid (and heavy); a thing that was literally built to last.

But here’s the other thing: it didn’t last.  You can’t buy this camera new any more, because the company that made them itself didn’t last.  They imagined, I suppose, that making a superb, high-quality instrument, the best that they could make, was enough.  They failed to understand that we don’t really want the best any more; we just want the latest.

Old Enough To Know Better

We’ve all seen the news coverage of the dreadful floods in Queensland.  Appalling loss of lives, with homes, livelihoods and whole communities devastated.   

And this is not the first time; the same area was flooded to even higher levels back in 1974.  I remember it well.

But some people don’t seem to remember it, and not necessarily because they aren’t old enough.   I saw a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald a few days ago in which the writer, Gerard Henderson, remarked on a press release put out by Australian Greens leader, Senator Bob Brown.  Brown’s press release was headlined ‘Coal barons should help pay for catastrophes’, and predictably called for the imposition of a new tax on the coal industry to pay for environmental and natural disasters such as the Queensland floods.

Bob Brown is even older than me, by a few years, so he must remember those floods of 1974 perfectly well, although I’ll forgive him for not recalling the even worse Brisbane floods way back in the 1890’s.   However, as the floods of 1893 and 1974 were pre-global-warming events, I think we can conclude that they are (to borrow an apt phrase from Bob’s hero, Al Gore) ‘inconvenient truths’.  Best not referred to.

A brief aside, before I resume my rant about Bob’s argument ... consider his press release’s headline.  He didn’t say ‘coal industry’, because that’s workers and families and support industries and whole communities and so forth.  That’s us, in other words.  The voters.  He said instead, ‘coal barons’.  Some rich fat bastard with a big cigar, in other words.   Not us.  Default position for the Greens of course.

Anyway, to return to Senator Brown’s actual point, which is that coal barons should pay for natural disasters because burning coal causes climate change (which used to be called global warming until it stopped getting warmer: another inconvenient truth).  There are three problems with his argument. 

First, it ignores history; in this case the 1893 and 1974 floods.

Second, it’s a claim built on what crusty old logic-crunchers call petitio principii, or begging the question.  It assumes the truth of something without any evidence other than that implied in the claim itself.  Bob has no evidence that the recent floods were caused by climate change, so he simply assumes that they were, and he just looks the other way when 1974 and 1893 start waving at him. 

I don’t comment on the deeper assumption in Bob the Senator’s reasoning, which is that burning coal actually causes climate change; nor on the even deeper one yet, which is that non-natural climate change is actually occurring.  Ooops, I did comment.  Sorry.  So now I might as well go a little further down that path and point out that the ‘coal barons’ aren’t personally burning very much coal, anyway.  Alas, we all are.  It’s us.

Third, Brown’s argument is alarmist nonsense, and should be taken no more seriously than the reading of tealeaves or animal entrails.  Possibly even less.  Senator Brown was graduating from university in 1968 when the American academic Paul Ehrlich published the global best-selling book The Population Bomb, so Bob can hardly have missed it.  Ehrlich insisted that world population growth would cause a global famine in the 1970s and 80s, which would kill hundreds of millions, and there was now no chance to produce all the necessary food to avert disaster; it was already too late (does that last bit sound familiar?) There would then follow a catastrophic global war during the 1990s and the earth as we know it would be finished.  None of it happened, of course.  Why?  Because Ehrlich’s arguments were based on misinterpreting the data and on false reasoning, most especially on begging the question.  Plus he was just naturally full of crap anyway. 

Senator Brown must also remember, as do I, the frightening  ‘New Ice Age’ that was forecast in the 1970s.  We were about to enter a period of disastrous global cooling (well, global bloody freezing, actually).  And guess what?  We couldn’t prevent it because it was …. yes, you’ve guessed it … it was too late!  Most of the experts quoted at that time have since disavowed their alarmist predictions of course, and claimed that it was all just a media beat-up. 

And maybe that’s the one part of the history of eco-alarmism that Senator Bob Brown does remember all to well: the ease with which untreated and unregulated Green emissions can trigger a runaway global media beat-up.   And we won’t be able to stop it either … it’ll be too late.

A One-Armed Paper Hanger

Recently a Qantas Airbus A380, the world’s biggest and flashest airliner, had a wee technical difficulty shortly after leaving Changi International Airport in Singapore.  One of its four giant Rolls Royce engines exploded. 

Of course, as we all know from the safety briefings, or at least from the movies, the loss of an engine is no big deal to these modern jetliners.  But in this case the pilot, Captain Richard de Crespigny, also had a few other issues to deal with.  Parts of the exploding engine had blown clean through the wing, making some unsightly holes and damaging the flaps, leading edge slats, hydraulics and speed brakes.  These are all bits that have a pretty serious influence on safely landing the plane, and landing was looking a fairly appealing option about then.

Worse still, the A380 had 80 tonnes of fuel on board; far too much for a normal safe landing even when everything was working.  Which it very definitely wasn’t, because as well as the various damaged flight surfaces, the flight crew soon discovered that they also had serious and unstoppable fuel leaks in the punctured wing tanks, plus there was now no way to jettison any fuel from the tail tank.  And because the fuel distribution system was also no longer functioning, the aircraft could not be correctly balanced for landing. 

Finally, just to complete the morning’s joy for Captain de Crespigny and his crew, the fire protection system for one of the other engines was no longer working, the auto-braking system was damaged, the anti-skid system was non-functional and the reverse thrust capability of one engine was also lost (this slows the plane quickly on the ground, and is why we hear the engines roar like demented monsters seconds after touchdown).  As you can’t use reverse thrust on one side only without taking a rapid and unexpected trip to the carpark, that meant no reverse thrust could be applied at all.

So QF32 was facing a high speed landing (because of the excess weight and the damaged wing surfaces), an unbalanced aircraft, severely limited slowing ability once actually on the ground, and a continuous fuel leak throughout the process, coupled with a compromised engine fire protection system. 

One other little complication: there were 459 people on board. 

While the crew figured all this good news out and worked out what to do about it, they had circled over the ocean for about an hour, getting rid of what fuel they could, and presumably making repeated trips to the toilet.  And no doubt remarking calmly to the passengers that there was a minor malfunction and it might be best to just nip back to Singapore and have it checked out, just to be on the safe side.   They may even have announced that the captain felt it wise to briefly halt the complimentary beverage service, at least in Economy Class.

Certainly, soothing and reassuring ‘flight information announcements’ would have been made, leading passengers to conclude that this sort of thing was all just part of the routine, and nothing to be much alarmed about.  Meanwhile, up in the pointy end of the top floor (the A380 is a double decker), Richard de Crespigny must have been as busy as a one-armed paper hanger.

But Qantas is not the world’s safest airline for nothing.  They may have had a bit of bad luck with equipment just lately, but their aircrew training is as good as it gets.  Captain Richard Champion de Crespigny did exactly as his impressive name suggests he would, and safely landed the aircraft back at Changi International in Singapore.  No passenger was harmed, no drink was spilled.  He stopped the aircraft with just 120 metres of runway left.  That does sound like a lot (it’s more than a full rugby field) but in fact it means that he used just over 99% of the available runway length to get QF32 stopped.

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I have flown on an A380 aircraft, and I will again.  When I do, and I settle in for the flight, I sure hope that I hear, “Good afternoon folks, this is your pilot Captain Richard de Crespigny.” 

I think I might even give a little cheer.  I’ll certainly raise my complimentary beverage to him.

A Load of Bull

Many years ago I was a soldier: an officer in the Australian Army.  And when I was a brand new, bright-eyed Lieutenant, I went to the School of Artillery to learn my trade.

This beautiful place on the ocean cliff-tops, right above Manly in Sydney, was ‘blessed’ with a legendary figure in the person of the Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) with the entirely appropriate name of ‘Bull’ Storey.

Readers with military experience will already know of such people, but for the uninitiated, the RSM is the senior enlisted soldier in any regiment, has seen and heard everything, and has almost unlimited power.  He enjoys a uniquely intimate one-to-one relationship with the Colonel, and as such holds the lives of the junior officers in his hands.  Technically I outranked the RSM and consequently he called me ‘Sir’, but we both knew that he didn’t mean it.

Anyway, why do I tell you all this old military guff, I hear you ask?  Well, I told you that so I could tell you this:  just a couple of the many fabled anecdotes involving ‘The Bull’.

The first involved a young soldier newly-posted to work in the regimental orderly room; the RSM’s inner sanctum.   This young man was of the Sikh religion, and named Alan Singh.  His rank was Private, but in the artillery that rank is actually ‘Gunner’.   So on his first day, young Alan goes to the RSM’s office with a pile of files, and simply opens the door and walks in.

The Bull looks at him as if he were a Warsaw Pact invasion.  His already ruddy complexion turns crimson.  Neck veins bulge, as do his eyeballs.  And finally he exclaims, in tones of infinite menace, “Who the bloody hell are you?”  Alan sputters out, “I’m Gunner Singh, sir!”

The Bull considers this meager explanation for a stranger daring to enter his den uninvited.  He leans forward.  “I don’t care if you’re gunna do a #$@$&# tap dance,” the Bull screams, “get outside and #$%$@# knock!”

The second Bull anecdote involved a big military parade.  There is no occasion that will stimulate the juices of an RSM more than a big parade.  It is his magnum opus, and woe betide any unfortunate soul, of any rank at all, who dares to even breathe in an unmilitary fashion on the RSM’s parade.

This particular parade was to mark the arrival of a new Commanding Officer.  The new Colonel and the old Colonel, accompanied by The Bull, would together inspect the ranks of gleaming troops assembled for the occasion.  It was a big parade, involving about 500 troops and a marching band.  Bayonets would be fixed.  Swords would be flourished.  Stirring music would deafen everyone present.  And The Bull would glow with unspeakable delight at the flawless execution of his parade (the Colonels knew better than to think it was really for them).

On the morning of the parade, troops were dressing in their perfectly starched uniforms and donning their polished brass.  And The Bull was prowling unnoticed behind one of the barrack buildings.  He glanced into a window as he passed, and spied a young soldier pulling on a pair of Many Sea Eagles football socks.  The military boots are high, and the trousers are gathered over the tops of the boots, so the socks are never actually visible.  But the dress instruction included the entry, “Socks, woolen worsted, khaki, pairs, 1”.  Nevertheless, The Bull held his tongue, and merely noted the identity of the miscreant.

Later, on the parade, the two Colonels are strolling through the ranks exchanging chat about their Labrador dogs and the new Range Rovers, with The Bull cruising along behind in a cloud of steam and malevolence.  And The Bull spots the soldier again. 

“You!” he screams, in a voice audible as far away as the Blue Mountains.  The Colonels stop instantly, astonished at this rude interruption of their chat.  The soldier himself rolls one eye at The Bull and begins to perspire.

“You!” repeats The Bull, “Tip your head back!”  The soldier blinks, and his sweat turns to a Niagra.

“Tip your #$%$@# head back and open your #$%$@# mouth!” The Bull shrieks again.  The soldier manages a swooning kind of gape, head lolling back like an unstuffed doll, upon which The Bull raises himself to tiptoe and peers down into the poor bugger’s throat.

“You’ve got #$%$@# red socks on!,” The Bull shouts even louder.  “Get outside my office straight after the parade, you miserable little worm.”

The Bull tucks his ceremonial stick back under his arm.  He makes eye contact with the Colonels, who have been frozen in place throughout, and nods.  They turn and resume their stroll, back to their world of Range Rovers and Labrador dogs.  And The Bull smiles a tiny little smile, just for one heartbeat.

May Contain Violence

I like movies.  Old movies, foreign movies and black & white movies are my particular favourites, but even modern Hollywood movies are not without their entertainment value if you open your mind – or better still if you empty it altogether.  And it is in that enforced catatonic state that I have become especially fond of studying the film censorship classifications and wondering what they could possibly mean.

I saw a wonderful example just tonight; a movie in which Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton rob banks while competing for the attentions of Cate Blanchett.  The movie itself was vacuous nonsense, but the censor’s classification statement was immensely engrossing.  It said ‘M – recommended for mature audiences – may contain violence.’

The first question that occurs to me is why the censor should actually be recommending movies at all.  Suitable for mature audiences perhaps, but recommended?  What is this?  The Michelin Guide?  Will the censor be giving star ratings and handing out awards sometime soon?

But let’s put that to one side for a moment and consider the second part: ‘may contain violence.’  What do they mean, it may contain violence?  Surely it either does or it doesn’t?  The use of the word ‘may’ indicates that they aren’t sure.  That they haven’t actually watched the film at all, but felt that the poster looked like it just might imply a picture with a touch of argy-bargy in it.  Or maybe the censor is just assuming that it could be violent because Bruce Willis is in it?

Another stupefyingly useless classification I have seen on a film recently was this: ‘MA 15⁺ – contains themes.’  Now imagine for one moment you are the parent of a typically wilful 14-year-old and he/she/it announces an intention to see this movie.  You consult the censor’s classification and forbid it.  

‘Awwwww,’ wails the pimply adolescent, ‘why not?’ 

‘Because,’ you retort, ‘it contains themes!’ 

Sound argument, yes?   Themes!  The moral peril speaks for itself doesn’t it?  Well it had better, because the censor’s certainly not saying anything intelligible.  What possible use is that cautionary statement: ‘contains themes’?  Surely it has no practical meaning whatsoever.   But at least has some amusement value for the keen student of Government Agency Gibberish (i.e. me), because it prompts me to fondly imagine the Chief Censor sitting his own pimply teenager down for a wee chat involving a stern caution to at all costs avoid engaging in any unprotected themes.

I have also seen a censorship classification alerting the intending viewer to the fact that ‘The following film contains language’.   I suppose the intention was to warn us that it is not a Charlie Chaplin movie, but is that really a legitimate function of the censor?  And if it is, what’s next?  ‘The following film may contain images; incidental background music is also possible’? 

Anyway, enough censor bashing for the moment, because I’ve just thought of something else about movies that I’d been dying to bring to your attention.  You see, I like movies but I pretty much dislike all actors.  They seem to me a shamelessly self-congratulatory bunch, given that all they do is read someone else’s words and smile/grunt/laugh/cry when instructed to do so.  And I especially despise their eagerness to paint themselves as the vanguard of social conscience by embracing every fashionable liberal and humanitarian cause that occurs to them.

Which raises an interesting point.  If their profession is really at the leading edge of social liberalism, why is it that they insist on having separate Academy Awards for male and female actors?  I can see sound reasons to retain sexual apartheid in javelin throwing, or weight lifting, or even (possibly) in downhill skiing.  But acting?  How is that justified on any reasonable grounds?

After all, the censor could always advise us of any risk of being exposed to movies with a dangerous gender imbalance in their Oscar prospects: “This film is classified MS – recommended for Meryl Streep – may contain glimpses of George Clooney’.

Golden Years

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7:05am at a beach on the east coast of Australia.  Late in May, when winter’s first chill breath discourages all but the most hardy of bathers.  Bathers such as these guys in my photograph, part of a group of about a dozen who meet each morning for a dip in the Pacific. 

All wear dark blue Speedo budgie smugglers.  That and grey hair, for every one of this band of brothers is aged in his 70’s or 80’s. 

They wade out through the surf, easily slipping beneath any inconvenient incoming wave, and gather together just outside the shore break, their sleek heads broaching and bobbing like a cabal of dignified seals.  Then, after what is presumably a daily round of ritual greetings and jibes (a kind of implied roll call), they break off into their sub-tribes according to inclination and capability.

Three or four remain bobbing in place, mostly treading water, occasionally bouncing lightly off the sandy bottom when it lifts up to them; walking on the moon. 

A few swim steadily parallel with the beach, tracking along fifty or so metres out in the easy swell, their strokes long and measured from a lifetime’s practice.  They’ll turn around some distant mark visible only to themselves and swim back at the same unhurried tempo.

Another three swim more quickly to the start of the nearest reasonable surf break and all catch the first good wave, bodysurfing in formation with the ridiculous facility of teenagers.  And again, and then again.

Fifteen minutes later, twenty at most, and the whole group has reassembled for another unspoken head count.  Then they’re wading ashore in twos and threes, backlit by the rising sun and streaming glittering diamonds onto the wet sand, heading into the Surf Club for a shower and breakfast. 

Whatever they do after that, it’s hard to imagine it could top the way they’ve just started the day.

I asked one of them how many days a year they elect to skip their daybreak swim and he answered, just slightly indignantly, “None, mate.”

There was one particularly special moment on the day I was there, and it’s the subject of the photograph.  One member, surely aged well into his 80’s, had apparently returned from an absence … perhaps an illness.  He was a little late and most of the group was already out in the cabal-of-seals stage when he arrived on the sand. 

But one other bloke was also late, and it was he who enthusiastically signalled to the rest the presence of their returning brother, who waved out to them in his delight to be back.  The band all waved and called cheerfully in reply, and I felt pretty bloody good about this new day in May.  

Al & Me

It’s deep into miserable winter as I write, cold and bleak, so naturally my thoughts turn to summer.  To cricket, and to golden beaches and warm sunshine.  As in this photograph, taken by me one wonderful summers’ day on Australia’s east coast.

My late father Al and I loved to fish together, and we especially enjoyed beach fishing.  It’s the most companionable and reflective of all forms of fishing.  There's no noisy boat motor involved, no haste, no unwarranted advice (offered or received), no sense of competition, and very little equipment required.

Instead there is simplicity, and a progressive immersion of all the senses into the hypnotic rhythms of the ocean.  You gradually attain a kind of deep synchronicity with the beach environment, and your every sense over-achieves in delight. The soothingly maternal sounds of the waves, the ozone-and-iodine rich smells, the strangely deja vu primeval feel of the warm sand under your bare feet: beach fishing is nature's most intense sensory high, and yet it's perfectly legal.  And free too!

Conversation is measured.  It's not at all unusual for whole minutes to pass between a remark and a reply.  Neither party to the conversation thinks this at all odd.  There's something relativistic about it: as glacial as the speed of dialogue might appear to an outside observer, to the two participants it often barely allows time for adequate reflection between observations.  Thinking is deep indeed.

And there's another strange thing: beach fishing is ideally a two-man pursuit.  Yes, you can do it alone; especially if there's an otherwise regular companion you can mentally position ten yards down the beach to hold silent conversations with.  When you've fished together a while, it's easy enough to think his thoughts as well as your own.  But you can't do beach fishing in groups of three or more.  It simply doesn't work.

I miss Al.  He's been dead more than ten years now.  And I haven't gone beach fishing in all that time.  I never thought to take his picture while we were beach fishing.  That is not my father in the photograph: it's just a guy I saw on the beach.  But he looked like Al, from a distance.  And when I saw that second rod waiting by the wee folding stool (our bait stayed fresh in the shade of a canvas stool), I knew that it was a picture of us after all: Al and me.