Memories and Medals

A photomontage is next to me as I write this. It comprises photos of my eldest son, my father, my grandfather and myself. My father compiled it to show the first-born (male) of four generations. For that reason alone, it is an important keepsake. But it is also treasured as the only known photo of my grandfather. He is pictured staring sternly at the camera at some racecourse somewhere—probably in Christchurch where he lived. He enjoyed the races, an enjoyment my father inherited but I did not. What I did inherit however is much more important. They are memories and medals.
My memories of my grandfather are of an imposing figure often sitting on a high-back chair, which of course we christened the throne.  That was in the house he and my grandmother owned in Godley Avenue Papanui (in point of fact one of the most ungodly avenues in town and long-since renamed). Nobody else was allowed to sit on that throne. Nobody else, but me. Why me, I don’t know. I wouldn’t say I was his favourite, but it was me who went out with him trudging through the ditches of those long Canterbury roads picking wild mint that we later sold by the sack-load to Boss Sauce. It was me he taught to hunt and trap rabbits. And it was me he always found a “special” book for. And it would be me, me alone, who would have treasured memories of all of that.
As for the medals? I have his medals from both world wars for he had served in both. I have those, and a shell case he purloined from World War I’s Western Front. I also have his discharge papers from that first world war that tell me my grandfather was 5’9” (slightly shorter than me), and that he served as a private in the Canterbury Infantry Regiment for a period of 2 years and 191 days, 2 years and 41 days of which he served overseas on the Western European Front during 1917/18. He was awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. He was discharged 25th April 1919 at the ripe old age of 25. In the Second World War he served for 3 years and 99 days with the Royal New Zealand Airforce, and discharged 5th July with the rank of lance corporal. His occupation is given as rabitter.
It is information such as this, and those memories, that keep my grandfather close to me. Yet they are not needed. Like those many many thousands of New Zealanders and Australians who this morning honoured their forebears I need no tangible aid or physical item to remember. Those men and women who served are justly and always remembered on this day and every day, not because of what they accomplished, but because of who they were, what they did, and what they left us all…Pride.
Lest we forget? Not a chance.

Good Fryday

This is a day of meditation. I have meditated today. I have meditated on the origins of the term Good Friday. To describe this particular day as good seems strange to me, given that it the day Jesus Christ is purported to have been crucified. So as one does when one meditates on the great mysteries of the age one turns to Google. Even here though the mystery is not completely solved. There is in fact more than one explanation presented and no guidance as to which is more credible. So, Fryday précis both.
Some declare Good Friday is good  because Christ, by His Death, “showed His great love for man, and purchased for him every blessing.” Good, in this sense, means "holy," and indeed Good Friday is known as Holy and Great Friday among Eastern Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox. Good Friday is also known as Holy Friday in the Romance languages. This seems a good explanation, except for the fact that Good Friday is called good only in English. In its entry on Good Friday, the Catholic Encyclopedia notes: The origin of the term Good is not clear. Some say it is from “God's Friday" (Gottes Freitag); others maintain that it is from the German Gute Freitag, and not specially English. Sometimes, too, the day was called Long Friday by the Anglo-Saxons; so today in Denmark. If Good Friday were called good because English adopted the German phrase, then we would expect Gute Freitag to be the common German name for Good Friday, but it is not. Instead, Germans refer to Good Friday as Karfreitag—that is, Sorrowful or Suffering Friday—in German. So, in the end, the historical origins of why Good Friday is called Good Friday remain unclear and may never be known.
Nevertheless it is an important day in the Christian calendar and is deservedly revered as such by such. For the great majority it is also the beginning of our longest weekend of the year and will culminate in the shortest working week of the year. It is indeed a good good Friday; I hope you thoroughly enjoy yours.

Showdown in Deadwood

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“ A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” is a phrase consigned sadly to history.

It probably originated in those penny-dreadful novels of 19^th Century America set in Deadwood featuring a man with the tautological two guns, and a dame in distress.

But there is little call these days for machismo and even, it seems, male courtesy. To open a door for a woman, if not frowned upon (though it can be), is often treated with suspicion and is certainly rarely understood. Even less understood is the Victorian courtesy of walking on the road side of a footpath when accompanying a woman. For that matter who “accompanies” a woman these days?

But I am of an age, and of an Age, that says bugger it.  I will continue to display common courtesies to women even if that leaves me open to derision by men and women both. I will continue to do it because:
A: I know how to do it, and,

B: It is still important to some women.

But there is one other reason, and that is one of reasoning and realisation. One realises as one grows older is that there are far more people younger than you than older. You are confronted by them hourly and they are just as perplexing to you as  you were to your parents and elders way back then.

But here is the thing. For those young people, those who care, we are equally mysterious. They do not know what drives us, they do not know what aspirations and hopes we could possibly have. If they are particularly cruel, they probably think we could not possibly have any hopes and aspirations, not at our age.

Realising that, my reasoning is to capitalise on that air of mystery—not to fight it.  If I am to be looked upon as an aging relic of an earlier age, then I shall also be looked upon as someone to whom a young person can go to for sage advice. 

I find myself in that role increasingly of late and I have been rewarded. I have a young goddaughter (with and IQ of 120) whom, I am told, adores me; I have the young lady with communications aspirations who I wrote about a few Frydays back and I have a new friend whom I am mentoring on writing—something, incidentally, I did for my goddaughter’s mother many years ago.

The rewards are that I have been treated with respect and I have been given insight to the coming generation—and what I have seen of that generation is deeply encouraging.

To those young ladies, I will open car-doors any day, every day, not because I have to, but because I want to—and they deserve it.

Guy Forks

Anna Guy

Someone said, probably on more than one occasion, that comparisons are odious. As an all-enveloping statement it is not strictly accurate and should not preclude us from making comparisons. Nevertheless some comparisons are odious, particularly when the comparisons are of odious people such as Kim Dotcom and Hone Harawira and Russell Norman and Colin Craig. The first coupling seems a strange love-fest at the very least, and the second, a defamation and counter-claim, is a waste of space and time. When we compare all four we must be drawn to the conclusion that the common factors are that they are all superficial, stupid and seemly oblivious to the “who cares” reaction they generate among most of us. Bit like Anna Guy really.