Gladdelling notes

We had a gladdelling man once. He did the lawns and tended the plants and it was, of course, Ah Moi the Chinese cook who called him the gladdelling man. She couldn’t get her tongue around garden.

Ratnam was his name and since he found himself at the bottom of Ah Moi’s pecking order, he too was obliged to refer to himself as the Gladdelling man. It wasn’t long before we all fell into line.

Ratnam came several miles each day, pumping his stick-insect legs on his rusty stick-insect bicycle. I never saw Ratnam's kampong or his domestic arrangements but it was not surprising he had stick-insect legs and rode a rusty bicycle, because he was paid bugger-all and that was his lot.

In those uncaring days one did pay gladdelling men bugger all, and didn’t give a toss how and where they lived. I mean, there probably were people who gave a toss, but then one didn’t give a toss about them either.

Why I remember Ratnam after all these years, was his special way with maidenhair ferns. The manner of their propagation was a closely guarded secret. They appeared as if by magic, but appear they did, and covered every inch of the verandah. He talked to his ferns; he would bucket them unmercilessly and they would literally leap from their pots in abundant glory.

I tried hitting Ratnam up for a few pointers but conversations with chaps who describe themselves as gladdelling men are always apt to be problematical.

Over the years, I’ve tried my hand with Maidenhairs. I watch them wilt, I bucket them, I watch them die - not the dignified end befitting this most delicate princess of ferns, but a miserable death as a blob of algae.

It was not my job to pay him - the office did that - but I often wonder how things might have turned out had I bought Ratnam a decent bicycle.

This was first published in the Capital Times, Wellington, in 2001
　
　

Lackey on Defence

　
A case of BLBRY WAT.
　
My excuse for rabbiting on about events of the past (the onset of senility is a plausible explanation) is that by studying the past we will avoid repeating mistakes in the future. This notion should, in any event, be flipped on it's ear. That is, we will continue to make the same old cock-ups, because we don’t study the lessons of the past.

Take, for example, all the hullabaloo over defence. I never rose above Lieutenant and you really have to be a General, an Admiral, or an Air-Whatsit to comment on such things . But I do want to say something about Ron Mark’s assertion that the New Zealand Army was 'a pack of thieving rascals'. He used more parliamentary language - said everyone called us the 'Hydraulics' because we 'could lift anything'. This is only partly true.

What is true is that NZ’s successive military ventures have been run on the smell of an oily rag - and no more so than in Vietnam, particularly when New Zealand citizens, and then their leaders, chose to wash their hands of the whole thing.
The secret of our survival was a sophisticated system of networking - using all the cunning, guile and, dare I say, charm which have been hallmarks of the Kiwi's military excursions.

Transportation is a case in point. Our fleet of Landrovers lived up to the maker’s claim that they were the most dependable transportation known to man - you could depend on them breaking down. One by one they ground to a halt, despite some amazing feats of No 8 wire mechanical engineering and canibalisation.

One thing was certain - replacement vehicles were out of the question.

Our American colleagues had no such problem. When a jeep or a truck so much as coughed, let alone spluttered, it would suffer a horrible accident - run over an imaginary mine, for example- and be replaced. It could then be loaned, or sold, or used for parts, or serve as an officer’s personal runabout.

Thus Landrover No 35768 (not it’s real name) miraculously became a 2 1/2 Ton General Motors truck. The miracle being $200 from our Officers Mess kitty. All that was left of the original was it’s registration number, but our redoubtable Battery Captain kept sending home Vehicle Condition Reports (in triplicate of course) informing the Buckle Street base-wallahs of the "Landrover's" amazing good health.
Sometimes the American's supply system proved an embarrassment of riches. I had a call one day from my mate, Lieutenant Hon, US Army. An audit team were about to descend on Hon’s battalion and would I be so kind as to take care of three Jeeps which , as he quaintly put it, were "Off Inventory"?

My jeep-sitting fee took the form of several cartons of prime beef cuts and other assorted delicacies. Included was a case of one gallon tins marked, in three places, with the words BLBRY WAT.

Now the US Military is nomenclaturely possessed and the naming in three places would presumably prevent someone mistaking them for cans of, say, napalm. It is one thing to hurl a can of napalm on an unsuspecting enemy, but a can of BLBRY WAT might violate the Geneva Convention, or possibly the Pure Foods Act.

We never found out what BLBRY WAT was. It was clear that Cook regarded it as a challenge to his culinary abilities; a challenge that he would never be ready to confront. The eight gallons of BLBRY WAT sat in his larder as a constant reminder of the gulf between our two cultures. He refused point blank to take up the old can-opener. It seemed churlish to ask if one could to take a little peek - besides, everyone knows that if you open a can, you have to finish the contents. A gallon of BLBRY WAT. Who would dare?

First published in the Wellington Capital Times in 2001
　

Lackey on reincarnation

Alas, poor Jim

A mile south of us is the Akatarawa Road, famous for its narrow chundiferous corners, and infamous as a dropping-off spot for unwanted pets. The good burghers of the Upper Hutt, tiring of the company of their cats and dogs, drive them over the top of the Akatarawa. There they leave them, completely disoriented after 108 of the aforementioned bends, to stagger off downhill into unfamiliar Kapiti.

To our north, and prevalently up-wind, is a piggery - a foul smelling, pestilential blot on the landscape.

The upshot of this juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated geographical features is that our hillside is a veritable passing parade of disaffected and lonely cats ( the dogs, mercifully, can’t manage the fences). To a lonely and hungry cat, it would appear, the odour of a pig is redolent of both food and succour. Pigs (plural) is ambrosia.

One such passer-by was Thompson, a sleek, inscrutable and very beautiful Siamese. Why anyone would want to excommunicate such a beast quite escapes me, but there he was. Breaking our strict if heartless rule, we fed and encouraged him and he became part of our family.

How did we know his name was Thompson? Jim Thompson, you will remember, was the American merchant adventurer who, with a little help from Jackie Kennedy, brought Thai silk to the attention of the world of fashion. Jim went missing from his Bankok home in the early seventies and hadn’t been seen since. Since we knew of no other missing Siamese, we naturally assumed that this was he. There was certainly no evidence to the contrary.

After several years with us, it was time for another reincarnation. Thompson curled himself up under a hot water pipe in an inaccessible part of our basement and passed, as it were, on. For some time thereafter, whenever it rained, we would get a whiff of the mummifying remains. But of Thompson reincarnate, we have seen no evidence. We still get lots of visiting cats but it seems hardly likely he’d choose to return as another cat.

The other day we had the builder renew a portion of the floor. There, in full skeletal glory, was the last of Thompson.

" Alas, poor Thompson. I knew him , Sean" (for that’s our builder’s name)
" A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy"

Sean gave me one of his looks and carried on ripping up the floor.

This was first published in the Capital Times Wellington in 2001