My contribution to sport

Sport was compulsory at Auckland Grammar. You had to play one winter sport and one summer sport. I lined up for hockey with all the bad grace at my command – I was a 3^rd former, 12 years old, and it was 1947. As I recall, they had me standing out on the field clutching a hockey stick, not having the remotest idea what I was supposed to do, or which indeed was “our” goal. Indeed, I didn’t even know whom I was playing for or against. I didn’t care. People were shouting at me. Evidently there was some autonomic sense of what to do in sport which I did not possess. I was apparently a bloody waste of space.

But I knew clearly that this was not how I wished to live my life; it all seemed even then juvenile and pointless. So I walked off the paddock and never went back. Over four years at Auckland Grammar I became invisible and watched the sporting heroes paraded at school assembly to shine the light of their magnificence upon us.

Sport was not an agenda in our home. My father, when he condescended to live with us, did have some prior and mysterious knowledge of wrestling, and that was of some interest to us in the time of Lofty Blomfield and Earl McCready. So we sometimes attended the wrestling in the Auckland Town Hall with morbid fascination, and considerable schadenfreude when the evil guys got dumped from a great height. “They know how to fall” said my father. Well, one would hope so.

Life proceeded without sport, as I still think it should. I could never understand why so many of my contemporaries were so eager to spend weekends on cold windswept paddocks to no good purpose. I recall being slightly amused when my father, by this time with a son at St Kentigern College, evinced a hitherto unveiled expertise in Rugby football, in the sense that he now knew all about it, and followed the fortunes of the St Kentigern First XV so assiduously each week that they made him an Honorary Member, and gave him a certificate which he framed and hung on the wall. My amusement was enhanced when he informed me one day that I did not and could not understand Rugby. He was right, I thought, the physical and mystical features of Rugby Football entirely elude me.

The fact is, I have always been unmoved and underwhelmed by the pervading cult of team sport and team spirit, speed, strength, physical prowess. These days it seems to produce, as collateral damage I suppose, sustained inebriation and gross sexual misbehaviour and crime. This is constantly excused by aficionados as the kind of latitude we have to allow to adrenalin-ridden sports icons, popping hormones all over the show -- and our role is to “understand”. That’s crap. These guys need to grow up. They haven’t yet come to terms with their gonads.

Professional football in all codes seems to me increasingly revolting. The juvenile and aggressive gestures on the field whenever someone achieves something, the often thinly-concealed racism, the tacit approval of violence and cheating against the rules... but then, as my father pointed out, I don’t understand any of this; it is somehow veiled from me. The exception, it seems to me, is netball, which appears to retain principles and is entertaining to watch.

Motor sport, on the other hand, is beyond belief. Noisy, polluting, wasteful of resources, hugely expensive, dangerous, pandering to everything less than admirable in human nature... Stock cars, drag racing, V8 stuff... It was a happy day for me when Auckland proved unable or unwilling to accommodate the international motor sport event which would have shut down part of the central city for about 3 weeks, and it went to Hamilton, which deserves it.

So I am counter-cultural. Isn’t that good! I have had a sports-free lifetime since I walked off the hockey field, and thus have achieved so much more in wideness and depth.

I'm as well as can be expected, given the state I'm in...

Personal health issues are usually boring, it seems to me. Mary says I am a compliant patient. Well, I long ago discovered that it suits me to be that, and gets better results. I subscribe to the weekly Mayo Clinic email newsletter, because they are supremely competent and professional. I have learned to be understanding of other people's pain, arthritis, loss of neurones, lack of eyesight or hearing... But I also refuse to cruise around the supermarket leaning on the trolley, or walking around with my mouth open.

Our GP back in Auckland was part of a practice right on the frontiers of every major social health issue. He paid us the courtesy of leaving it entirely to us whether we showed up to see him or not, he respected whatever intelligence we have. Now we have had to sign up with a new practice here in Algies Bay / Snells Beach / Warkworth area. I have yet actually to meet the doctor I am supposed to be with. I met the locum, and I met the practice nurse, the receptionists, another doctor who has left... But they have sent me a notice informing me that I am part of a programme about diabetes, with things to do including a set of tests. And I have to show up also for a medical check before I can get my new driver's licence, since my 75th birthday comes in August. I suspect, in this practice, it may be a fight to get past the practice nurse, but we'll see.

But there we are, discussing health issues, a prevalent form of egoism. It's not as though any of it matters ultimately. It would be good to be without pain and suffering until one's last breath, but that's unlikely -- and is itself, I guess, a form of egoism. Mary sometimes says, "Stay away from doctors, especially surgeons." Well, it's a fine aim. I'm trying, I'm trying...

The best thing is to have found a way to confront one's own mortality and actual death, and to know its sting is drawn. That's the road down which freedom lies.

David Bain

Once upon a time, a man I had never met showed up, asked if he could talk with me confidentially, and proceeded to confess to a murder. I did everything I could to get him to take his confession to the police. There was no way he would do that. So he was left with whatever solace comes from confession to a minister who could by no means offer absolution -- and I was left with knowledge of the identity of a murderer. The police never did resolve the matter.

It impresses me that only David Bain knows who murdered his mother Margaret, father Robin, sisters Laniet and Arawa, and brother Stephen -- five people. If Robin did it, that's four murders and one suicide. If David did it, it's five murders. Forensic evidence shoots either way, and could be argued ad infinitum. That has been abundantly shown in two major trials and an appeal hearing to the Privy Council. David himself presents as gentle and gentlemanly, open to hurt, braving the media, saying only positive things, entirely likeable. It is extremely difficult to see him in the role the prosecution wanted. He has said repeatedly he is innocent. Logic would believe him.

But of course just about everyone in NZ has an opinion.

I don't care. The Bain family was spectacularly dysfunctional, including psychopathological religion, and had become precisely the kind of environment in which something utterly dreadful could happen. And so it did. David survived from all that psychopathology, and he actually seems, even after some 13 years in prison, and much sustained harassment from the legal scene, to be reasonably intact. That's what matters.

The Solemn Feast of Queen's Birthday

One of the features of decrepency and retirement is that everyone else knows that next weekend is a long weekend because of Queen's Birthday, but you didn't know until it became apparent in the circumstances of life. Once upon a time, you knew it weeks ahead, and planned for it.

So we had Rachel and Simon and little Stephen (10 months) come up for dinner on Saturday, and Rachel and Stephen stayed over till Monday, and went back to Auckland with Mary. It was all lovely. Stephen is the most rewarding little kid, responsive, etc, etc... Both Simon and Mary subscribe to the NZ Taste magazine, actually quite good about menus and recipes -- but it means that Mary competes with Simon, in the gentlest possible ways of course. So we tend to get quite nice food.

It was Pentecost Sunday, and the locals were invited to show up wearing red for Pentecost. This amuses the local believers and advances the faith. Stephen utterly refuses to wear his knitted red beany, so that's a dead loss. Etc, etc... this is the local church from which I am emancipated.

But now they have all gone back to Auckland. All I have left to do is get the washing dry, and bring it in. I am alone..! Oh dear, how sad, never mind... I can live happily in both worlds.

And in my solitude world...? Well, that is my hermit existence. Except that tomorrow I feel committed to set off for Hamilton, to visit my mother's remaining half-sisters, Tui and Patsy, in Te Awamutu, and also Helen Oliver. Helen and Jack Oliver, Jack now died, are very old friends.

I don't want to venture from here. But this one I ought to do.

Pentecost passed without inspiration, except that I keep the faith.