Last night as I recall we were 55 days away from the start of Rugby Heaven, the Rugby World Cup. A huge excrescence seems to have come ashore on the Auckland waterfront, like some liquefaction from the abyss of the Kermadec Trench. This is called The Cloud, I believe -- no one seems to know why -- and it’s purpose is to function as a giant bowser station for pumping Heineken and Steinlager into the bloodstreams of the faithful. The Prime Minister called it Party Central. It will be a very noisy place.
Given that any actual rugby event will be kilometers away, this place must be solely dedicated to booze and noise as a kind of adjunct -- or what in another context might have been called peripheral damage. It is a comment on our culture, that the malignant RWC metastasizes into separate islands of indulgence at vast expense, as though the simple enjoyment of watching football game were never enough, or even the point. There will be pubs and clubs and other venues everywhere, with wide TV screens, dispensing alcohol to the devotees.
Daily on TV we are seeing happy happy people holding up their blue RWC tickets. We have ours, have you got yours? The slogan seems to be You gotta be there. No I don’t. Bad mistake.
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Then I thought to consult the RWC websites. There is a place where they have clearly gone to some trouble to organise the national anthems to be sung at the rugby events. Somebody thought to mobilise some of New Zealand’s choral talent for recordings of everyone’s national anthems decently and in order. This is excellent news. It means that we won’t be subjected to the cringing embarrassment of some swooping talentless soprano, trained, if that is the word, in the hip hop school of tuneless noisemaking, destroying whatever merit there may be in God Defend NZ, or Allons Enfants, and getting flatter and flatter. The recordings you can hear on the website are very brisk and professional, with decent orchestration. We are given the words in the home language. All of this ensures that I will, if I’m around, tune in to the start of the games to hear the anthems.
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Dr Richard Worth, the cabinet minister who resigned last year after allegations of sexual impropriety, has been confirmed as Honorary Consul to New Zealand for Monaco. Well, there’s a certain tantalising fittingness about that. Dr Worth has just returned from the wedding of Prince Albert of Monaco and Charleen Wittstock. The body language of Charleen and Albert at the festivities, I thought, said it all. It is as though they loathe each other. They honeymooned in Durban, not merely in separate rooms but in separate hotels. Their honeymoon was cut short because Albert had to get home to have blood tests in a paternity suit. Isn’t that wonderful.
I seem to remember Sir Robert Jones, in one of his books, writing that among the people he would never employ are those who wear sun shades pushed back to the top of their heads, and anyone called Charleen. Ah well, no doubt Charleen’s role is to produce an heir.
Someone may know why Monaco needs a consul in NZ, honorary or otherwise. Why does NZ consent to clutter up its diplomatic corps with representation from Monaco? Do we have representation from Chad, Upper Volta or Albania?
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Manu Samoa beat the Wallabies 32-23. There is delirious rejoicing in Apia and Auckland. And I believe they did it on merit. The Aussies were simply outplayed. And outmuscled, I imagine. I try to avoid schadenfreude, but these moments in sport seem to demand it. Former Samoan rugby hero Peter Fatialofa said he might have a beer or two even though it was Sunday. This is big stuff. I knew his mother, Tui Fatialofa. She was a lovely, brave and noble woman who was the first Samoan woman to be ordained a Presbyterian minister in the face of much tut-tutting in the patriarchy. Tui, I think, might have made a Sunday exception too.
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