Miscellany 3

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.

Fifty dancing virgins

As I write, the actual Cup, the Webb Ellis Cup, the Rugby World Cup, is down at Bluff about to start its pilgrimage northwards through the land for the homage of the faithful. First, today, they carted it across Foveaux Strait to Stewart Island where the primary school kids did a haka and had their photos taken individually alongside the Cup.

This is very moving stuff. They have modified some large cartage van as the centerpiece of their cavalcade, and it seems that worshippers in Hokitika or Havelock, Dannevirke or Dargaville, can form orderly queues and file through the van for a reverential glimpse of the Cup.

It is reminiscent of the ancient Hebrew narrative describing King David bringing the Ark of the Covenant up into Jerusalem. He sacrificed bullocks along the way and had the Ark preceded by dancing singing virgins. David himself danced the Ark into Jerusalem, naked, and subject to some public ridicule. He was just happy, that’s all.

So at least when the Cup is in the approaches to centres with sacred rugby turf there could be some local dancing virgins. About fifty should do it, if they can be found. A reduced number might be necessary at Taumarunui. Solemn barbecues with Heineken could substitute for sacrifices, although I would personally prefer a properly spit-roasted bullock. But that would take too long.

The Cup is an elaborate silver thing with a lid, and I was intrigued to learn that its two handles have silver representations of a satyr on one and a nymph on the other. This could be seen as sinister. The only connection I can think of between satyrs and nymphs on the one hand, and world Rugby on the other, seems to me strictly off-field and causes considerable angst from time to time, with players sent home. One has to ask why this design was chosen. Perhaps we will never know. One possibility is that, as happened in the building of old cathedrals, carvers and engravers, artisans and decorators, often left their own little secret jokes.

Well, now it proceeds north. With only two months to the opening of Rugby Heaven and its ancillary horrors such as Auckland’s Party Central -- to say nothing of the media’s sickening obsequious and sycophantic devotion -- it has become a case of sauve qui peut. There is no escape committee I know of.

An item in the NZ Herald today says there is some trouble recruiting enough people to serve beer. I imagine there are sufficient people to drink it.