- Get stale having to actually work for a crust.
- Figure out that when push comes to squeeze one doesn’t really need to head off to work each day.
- Figure out the Next Best Amusement (NBA for those in the know - wink wink). “Ooh I know! I'll acquire a ute and a caravan and go a-travelling!” Sounding like Toad.
- Spend years reading, sweat over the details, procrastinate - all very hard work
- All the time working working working, stale stale stale
- Terrific people around you saying go on, go on, stay here, stay here, follow the dream, be sensible …
- Take the plunge, spend the money
- Go on a bit of a trial run, sort out the wrinkles and barnacles
- Get the vital organs checked out - all good, much to the chagrin of those with vested interests!
- But they’ll take a tax anyway.
Then it’s summer and fire season and four months when it’s too hot and too uncomfortable and too bloody uncertain to be choofing off around Australia in case the fires catch up and if they don’t then the heat’ll get you. Or the floods. Or hail the size of baseballs. Or the cyclones. Or the summer flies (or the autumn, winter and spring flies!)
So you wisely decide to postpone for a four month INTERLUDE. Right now we are in the INTERLUDE.
Great word, interlude. A bit like INTERMISSION at the pictures, only shorter. Nearly as long as the break in a double feature. With the Jaffas or the Eskimo Pies ...
... or the rock hard frozen ice creams in cones, and the NahNah Boys going bananas in the front row while we sit quietly (yeah, right) almost exactly two thirds the way up the back. Not too far back in case we find ourselves in Lovers Lane, and not too far forward where the little kids sit. Or more to the point don't sit. And we all stand up for the royalty at the start, then maybe the Movietone News, some cartoons. Then the FEATURES. All decorum goes out the windowless windows. Jumping up and down, screaming. Yaaah! Marx Bros. Yaaah! Stooges. Yaaah! John Wayne. Yaaah! Chitty Chitty. Yaaah! No taste. No preference. No restraint. No problem.
The State Theatre was best for this. The Mayfair was a fleapit and then it closed. The Odeon was a bit flash and newly furbished and had carpet down the aisles so you couldn’t hear the Jaffas roll slowly down the wooden floorboards and make an extra “tack tack tack” down the steps. (see here: Link to Cadbury NZ Jaffas page) Only during the boring bits, mind (uh huh!) - the News. Or travelogues. Not the FEATURES.
Yep, the State had everything. Big modern pastel-coloured plaster bubbles on the walls. Even had upstairs balconies - the “Dress Circle” - for those with an extra 3d - and if you had the extra 3d you did go upstairs so you could ambush the hoi polloi 15 ft below. With Jaffas of course. Took 'em by surprise every time. Even when we were on the receiving end. "What was that? Who did that?"
The State had a 6 foot wide Refreshments counter strategically placed near the auditorium door. It struggled a bit with the crowd but did a great job sugaring up the 500 already excitable under-tens during the 15 min half time break. Send ‘em out. Sugar ‘em up. Send ‘em back. Shut ‘em in. Eye-watering thought, in retrospect. I have to assume there was some really really good money in it. Or the proprietors had done something really really bad in a previous life.
But the State Theatre is no more. The building is still there, but apparently now used for retail or cafe. Make it part of your Art Deco experience when next you travel through Sunny Napier.
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| The single eyebrow at the top contains the theatre name. Clearly Max needed to be more important. |
... But I digress.
… so there I was contemplating INTERLUDE when Glenn called and said “come and have some fun”!
One finds oneself gainfully employed, once again. Jolly interesting gig, a lot of fun. But the bureaucrats decide to take their last and most effective revenge before I finally stop working. Not quite sure which is cause and which is effect - is the revenge causing my final pin-pull, or did my pin-pull evoke the final revenge? Gotta be a bit philosophical about this stuff.
Jo and Glenn jumping that (!) high to satisfy the rules, but still it isn’t enough. Like the dreaded Moctezuma’s Revenge the bureaucratic obstruction never really goes away. Comes back with brass ornaments on, just when you thought it was all safe and process completed and finished and you thought you could draw the line and move on. Except it’s held up somewhere again. No message or signal that it’s held up, just an eerie silence, a notification by vacuum.
“This is our space. In our space, no-one hears you scream. We’ll let you know sometime if your query worked. Otherwise assume it hasn’t. Or has, but we forgot. Or we forgot, so it hasn’t. Or that. But don’t ask because we won’t. Or we could, but we could also forget. Or something.”
I fully expect my query will be rattling around that magic vacuum when the machines take over:
“Bzzt. What’s this? Unresolved query 456. Is it resolved yet? No. Put it on the queue. … Bzzt. What’s this? Unresolved query 456. Is it resolved yet? No. Put it on the queue. … Bzzt. What’s this? Unresolved query 456 …”
So have we stumbled upon an answer for breaches of Asimov’s Laws of Robotics? Send in the Bureau-Bots? Everything will stop. Even time.
In retrospect, perhaps that’s what happened to my query. Fell through a crack in the space-time continuum, and therefore the query exists across all times in every possible universe … so perhaps my query is already answered some time in the future and therefore doesn’t need to be answered again in the present. And because the future answer is its own evidence of query-completion that exists in all futures and in all pasts there is no need to let anyone know it has or hasn’t been answered. QED.
Don’t scream in our space. No-one will hear you.
Now THAT was cathartic! Got it all out. Feeling better now.
STOP PRESS
Perhaps it was Jo’s impeccable connections and powerful ability to influence, perhaps it was the Bureau-Bots, but the response came through. Miracles. Thank you Jo!
START PRESS
Now all I have to do is recover from some side effects caused by a bout of Extreme Gardening over Xmas. We had some trees cut down and cut into bits about the right size to split for the wood heater. Then we rented an old log splitter and got a little routine going with Cameron, Stuart and me splitting and stacking the wood.
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| Like this but much, much older. |
We got through about two or three tons before we ran out of steam, and it got too hot for us office types, well - me, and I started travelling for work (see above). And then there was a monster pile of chipped eucalypt, ideal for mulch, so we got another routine going, forking and shovelling into the trailer to move it around to the garden beds, then heave it off and back for more. BACK being the operative word because after all the lifting and rolling and shovelling and twisting my back started niggling. And Niggling. And NIGGLING. Like someone jabbing a thumb - hard - into my lower back. Sudden and eye watering. So now I’m flat on my back a-waiting for my GP appointment on Monday. Thought I’d given the slip to the Medical Fraternity when I passed the easy-to-see and puff-puff test (see previous blog post). It seems not.
So here I recline ...
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| Looking good. That's not really me. I don't have a hookah. |
So leave me now
To contemplate
In my blissful misery
And express in meaningless lines
With no rhyme, nor reason
Why no-one told me
About the tear-bone
Another INTERLUDE update will come … later ... after I figure it out.
Be seeing you.
