Yon Perfect Southern Lass

Through all my youth Dunedin toon has been sae fu‘ of beauty,
Tae find that paragon sae fair, has been ma bounden duty.
Ah‘ve lo‘ed them a‘, and tracked them doon, thro' daylight hoors an‘ darkness,
And when they‘re in my arms again, I‘ve marvelled at their starkness.

The perfect lass, Ah‘ll tell ye noo, my memory‘s fast recedin‘,
Is made from mony a charmer frae the suburbs o‘ Dunedin.
And as I sit at Stuart‘s foot, my back turned on the kirkin‘,
Ah‘ll put her all togither, as my mind like fever‘s workin‘.

Her hair belonged to Mosgiel‘s Jean, whose lovely auburn tresses,
Wad make me wish she lived in toon, at handier addresses.
Her eyes belonged to Caversham, where Alice lived in splendour,
She only had to open them, to have me sigh so tender.

Her ankles are from Woodhaugh‘s Claire, and as I walked behind her,
She need not turn her face to me, those well-turned pins would find her.
The hips and thighs of ample Sal, who wooed me round St Kilda,
Were all the contours I traversed, with heavenly form they filled her.

Anither love was Roslyn‘s Rose, her waist and bosom famous,
And when a lass has parts like that, it‘s simple fare to tame us.
The lips belonged to Belleknowes Jane, her kiss was so inviting,
I couldna stop at ane alone, my fervent needs requiting.

The twinkling feet and lively legs were Caversham‘s Ramona‘s,
We‘d dance sae crazy, all oor friends were ready to disown us.
The slinky arms from Maori Hill belonged to little Mavis,
As roond ma neck they slid their way; ‘twould take a prayer to save us.
And last, those hands, that precious touch, of Olive from the City,
Her magic fingers twined in mine, to leave her was a pity.

But the most essential item of this fine eclectic creature,
Is the mind which ticks within her; it‘s her all-important feature.
As Dunedin men admire her from her head down to her toes,
May the brain of Mayor Sukhinder now direct her as she goes.

So get your mindies working, and just weave this wondrous being,
And as I sit here; face the pub; you‘ll doubtless be agreeing.
In man‘s imagination you can take it all in turns,
To walk aboot the Octagon wi' the girl of Robbie Burns.

(photo - Don Spittle)

- Slidge (2004)

After Hours

Billy Molloy looked nervously across at his wife as she slammed the last dish in the cupboard. The kids were in bed, thank God, all except Ngaire of course. And where the hell was she on a filthy night like this? Safe in the pictures at Greymouth, as she’ll probably try to tell us? Or up on the Taylorville back road with that young Mitchell in his 1953 Velox?! It’ll be a bloody miracle if she gets to seventeen without a disaster.

Rita Molloy, stolid and miserable, poked the fire unmercifully, picked up her knitting, and settled down with the 3YZ Request Session as if Billy didn’t exist. Nice boy, that Terry Mitchell – nice family altogether – she could do a lot worse. Oh, yes, my Ngaire can look after herself. Even when her husband got up to peer under the water-marked holland blind, she didn’t flinch.

The steady three-day rain was still tinning away on the roof, gutters spilling down past the window to run under the house, and a huge reflecting pool of black splashing in the pile of coal at the gate. He could just see the misty lemon blob of the nearest street light and the downward driving lines of the familiar rain.

She won’t care if I go along to the pub. Won’t miss me, anyway. Better than sitting here chained to the kennel. Down in the mine all day, wet walls, sweaty, shiny workmates, all grunts and heaves, soggy sandwiches and thermos tea, - - pick, shovel,fuse,blast, drill and sweat! What for? To sit here with more grunts from her, and the water trying its best to come straight through the bloody roof. Aw, bugger it!

Rita shrugged out a knowing derisive snort as he grabbed for his oilskin behind the door. “Down to Wallsend for a jug” was quite redundant, and “Won’t be long” was unconvincing. She never was much of a girl for the pub.

There was the usual crowd in the bar, long after most of the pubs in the country had closed, and Roy Williams, the pubkeeper, leaned over all confidential-like, tea-towel over his shoulder. Heard about the new cop at Taylorville? Yeah, came over all cobbery, told me to close at eleven and he wouldn’t worry me. Eleven be buggered, let ‘im bloody try! The usual, Billy? O.K. - comin’ up.

The smoke was thick in the little square room, big villa windows onto the verandah, blinds pulled hard down, no outside lights, and the good old phone to warn you of the ‘flying squad’ as it shot through Kaiata or Stillwater.

Like a club it was, with the buzz and shout of the beer-talk, the loud-mouthed skite and pickled confidences, man to man, arm around the neck, “cos I trust y’ see?”, but more to keep the balance really. One lot of regulars played 45’s under the unsubtle light, the whole rowdy scene a going concern, good for the pub, good for the miners, the real social life of the Coast.

Then there was one long blast of the front door-bell. The noise stuttered, dwindled and was gone. It’s that new cop! Quick, out the back! Says Roy.

It’ll be a bit wet, but it won’t be for long. Billy fairly scampered out with the others in single file, jugs, glasses and all, Roy swabbing the bar like a flash, two of the Ngahere lads grabbing brooms, and the scene was set.

Over the back porch went the others, straight into the dark,damp,towering bush, up the wet, black, earthy bank, pulling on grass and supplejacks, swearing at blackberry and lawyer, grabbing the sticky, dirty tree-trunks, as they scurried for perfect cover in the night.

And there they crouched facing the pub, as the rain hammered down on the sheds and lean-to, pouring, soaking and dripping through the heavy leaves, into their hair, down their necks, as they pulled up their coat collars in vain. Someone was hushed as he started to abuse the new cop.

It seemed like hours, and Billy felt he was still down the mine – only this was worse. In the bush in the rain at midnight surrounded by fools like himself. But they all knew the drill. Roy would pitch a yarn about leaving the cleaning-up till pretty late, offer the policeman a drink, or even a bottle of Scotch to keep him sweet, see him out the front, then call them all back in to continue the night. What bloody fools we’ll all look at home, back from the pub like drowned rats! Billy could already hear Rita’s biting wisdom, and wished he’d stayed with the Request Session.

Then Roy’s voice! O.K. Come on in! It must’ve been a false alarm. There wasn’t even a car!
Then the swearing really started, as they trooped crazily in, shaking themselves in the hall as the lights came on, back to the bar for an hour or two and the roaring fire. Like Billy to a man, no-one was wife-bound just yet for a while. It came as quite a surprise to most of them there when the last man in shut the door quietly behind him, turned the key in the lock, and took their names and addresses.

Billy Molloy often thought about that rainy night in the bush . . . . “He didn’t last long, that new cop, and anyway, we never got our names in the paper like they did over the hill. All a bit of a dag really.” Rita Molloy always reckoned they were a bit tough on him. “What’s wrong with making you all obey the law just for once in your life? And it’s only for boozing!” Never was much of a girl for the pub.

ACE

It was a dirty trick, Colin reckoned. He must've seen us on the beach. Anyway, it wasn't his beach, it was our beach. Our grandfather walked along it at low-tide nearly every day, and he picked up all the funny-shaped pieces of driftwood, and he found the dead albatross with the six-foot wingspan. That stupid pilot probably never played on a beach. He wouldn't know how to make a sea-weed ball, or take a catch at mid-wicket when you're running through the breakers. He wasn't standing on top of the sand-hills during the big sea. Our grandfather was. And he saw the sloping sand-hill fall away beneath his feet, and wondered whether his little lean-to house was going to be next to go.

"Look at that plane!", someone shouted, and we all looked too high, then lower, right down against the shadow of Blackhead, and the plane looked huge, bearing down on our beach, its two frail wings rocking slightly in the wind as though not quite under control. We'd never seen a plane at such close quarters. "He's going to land on the beach! Quick, get up to the sand-hill!", shouted our big brother Wally,and we ran.

Maybe he was going to land on the beach, but I don't reckon so, claims Colin to this day. It was blowing a gusty easterly off the sea that day, and the weeks of easy weather had planed the beach down to a pleasant powdery white, warm under the bare feet, and coloured near the tide-mark by the orange grit patches and their lovely wind-swept corrugations. Wally was in charge of the four of us, and wasn't letting us go swimming without Mum or Grandad around. We'd all been down to the end of the beach already, paddled across the beck just beneath the black bridge, and dug some racing cars out of the sand. But the tide was going out, and we couldn't be bothered chasing it, so Dave ran home for the big kite, and he and Wally got it going and played out the enormous ball of string they'd brought from Dunedin. Colin and Jean mucked about with a sort of hut in the lupins for a while, then went out to see how high they'd got the kite.

                                     

It was a big white kite, a bought one, with the word "ACE" in huge red capital letters right across its face, and Wally and Dave, who were pretty good scientists, had made a long cloth tail of ripped-up sheets, tied with red ribbons. It made it pretty heavy, but it was stable, and this day it climbed and climbed proudly on the breeze, as Wally let more and more string off the stick, until he got to the end of it, and it was the highest kite we'd ever had! We all stood there on the beach, our beach, the wind pinning the shirts to our backs, so proud, with our feet apart, hands on hips, mouths open and eyes squinting in the glare of the bright sky. The highest kite we'd ever had!

Wally reckoned the sand could hold the stick, and we could have a game of cricket before it was time to go home, or if the truth be known before Mum appeared at the top of the sand-hill crying out like the seagulls to her brood. He dug the stick savagely into the sand, stamped all around it, then we all made a big pile of sand, until the stick was well and truly buried under a heavy hillock.

You had to have at least a dozen sea-weed balls for a decent game of beach cricket, as they didn't last forever, but Wally and Dave were pretty good at carving them into neat little spheres, then putting little sister Jean behind the driftwood stumps, and sending Colin, the smallest, to paddle at mid-wicket after his short first innings. Then they'd do most of the batting and bowling, as well as shouting directions and generally abusing the fielders, both of them.

Jean it was, bored with her unexciting role, and exhausted after long runs to the south as the batsman ran dozens of byes, who saw the plane first. "Look at that plane!" The four children rushed to the doubtful shelter of the lupins, and stood there, mouths open with simple astonishment, as the crazy biplane, engine now roaring as it loomed and lurched toward them just off the ground, enormous like the albatross, as it climbed again below the kite.

He snipped it off as neat as if with scissors, he did, that grinning mad pilot, and off he went above our beach, with our kite, our "ACE", the highest kite we'd ever had! The boys shouted and waved their fists, and the long, long string came drifting, drifting down, blowing sadly in the wind.

"He did it on purpose!" said Dave angrily, back in Grandad's little house. "He was laughing at us!" cried Jean. "It was dangerous low flying," was Wally's calm judgment. "He shouldn't of been on our beach!" repeated Colin for the third or fourth time. "He's a robber!" "Wash that sand off your feet before you come in this house!" said Mum.