The best lesson I learnt from the exercise, other than reinforcement of the fact that I would never make a scriptwriter, was taught me by the Aussie writer. Jon Stephens was a real, and successful, scriptwriter for film and television. And a real character. ‘Check the fine print in your contract,’ he told me and the third writer, an English dude who was an expert on Jack the Ripper and had written a book on this gory character, which clearly qualified him for the transportation of King Arthur into space. ‘Check the fine print,’ Jon advised. ‘Make sure there is a clause that covers severance and says they’ll have to pay you out for a period of time if things go wrong.’
‘What can go wrong?’ I was naïve.
‘We’ll be sacked. They’ll get through a helluva lot more writers before this thing reaches the small screen—if it ever does. Mark my words!’
I may not have been God’s gift to the art of screenwriting, but that didn’t really matter because there wasn’t much time for writing anything. We seemed to spend most of our time being wined and dined—brunches, lunches and dinners—all designed to welcome some new face to the production team ‘on board’. It was terrific!
Jon was not quite right. We were not sacked—we were ‘disassembled’. We were ‘disassembled’ after about six weeks. I will never forget the term. I remember saying to the big boss, a well-known name in the industry, when we were called to his office, ‘You mean we’re sacked?’ He was horrified. Nothing could be further from the truth, other than for the obvious fact that we were now out of a job. Having taken heed of Jon’s initial advice regarding clauses in contracts, we were very well rewarded. Jon and I consoled ourselves with a few days’ holiday in the Bay of Islands, staying at the old Duke of Marlborough Hotel—after wasting a fair bit of our disassemblement pay buying new clothes at Saks over in Newmarket. Telly people are quite well paid. The spaced-out King Arthur did eventually get made—they called in good old Ken Catran to knit something together after the writing team succeeding ours was also ‘disassembled’.
I thought that this experience would spell the death knell on my relationship with South Pacific. They held the option on my Worst Soccer Team Ever series, and I considered that with my crippling ‘disassembly’ they would certainly not proceed on this project and I would never be able to afford to shop at Saks again. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Sometime later they called me up, told me the whole project was about to begin, and asked to employ me for a week or two as a ‘script advisor’.
This time I didn’t get the flat but, rather, an almost-suite at an up-market motel in Herne Bay. Welcome Home read the card on the basket of fruit and flowers that greeted me, Where have you been all this time?
My second time around proved a very pleasant couple of weeks of brunches, lunches and ‘welcome on board’ dinners. It was a nice gesture on SPP’s part; the last thing they actually wanted was any ‘advice’ from the writer of the books they were adapting. It was a good production. Ken Catran did the scripts!
Some years later I did the whole scriptwriting thing in reverse when South Pacific Pictures—they couldn’t resist me!—and Longacre Press published a set of four Shortland Street novels and I was commissioned to write Nick’s Story. They supplied me with several very large boxes of Shortland Street scripts to wade through, plus about thirty hours’ worth of videoed episodes—without the respite of credits or commercial breaks. A very solid block of Shorty indeed. I can’t pretend to have enjoyed the exercise, but I did it.
Early in 1989 I took off for a few weeks’ holiday in California with a side trip to New York to meet my editors at Scholastic. It was in my mind, now, that it was time for me to leave Ohakune. My way of life had changed completely. This was understandable and quite OK, and certainly no worry in itself. For all that, I realized that the roles I had taken on in the town, and now given up, would make it difficult for me to lead a private life in which my comings and goings would be less conspicuous, less noted and less subject to comment or conjecture. I even lived in a conspicuous place: the main road in and out of the town, Clyde Street, two doors from the carrot!
Before leaving for America I had a chat with the local land agent and asked him what the chances would be of my selling my home. His response was not encouraging—after all, the stock-market debacle of 1987 was not far behind us. I told him simply to bear in mind that, if someone did come his way looking for a property such as mine, it could be had for a reasonable price. I also told him I did not want the place advertised in any way. I had no reason to hope that anything would happen, and took off for a very pleasant time in California and to enjoy the hospitality of my publishers in New York. The latter was meagre in the absolute extreme! After being virtually strip-searched in the foyer of the building that housed Scholastic, I spent a desultory half-hour of chat over a tepid cup of herbal teabag tea. Not even a biscuit. I was slightly pissed off. After all, Possum Perkins had done remarkably well for them, Agnes was about to be published by them, and Knitwits was just around the corner. What a come-down from the magnificent hospitality I had grown used to at South Pacific Pictures!
I got home…A buyer had been found for my house. The sale went through. I moved.
I have now lived in Raurimu for twenty years. I love the place where I live. Isolated it may be, but I have hardly lived here in seclusion. My sons, daughter-in-law, my grandchildren who have been born while I have lived here, often stay. My two sisters have stayed frequently. My closest writing friends, Tessa Duder and Janice Marriott, also often stay—and, before she died, Gaelyn Gordon. Many dozens of others have enjoyed the place with me. In some respects, the place seems to be a sort of magnet. Many of the good folk of Ohakune thought I ‘retired’ here, and whenever I was in the town—which was often—would ask how I was enjoying ‘retirement’.
It has certainly been a busy ‘retirement’. In my years here near Raurimu, I have written twenty-five novels in my tiny little untidy slip of an office, with its by-guess-and-by-God filing system and a succession of computers. It was once the front porch of the house. From here I have sallied forth to take up the post of writer-in-residence at both of the old teachers’ colleges—Palmerston North and Dunedin. Similarly, to the Midwest of the United States for a three-or four-month fellowship at the University of Iowa. I have returned home here countless times from book tours, library visits and, above all, school visits.
I first came across this haven in the mid-1970s while teaching at National Park. It was the farmhouse for a very large farm, and I became friendly with the owners, Noelene and Stuart Buckland. It became a standing joke that, should they ever move on, I would buy the house—but not the farm! By sheer coincidence, they did move on, just before I sold my Ohakune home. They did try to sell me a few hundred acres to go with the house, but, stupidly, I wasn’t interested. The house and a few acres were subdivided from the main property, and I moved here.
It has always been the right place for me. It fits me perfectly. I have lived here much longer now than I have ever lived anywhere else. It is a funny little old house, unprepossessing, built of heart rimu milled on the property about ninety years ago. A new-ish wing built onto the house means it is somewhat larger than it first appears. It sits in about half an acre of gardens surrounded by many trees. I have planted a fair number of the shrubs and trees—particularly the rhododendrons that thrive in this spot—and I calculate that I have mown the lawns around a thousand times since I moved here. Friends and family find great amusement in my assiduous mowing of the grass! I guess I do attack the lawns with an excess of vigour—it was while mowing them on Christmas Day 1993 that I had a heart attack. It didn’t stop me finishing my lawns. It was a good ten days later that my doctor told me what it was that ailed me—by which time the lawns needed mowing again…
Funny little old house, nice gardens, and a very pleasant, hospitable and affable old occupier—all pale into insignificance in comparison with the most stunning feature of the property: the views. Sited at the top of a road that
winds down, and continues winding all the way down to the Whanganui River some thirty-five kilometres from here, the views fade right out into the distance over range after range of razor-back hills to Mount Taranaki-Egmont floating on the horizon. The weather is not always sufficiently clement to spot the floating, but the views remain spectacular—fine weather or foul—in rain, hail, snow, or even volcanic ash! The sunsets can be amazing, particularly if there is a bit of volcanic ash. Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe are only just around the corner—well, a few corners—from my home. I love it here.
Over the years, the old place with the great views has exerted a pull on many more than just me. In the early 1990s Craig came to stay, ostensibly for just the ski season after first coming to the place to do a bit of hunting. Extending a hunting trip to a ski season is something of a jump, but that was OK. Busy as I was at the time, here and away, it was good to have another person around the place. Craig Blake’s ski season extended to three years. He simply became part of the place—indeed part of my family. Based in Wanaka now for many years, he still turns up to stay periodically—checking up on me, and also on an assortment of his goods and chattels still ‘in store’ here.
There are eight others who now consider this old place, at least in part, their home. My other family of ‘almost sons’ are from Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Hungary, the United States, Chile and Russia. Back in 1997 there was a piece in our local newspaper saying that a Swiss boy needed a home for a year in this neck of the woods—an American Field Service exchange student who would, if a home could be found, spend a year at Taumarunui High School. I thought nothing of it until, a couple of weeks later, there was another piece in the paper to the effect that the poor Swiss boy would miss out on this golden opportunity unless a home was found for him. ‘Poor Swiss boy,’ I muttered to myself. Then I thought things over. Why not? I phoned the contact number and explained that I was a highly unsuitable person to temporarily parent anyone—I was too old, single, lived too far away from Taumarunui—but if they were desperate, and it would mean the homeless Swiss boy could get here, I would be willing to give him a home for, say, three months. Yes, they were desperate, so I was highly suitable. Michael arrived even more quickly than Julian had when Delia and I adopted him! He stayed for the whole year and has been back many times since. One of my family.
I know a great deal more about AFS these days than I did back then. I do remember entertaining one or two AFS students to afternoon tea when I was mayor in Ohakune. I have found out since that it is one of the items on their list of ‘things to do’—try to meet the mayor! None of my eight have actually bothered. As one of mine said to me: ‘You’ve been a mayor and I don’t need to meet another one.’
Swiss Michael could be a handful. If anything could go wrong, it would go wrong for Michael. On one occasion he was under ‘house arrest’ here for infringing one or more AFS rules. ‘Why punish me?’ I plaintively asked his AFS support person. Michael was not very keen on attending school—and often didn’t. Michael drank great quantities of beer. He also smoked. Michael entertained significant numbers of girlfriends, sometimes trying to balance the needs of two or three at the same time while avoiding detection. Michael is also very bright. He speaks German—both Swiss German and High German—fluent, almost accentless English, French, Italian, and has a passing acquaintance with Spanish and Portuguese. He read Voltaire in French, Shakespeare in English, and Goethe in German—all while he was here and busy hooning around the King Country with his local mates, most of them no better than they should be. I breathed an enormous sigh of great relief when I got him onto his flight home, happy, probably hungover, but in one piece…He still owed me $500 because his various lines of credit were maxed out. A few weeks later I gently reminded him of his debt. Soon after that my bank phoned to tell me that $1,500 had been deposited in my account from Switzerland. It was from his lovely and long-suffering mother, Brigitte. I emailed her and said there was some mistake; her son’s debt was $500. She emailed back; The rest of it is for damage to your property and your loss of reputation because of my son. Enjoy spending it.
Michael graduated from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland with a degree in comparative religion and the psychology of education. Today he works for the Swiss government with asylum seekers hoping to find refuge in his country. He has also met up with almost all of the other seven boys who succeeded him here.
I didn’t hear again from AFS for two years after Michael had left. I wasn’t surprised. I was likely on the blacklist! But the phone call came eventually. I emailed Michael: Fucking AFS want me to take another student! I thought I bloody failed enough with you…and on in a similar vein. Tragically—or comically—I selected the wrong email address in my list. It went instead to Michael’s old AFS support person. Bless her, she replied to me promptly, pointing out my error and adding How very nice it is to see that you still have a close relationship with Michael, and reiterating her invitation to me to take another exchange student. How could I refuse?
Mathis, from near Brunswick in Germany, did regularly attend school. He enjoyed it and made many friends. He also drank a great deal of beer, but he did manage his girlfriends more discreetly. Like most of the others he thoroughly enjoyed hunting, and disposed of large numbers of possums, rabbits and goats and even a few of what he quaintly termed ‘McPies’. ‘Same as McDonald’s, isn’t it?’
Mathis could never do too much for me. Anything that needed doing around the place, he would do. He loved his time here, and suffered more than most at the prospect of leaving. He proved of enormous use when Robin and Carmen married here in the garden: their guest list had increased from an original twenty or thirty to around 150! It was his privilege—or so I considered—to be here at the time of the 250th anniversary of either the birth or death of Bach. The Concert Programme made much of the event, and I immersed myself, daily, in their radio offerings. Bach would generally be playing when Mathis arrived home and I would deliver him yet another homily on how proud he should feel of his great, long-dead compatriot. I well remember him murmuring on one such occasion, ‘Just my luck to be born a fuckin’ German.’ Mathis is now almost through his medical studies in Leipzig. I once asked him if he had been to the Gewandhaus. ‘Yeah. I go there every day: it’s the bus stop where I catch the bus home.’
Mathis was overjoyed to tell me, soon after he returned to school in Brunswick, that his class had been taken to hear the New York Philharmonic play during a European tour. Naturally I enquired what they had played. ‘Can’t remember, but we got free drinks and burgers.’ He has always known how to strike the right chord when it comes to me! He was last here just two years ago when he and Johannes, also of Germany, painted the house for me.
Johan from Stockholm and Johannes from Offenburg, near the Black Forest and a stone’s throw from Strasbourg in France, were next. Two for the price of one! They painted the kitchen and living room. They seemed to attend school only for photography, although Johan did achieve a minimal NCEA qualification in Hospitality (how to correctly pour wine from a bottle). They snowboarded with great enthusiasm and regularity, and also accompanied me to Australia when I visited Sydney on writing business. They kept a video record of their whole stay.
It was during their time with me that I was president of the New Zealand Society of Authors. In that capacity I was invited to a garden party for the Queen at Government House, Auckland. I showed off the elaborate invitation to Johan and said that I wouldn’t attend, pleading the excuse that the heat of midsummer, the distance to travel there and back—and the fact that he had to go to school! ‘It’s from the Queen of England,’ he said. ‘You cannot say no.’
‘It’s from the Queen of New Zealand,’ I replied. ‘And I can say no. Besides, she won’t miss me.’
‘You have to go. It’s the law,’ said Johan. ‘And I can come, too, because it says “and partner” and you haven’t got one so you can take me.’
It was a superb summer afternoon in Auckland. Abou
t 400 or 500 guests, and the band of the Royal New Zealand Navy—not tootling for me this time!—good New Zealand sparkling wines and plenty of nibbles. Her Majesty looked every inch a queen, almost as regal in appearance as her ladies-in-waiting. She proceeded among her guests, and the Duke took an opposite path, and people queued to shake hands and, if lucky, have a brief two- or three-word conversation.
‘I’m going to talk to the Queen,’ said Johan.
‘You’d better get in line,’ I said. ‘Even then it’s unlikely you’ll get to her before nightfall. You’ll also have to knock aside or knock over a whole heap of little old ladies who probably resemble the grandmother you tell me you loved dearly.’
‘That’s OK,’ he said, busily calculating where to position himself to advantage.
‘How d’you do?’ said the Queen to Johan, possibly relieved to have the opportunity to chat with anyone who wasn’t obviously a pensioner. ‘And tell me, whom do you represent?’
‘Sweden,’ replied Johan, succinctly.
‘Oh, how interesting. Tell me about it,’ said the Queen.
Johan obliged. Flushed with the enormity of his success, he returned to me and announced. ‘Now I’m going to do her husband.’
The Duke was nowhere near as chatty as his wife. ‘Who do you represent?’ the Duke enquired, gruffly.
‘Taumarunui High School,’ replied Johan.
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