Off the Radar

by Te Radar

  While building something under 10 square metres in area is exempt from a building permit, the building still has to be built according to the strictures of the Building Code.

  On a wet October morning, a friendly man whose job it is to inspect these things on an independent basis points out the obvious defects.

  He suspects the poles aren’t deep enough.

  He isn’t sure the shelf framing makes for the most suitable building framework, but I think he is impressed at the ingenuity of its usage.

  He points out there is what he politely describes as ‘a little moisture’ leaking in from the windows that appears to be rotting some of the timber.

  I point out that it isn’t my building skills that are at fault here, but that the wood was rotten before I used it. I also point out that, to be fair, I have strengthened it with some of the spare shelving brackets.

  Worst of all, he says, ‘There is no way a potbelly can be installed without the sign-off of an engineer.’

  ‘What kind of land is it,’ I demand to know, ‘where people can’t inhabit a shack of their own construction? What would our ancestors have thought, in their hovels and shanties? It is an outrage.’

  If my home-made shack falls down, I continue to rant, surely it’ll be on my own head? Even if that’s literally?

  He agrees, and suggests that if I remove the illegal potbelly, promise not to sleep in the shed, and to build everything else to code, then he’ll allow the structure to remain. As the cameras roll, I assure him I shall.

  ‘Would you,’ I ask, ‘perhaps like to help me remove the stove?’ That way he can be sure it’s gone. ‘I’d love to,’ he replied, ‘but, alas, I have other pressing council callings.’ It seems that although building inspectors are to be feared, they are not as frightening as whitetails.

  6

  The elusive eel

  Given my propensity for appearing in public in all manner of scanty attire, it may be difficult to tell that as a younger man I suffered from a self-diagnosed form of the psychological condition known as body dysmorphia.

  In a world obsessed with the tanned body beautiful, I loathed taking my shirt off or wearing shorts in public, because I was a pale ginger-haired boy whose skin refused to tan, meaning I was either ghostly white or, after a little sunshine, hot pink—literally. As a result, I detested summer and everything that went with it. What I hated the most was that I missed out on a lot of swimming.

  It could be said that I am now overcompensating for this childhood trauma by taking most of my clothes off as often as possible. I once suggested to someone that this might be a form of aversion therapy. They laughed and said, ‘Yes, particularly for any women in the vicinity.’

  Little wonder then that I decide it is entirely appropriate to illustrate the lifecycle of an eel for an insert in the show by donning a giant eel head and, alternately, my scanty swimming trunks and a bikini. I like to think that the visual metaphor is fitting, because for many people, both the eel and my good self in a bikini are visions that are slightly uneasy on the eye.

  Eels are one of those animals whose lifecycle is difficult to understand, not only because little about them is understood, but also because what is understood seems slightly ludicrous.

  Over the millennia, some of the greatest minds in history have tried to decipher the mysteries of the eel.

  The Greek philosopher Aristotle, when not mooching around being profound and inventing thinking, studied the eel. He declared that they were born of the earthworm, and emerged literally ‘from the guts of wet soil’. Given the rest of his accomplishments, I guess we can forgive him this one minor error.

  Later, Sigmund Freud began his career dissecting eels for several weeks in an attempt to find their testicles. He failed to do so, and some wonder if his later sexual theories were somehow caused by his frustration in this endeavour.

  It’s astonishing to think that the eels that inhabit the creeks and ponds of deepest, darkest New Zealand were all born thousands of miles away in warm tropical waters. No one knows exactly where, but it is being narrowed down to an area somewhere near New Caledonia, or Tonga, or maybe Fiji.

  Quite why they would choose to leave these lovely tropical waters for the dark pools of innermost New Zealand I do not know. Nevertheless, here they remain for up to 40 years, and in some cases 80 or even 100 years, before making the return journey to the spawning grounds. It seems an inordinate amount of effort to go to.

  No one has ever observed eels spawning, but I can only imagine that it is an absolutely astounding sexual experience, because as soon as it is completed they die.

  As fascinating as all of this undoubtedly is, the thought of having to deal with one is not in any way appealing to me. I’ve never liked them. They give me the willies. I think it is a combination of their slimy writhyness and their teeth.

  That they can grow up to 1.75 metres long and weigh up to 24 kilograms means that I have no trouble believing the anecdotal reports of ducklings and other small waterfowl disappearing underwater as they paddle along.

  I have no desire to be bitten by an eel, as their teeth are set at a backwards angle so that when they bite down, their teeth lock in place, and the only way to release them is to basically tear out the flesh they have gripped. That has to sting.

  This is why I am prepared to risk the mocking laughter and snide glances of Shawn’s stepson John and his mate Brin, who have somehow been persuaded to take me eeling, when I pull from my pocket a sturdy leatherette man-glove that I have brought with me in case I am forced to handle one of these repulsive, but apparently tasty, denizens of the creek.

  What makes the entire eeling endeavour all the worse is that the eels are to be tempted by a better quality of meat than I have seen in several days. The bait consists of a large hunk of wild venison that John has taken from Shawn’s freezer. What I really want to do is take the bait home and simply eat that instead.

  As Jane won’t let me, I find myself casting a line into the creek, forlornly hoping that I will not catch an eel. John and Brin though, not wishing to disappoint, have what they proudly refer to as their never-fail eel-enticing trick. This consists of cracking an egg into the creek.

  As they proceed to crack egg after egg and drop them in the creek, they insist their technique remains a secret. I assure them it will. To date, I have told no one.

  Whether it is the lure of the eggs or the venison, within a short period we are hauling eels out of the creek. I insist on keeping only one—purely in the spirit of sustainability, of course.

  It is rather difficult, in my experience, to tell if an eel is actually dead. As they can absorb up to 50 per cent of their oxygen requirements through their skin, merely leaving them out of the water is not enough. You can stomp on their heads, but this seems barbaric, and there is always the danger that the soft ground will mitigate the stomping and you will merely end up with an angry eel with a headache.

  Aiming a knife at their brain is another method, but even then it can be difficult to tell if the brain is stabbed, as they will continue to twitch and writhe in an inelegantly disturbing manner for some time.

  I suggest that John employs both of these methods in an effort to render my eel as dead as possible. I even offer him my man-glove, which he politely declines.

  With the deed done, I pack the eel in a sack, bid the youths farewell, and set off to feast in the manner of a pre-European Maori.

  The first step in preparing the eel is to de-slime it. John has suggested a couple of options, including putting it in a bag of salt overnight. As they are to be my dinner immediately, I need them unslimy pronto. I decide to employ the dipping-them-in-hot-water method.

  With my delicate hand safely enclosed in the leatherette gauntlet, I tentatively grasp the heavy body of the dead eel and drop it into a wok full of steaming water. The dead eel immediately begins such a frenzy of quite undead writhing that it pops right back out of the wok.

  While I am sure it is dead, the water mus
t have caused its nerves and muscles to expand and contract spontaneously. This is not family viewing.

  ‘I suspect we won’t see that bit on the telly either, will we, Jane?’ I say.

  ‘No’, she agrees. ‘We most certainly will not.’

  The eel finally stops wriggling after I hold it down in the boiling water with tongs, which doesn’t please me entirely as it means that I now have to dissect it.

  This is not overly difficult, as one simply needs to slice it from what appears to be the opening of the anus, up the torso, to the neck. The intestines and other organs can then be easily removed.

  As it is nearly dark, and the crew are due to knock off, I decide that, rather than fillet the critter, I will cut it widthways into steaks, not dissimilar to salmon steaks, and fry each with a different coating of herbs I have scavenged from the garden.

  So, with the eel steaks slathered in a little olive oil, I coat one in rosemary, another in chives, and the last one in garlic, before hiffing them into the pan sitting atop the gas cooker.

  I suspect there is a reason that I have never seen eel offered like this in a restaurant. That reason may be that the result is not dissimilar to slightly fishy-tasting rubber.

  But, on a cold, damp October night, as the crew disappear into the darkness, that fishy-tasting, herb-flavoured rubber proves to be warmingly nutritious, and a thoroughly welcome break from silverbeet and eggs. As I pull bits of its stringiness from out of my teeth, I try not to think of the venison.

  7

  A can of worms

  It is decided, by those who make the decisions, that I am to become a worm farmer. This is an exciting development because, prior to this, I have only ever grown worms internally.

  The worms will become my untiring minions, working relentlessly to convert food scraps and other organic matter into vermicast or, as it is also known, worm castings. It is, in its most crudest sense, worm faeces.

  As the worms slurp their food into their little worm-mouths, it passes through them and into their stomachs, which teem with all manner of bacteria and enzymes. Not only do these microscopic creatures help with digestion, but many of them emerge in the castings, and when added to soil enable the release of nutrients that would otherwise remain locked in the soil.

  Or at least that is what I read on a packet of the stuff available in a garden centre for only slightly more money than I have on me.

  The process also produces a liquid, known commonly as worm tea, which when diluted with water gives plants a good kick in the roots.

  And the best thing about worms is that they can be ordered over the Internet. Do livestock come any simpler?

  I had first seen worms employed in a large-scale way on my tour of Rainbow Valley Farm with Trish.

  She had lifted up the lid of what appeared to be a coffin to reveal a layer of food scraps, which she scraped away to reveal thousands of worms, all wriggling around, doing whatever it is that worms do.

  I was just a tad reluctant to accept her offer to plunge my hand into the rich humus they had created. It is, after all, worm faeces.

  Trish seemed to know an awful lot about worms.

  ‘They eat their own bodyweight in food every day, are both male and female, and have up to two hundred babies a year. They have five hearts and no teeth, so they grind up their food in their gizzard, which contains tiny stones,’ she told me while holding up a handful of the striped squirmers and looking at them with what appeared to be a sense of reverence.

  As someone who was contemplating farming worms, I really only had one question: ‘If I have a worm farm, and I’m a little short on worms, can I chop them in half and double their numbers?’

  ‘No, that’s a myth,’ she said.

  ‘Oh. That’s a shame.’

  For my worm farm I have acquired a disused cast-iron bath, in the bottom of which is painted a rudimentary mermaid, complete with long hair, a fishlike tail and ample breasts. The simple drawing makes it appear as if someone has killed the mermaid in the bath (probably not by drowning), and then the police have drawn an overly elaborate and mildly erotic chalk sketch of the outline of her corpse.

  In order to harvest the worm tea from the bath, it will have to be built high enough off the ground so that I can fit a bucket underneath the plug hole to collect the juice.

  My plan is simple. I’ll firstly dig four posts into the ground at a depth that will be determined by making an educated guess as to the minimum depth the holes need to be in order to keep the posts upright, divided by how energetic I am feeling at the time.

  I then plan to nail cross-beams onto the posts to create a box-shaped frame into which I will drop the bath so that it rests on the beams. The worms will live in the elevated bath, the tea will drain into the bucket, and all I will have to do is remember to feed the worms and empty the bucket onto the garden. The plan, as I formulate it in my head, seems like a simple task that should be easily accomplished. What I fail to factor in is the reality of the bath.

  There isn’t much that is as clumsily heavy as a cast-iron bath. While I can roll it over with a modicum of difficulty, I haven’t taken into account quite how I will get it up onto the platform without being crushed or rupturing myself.

  I have assumed that the endeavour will be filmed in sections, as it usually is, and that in between shots the crew will assist me in the task, as they usually do.

  Jane has other ideas. She wants the entire effort filmed with a locked-off camera shot. This means that I will have to complete the task alone as the crew loll about behind the camera, watching me struggle. The simple reason why she wants it done this way is that she is a sadist.

  When one engages in activities such as farming, there are some jobs that are on the very margins of being possible to achieve alone. While it is a wonderful personal challenge to attempt a job that might be a little too much for one person, there is always the danger that during these little tests of ingenuity and strength, something could go really quite badly wrong. People can be hurt. People like me.

  One consolation is that I am in the fortunate position of having a camera crew documenting my attempts at these outlandishly ambitious tasks. If I am hurt or injured, investigators will have the videotape handy to ascertain exactly where things begin to go wrong. I would suggest it was about the time I had the third glass of Astrolabe chardonnay at SPQR in August.

  What is worrying about the prospect of failure is that the level of failure will be so ludicrous that I will become the laughing stock of the accident investigation and insurance industries. I feel that what I am about to attempt will one day be used as the flashback section from an episode of Seconds from Disaster. Such is the nature of our appetite for this type of televisual carnage that the same footage will no doubt also appear in New Zealand’s Funniest Home Videos.

  While the crew relax in the sun, the unblinking eye of the camera stares fixedly at me while I stare at the bath.

  Performing a task like this gives you a good sense of what sportspeople must go through in any of the trials involving the throwing and lifting of heavy objects. They are the most individual of events. It’s you versus gravity. Mind over matter. Of course, matter does have the advantage of physics.

  Stepping forward, I crouch, wriggle my fingers under the lip of the bath, and clenching my sphincter in an attempt to prevent any kind of exertion-based prolapse, muster all the strength I have in my feeble legs and propel myself and the tub in an upwards direction.

  As I realise I am lifting the bath successfully, a primal ‘Harrumph’ of manly exertion and triumph emanates from somewhere deep inside my face. With another Herculean heave I slide the bath along the railings so that it ends up sitting in the right place, albeit upside-down.

  That wasn’t so difficult. All I need to do now is flip it over and lower its heavy mass gently into place.

  I manage to roll the bath onto its edge, and as it teeters precariously, I realise that my chances of slowly working my way around it, while holdin
g it up, then allowing it to lower gently into place, are at their best slim, and probably closer to nil. Oh well, I think, I’ll just let it fall into place.

  I let go of the bath, leap deftly back as gravity takes charge of it, and watch as the bath clangs heavily but perfectly into place. I keep watching, as the weight of the falling bath then knocks off the boards intended to hold it up, and the boards, the bath, and my ego all crash heavily to the earth.

  I stare at the fallen tub with the look of a man who hasn’t really anticipated this particular outcome firmly plastered on my face.

  The crew look at me with the expressions of people who are not overly surprised at this particular outcome on their faces.

  I look up at the crew.

  They continue looking at me.

  Then we all laugh.

  It couldn’t have been scripted any better if Benny Hill had written it, although if he had, there may have been more women in bikinis present.

  What I need is more nails. Actually, what is needed are bolts, but I don’t have any of those, so more nails will have to do the trick until I can wangle some bolts.

  As I proceed to alternate between hammering more nails into the structure and whacking my thumb, Frank the soundman says, ‘You know, people used to mock Maori for trading land for nails.’

  He is right, of course. The belief that Maori were duped into trading any manner of things for a nail instead of money is an easy concept to mock, until you try building something without a nail. You can do without a hammer, but it’s clear why a nail would be considered a taonga.

  At the time when the first contact was made between the Maori and Europeans, nails were still hand-made, and things of value, even to Europeans. It was reported in the 1770s that large nails, which could be turned into chisels, were the most valued trade item when dealing with Maori. Small nails were fashioned into fish hooks.