I tell Dave, our next-door neighbour. He's usually got an in on the black market. He can't help me with Vanessa's bike, but reckons he can get another, just the same, for seventy, seventy-five.
Repainted, serial number filed off, he says. No risk of detection.
I try to tell him I want Vanessa's bike back for free. Why should I pay seventy bucks for something which is already mine?
Oh, it won't be Vanessa's, he tries to explain. It's an operation on the other side of the city.
It might as well be hers, I say.
People've got to eat, he says.
I think of Vanessa in her room. She hasn't stopped crying since she got home. When can you get it by? I ask.
Tomorrow, he says. Cash in advance.
I give him eighty. What the hell else can I do?
My own first bicycle was a Drag-Star, a 70s curiosity. It's a difficult thing to describe, a bicycle, but a Drag-Star was something like a Chopper, with a banana seat—good for dubbing—and V-shaped handlebars that came right up at you. It had three gears set in the low cross-bar from the front wheel to the seat and the front brakes had a tendency to be the more powerful, so that trying to stop from speed you'd go straight over the handlebars if you applied both front and rear full on. You learnt that the first time you rode one. My Drag-Star was painted a sparkly red and it had a wide, bald rear tyre. The man in the shop told my father that recent research had shown this tyre—against all expectations—to actually handle better in the wet. He's something of a constant in this story, the salesman in the bicycle shop.
It had been a real fight to get any kind of bicycle. For years I'd watched as one by one my friends got their bikes, but of course what other children did was never much of an argument in our house. Other kids could wear long pants to school, other kids got to keep the Enid Blyton books they were given for their birthdays. Other kids could watch as much TV as they liked. Our family made its own decisions.
Of course I can see now why parents feel reluctant to give their children bicycles. Okay, they want one and all that, but all the time you're thinking of how dangerous the roads are these days, how crazy and thoughtless drivers seem to have become. And a kid can get a long way from home on a bicycle … it feels like you're giving them a gun.
Then, though, I was a kid, and only wanted what was rightfully mine. Without a bicycle you were by default still in the tricycle years of development. Owning a bicycle was a natural part of childhood and my parents had no right to interfere. I put it to them that soon I would be old enough to drive a car and then I would have missed forever all those important formative years where you learn first of all on a bicycle. It was more dangerous being dubbed than having your own, I explained, and with a bike I could get to and from my friends' houses without having to involve parents when it didn't suit. Finally there was something of a breakthrough. Yes, you can have a bicycle, they told me, but it has to be a normal bicycle. Definitely no Drag-Star.
Round two. All the serious uncool kids had normal serious bicycles; all the cool kids—and most of my friends—Drag-Stars. Of course this was not an argument to use with my parents; I had to come up with something better than that. I tried, for a start, safety. The seat's bigger and closer to the ground, I explained. If you fall off you're less likely to break your arm. The gears are easier to manipulate, so you don't have to let go of the handlebars for so long. The reflector is bigger than normal bikes; it'll be safer for riding at night. The bell is right out of the way … the bell was an important point to emphasise. Some friends of our family knew of a boy who'd fallen off his bike and died after the bell-ringer pierced his neck.
But my parents weren't interested in these arguments. Those other bicycles have been around even longer than me, my father said. They can't be all that dangerous. Of course in his childhood he'd ridden one himself. He couldn't see the problem.
The real issue was that to my parents' eyes the Drag-Star looked American. Somehow it embodied all that was crass and superficial, everything that was going wrong with the world. Looking like that it simply couldn't be any good. Years later, just before we moved from Australia to New Zealand, my father took some of our stuff to a flea market to sell. He got rid of just about everything, but he couldn't sell the Drag-Star, not for any price. I think deep down this pleased him. An ordinary bicycle would have sold no problem. He'd said all along Drag-Stars were inferior. Personally, I don't think he tried very hard to sell it.
In the end, though, my relentless championing of the crass and superficial was not all in vain. On Christmas Day my pile of presents was substantially smaller than my sisters'. A note in an envelope instructed me to go to the garage. In the garage on my father's workbench another note told me to go to my parents' wardrobe. There, pinned to a dress, yet another advised trying the shower. In the shower, draped with Christmas decorations, I found my brand new Drag-Star.
I spent the day running it in and looking for signs of envy from neighbours. The young boy next door had never ridden one. His first ride he came hurtling down the hill beside our house, put both brakes on full near the bottom, and went straight over the handlebars into a wall. He needed eight stitches in his forehead. I thought this might be sufficient reason for confiscation but my parents remained tight-lipped. It was, after all, Christmas Day, and generally they didn't like our next-door neighbours much. I think they saw the gravity of his injuries as warning enough.
A few months after I first got it I was wheeling my bike home from a friend's—it had a flat tyre and I'd left my puncture repair kit at home. That rear tyre did have a tendency to puncture. As I walked I became aware of a commotion on the street just ahead of me; when I got closer I realised it was two boys fighting.
I was never much into fighting myself. I can count on one hand the fights of my childhood, though one of my front teeth is still missing the corner a kid in the class above me removed one morning on the way to school. The main source of my pacifism was ineptitude: unusually slow reflexes, weakness, lack of technique—some boys had fathers who'd taught them how to fight—and basically there was no way I'd ever win a fight anyway. But the boys I came upon that day seemed to have developed the idea further. They were safe from each other's fists.
Instead they were smashing up each other's bicycles. First one would take the other's bike and twist off the mirror, or kick in the reflector, or just pick the whole thing up and crash it to the ground, all while the owner stood by and watched. Then they'd swap, and the other boy would have a go. They took it in turns, back and forth. Both bicycles were already damaged beyond repair. The wheels were bent out of shape, the gear sticks and brake levers pulled right off, cables and chains were in knots. One of the bikes was a Drag-Star; its long seat had been ripped open. Both boys were weeping inconsolably. Presumably they were friends.
Neither of them noticed me as I snuck by on the opposite footpath—ready to run for it if necessary—watching them in frank horror. They were too engrossed in the fight. I thought of their parents ringing each other, arguing about who should pay. Wouldn't it have just been simpler to hit each other a few times, or wrestle for a couple of minutes?
Finally it got to the point where there was nothing left to break. Each bent over his own mangled bike like a younger child over a freshly discovered dead pet. They tugged at bits of cable, tried to reassemble shattered plastic. Both were still crying.
One by one people who lived in the street came out of their houses and stood on their front lawns, watching.
Come on now, said a man from the house behind me. You've had your bit of fun. Why don't you go off home?
I've got a puncture, I said. I am going home. Slowly I moved off, still watching the boys. By now a woman was out in the street talking to them. I couldn't quite make out what she was saying. There were bits of bicycle everywhere.
At home I mended the puncture and wiped all the metal with meths. I cleaned the mirror with Windowlene, polished the seat, regreased the chain, and fixed the slightly
bent stand with a hammer. Afterwards I leant it against the garage wall and stood back to admire my work. It looked almost new. I made a bold promise that I would look after it like that forever, that I would clean and service it regularly just as the manual advised; that one day I would pass it on with pride and pleasure to my own post-tricycle child.
BOSWELL AND JOHNSON: THE SCOTTISH TOUR
The young man waits at the door. The corridor he is in is narrow and because he is fat people passing have difficulty squeezing by. A man with knives dressed like a gladiator, the fire-eater with her blackened lips, Columbine the ballerina, all squeeze by. Only Columbine speaks to him. Jimmy, you're on soon, she smiles. Jimmy pants. He has been running.
Finally the door opens. An elongate man steps out into the corridor, careful to close the door behind him. He is sweating and only semi-clad. From the irritation in his voice Jimmy realises he has been interrupted.
What is it Jimmy?
Sam's sick, he pants. Real sick. His voice is stuffed. He can't go on.
But he has to.
But he can't.
Well do it yourself then. Pretend he's off-stage and too shy to come on. Just make up something.
Jimmy is frightened. He doesn't want to go on alone. He knows, though, there is no point arguing.
The elongate man steps back into his room, sighs. For an apprentice Smartest Arse in the World, Jimmy shows precious little initiative.
Jimmy stands at the curtain's edge. The audience are rowdy tonight, throwing food, calling out. Clowns and dancers buzz round him. He is shaking.
And now, good people, the moment you've all been waiting for, the star of the show! Ladies and gentlemen, a very warm welcome, would you put your hands together for the one and only Smartest Arse in the World! Most of the audience clap. There is a lot of yelling and Jimmy thinks he might be ill. Columbine is there and she squeezes his hand.
Pretend I'm Sam, she whispers.
Jimmy walks on as if the gallows await him. He doesn't see the crowd. His mind is numb.
Ladies and gentlemen, any questions for the Smartest Arse? The MC turns to Jimmy, hisses, Where the fuck is Sam?
What does the Smartest Arse think of Scotland? calls a woman leeringly from the back. This is easy. They get asked this every night.
Seeing England, Madam, he says in a voice an octave higher than normal, is only seeing a worse Scotland!
For a second it is as if a tarpaulin has been thrown over the audience. Should the Smartest Arse be saying that? Jimmy realises his error with a stab of fear, but doesn't have the courage to go back.
A man in the front row calls out, Where's the real Smartest Arse? You're not the real one are you? Jimmy squints out into the cruel cavernous expanse. He hesitates. The man does have a point.
He who praises nobody praises everybody, he offers, but the crowd is silent. When Sam says it, he gets rapturous applause. Somehow he manages to turn his head to the wing where Columbine stands, but she looks down at the floor. Next to her is the MC, who has backed off the stage at the first sign of disaster.
OTHER WAY ROUND, he mouths silently, but to Jimmy it just looks like a yawn. A tomato zings by his ear, splotches on the back curtain like a bit of brain.
What does the Smartest Arse think of life? Jimmy is almost paralysed. In a small voice he says, It matters not how you live, but how you die.
Someone snarls from the front, Other way round, Smart Arse. People begin to boo. Another tomato sears by. A potato hits him on the arm.
What does the Smartest Arse think of friendship? Jimmy thinks he might cry. He can't remember what Sam thinks of friendship. His mind has stopped working.
A small group near the back of the hall begin to chorus. SMART ARSE! SMART ARSE! SMART ARSE! More and more people join in, and more and more food hits Jimmy. The crowd start clapping their hands in rhythm to the chorus; most stomp their feet as well. The chant becomes a roar. The flow of fruit and vegetables through the air becomes relentless; a smell of ferment fills the stage. A glass smashes at Jimmy's feet and a second later a pineapple hits him full in the face, bloodying his nose. He stumbles from the stage, holding his head. Made-up faces loom in like a nightmare. Columbine grabs his hand. You were wonderful, says someone among the faces, and Jimmy begins to cry.
It's all right, says someone else, you can still be a lawyer.
The elongate man, awoken from his post-copulatory slumbers, has elbowed his way through the corridors to the side of the stage. A policeman appears from somewhere. The noise is deafening.
It's a riot, he says.
Jesus, says the elongate man.
Later, in his caravan, Sam sips on a lemon-and-honey drink. My voice, he croaks, feels better, Sir. Now tell me, Jimmy, Sir, you haven't said how it went without me.
I think, Sir, says Jimmy, I might just stick to biography.
Indeed, Sir? Sam struggles up onto an elbow, takes another sip. What about doing one on me?
Jimmy does.
from DUNEDIN
Friendly City of the South
Dunedin, port and capital of New Zealand's largest province, Otago, is the country's fourth city. Dreamed into existence before the site itself had even been considered, Dunedin was the product of the New Edinburgh Scheme, an 1840s plan to establish a Scottish settlement in the South Island. Since then it has earned and jealously guarded a reputation for good sense and friendly hospitality, growing into a robust, prosperous city, successfully keeping pace in the cybernetic age without losing its sense of history or deep respect for all things cultural.
A Proud Tradition
Dunedin is unequivocally Scottish; indeed, Scottish tourists are often heard to loudly proclaim that the city is more Scottish than Scotland itself. ‘Dunedin’ translates to ‘Edin Hill’, though the more common version renders it ‘Edinburgh of the South’—and everyone knows how the central town plans of these sister cities are identical. Today Robbie Burns sits proudly overlooking the Octagon in the city centre, and the Robbie Burns liquor outlet is the city's biggest grossing retail concern.
Less well known is that ‘Edin’ apparently in turn translates to ‘New Athens’, rendering Dunedin ‘New Athens Hill’—or, if we follow the usual error, ‘South New Athens’—perhaps, for convenience, ‘South Athens’—and indeed, Greek tourists are also often heard to loudly proclaim that the city seems as Greek to them as Greece itself. ‘Athens’, of course, comes from Athena, goddess of wisdom and patron of the arts; it is difficult to imagine a flag-bearer more apt.
Uncrowded and Spacious: Health and Geography
Dunedin's founders chose for their settlement one of the most magnificent harbour settings in the country. Today the city spreads up and over the hills ringing the head of Otago Harbour, offering the majority of home-owners sweeping vistas of hill and sea. In fact, like Rome, Dunedin sits on seven hills, a detail first pointed out to me by a psychiatric patient from Cherry Farm—incarcerated precisely because of his fixation on this unhappy coincidence, which had grown to a point where the dire prophecies in Isaiah and St John applied not only to ‘Babylon’ but to Dunedin as well, catastrophe averted only with the aid of a complex set of bizarre, private rituals that took up all his time and which unfortunately did not appear to anyone else to be normal. The seven hills are arranged in the manner of holes in a plughole: six around the central one, disrupted only by Saddle Hill, squeezed some way out of the encircling six like a sulking child.
As in all hilly cities you tend to make friends with those at similar altitudes, so that visits don't involve any climbing. Going down is often just as bad: on a cold winter's morning Dunedin can be irresistibly downhill. The valleys slowly fill up with people and cars. You might break the odd bone or two, you might even smash up the car—but hey, you'll probably just end up laughing. Hills are like that. You just never can tell.
Dunedin and the Treaty
The Maori also have a name for Dunedin: Otepoti, but do you think the Post Office are worried? You can try
sending mail to Otepoti; more often than not it will simply boomerang, returning some months later covered in question marks, try Otemata, Otaki and Outram (so close!) and of course the final definitive ink-stamp of a straight purple finger accusing the letter back to its sender. Otepoti—Otepotu is also correct—notes the position of the site at the head of the harbour: where the points of land come together or place of the steep points … you see, there they are again, the hills.
A Relaxed Pace
Dunedin has more centenarians per capita than any other city in the Southern Hemisphere. And how many major cities are there left in the world where it is still possible to drive four or five miles from a city office to a suburban home for lunch and return within the hour? To suggest that Dunedin did not have a traffic problem would be unrealistic—the traffic problem is an inescapable fact of postmodern living. But in Dunedin it is by no means as great as in New Zealand's other major cities. Oh and by the way, it's actually illegal to use your indicator within city limits. That one often catches the unsuspecting visitor.
I had a friend who moved out of town to the peninsula, not far out, but enough that no one visited him any more. He was hurt and even angry that a few miles could make such a difference to friends and always made a big thing about how it was only six-and-a-half minutes from the Octagon to his driveway. Of course you had to really speed to get even close to that—though he always loudly maintained he'd carefully kept to the speed limit the whole way when he measured it. Really, though, it wouldn't have mattered if it was twenty seconds. He'd moved out of town. End of argument.
Television is a popular pastime.
Youth, Sport and Culture
Despite its proud sense of the past, Dunedin is above all a city for young people. New Zealand's oldest and the world's southernmost university attracts large numbers of students from out of town and many are enticed to stay on after completing their degrees or dropping out, ensuring the city's gene pool remains vital. A thriving underground arts, literary and music scene helps keep Dunedin's vast numbers of young black-clad unemployed away from serious crime and it is remarkable how many rock-stars you can meet in ten minutes of walking down the main street. Attractive, aromatic and medicinal flora and fungi abound, experienced most fully on the many scenic walks around the city where in autumn in particular the youth are so often to be encountered. Sometimes their mysterious fungal forces seem to fill the very atmosphere: a simple afternoon stroll can assume the grandest proportions.
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