by Paul Henry
As well as doing the mail, I gained experience by getting attachments — short-term appointments in different roles. I got one as a projectionist for the Natural History Unit. It was quite complicated because it wasn’t just a matter of getting the rushes and whacking them on. Curtains were opened, lights were dimmed — they didn’t get switched off, they had to be dimmed — and there would be fresh water and cocktails and nibbles on a little tray.
When important visitors came and wanted to view old film — which they often did — the pressure could be intense. First, you prayed to God the item had a combined track — meaning sound and image were on the one piece of film and in sync. This never happened, one of many proofs this book will suggest for the non-existence of God. I had to put the soundtrack on one side of the projector and try to line it up with the images on the other. The more important a project, the more likely it was to have separate tracks because the quality was admittedly better that way.
I had to screen some of The Iron Age Project once. This was a wonderful early reality series. I think we called them documentaries then because they often had quite a substantial factual component. For The Iron Age Project people were trained and then sent to live in Iron Age conditions for a couple of years. They had it rough but only slightly rougher than I did trying to screen the thing.
In the very beginning of the film there was a man hitting a post with a mallet. When I screened it, you saw him hit it, then four seconds later you heard him. I waited for the inevitable command: ‘Let’s start a-fucking-gain, shall we? This is going well, isn’t it?’
Once a bigwig turned up to see a particularly significant piece of historic film. I opened the tape canister and the last person who screened it had put bits of paper in the film as markers. I knew if these went through the projector they would jam it, so while it was screening I stood there ready to whip them out just before they went through.
Suddenly, someone barked at me from his seat: ‘Could you just lift the light on that a little bit?’
‘Certainly,’ I said and in the moment it took me, a piece of paper went through the projector and, of course, flashed up on the screen.
‘Projectionist, what was that?’
‘I’m not entirely sure, sir, but it seems to have come good.’
But as the piece of paper went around it jammed the spool, so the film started to roll out onto the floor. I just stood there looking at this incredibly valuable film unravelling all over the room. It was a revelation how long it got in a short space of time. When it’s not wound tight, film is like water — it finds a natural level. Pretty soon I couldn’t budge because the film was around my ankles and if I moved I would have damaged it. So I decided — with, in hindsight, questionable wisdom — to let it go. As long as no one came into the projection booth — and why would they? — they would never know and I could get the film wound up nicely and back in its can when the screening was over.
My one bit of luck was that they didn’t want to sit through the whole thing.
‘I think I’ve seen enough,’ said the bigwig about halfway through. I breathed a sigh of relief and reached over so I could turn the lights back on without moving my feet.
‘Thank you very much, projectionist.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Can you just come in and clear up these glasses and what have you?’
‘Yes, I’ll do that.’ Just as soon as you’ve gone.
But as he was leaving he opened the door to the projection booth, to reveal me paddling in valuable, historic film, some of which now took the opportunity to roll through the door and out of the booth.
‘What a fucking embarrassment,’ said the bigwig.
‘I didn’t want to disturb your viewing pleasure, but there was a slight problem because someone had left markers in it, sir. But I thought it was better that, you know, your time is valuable, it’s better that you can watch and get on and I’ll just sort this out.’
‘Do you want to know what’s valuable?’ he said. ‘This fucking mess here is valuable. Sort it.’ And he closed the door and walked off. I hope by now they’ve finished converting all those films to digital.
Eventually I got to be involved in other aspects of the organisation. The BBC was very traditional, but also ready to take chances. They made programmes no one would do now, like A Year in the Life of a Tree. They had a tree growing in the middle of the BBC grounds with cameras bolted to it that they kept running for 12 months to see what happened.
We did an outside broadcast for a year with a family of badgers. We parked a spare outside broadcast truck up in a badger sett and at around 10.15 every night it went live for 15 minutes. You could watch the badgers for a quarter of an hour. When they looked at the ratings, which they hardly ever did because they were the BBC, they realised people were checking on the badgers just before they went to bed. Some nights nothing would happen for minutes and those episodes were among the best rating because people stayed tuned in until they had laid eyes on the badgers. When the OB truck was needed for other duties, people wrote in.
I became one of several hosts for Any Answers, which was done at Bush House, the BBC headquarters in London. Questions would be read out on air in a show called Any Questions and then other people would write in with answers and we would read the best ones. The shows are still running. I was chosen possibly because I had an obvious affinity for mail, but mainly because I had been doing a bit of hosting on local radio and still hadn’t turned 20.
‘You’ve got a younger voice, so we’ll get you to do the younger letters for Any Answers,’ the producer told me. I got a first-class train ticket once a week to go to London.
Doing that made me think that the BBC would take any excuse for a radio programme, so I decided to come up with one and took it to one of my bosses.
‘I’ve had this idea and I’ve done a rough budget on it,’ I said. ‘We go to the most far-flung, most isolated parts of England and we just talk to the people that live and work there.’ There was a little bit more to it but essentially that was the guts of it. It was no surprise to me at all that this producer came back to me after a week and said he liked my idea.
‘Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll give you an office and a secretary, and you do the production. You turn it into something that we can then turn around and do.’
So for a while I had an office. I had visions of myself getting plants from the nursery and furnishing the thing and then mail people would come around and I’d be this mysterious character tippy-tapping away or dictating. The best thing about it, as far as I was concerned, was that someone would be delivering me mail. Stationery has always been an enthusiasm and I got a stamp made with my full name on it — Paul Henry Hopes — so that I could stamp any documents I thought needed it.
Of course, I never got around to making the programme. As with so many of my ambitions, I was much more interested in getting the gig than in doing it. Also, it didn’t pay any money, which was one of the reasons the producer had been so happy to let me do it, but it was a big disincentive as far as I was concerned. It was just going to be too hard. It was also going to take too long; my attention span was waning.
I was after something that was going to get me a job, not something that was going to become a job, possibly, at some stage. I still didn’t have a proper BBC job that I could live on and that would help improve things for my mother and myself. I liked the excitement and variety of what I was doing, but at the same time we were very poor and my mother was working very hard. The flip side of my taste for variety was a craving for security. In my life up till now there had been a lot of insecurity, so I wanted permanence in things, which at that time meant getting an actual job. Just not in the tobacco factory.
Also, England was even more depressing this time around. When I first went there it hadn’t been so noticeable, because I was only 11 years old and didn’t have a choice. But when I went back, my mother was still in the same council flat and everyone else I knew w
as still doing exactly what they had always done.
I decided to move back to New Zealand again — and if you’re finding this a little repetitive, I promise this is the last time I will change countries. At least I had made my mind up before I turned 21.
So I moved back to Auckland, determined not to waste any more time dithering about what I was going to do. I wanted to establish security and amass wealth, start businesses, get a decent job in radio. Probably not in that order. At the same time, predictably and in between finishing one thing and starting another, I added a few glittering lines to my CV.
I got a job selling coffee machines and quite quickly became the manager for my region — a deliberate move to divert attention from the fact I wasn’t any good at selling the machines.
‘I’m going to be found out,’ I thought. ‘I’ve got to become branch manager or they’ll realise I’m hopeless. They better promote me quick.’
One of the reps was Dutch and everyone else there hated him. I couldn’t work out why. I thought it might have been because he had a beard, or because he had an accent or just because he was Dutch.
Eventually I realised it was because he was so spectacularly successful. Also, he didn’t like any of them, either. He didn’t want to go to meetings or chat about the weekend or drink with them after work. His pockets were full of slips of paper with leads. All he cared about was leads and possibilities. Why would he come in for a meeting when he could be out there selling coffee machines? Somehow he ended up showing me how to sell the machines and he would have been a good teacher if I had been a better student. The only time he wasn’t talking about selling coffee machines was when he was running down the other people there. He used to sell these things like they were going out of fashion. He got as many knock-backs as everybody else but he knocked on a lot more doors.
My mother came back about a year after me. We were a good team and it was only sensible for us both to be in the same place. It did take a bit of organising because even though I had been born in New Zealand she had not.
A telephone conversation with my mother
(ring ring)
O: Hello?
P: Hi, it’s me.
O: Oh good. What happened to you yesterday?
P: I just got busy in the afternoon but I’ll come and see you this weekend.
O: When?
P: I’m not sure but I’ll definitely come and see you this weekend. I’ll ring you tomorrow. Have you had a good day?
O: Oh well, we won the A and B quiz and we’ve got bocce this afternoon … now… (long pause where I roll my eyes and think, oh god, how long is this going to take?)
P: Okay, so I’ll ring you tomorrow.
O: … Now … (long pause where I roll my eyes and think, oh god, how long is this going to take?)
P: Never mind, it doesn’t matter. If you can’t think of it, it can’t be important.
O: No (pause). What was it?
P: I don’t care what it was. I have to go but I’ll ring you tomorrow.
O: Well I was talking to (pause), oh, you know.
P: No, I don’t know and I don’t care and I have to go but I’ll ring you tomorrow.
O: She’s on our floor.
P: Who?
O: Oh, you know, what’s her name?
P: I’m going now. I’ll ring you tomorrow, I love you very much, have a good night.
O: Oh okay, I love you, I love you so much.
P: All right. God bless.
O: Bye then … Paul?
P: What?
O: I love you, you know?
P: And I love you very much. You have a good night and I’ll ring you tomorrow and I’ll come and see you in the weekend maybe.
O: All right, I love you, you take care … Are you all right for money?
P: Yes, I’m very rich, remember? (old lady laughs)
O: Oh, I’m very proud of you… drive carefully.
P: I will. You take care, love you.
O: Are you all right?
P: Hang up or I will never talk to you again. (raucous laughter on both sides)
O: All right, good night love. (it might not be night, doesn’t matter)
P: Okay, bye, I love you. God bless. Bye, bye, bye. (hangs up on old lady)
Because I liked the look of the place, I bought a building in Featherston and opened a cafe and arts and crafts shop called the Inkley Doovery Emporium. Inkley Doovery is a West Country name for something which has a specific purpose but is being used for something else, like a milk bottle that is being used to collect coins. It’s a very useful word.
While I was still running it, I joined the Carterton Dramatic Society and went along out of the blue to audition for the part of Macbeth. Of course it was a clique and they had their Macbeth well and truly chosen, which is lucky because it was a much bigger part than I thought. I was Banquo in the end, and I was a damn good Banquo, but I didn’t want to be part of a clique. They socialised a lot, and I used to socialise with them a bit because I’d just moved there. I was a local businessman and I knew I had to get to know people. Maybe they’d come and buy a cake or a pie.
Custom at the cafe was sporadic. But sometimes the whole shop would suddenly go dark in the middle of the day because a tour bus had pulled up, blocking the windows. ‘Oh fuck,’ I thought. ‘We’re going to need every spoon, cup and plate in the place. We’re really going to have to pull finger.’ I was there on my own, with my mum working for me part-time. So I had to ring around and get casual staff in if we got busy. We didn’t get many coaches, though, because the coach driver always wanted a free cup of tea and I didn’t want to give anyone a free cup of tea.
I became a baker and I used to make cakes and they turned out very well. I made tomato soup from real tomatoes. Occasionally, it could get a bit Fawlty Towers. Once, as I was walking away from a table, I heard a customer say, ‘This is not home-made. This is tinned soup.’
‘Oh God, have I given you tinned soup by mistake,’ I said. And I took it back to the kitchen and never went back out. They had to leave.
Tipping
I believe you should get what you pay for, which is why I am passionately opposed to tipping. In America tipping is a tax. I never want to see that in New Zealand. Tipping should be a bonus to someone for exceptional service, not for doing what they are paid to do. You shouldn’t tip someone because they smile at you. You shouldn’t tip them for bringing you a meal. You’re keeping them in a job. And you can’t opt out. Do you have a choice of going to eat out of the fridge in the restaurant kitchen?
These sorts of annoyances play into my obsessive-compulsive urges, because I do become obsessive about them. In the States, I go out with Americans who accept that they will tip at least 15 per cent. I won’t, unless the service has been good. If the service is not good, I won’t tip 1 per cent. My friends get worried. I’ve known them to go back later and tip the staff.
The worst form of tipping in the US is valet parking. You go somewhere in your car and you can see the car park quite clearly, because they’re not hidden. But you’re not allowed to park your own car, which would be quicker and safer. Instead, you have to join a queue that has formed and hand over your keys to a valet who gives you a chit in return. On leaving you return the chit and he returns your car. Again, you can’t opt out. You have to pay $15 for the parking and he expects a tip as well.
I’m appalled at the number of people who apologise when they don’t get good service: ‘I’m sorry to interrupt. I know you’re conducting a private conversation with a girlfriend at work behind the counter and I’ve been waiting for five minutes but sorry, excuse me, I’m in a bit of a hurry.’
At the same time, I can’t stand people who make a profession out of being dissatisfied. You see them come into a restaurant and you know nothing will be good enough. If they get food they don’t like, it’s probably their fault for ordering the wrong thing. You are entitled to certain expectations and you should only complain when those expectations aren’t met
.
The cafe was never hugely successful but I lived off the money it made and then I sold it and got a job selling roofs.
Selling roofs was not something I had planned on doing. I had noticed over the years that most people’s houses tended already to have some sort of covering that kept out water. But it was just like the encyclopaedia business — you were selling everything but the product you actually talked about. The strategy with selling roofs was to knock on a door, introduce myself and say, ‘I happened to be passing and I couldn’t help noticing your roof. We need some show roofs in this area, and the position of your house relative to the road would be absolutely perfect for a show roof. It means you’ll get a huge discount on the roof if we can just take a couple of photos for our promotional material, that’s all we need. Maybe people will drive by to have a look, but you won’t know they’re there. You’ll get quite a discount on the roof, and I have noticed actually that your roof is beginning to deteriorate.’
Ideally, they said, ‘What would it cost?’ and they didn’t know this, but when they asked that question they had as good as bought a new roof.
‘I tell you what,’ I said. ‘I’ve got my stuff in the car, I’ll just quickly measure it up and I can give you a proper quote.’ By the time I got back in with the quote all they could think about was their house with a new roof.
‘It’ll probably double the life of your house,’ I said. ‘If we can get that weight of the concrete tiles off and a lovely low-maintenance roof popped on there, imagine the relief to the house.’