The barbarian was at the gate. Then he was in the house. I had been smugly congratulating myself on a most civilised Christmas Day here at Lush Places. The croquet hoops were set up on the lawn. Miles Davis was playing quietly on the outdoor speakers. There was a tussie-mussie from the garden on the outdoor table, which was set with my great-grandmother’s silver and the linen napkins. Then the barbarian arrived, Blokesy Stokes, also known as Andrew, who lives with Janet right around the bend. What, he demanded to know, loudly, was that depressing music? By which he meant: what was that girly music? We needed, he decreed, AC/DC.
He is a generous sort of barbarian. He came bearing gifts. Grinning like a Santa with a twisted sense of humour, he presented Greg with the following: a muscle T-shirt, a packet of fags and, the pièce de résistance, a girly calendar. Once the obligatory adornment of every mechanics’ workshop, a girly calendar is seldom seen these days. This one was provided courtesy of a local engineering company. He had told Blokesy that he was sick of bloody landscapes.
Fair enough. Sort of, if you are partial to pictures of nude ladies posed, supposedly provocatively, against bits of tatty masonry mostly. Miss May is pictured doing something peculiar in what is obviously a Photoshopped moss-covered forest. She looks like a contortionist monkey, with boobs. Blokesy also has this calendar. Of course he does. It hangs, Janet informs me, on his side of the bed.
Calendars are popular here in the provinces. Moore Wilson’s does a more tasteful version with posh recipes. Farmlands does Dogs of the Year. The vet clinic sells our mate Pru’s Donkey and Mule Protection Trust calendar, which features donkeys looking winsome.
To balance up the level of political correctness here at Lush Places, Greg went online and ordered for me the 2024 Firefighters Calendar. Just so we could say, “Look at the biceps on that!” The calendar has traditionally featured hunky topless fire blokes. It arrived. It featured fully kitted up fire blokes and sheilas posing with kids. Fair enough. It is a fundraiser for kids with cancer so it would be beyond churlish to complain. Still, as Greg pointed out, we might have been better off with one of Pru’s donkey calendars, so we could say, “Look at the haunches on that!”
This blokeyness is catching. Our friend Moose, who came to stay for Christmas week, wanted to do something appropriately blokey and countrified. Greg sent him out into the paddocks with a grubber and instructions to murder the evil thistles. He put his back out. We went to poncey Martinborough, where he and I, with my dodgy leg, hobbled about looking like ancient deros. We named ourselves Colin and Mavis and pretended that Greg was taking his elderly grandparents for an outing.
Moose’s name is not, obviously, Moose, or Colin. Years ago at the Herald, I dubbed him Moose and I have no idea why. I surveyed some of our old Herald mates and they had no idea why, either. One had a vague recollection of my writing some insane poem involving a moose trit-trotting through a fiord. Another thought it perhaps had something to do with our habit of making animal noises every time one of us filed a story. Moose thought it had something to do with my coming across a picture of the last moose in the South Island. “It may have coincided with my long-hair phase. I can’t think of any other logical reason. But you may have had one.” Did we really work at the Herald? Or did we just believe we did and we were actually residing in a lunatic asylum?
Perhaps we still are. Back at Lush Places, Greg put on his muscle vest, smoked a fag and blasted AC/DC.
