Friday, July 3, 2015

Curmudgeon - by Karl Du Fresne




Finally the time has arrived for me to sign up for the National Superannuation.

I put in my teeth, got out of bed, put on my brown carpet slippers , and shuffled down the hallway after telling the wife to stop shivering, we can’t afford electricity, she can just light the coal range. I went to the telephone and lifted up the receiver.

“Working?” I asked.

Nobody answered so I turned the handle and gave a long ring for the exchange and asked to be put through to Social Security.

I waited and waited and waited. I fell on the floor and lay down for a while. I got up and tried again. 

My saintly wife came along. “You silly old bugger,” she said. “You can’t do it like that anymore.”
“Do I have to make a toll call?” I asked. “Bother it. That will cost me quite a lot since it’s not after 6pm”. 

What the hell, I thought, I’ve paid my taxes all my life, the government can pay for the call. So I rang again and said, “Tolls please, I’d like to make a collect call.”

I waited and waited and waited. I fell on the floor. I got up and tried again.

My wife came along and said, “You silly old bugger. If you’d been alive in the 19th century you would have opposed women getting the vote. I suppose you still send out Christmas cards.”

As a matter-of-fact I do. I like those long closely typed letters where the typewriter punches out a hole instead of a c, and you tell everyone how well your grandchildren are doing. I think everyone else loves receiving them too, don’t you? They always read them several times over; never just throw them in the bin.

I went outside and tried to start the car. It wouldn’t go so I got out the crank handle, stuck it through the grill in the front and tried to crank it up. That didn’t work either. It still wouldn’t start. They don’t make these cars like they used to. When I was a young lad growing up in Waipukurau, you could ride into town standing on the running board without holding on, and the policeman would just ride past on his bicycle and look the other way. 

Everything is moving much too fast these days. When I was a young cadet reporter writing about crimes I was too reverential to even look the magistrates in the eye. We tipped our hats, called them magistrates then. Actually we called them sir. And we wore suits and ties, and shined our shoes even underneath where the soles were leather. And we wore clean underwear in case we had an accident and had to go to hospital. Today I see young reporters wearing anything to court, even sparkly trousers and black shirts with white tee-shirts showing. And they need haircuts. 

And if we were overseas reporting on a war zone, we were actually in the war zone, dodging the bullets as they whizzed past our ears, or gave us little holes in the lobes. These days they just get the footage from some big multinational media company, then stand in the Auckland newsroom and call themselves a foreign correspondent. 

Everything has gone to pieces in the world of journalism. They have it too easy now.

(Please wait while I put carbon paper between three pieces of paper, then insert them behind the roller in my typewriter, and type the next paragraph. I have to take this into town to send to Shayne by telegram at the Post Office because my telex machine is not working today.)

I kicked the car in the guts and got out my zimmer frame to go into Masterton to Hedleys book shop and asked for Alec. They said he’d passed on years ago. Nobody told me. I like a good funeral. Some young whippersnapper called David Hedley is now in charge who’s apparently friendly with The Beatles. Gah. What’s wrong with Burl Ives? I told him I’ve been advised to buy a book that everyone is talking about called Face. Apparently I would like it. 

Harrumph. We’ll see.

Editor -  Karl Du Fresne is a freelance journalist stuck in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies he boasts he walks to work each day - he paced it out and it is about 15 metres. Karl writes about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques his interest - even sport, although he's not a New Zealand bloke so cannot absorb as if by osmosis. He's been in journalism longer than Heather Du Plessis- Allan has been born and like many journalists just makes things up as he goes along. He has never won any journalism awards.

1 comment:

  1. This is uncanny. You know so much about my life that I suspect you've been stalking me.
    Just one small thing. I've replaced my Essex Six (which did require a crank) with a Morris Minor.

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