Columns by Mike Crowl, from the Dunedin Star Midweeker, Dunedin, New Zealand

Column Eight - 5th April, 1995

Offspring

Writers have a few fully-grown 'children' of whom they can be proud - and a small number of black sheep. But their progeny also includes a half-forgotten group who sit in the corner, complaining, 'Why didn't we make it?' After struggling with a column last weekend which steadfastly refused to do what it was told, I dug back into my old files to see what (or 'who') had been abandoned. One column was about leading horses to water and not being able to make them drink. I'd tried to relate this young people knowing all about safe sex and still refusing to use it. Confused? So was the poor little column, which, in spite of an original analogy, turned into a mishmash. I came across another column in which I described the first (and last) time I arranged a full-scale concert. Here's an extract: 'The day came on which we were to perform. We'd never been inside the hall and had never seen where anything was. We looked disconcertedly at people turning up all over the place for rehearsal. I became a nervous wreck. 'Between the rehearsal (which ran late) and the performance, we had to fit in my son's birthday party. Five rowdy 11-year old boys scrummaged the food under baleful eyes of two exhausted parents. I dropped onto the nearest couch and catnapped. 'As soon as we'd disposed of the guests, we squeezed several members of the family into the van - along with large quantities of food for the concert supper and an enormous borrowed floral arrangement - and drove to the hall. It was like some competition to see how much could be squashed into a telephone box. 'The concert lasted three hours.' In another column I noted the discovery of a substantial booklet students use as background reading for an English course. I considered providing readers of this column with just such a booklet - so they could better understand the columnist. My rationale was: 'Writers assume all the time that their readers live in the same world as they do, have had the same sort of life experience, perceive things with the same gender bias, have similar political feelings, and read columns in circumstances corresponding to those under which they are written. Writers are wrong. Their readers do not.' I baulked at the task in the end: Information sufficient to inform my readers about this columnist wouldn't fit into a booklet. I'd need the equivalent of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Another task I've baulked at writing is about death. Although I've got two complete columns on death in my files, neither has seen the light of day. Perhaps I'm not ready to deal with this subject in 600 words. Perhaps I haven't go the tone right, as the following may indicate: 'We try to close over the grave too quickly, as though normal living excludes death. Jokes about the departed leave a strange taste in my mouth. Chatting with friends and relatives at post-funeral teas is like skating over thin ice - any minute the fact of death might crack open and drag us into the freezing depths.' Hmmm… My back burner has material on every subject you can imagine: women inventors and Real Men; smallism, skeptics and smart cards; teachers' holidays and truth; and even a poetic piece on Pukerua Bay. All of these live fruitless, unfinished lives. Finally, there's even an idea a friend suggested for providing all the extra electricity we need for the future without building hydro schemes or nuclear plants. Personal electrification, you might call it. My friend suggested harnessing all the untapped energy residing in our nation's human resource. His idea was that each person could spend an hour a day on the equivalent of an exercycle (an electrocycle?) which would be connected to the national grid. Electrocycling would also improve people's health. Rowing machines were an alternative, but these smacked rather too much of the Roman galley-slave idea… You can see why I've kept quiet about some of my offspring.

Finding ideas for columns is something that's always going on behind the scenes.   However within a year, I wrote two columns about it... hmmm, indeed!

Three hours: it included two clowns/jugglers; a junior brass band; the complete performance of Poulenc's Baba the Elephant music on piano, with the story read by another person; a jazz group; a choir; soloists, duettists, dancers...[Back]

Return to the Index