Monthly Archives: September 2018

September 30, 2018 · 4:20 pm

The future in the distance

100_0404I know I said this would be the last instalment of my autobiography, but as it turns out, there is one more chapter to come.

 When I was in the army as a twenty- two- year old lieutenant, I had to take a detachment of my girls to help at a local fete at Stratford-on -Avon. My job was to look after John Mills, the film star, and his daughter Juliet, also a film star. They were opening the village fete.

When this not-too- onerous task had been completed, I was free to wander round the fair ground, though feeling somewhat conspicuous in my dark green army uniform. I ducked inside a fortune teller’s tent for fun and sat down in front of her crystal ball. She took my hand, and peered at it. “There’s writing in this hand,” she said. “you’re going to start writing and you’ll never stop. It’s all through the rest of your life.”

Nothing was further from my thoughts at the time, and I dismissed it as a fortune teller’s fantasy. It took another seven years before her prophesy came true, and I’m still writing! During the years of Patrick’s retirement when he was still churning out a weekly column and editing a grey power magazine, I was still writing too.

Not only did I write for his magazine – interviews, columns, and cookery articles, (all unpaid) helping him design covers and acting as courier to and from the printers, but I also checked his books before they went to the printer, thought of titles like: ‘Sons of the Sword’, ‘Dangerous Journeys’, and provided material to give them extra depths like the extracts from the Mahabharata about a nuclear explosion, when he wrote of Hiroshima in ‘Sons of the Sword’.

When he ran out of ideas for his column, I’d cook up a reader’s letter for him to discuss, or find and research a topic for him, and as he grew less able, I’d check over every column trying to re-write confused sentences and connect unconnected trains of thought. He used to get very angry with me at correcting his work, and I dreaded doing it every week, but it had to be done to maintain his credibility.

A publisher commissioned me to write sixteen illustrated books on New Zealand, I wrote for a parent’s magazine, and for my pleasure also began writing a book called ‘The Sound of Water.’ Through all the sadness and despair of the last years of our marriage this writing energised me and gave me pleasure.

Patrick had six major operations during this time, and they were always followed by complications. When we could still afford private care, it was daunting to discover that once the operation had been completed, and paid for- we were out on the street! Not even any help into the car with a severely disabled heavy patient, and there was no follow-up care.

When we had to fall back on the state health system, the follow-up care was meticulous and took a great weight off my mind; but we still had the long treks into the pain clinic, the geriatric department, the heart unit, operations for cataracts, endless visits to the hearing clinic for hearing aids, and regular trips to the doctor… I was now facing what so many women who marry much older husbands have to cope with.

When he fell over, a frequent occurrence, I would have to ring the local volunteer fire brigade for help in lifting a heavy and inert old man – it would take four men to get him off the floor, and then onto a stretcher and into an ambulance to hospital.

The army of medical practitioners involved in his care all told me that now was the time to ask for family help, ‘you can’t go it alone’. But like so many other families, mine too was spread around the globe or coping with their own burdens.

Though I was frequently ambushed with depression in this time, and so stressed that heart pains made me wonder if I was having a heart attack, the support of friends, coffee, lunch or little get- togethers kept me going. And now I discovered opera, becoming an afficionado of the New York Met’s filmed operas which showed at our local cinema regularly.

Back home I’d compare different versions on Youtube, and found solace and stimulation in this new passion. And then blogging became a hobby too – more writing! And because I always looked bright and efficient, loved my garden, books, music, clothes, good food and friends, no-one ever thought I wasn’t coping.

Once I organised a two week stay of what was called ‘respite care’ in a nearby retirement home, paid for by the health service, and Patrick’s children were appalled at my callousness. During this time, I was so exhausted I slept most of the time, which I’m told is typical for carers. I began to wonder guiltily if I would ever have any life left to enjoy, when this long period of illness and frailty was over for a husband – who in spite of all his operations and constant illness was still, it seemed, indestructible.

I began to seek comfort in the words of people like Ibsen:

‘ELMER: But this is disgraceful. Is this the way you neglect your most sacred duties?
NORA: What do you consider is my most sacred duty?
HELMER: Do I have to tell you that? Isn’t it your duty to your husband and children?
NORA:I have another duty, just as sacred.
HELMER: You can’t have. What duty do you mean?
NORA: My duty to myself.’

I found the lines in Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s poem gave me courage:

‘… I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.’

And Hillel’s words written two thousand years ago: ’If not you – who? If not now – when?

So in the end, after giving him a rousing eighty-fifth birthday party which all but two of the children were able to attend, I decided I had to make a decision. Three weeks later, with my doctor’s encouragement, I told him I couldn’t go on any longer, and that I’d found several good retirement homes for him, which of course he refused to consider, saying he was not ready for that yet.

It happened, and I incurred odium and ostracism from all his family and most of the people connected with him. Even during the first year on my own, struggling with too little money, a burden of guilt, and legal woes, I was happier than I’d been for years.

Patrick lived in a luxury retirement home, where his daughter was the manager. He was immediately assessed as needing to be in the hospital wing, which I felt justified my decision. Family and work associates all made the trek out to see him regularly, though no-one had bothered to do this when I was looking after him!

He was still collecting Japanese artifacts and still writing his monumental and unreadable history of Japan and the Pacific War. I moved to the Coromandel peninsula, a four hour drive away, and when I received a phone call one evening three years later, saying he was ill and unlikely to last beyond the next day, I drove through the night to see him.

He was unconscious, and I sat by his bed for three hours until I felt his daughter wanted me to go. I bent over to kiss him and say goodbye, and he opened his eyes and looked straight into mine.

He had been twenty-one when he joined his beloved Auckland Star. On its masthead back then were the lines:

For the cause that needs assistance,

For the wrong that needs resistance,

For the future in the distance,

For the good that we can do.

He faithfully and steadfastly lived those words for the next sixty- eight years of his life until he died at nearly eight-nine.

At his funeral, as the hearse was about to pull away, an elderly man stepped forward and placed a flower on the coffin. It was Arthur Thomas.

 

Food for Threadbare Gourmets

 This is a wonderful lunch dish for a special occasion. I found it in a magazine a few years ago, and now that spring is here, am about to dust off my quiche tin for it. Having prepared and cooked a short crust pastry shell, the recipe suggests to cook six sliced red onions in two tablesp of oil and four tablesp of brown sugar until soft. When golden leave to cool. Mix five egg yolks with three hundred g of crumbled blue cheese, 22 g mascarpone, six slices of prosciutto or thin streaky bacon and eighty g of pine nuts. Stir in the onions and spread the mixture into the pastry case. Bake at 180 degrees for 20-30 minutes or until cooked. If the top starts to brown too fast, lower the oven to 160 degrees.

I like it with half cheddar and half blue cheese, use cream instead of mascarpone, and chopped fried  streaky bacon – still good…The magazine recommends six small onions, and the quiche is double the normal size I cook, serving ten people. When I make it in a normal sized quiche tin for five/six people, I use two onions, and 100g of blue cheese plus several ounces of cheddar and a good helping of cream.. I also use five whole eggs. Hope this answers your query Nicki, from Expat Alien… I’d feel the same if I saw those amounts recommended by the magazine !

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September 22, 2018 · 8:36 pm

Closing Circles

Image result for valerie davies nz

The penultimate instalment of my autobiography before I revert to my normal blogs

A year after Arthur Thomas’s pardon, a Royal Commission condemned the policeman who’d planted the cartridge, and said Arthur should never have been charged. I sat through the weeks of testimony, crocheting a colourful rug from all the scraps of wool I had, and I think driving the male chauvinists around me quite mad!

I was back home towards the end when Patrick took time off from his office to hear the last stages of the inquiry which was all based on his findings. He rang and said they were being asked to put in a claim for what the investigation had cost them, and Jim Sprott was claiming $150,000. Patrick said it didn’t feel right climbing on this bandwagon of claims… so I told him about the painter Whistler’s damages of a farthing in England when he sued Ruskin for defamation in 1870, and suggested Patrick likewise claim a dollar – otherwise you’ll be written out of the court’s findings, I said.

So he did claim a dollar. Arthur was given a million dollars in compensation, and Patrick was rewarded with an OBE. The following year the Queen presented it to him, at the same time that my daughter received her Gold Medal from the Duke of Edinburgh

While all these dramas were playing out, I resigned as Woman’s Editor of the Star, feeling that the increased attacks and hostility from feminists would lose their sting if I wasn’t there, and the women’s pages might become unmolested!

I took the children to England for a holiday, and when we returned took up writing my columns again, and was commissioned to write several books. I once calculated that fifteen years of writing two columns of a thousand words a week, probably added up to about 780,000 words, and that didn’t include all the articles and interviews I wrote in that time as well. At least half as much again, I suspect.

A column which covered vivisection and the experiments and horrible operations that people like South African heart surgeon Dr Christian Barnard performed on animals, caused huge repercussions. It revived the moribund anti-vivisection society known as SAFE, (Save Animals from Experimentation) and Patrick and I became president and vice-president.

This column also triggered a big meeting of angry doctors at the Medical School at Auckland University where they reportedly discussed: ‘What to do about Valerie Davies’. At the time I had also castigated the practise of every medical student having their own rat to kill – they  bashed it on the table by holding its tail, before dissecting it.

They sent my article to Christian Barnard in South Africa, who’d become a high-living celebrity by then, and he responded by sue-ing me and the Star. The Star cravenly paid up the money he demanded, but I refused, telling my solicitor I’d rather go to jail. The children were devastated, and my son even had tears rolling down his cheeks when I explained what I was doing.

In the event my clever lawyer wrote told Barnard’s solicitor that my defence would be that I’d found all the hideous boasts about making a two headed dog, and the screams of a baboon wrenched from his mate to take his heart for an experiment, in Dr Barnard’s own autobiography, and a TV interview. We heard no more!

I continued writing columns that enraged people, writing of the barbaric treatment of calves in modern farming, to the use of 245T (a dioxin based pesticide) the indiscriminate felling of trees, and other environmental concerns. After a column on climate change and the ozone layer, a university professor wrote a scathing letter to the paper calling me a ‘knee-jerk environmentalist’, while a professor of paediatrics, rang me at home he was so furious when I wrote that babies should never be left to cry as it broke their trust in their parents.

Now all the research into brain function has proved me right. Child psychology preaches the benefits of cuddling and of feel- good pheromones  connecting in the brain, and the dangers of cortisone building up in the brain if babies are left to cry, which leaves them prone to depression and a host of problems as they grow older…

Sometimes, in the rain and misery of the Springbok winter, traipsing in and out to the Royal Commission in the city- an hour’s drive each way- struggling with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, living on willpower, not energy, seeing the miseries of modern farming as I drove past fields with bleak herds of cows deprived of their new calves, stopping the car to untangle desperate goats tied up and used as lawn-mowers on the road-side, I used to wonder what was wrong with me.

Why was I so out of step with everyone and everything? And then I discovered a group in England called Women for Life on Earth, and I knew I wasn’t mad after all, and that my concerns were those of many others too. Knowing this restored my confidence and gave me heart. (This group morphed into the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, and their historic resistance to nuclear weapons.)

My illness had got worse. I couldn’t bear light, and had tortoise shell rattan blinds on every window as well as curtains, I had difficulty understanding speech and used to exhort the children and my husband to speak clearly. I couldn’t bear any music except formal baroque tunes, and was in constant pain.

Somehow, I kept up with driving the children around, having friends and Patrick’s family to stay, his other four children and their friends for meals, walking the dogs twice a day, cooking decent nutritious food on time, fulfilling numerous speaking engagements – teachers conferences, school prize-givings, parents groups, schools, Rotary and other clubs, even the annual lunch of accountants – to mention a few – writing the columns which generated so much controversy and so many letters to answer, not to mention the dreaded housework. I paid the teenage children to help… my daughter to do the washing, my son to clean the bathrooms.

And at the end of this hard, sad winter we left our dream home in the country, where no-one had waved or spoken to us in over a year, and moved back to town, where friends welcomed us, strangers called in with fruit and flowers and cakes, and we felt we had come home.

A young, unprejudiced and open-minded woman doctor friend dropped in to see me, while I was having an episode of CFS. Mimi introduced me to Re-birthing, a system of connected breathing which was all the rage at that time, and this was a turning point for me. The breathing got me on my feet, and I was now strong enough to become involved with a personal growth group, Self-Transformation, which I helped to establish in this country.

It grew exponentially. This was the early eighties, when groups like EST were breaking down so many barriers, and people all over the world were ready to start their journey towards self-actualisation. Jung was often the starting point, his book and his theme ‘Modern Man in Search of his Soul’ in tune with the new age.

Abraham Maslow, Ken Wilbur, then Dipak Chopra, Jean Houston, Caroline Myss, one after another, names and techniques came crowding into our consciousness, and people like me couldn’t get enough…meditation, yoga, Reiki, shiatsu, rolfing, holotropic breathing, aromatherapy, sweat lodges and other methods of bodywork we explored put us in touch with our emotional blocks and old traumas, and kept us busy for years.

Buddhism, the Essenes, Hawaian Kahunas, Shamanism, gurus from Ram Dass to Sai Baba, Raj Neesh, and the Dalai Lama held many in thrall – though gurus were not for me – and this is only to touch on a few of the influences, techniques and people who influenced my friends and I as we journeyed on. I sold most of my precious things to pay for all this… silver from my first marriage, oriental rugs I’d collected over the years, a precious French provincial table… it was worth it.

It was all a mystery to my husband, who called me a New Age Nutter, which didn’t bother me at all. I tried often to explain what I was doing, and it didn’t matter how often I did, he never understood or remembered.

He had a different journey. He had ten jobs in twenty years, travelling from radio back to newspapers, then magazines to public relations, radio again, magazines, to teaching journalism and back to newspapers, finally becoming editor- in- chief of a group of suburban newspapers when he was in his early seventies. They were years of financial insecurity, when he was badly paid, and I was glad to still have some money from my writing and then the counselling practise that I managed to operate for all those years until I was in my mid-seventies.

In every job he found, pressure would build-up, and he would be unable to see eye- to-eye with his boss, just as he had been so often at the Star. It’s only as I look back that I realise that this was his modus operandi.

He’d come home and I’d sympathise and take on the angst and the anxiety. We moved house often, buying old wrecks which I restored and beautified, each time hoping that by reducing the mortgage or making life easier at home, with less travelling, or some other excuse, it would reduce his stress. It never did.

He had also become obsessed with Japan, and apart from writing books about it, studying its history and customs, and collecting anything Japanese, he became an expert on samurais, Japanese sword-play – kendo and eido- and antique Japanese swords, which were hugely expensive. He was always buying more and more precious ones, as he learned more and more about them, and went to Japan half a dozen times.

As my car fell to pieces, because we couldn’t afford to replace it, he was ‘investing’ he assured me, in his swords, which would pay for our old age, so we didn’t need to save or pay off the mortgage. I believed him.

And so we came to the end of our roads. As Paul Coelho wrote: “It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn’t matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over.”

Next week is the last instalment of this series. The Who-dun-it of the Thomas case will be told in an Appendix the week after that.

 

Food for Threadbare Gourmets

 

As we talked about our go-to puddings over a nice drop of affogato in our favourite restaurant, one of my closest friends asked me for the recipe for my hot chocolate sauce for ice-cream I was boasting about. This is for her.

It comes from good old Mrs Beeton, and my children loved it over ice-cream, while I serve it for guests now with pears baked in wine plus ice-cream.

Blend together a rounded dessert spoon of cornflour, two rounded dessertspoons of cocoa powder, and three rounded dessertspoons of sugar with a little cold water measured from half a pint. Boil the rest of the half pint of water and pour on the mixture. Pour into a saucepan and boil for two minutes, stirring all the time. Add three drops of vanilla and half an ounce of butter. Simple and  delicious.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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September 14, 2018 · 5:05 pm

A Pardon, Apartheid and Plagiarism

Image result for nelson mandela in prison
Nelson Mandela in his prison cell

Another instalment of my autobiography before I revert to my normal blogs

Late one afternoon Patrick arrived home deeply disturbed. Throughout all the threatening events of the last few years with both police and gangsters, I’d never see my tough imperturbable husband shaken.

Now he stood by me, utterly de-stabilised, while I peeled potatoes at the kitchen bench, and listened to him tell how he’d been pursued all the way down the motorway by a large black car with three men in black in it. He caught sight of them in his rear vision mirror and watched the three, wearing black suits and black sunglasses, looking vaguely oriental he said, and implacable, following him relentlessly.

They felt utterly alien, he added. He’d managed to throw them off by failing to indicate when he turned left at speed onto the minor road home. I caught the nameless dread of the encounter and was so appalled that I buried it in my consciousness, and forgot it.

But a few years later when I read on page 78 of his book ‘Alien Intelligence’, Stuart Holroyd’s discussion of the strange phenomena of the sinister men in black in large black cars, two or three of them, who have menaced those people all round the world who have seen and spoken of UFO’s – as we had done – it all came back…

We’d seen UFO’s often, and I always felt a sense of benevolence and peace when we did. The last time we’d seen them I’d known all evening that this was the night, and kept watching for them. It was a still light summer night, and suddenly I saw a green flashing craft moving swiftly and silently across the sky.

It was bouncing up and down and then I saw another silent object coming from the opposite direction, flashing red. They joined up, and suddenly shot up vertically so fast that they disappeared almost at once. And that was our last sighting.

Another unwelcome presence now entered our lives, a writer called David Yallop. He’d been staying with a mutual friend, writer Maurice Shadbolt, and had become fascinated by the Thomas Case. He rang Patrick from the airport as he was leaving to return to the UK. He suggested that they collaborate on a book about the case, and believing that anything which added to the pressure on the government, Patrick somewhat reluctantly agreed.

He sent all his notes, clippings, files, a copy of his book Trial by Ambush, the confidential transcripts of both trials, and the police photographs of the inside of the house where the couple had died.

After six months of silence Yallop wrote and said he’d decided to write the book himself. He used all Patrick’s work to produce the book, with no acknowledgement, and interviewed no-one. He made a huge wave when the book was published by coming to New Zealand and claiming he knew who had fed the murdered couple’s baby, who had been found in the house unharmed.

His book became a bestseller, while Patrick spent months retrieving all his files and material from Yallop. Yallop always claimed that he had got Arthur Thomas out of prison, but actually he was just another player in the long drawn out tragedy. Patrick and Jim Sprott then had a long session with the Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, and he decided to give all the facts to an independent QC, R.A. Adam-Smith.

Meanwhile the Mr Asia inquiry had taken a strange twist – Mr Asia himself was found murdered in Lancashire, England. His partner in his crimes, Terry Clark, was eventually arrested by the UK police, and among the incriminating evidence was a photograph of the woman who had rung us – lying laughing on a hotel bed naked – surrounded by thousands of pound notes.

She denied any knowledge of her lover’s criminal doings, and he was sentenced to twenty years in prison, though he died suddenly after two years. Patrick took four weeks off from The Star to write the book ‘The Mr Asia File’ about The Star’s investigation.

For the last week of this intensive enterprise, we took a brief holiday in the Bay of Islands so he could check out Terry Clark’s palatial and notorious mansion on the waterfront. We both wanted to come home early without mentioning to each other that we feared something was happening at our house.

We were right- this was when we found the break-in and deep freeze switched off. The next day we all drove into town to do food shopping, and for Patrick to deliver the final chapters of the book to his editor.  The children and I sat in the car outside the newspaper in the hot summer afternoon of 18 December 1980. Suddenly Patrick came running out – “Arthur’s been pardoned!” I looked at him blankly. I couldn’t even take it in. Mr Adam- Smith QC had examined the evidence, and told Muldoon that Arthur was innocent.

We drove home to pack an over-night bag for Patrick, and rendezvoused with him on his way down to meet Arthur just out of prison. Back in ’73 Patrick had promised they would spend the first night of Arthur’s freedom together. Now seven weary years later, he was fulfilling his promise. After feeding the children, I got on with the holiday washing that evening, and as I pegged up the clothes, I saw a station-wagon pull into the drive and back out to park hidden behind a high hedge.

I walked down the drive as two men got out of the car, and one put something black under his arm. They strode purposefully towards me, and I thought: ‘they’ve’ come for Patrick. I was rooted to the spot in terror, wondering how to protect the children. I know now, how true those phrases are – rooted to the spot, frozen with terror. Then the man with the black object under his arm, introduced himself as a TV news anchor, he was holding his microphone. Since we never watched TV I hadn’t recognised him.

He was the first of many newsmen staking out the house that night, hoping to interview Arthur. But Patrick had to keep him under wraps and hide him until his own newspaper came out the following day. So there was no trace of him or Arthur. Eventually they drove into the garage, and Arthur uncoiled himself from the floor in the back seat. The only food in the house after our holiday was eggs, so his first meal of freedom was scrambled eggs and red wine.

Half way through he wanted to ring the prime minister, to thank him for the pardon. We heard the operator ask who was calling, and Arthur replying Arthur Thomas for Mr Muldoon, and the operator slammed down the receiver thinking it was a hoax!  With some fast talking Patrick managed to get Muldoon on the line to talk to Arthur.

Both men then drove off to Arthur’s sister’s house where he stayed the night untroubled by newsmen. He came out of the bedroom, carrying the flowered sheet from his bed, asking if this was a joke. So many things had changed during his eight years in jail, and flowered sheets were one of them.

When a film was made of Yallop’s book, in which Patrick was written out of all that had transpired, the last scene is of Arthur’s eight brothers and sisters running hand- in- hand across a field to meet him. But it wasn’t like that.

In the morning, Patrick took him to his parents who had been running Arthur’s farm for him. As they drove up to the house, the door opened, and Ivy, his old mother, flung her arms around him, crying,” My boy, my boy.” His father, kindly, patient, Job-like, stood in the door, and said to his son: “Where the hell have you been?” a question which had many meanings. It was a deeply moving moment of quiet joy.

A few months later the Prime Minister did something that split the country and communities,  families and friendships. In a rugby mad country, he refused to honour the anti-apartheid agreements of the Commonwealth, and allowed the all- powerful Rugby Union to invite the South African rugby team, the Springboks, to tour this country for a series of test matches.

It sounds innocent enough, but it was betrayal of the anti-apartheid movement, and was an encouragement to racism in this country. The liberal, educated middle classes and town people who had marched years before in the fifties under the banner ‘No Maoris, no Tour’  when Maoris were refused their places in the visiting NZ team by South African authorities, now opposed this tour with all their might. The country folk and rugby die-hards passionately supported it. (Maoris were eventually allowed into South Africa as ‘honorary whites’)

There were protest marches all over the country for months beforehand to ‘Stop the Tour”. Thousands of people who had never marched or protested before in their lives, old and young, fit or hobbling along on sticks, tried to make their voice against apartheid heard and ‘Stop the Tour”. The police countered with violent measures.

Friends – poets, painters, writers, psychiatrists, potters, architects, took to wearing crash helmets to protect their heads from the blows of police batons. One match in Hamilton had to be abandoned when protestors surged against the fence around the rugby field, and spilled onto the ground.

The match was cancelled, and enraged rugby fans sought out protestors and beat them up unmercifully. It was the most extraordinary episode in the history of a peaceful, law-abiding country. Like so many others, Patrick and I both marched and wrote against the tour. In our country community we were so completely ostracised that I took a book with me to read while everyone else was sociaising, when I had to attend school concerts in the village hall.

And Nelson Mandela, enduring his dark night of the soul in his prison cell on Robben Island, hearing of the protest marches half a world away, and that the match in Hamilton had been cancelled when protestors invaded the ground, felt as ‘if the sun had come out’.

Next week -what really happened to the murdered couple…

 Food for Threadbare Gourmets

 Because our forest is hidden away behind high heavy iron gates, with no fear of being caught by a breathalyser, we are able to indulge in an easy and old fashioned form of entertaining – drinks before dinner.

This recipe for red tinned salmon is a quick and easy dip, and good to eat with chilled white wine or rose. Use 50 gms of softened butter to 100gms of red salmon. Whip the butter together with half the salmon, and then stir in a clove of chopped garlic, a chopped spring onion, a teasp of finely chopped fresh dill, and the grated zest and juice  of half a lemon. Add the juice from the tin of salmon, and then flake the remaining salon and lightly stir into the mixture. Spread on rice crackers for gluten free guests or any other small cracker for guests to help themselves.

Food for Thought

Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence. It is no fun to write lumpishly, dully, in prose the reader must plod through like wet sand. But it is a pleasure to achieve, if one can, a clear running prose that is simple yet full of surprises. This does not just happen. It requires skill, hard work, a good ear, and continued practice.                      Barbara Tuchman, historian

 

 

 

 

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September 7, 2018 · 1:48 pm

Drugs, Death threats, Alfred Dreyfus and Pastor Niemoller

Image result for phonographs

Another instalment of my autobiography before I revert to my normal blogs

 Alfred Dreyfus, the Frenchman wrongly accused of spying, and the victim of twelve years of imprisonment, trials and injustice, ending in his pardon in 1904, seemed an odd person to enter our lives – but he did.

Dreyfus was framed and punished for a crime he didn’t commit, and his case has since become the classic example of  bias and state bullying. Among the people who campaigned to exonerate him and re-gain his freedom was the writer, Emile Zola, who wrote a powerful and explosive newspaper article entitled ‘J’Accuse!’ aimed at those who had collaborated in this crime by the establishment.

So many aspects of Dreyfus’s ordeal were repeated in the case of Arthur Thomas that Patrick began to use the parallels and wrote his own version of ‘J’Accuse!’ Whenever he was invited to speak to a meeting, be it conservative anti-Thomas, pro- establishment Rotary clubs, or dinners for Justices of the Peace, he would tell the story of Dreyfus, not mentioning his name.

The audience would grow visibly angry since they believed that justice had been done to Thomas. At the end of his talk he would say – no, not Arthur Thomas, but Alfred Dreyfus. This would always cause a stir, and suddenly they became open to hearing about Arthur’s case, asking the questions Patrick wanted to answer. The constant campaigning went on, while I beavered away by now, at producing the women’s pages as well as writing two weekly columns for the Star and Women’s Weekly.

Life became a juggling act with the children now at secondary school in the city, forty minute’s drive away, and reliant on us to get them there as public transport was difficult from our remote little valley. By the time  we’d added in their weekly piano lessons  with two different teachers in two different  directions, flute lessons in another distant suburb, weekend children’s orchestra, regular piano concerts in which their teachers had entered them, plus my daughter’s activities, which included the Duke of Edinburgh Gold Medal, and rehearsals with the Handel trio she’d organised, culminating in the finals of a nation-wide competition -to name only a few of their activities – life was hectic.

Friends came to stay from England – a god-mother for three months, other friends for weeks at a time and Shirley, who became a regular visitor who collapsed with exhaustion on her arrival, slept for a few days, and then left – refreshed! This schedule was interrupted with increasingly frequent bouts of what is now known as chronic fatigue syndrome, but in those days got me diagnosed as hypochondriac, or emotionally disturbed, and other enraging judgemental descriptions. I eventually gave up on conventional medicine and went to a homeopath.

He was a very tall, handsome and distinguished man with great compassion, who a few years later returned to England to become the Queens’s homeopath, but was murdered by his mistress with a pair of scissors before he could take up the appointment.

When I went to see him, he was appalled at how weak I was and sent me off to see a raft of specialists, from an endocrinologist, a gynaecologist, a neurologist and finally a faith healer. No-one could get to the bottom of my puzzling ailment, and because no-one could put a name on it I was in a sort of limbo… not really ill at all… I dragged myself around to walk the dogs and speak to meetings, organise, write, interview and lay-out the women’s pages, working from home for most of the tine, and driving into the office two days a week.

One of the high spots of this time was meeting the Duke of Edinburgh, who was handsome, charming, intelligent and witty. Later, a cocktail party on board Britannia to meet the Queen was another fascinating experience, not just talking to her but watching her vivacity and sense of fun as she mingled with other guests. Other interviews were with people as diverse as tennis player Yvonne Goolagong and the new Governor General, Erin Pizzey, English campaigner against domestic violence, painters, poets, midwives, and Maoris…so many good people doing their best for their world.

Patrick in the mean-time pursued his rather expensive hobbies, so although we were always struggling financially, he still managed to collect antique phonographs and records, until he had hundreds of old cylinders and records, and over twenty horned gramophones, Victrolas and other models. Vintage cars were another of his passions, and he was always coming home with another brass headlamp, a brass horn, a new radiator and other trimmings which I used to call Christmas tree decorations, the cars were arrayed with so many extras.

One day he came home with a strange story about one of his girl cadets coming to see him because she was worried about her flat-mate. She feared her friend was working for a shady magazine with odd connections… false passports in the safe, strange phone calls, and stranger people calling. The following week, having followed it up, he felt he had stumbled on a drug ring.

Over the next few years, in tandem with the Thomas campaign, he investigated this frightening international crime ring, which he nicknamed The Mr Asia Drug Ring. He was assisted by a team of three brave and enthusiastic reporters. Up to twelve people were murdered by the two principals, and my heart used to sink at having to listen to more stories of crime and depravity. Eventually I couldn’t take any more, and my daughter claimed her stepfather unburdened it onto her instead on the school run!

But I still couldn’t escape the ramifications of this dangerous mission Patrick was now committed to. After several years of investigations and a big front-page story, the phone rang that eveing, and an educated woman’s voice spoke at the other end. “Martin is not going to like it.” she said menacingly, naming one of the two drug ring-leaders. Since we had an unlisted number this was worrying; we learned later that she worked in the office of Arthur Thomas’s counsel, and had found it easy to get our details.

This barrister, a QC, who had demanded such a price for volunteering to be Arthur’s legal adviser that the Thomas parents had had to mortgage their farm, was also successfully defending one of the two drug lords. This was a strange situation for Patrick, who while he discussed Arthur Thomas with the QC, never mentioned Terry Clark, the other client who he, Patrick, was trying to expose and destroy, while the QC was trying to defend him!

Now, the prime minister, Rob Muldoon caused another huge ripple in our lives. He sent a list to all the newspapers of all the supposed communists in the country, and Patrick who was editing the Star at the time while the editor was on holiday, refused to publish it. I remembered Pastor Niemoller and rang Patrick at the office with his famous words:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Patrick printed them in his editorial – saying next it will be homosexuals in the education department, or Catholics in the health department. His staff were enraptured, exclaiming that they were proud to work for the liberal newspaper, while it caused a stir throughout the country. Flushed with pride Patrick was furious when his boss came hurrying back from holiday, and criticised his  decision.

The next morning, I awoke to hear him say, “I’m resigning.” Suddenly, after a few good years of what felt like prosperity, we were thrown back into the hardship of never having enough money. The big yellow Austin Princess office car was returned to the newspaper, and my lovely new yellow station wagon, the only new car I have ever owned, had to be sold.

With the proceeds, Patrick bought a vintage car called a Dodge, so he could have the fun of it, he said, and we could use it as transport. It was a disaster, always breaking down, and hideous to boot! We ended up selling it at a loss – of course – and buying three very old Morris Minors, one for Patrick, one for me, and one for the children to drive themselves to school- my earnings paid for their school fees. Patrick found it hard to find another job with his reputation for not toeing the establishment line, and went into radio which he didn’t enjoy.

I mentioned to him that there was a lot of rattling in my Morris Minor when driving along our steep and winding country roads. When he checked, he found some -one – the drug lord’s henchman? – had somehow penetrated our isolated home, and had unscrewed all the nuts on the front wheels except one, which hung by a thread. And just in case we hadn’t got the message that ‘they’ knew where we were and would stop at nothing, when we were away on holiday for a week, they broke into the house, and switched off the deep freeze, so that everything had rotted… a sinister calling card…

Other troubling messages continued to reach us, like the one brought by a reporter who’d been dining at a restaurant. As she was leaving, a man at a table put out his walking stick to prevent her passing and said: “Tell Mr Booth that I am always thinking of him”. This was frightening, as was the information relayed by the police, that the drug ring had put out a contract on Patrick’s head, with return fares to and from Australia, and a payment of thirty thousand dollars – which, nearly thirty years ago was a lot of money.

To be continued

 Food for Threadbare Gourmets

 I use this mixture in a pie, or if I’m pushed for time, over two minute noodles. For gluten free foodies, it could be served over rice, but I think I’d jazz up the rice with some frozen peas, chopped parsley, mushrooms cooked in butter, fried onions or similar. It’s just three chopped leeks, gently fried in butter with a spring of fresh chopped thyme.

Mix two table spoons of flour with two table spoons of cream, and add to the leeks along with 200gms of crème fraiche. If no crème fraiche I might use cream cheese. To this add 200 gms of ham, though I use chicken and a few rashers of cooked, chopped bacon. Then salt and pepper, and a good dollop of chopped blue cream cheese… 100 gm at least. When they’re mixed, tip into a greased pie dish, and cover with short crust or puff pastry, brushed over with some milk.

Make a small hole in the centre for steam to escape – those old china pie funnels are ideal – and bake for thirty minutes or so. Good with carrots and broccoli, and creamy mashed potatoes for a homely winter meal on a cold day. In summer it’s just as good with salad.

Food for Thought

There is life on earth – one life, which embraces every animal and plant on the planet. Time has divided it up into several million parts, but each is an integral part of the whole. We are all of one flesh, drawn from the same crucible. The instructions for all life are written in the same simple language. An intricate web of interaction connects all life into one vast self- maintaining system.

Lyall Watson. The opening lines of Supernature

 

 

 

 

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