Page nine

Mr. Errors and I had a talk about my column on his blog.  Actually, he did most of the talking and I listened (he certainly has a high opinion of his opinions).  He has suggested that I am taking too long to read each paper from 1912 and therefore I am not producing articles for his blog regularly enough.  He suggested that I just focus on one or two things.  Then he told me what those things were going to be: anything I could find on page nine of the Evening Post.

I went and looked at page nine.  It is the page that features stories for women and advertising (mainly for women).  I protested.  He insisted.  I asked for an explanation.  He said that I needed to broaden my horizons.  I protested quite vigorously that having been born in 1860, killed by a tram on a Wellington street in 1929 and suddenly resurrected in 2012 to write a column for blog meant my experiences were already quite broad.  He relented a little and said I could also review popular music in New Zealand every week because, “I know how much you like music”.  Yes, I said, I like music, but what is on the top of the pops now is certainly not music.  He looked at me quite grimly and said: “only female artists.  You can only review female artists on the top twenty.”  Then he smiled and said,

“If I created you… it’s easy enough for me to uncreate you.”

I went and looked at page nine.

***

Good lord.  Imported human hair?  Washable hair pads?  Quite a startling beginning to my attempts to understand women.

Aside from a piece about how to wear a scarf (there are a bewildering number of ways), and how to manage your servants, there is this little piece on children.

Now, Mr. Errors has two daughters, one aged five and half, and the other one and a half.  They are rather unruly examples of their sex, but charming in their way.  As I am a bachelor of 152 years it is perhaps not my place to comment on child-rearing, but it is my distinct impression that Mr. Errors is being reared by his daughters and not the other way round.  I had thought this was due to natural flaws in his character, and these certainly abound, but perhaps it is to do with the number of toys his children have and that devilish box they call a TV.  Surely all these moving pictures and jarring sounds are leading to a gross over stimulation.  Much better, the writer of this article suggests, that the infant simply look at the world around them.

Indeed. 

Mr. Errors has a garden.  The principle purpose of which seems to be for him to complain about.  Perhaps he should let his children roam more in it.  This would certainly stop them barging into my room at all hours and asking if they can play the drums on my head.  Impertinent.

Let him alone while he is good.  Splendid.

Finally, this young New Zealand lady has had a popular song in this country recently.  I draw your attention to it because Mr. Errors has recently taken up lawn bowls.

Her name is Anna.  She has an “h” at the end but I cannot bring myself to do this to a perfectly good name.  She appears to have a tattoo, and like wearing shoes called stilettos.  Lawn bowling, like everything else in the world, seems to have changed.

Mr. Errors assures me that if you “click” on the picture it will display the “video”.  I have seen this “video” and it is hard to decide which is more appalling: the antics of youth or the antics of the elderly.

Nor woman neither

I think that it is true that a picture speaks a thousand words although sometimes it is unclear what the words might be.  Maybe LOL.

The Listener article on the fitness craze sweeping New Zealand in February 1982 is fairly dismissive of one type of new fangled exercise called Jazzercise.

Jazzercise is a commercial con where the franchisers dance all the way to the bank and most of the customers limp home, say critics.

It attracts women, and I have the sense that this is the underlying thing that makes the journalist sceptical (although she too is a woman), as if it were news that women like dancing and that dancing is good exercise.  The other main picture in the article featuring a woman is this:

I really have no idea what she is doing, but she’s really into it.  Hard out.

In 1982 the main gyms in New Zealand, The Listener tells us, were the YMCA, YWCA, Les Mills and Clive Green.  Jogging, we are told, had become the number three leisure activity and interest in New Zealand after rugby and swimming.  Les Mills believes that centres likes his will become more popular “as people have more leisure and less work.”  I knew Les was a former discus tosser but I didn’t know he was a comedian as well.

Mills was invited last year to be a consultant for the Oamaru Licensing Trust when they opened a health centre adjoining a tavern.  The pub-gym combination did not bother Mills. “It’s part of our society having a beer.”

Jogging was so popular that we even tried a family jog when I was about seven or eight.  I’m pretty sure we did it once and never again.  It was important to wear stupid clothes when you exercised.  I had velcro running shoes and a blue track suit.

I’m guessing you want me to explain what I am doing with the cat, but I’m not going to.  Any relation between this picture and animal erotica is purely coincidental.  Anyway, the big problem with this tracksuit, aside from the cat, was that the pants clung to your crotch.  Which was quite awkward.  Whenever I wore the pants I spent most of my time leaning forward slightly so that the pants would balloon forward in more ambiguous way.  This made it quite hard to run.  Which I think, as I said, we only did once.  The point of sportswear as fashion was that it was fashion and not sportswear.  Which is true to this day.

I had an unhappy relationship with running at primary school.  The school I went to made us go for a 2km run at least once a week, and sometimes a 5km run just for fun.  I was a rubbish runner at primary school.  The 2km run may as well have been a marathon.  Athletics was worse because you had an audience.  My last year at primary I found myself locked in an epic struggle across 100 metres for second-to-last.  With every fibre of my body I just managed to avoid last place, grimly snatching second-to-last away from some poor pudgy fellow who probably only had one leg and was blind (my memory is unclear). 

Aerobics Oz Style used to be on TV early in the morning and my mother videoed it (check out that 80s sentence: videoing an aerobics show).  Sometimes I sneakily did one of the routines while my mum was out.  There was a really good routine set to Prince’s song America.  If you know the song you will know that it is really fast.  Great routine.  If only I could remember it now I could bust out some pretty impressive moves on the dance floor at the next awkward middle-aged dance that I go to.

I would be surprised if jogging is still the number three sports activity in New Zealand, but aerobics has lasted pretty well in its various forms, and still draws women into gyms.  On a mostly unrelated note, it’s good to see that ads for feminine hygiene products have also been pretty stupid since the 80s.