A Dynamite Surprise ....!

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Today, five days after Mister B’s first appearance at any workout, he stepped out again. He needed to capitalise on what, hopefully, he had learned in his first ‘race’ and, of course, over the holiday period, things like trials and workouts are rarer than my teeth. And as the events today were at our local racecourse in Rangiora, what more obvious then that we bundled into the little red car and that way went.

He's grown! Oh, how like his mother ...

Now, as I said last time, our boy clearly has speed, but he also has a lot to learn about Being a Racehorse. So what was our surprise to see that he was in the field for Heat Two. The standing start qualifying trial! Already? We thought that was weeks or months away. Well, he was there a little under false pretences. He was coming from Bank’s Peninsula with a sweet little mare called Naturally Good, whom Murray is preparing for the holiday meeting at dear old Richmond Park (both Wendy and I hail from little Richmond). Her race was at 1.30. The learners’ heat was at 3.00. Well, Mr B was only in for more practice, so Murray popped him in the qualifying heat at 11.15 instead. Saving an hour and a half of a working day. He could just go around at the back of the field and practice doing things right.

Well, he sort of did. This time he didn’t rear up. He lined up sagely in his outside spot, and when the tape went ‘ping’ he didn’t throw a catatonic. The new earplugs probably helped. So he didn’t gallop away. He walked gently out and gradually raised his game for a furlong or so ... Safe! I began dreaming that he might even qualify. You can only qualify if you run the time, and if you don’t gallop.

The big boys go at it .. 15 lengths ahead

Up front, the horses from the flash stables – Burrows, Hill, McRae – set to it at what even I could tell was pretty much race speed as Mister B, as planned, tucked sagely into last place of the five remaining competitors. Would it be enough? Oh, well, we hadn’t really come today to qualify… we hadn’t …

A round to go ... the leader cruises, before taking off

As they came round the final bend, Mr B had moved past the tiring filly in fourth, and then Murray pulled the ear-plugs …  The leader, an impressive black three year-old, Flying Mister Ideal, by American Ideal out of Flying Mrs Williams, was already off and gone towards the line, but good old Mr B swooped strongly, as he had the previous week, and zoomed enthusiastically past everyone else …  We looked at one another in surprise and delight. Whee! Second time on a race track and … I mean, whee! And surely … he must have qualified. 3.31.8 was the fatidic time. Yes. The run-away winner had cut out the 2600 metres in 3.22.4.  Real race-winning time. Mr B, even with his careful start, which had cost him 8 to 10 lengths, had run 3.24.6.

Down the final straight and Mr B makes ground hand over hoof ...

So I think we have a racehorse. And sooner than expected! Goodness me, I thought I was over all that. But it was nice to see the soft-boiled-egg silks storming down the outside one more time …

PS The Learners Heat was run in 3.43.0. Another world … circumstances were surely on our side! Thank you, little Miss Naturally Good.

Ma pipe!

The Great Gerolstein cleanout continues. Intermittently. Bit by bit. Wendy is doing the kitchen (soooo many appliances! Why do we have FIVE of everything …) and I have returned to my office, where the floor is covered with C19th theatrical playbills and costume designs and music and books …

Later…

The kitchen and the office are now slimmed and tidy. More or less. I have nothing left on the floor. Phew! Until the next time. Why the next time? Because I must try to sell all this stuff … or in some cases, give it away … or else, when I depart this earth, it may end up in a skip. New Zealand libraries/museums are only interested in Maori stuff. They haven’t got out of that fashionable phase. Other countries’s libraries want collections and items, but only for nothing. And I have found that donating things to museums and libraries is a thankless occupation. You are liable to find your donated items dumped in a sell-off fundraiser a few years later …

So I put it all away, and started dusting. I’m a bit wobbly on a stepladder nowadays, so the top shelves have got quite neglected. But when I got up there … ah! There it is! Great-grandpa’s Austrian pipe!

There were two. Brother John, I think, has the more impressive one. But I thought …  well, so many things are ‘missing’. You know, ‘whatever happened to grandma’s ..’. Oh, where are his pocket watches… found!

Well, that’s my achievement for this afternoon. Wendy’s mowed the paddocks. Now it’s time for a quiet and short evening. I’ll finish those top shelves tomorrow…

Dynamite's first explosion!

Once upon a time, I raced horses. Harness horses. Quite successfully too, although of course little guys like I can’t compete against the monoliths of the New Zealand Harness Racing industry when the big prizes are at stake. It’s crumbs time. In the end, I suppose my 50-odd wins cost me something like $15-20,000 apiece.

Finally, the gloss went off the game for me. All the things that were bad about racing in New Zealand seemed to be getting worse, and the nice things, the sporty things, the fun things were disappearing. Not to mention new rules, hugely increasing costs … it was time to go. So I went.

Mother wins at Addington

 I gave away my last three mares, Duchess, Elena and Agnes, found homes for the boys who had finished racing, as riding horses, and in the end was left with just two horses: huge, goofy Johnny Molecule, who has a congenital defect in a leg which would prevent his ever being a racehorse, and Elena’s baby, a handsome boy called Dynamite Paul (known as ‘Mister B’). I should, I suppose, have given him away too, but I didn’t. In the end, he went out in the paddock and just ate grass.

Mr B aka Dynamite Paul as a baby

Then one day, three months or so back, a horsey gent walking past the greensward where Mr B was having his usual hoon said ‘wow, who’s that?’ ‘A trotter?’. Er no. A pacer. But Mr B was trotting. Could he be a trotter? I loved my trotters. There was only one way to find out. Off to Motukarara with him, to ‘Motukarara Murray’ Edmonds, who has trained nearly all my trotters.

Today, 15 December, at five years of age, Mr B made his debut at the Banks Peninsula workouts. A learners’ heat. A pacing learner’s heat. Yes, after all that, Murray had decided that he cut more meat as a pacer than a trotter, so…

Mr B heads for the track

Well, like his mother and his Aunt Agnes, Mr B has a mind of his own. Also, he had never seen ‘a race’ and wasn’t initially quite sure, I’d say, what he was supposed to do. What he was NOT supposed to do was rear up at the barrier, and have a fit at the ‘ping’ of the starting tapes, close by his right ear. What he was NOT supposed to do was gallop off the mark and end up, in a twinkling, way behind the field.

But then things changed. Mr B glid into his gait and set out after the others at a rate of knots. The gap disappeared in fifty metres as he cruised at an excessive speed up and right past the opposition, to lead the charge by several lengths.

Now, this was supposed to be a Learner’s Heat, and you are only allowed to go a certain speed. Mr B was definitely over the speed limit. So Murray eased up, and the others gradually gathered in a group behind him. But in the last half mile he squeezed the accelerator a tad, and all but the trailing horse drifted off the back. Too fast! Murray let him cruise to the line, and the trailing horse passing-laned past, with Mr B marginally second. They were precisely 0.5 seconds inside the allowed time. (Sadly, there is no photo, because Mot racecourse has seen fit to plant publicity panels outside the final metres of the track!)

Good boy ... in parts

Well, he may have pretty useful speed, but Mr B is still a ‘learner’ as far as race manners are concerned. He’ll need a good few more similar practice runs before he becomes a racehorse. But I don’t mind. I actually enjoy workouts more than races, these days. 

Well, here we go again. Last time. Really...!

Gay times at the Criterion Theatre ...

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My old boss, the unforgettable Harold Fielding, goes down in the history of the London musical theatre as the producer of musicals for the millions. The coach party king. That's a bit right, but only a bit. Harold and his right hand (wife Maisie) and left hand (associate Ian Bevan) back-roomers did more than just mount popular shows -- from Cinderella, Half a Sixpence, Showboat, Irene et al to Barnum and Singin' in the Rain -- for the charabanc public. His name appeared at the top of the bill for two of the 1970s's most 'liberated' musical shows: the long-running Let My People Come at the Regent and the revue Hulla Baloo at the Criterion.

Let My People Come was still running when I joined the company (Ian had the job of casting it), but Hulla Baloo had gone its way so I never saw it. But it sounds good, camp fun:

'The curtain rises to show a public convenience with 3 cubicles on either side of the stage and that more or less sets the tone of the humour for the rest of the evening. Rogers and Starr score early on with one of their popular numbers ‘Rape’ and again in the second half with their famous ‘Beyond the Freud’ number which was so popular with the audiences at the Hampstead Theatre Club where they had 2 successful seasons of late night revue 2 years running. Roy Starr repeats his amusing ‘Dear Marje’ takeoff of Marjorie Proops, and Michael Rogers follows with his rather cruel Dietrich impersonation, descending the toilet stairs impeccably gowned in a transparent salmon pink shimmering dress.

In the second act the two of them proceed to demolish ‘Gone With The Wind’ with their hilarious portrayals of Mammie and Prissie the maid. It was interesting to note how enjoyable Jimmy Edwards can be when he stops ad-libbing. His talk on gardening ‘Are you listening, Mary Whitehouse?’ involves some useful information on the growing of roses: ‘First get your beds ready, go easy with the trowel and don’t give ‘er more than 5 inches to start with…’ and he gets good participation from the audience with his song about Enoch Powell. Chelsea Brown looks good and has several numbers to sing, including the title song, an obscure Duke Ellington number ‘Tulip or Turnip’ and one of Michael Rogers’ own songs ‘Powder My Back’.'

And I find I have a souvenir of it. Amongst my C19th playbills, I have found this costume design. 

What on earth shall I do with it! Should I put it on eBay? Or should it be in Gay News, or a Gay Museum ...

Propping up the Anglicans ....

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Ever since the earthquakes, more than half a dozen years ago, there has been an incommensurate amount of publicity given to the (now ruined and deconsecrated) Cathedral at the centre of the city. 'The Cathedral', which is spoken of as if it were the only one. But it is not. It is merely the only Anglican one ...  a few streets down there is, or was, another, in my opinion, a much finer building, dedicated by the Catholic Church.

I lived in Christchurch in the 1960s, and used to have to pass The Cathedral each day on my way to University. I make no secret, I found it a gloomy, grey blot on the landscape. A mid-19th century bit of D-level architecture. Inside was even worse. Yes, I went inside. I was engaged to sing there. Otherwise I would probably not have. For I am no Anglican, indeed no Christian, and never was. But I love good architecture. Secular or religious. And loathe facile imitations. Which this was.

'The Cathedral' (Anglican)

I have told before how I watched the earthquake's depredations 'live on TV' from my 'hospital bed' a few days after a stroke. It was a surreal experience, and one that inspired little but horror and pity. All those people, all those lives ...  but if there was a tiny glimpse of satisfaction nestled, for me, amongst the terrible sights and feelings, it was in seeing 'The Cathedral' topple ... at last, Christchurch is rid of the thing!

But, of course, vested interests want it otherwise. And the squabble over whether the ruin should be cleared, and the Square made a public area for all of the population, and not just Anglican Christians, or whether the thing should be restored or rebuilt have made the news as recently as today. Everyone is fighting for his corner. But the Christchurch council has voted millions towards the replacement? The people's money. Ratepayers' money? From whence came the quote about 'propping up the Anglicans'. So it goes on.

The Cathedral, Barbados Street

And in all this blathering, I have not heard (mind you, I haven't been listening) a thing about the Catholic Cathedral. Nor about suburban churches like the one at Woodend, unused and fenced off for the past six years.

Somewhere, here, is a great deal of hypocrisy, a great deal of sectarian power-struggle, a great deal of pomposity ...  and if the tens of millions of dollars were to be spent on housing instead of on a useless  and unattractive monument to a religious sect ...? And the city's heart deconsecrated properly...

Just saying.

Every picture tells some story ...

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Now that I’m not currently working on getting a new book out, I, for the first time in many years, have time to … well, indulge the odd lazy, nineteenth-century fancy. If something catches my eye as I waddle round my literary domain, I can spend a day or two looking into it – well, you’ve seen my recent posts. A piece of music, a book … they all have some sort of a tale to tell, and they can all start me off on a little adventure.

Today it was a photo. This morning I was strolling through the pages and pages of cartes de visite to be found on eBay, pictures of places and people of other times. More often than not, insofar as the people are concerned, unknown, unidentified, nameless. I’m not looking to buy these days, but I like to look. And this one took my fancy. A little boy in his best Sunday suit and his somewhat overweight sister from Melbourne, Australia.

 What often happens with photos is that, when the photo-ed folk and their family are gone, they get disposed of. So where there is one, you can sometimes find more. So I looked, just in case. And, yes! There are three of these two children, all with the same dealer. And one of a whiskered man. Same photographer. Same chair. Clearly, the same session. And there is one of a lady. Different dealer, different chair … but same photographer, same year … No, they’re not dated or identified but the photographer is. And a sad story is his.

John Gaul was born in Alvar, Banffshire, Scotland in 1831, the second son in the family of maltman, John Gaul, and his wife née Ann MacIntosh. We can see him, in the 1851 census, working as a cabinet-maker in Banff. On 8 May 1857, he married Miss Jessie Gossip, soon after, their first son, Joseph, was born, and the year after they left Liverpool for Australia and a new life. On the ship’s manifest, John was listed as ‘labourer’, but he clearly had other ideas. They arrived in Melbourne 29 April 1860, and within no time John, ‘artist’, had set up a pianoforte tuning and accordion business, then a studio of ‘The Photographic Art’ at 112 Douglas Parade. And 22 July Jessie gave birth to a second son, Alexander William, ‘at the home of Captain [Joseph] Dalgarno’. 112 Douglas Parade. The child died at 18 months. But there were two more to come. Finally, in 1866, John Gaul upmarketed. He moved his studio 95 Swanston Street, the address shown on our photographs. But he didn’t stay there for long. By the next year, he had shifted to larger premises in the same street. So, we can date our photos precisely to 1866.

 Then it all went wrong for John. Jessie died, aged only 34 at their home at 22 Regent Street, Fitzroy. A few weeks later, John took on a partner in his business, and within two years he himself withdrew. His brother, Alexander [MacIntosh], who had also emigrated and who was a printer in Carlton apparently helped him out, until he got into money troubles too, and he and his family re-emigrated to New Zealand where he died in 1903.

John too went to New Zealand. With a new wife, Margaret née Dillon. And presumably at least some of his three surviving children. He died there, in Colombo Street, Christchurch, 27 November 1876 – 25km from where I sit now -- where he had established a studio. It was believed to be suicide.

So, poor John Gaul ‘artist’ apparently didn’t have a very long career as a Melburnian photographer. Five years or so in Williamstown, one year of glory at no 95, and then a bit longer down the road. But he took some photos there which have survived. The State Library of Victoria has a handful. And then there are these. I guess these folk went back to England, and took their Melburnian photos with them …

I should dearly love to know who they were. Dad would make a lovely understudy for Abe Lincoln.

PS I find that someone else has delved into the Gauls and in considerably more detail than I, and with a fine selection of his Christchurch photographs:

http://canterburyphotography.blogspot.co.nz/2008/09/gauls-portrait-rooms-christchurch.html