Tinkering Read online

  About the Book

  This book tells the story of John Clarke’s writing life, including the fan letter he sent to All Black Terry Lineen when he was ten, a golf instruction manual unlike any other, Anna Karenina in forty-three words, and the moving essays he wrote after the deaths of his parents.

  Tinkering is full of surprises, and includes all kinds of puzzles and propositions. Each one has different rules but together they reveal the different facets of John Clarke’s comic genius. In these pages you will find Fred Dagg dispensing advice on everything from dentistry to dreaming, the complete history of the lost sport of farnarkeling, the famous ‘Quiz Answers’, and ‘Saint Paul’s Letter to the Electorates’—a brilliant account of the Rudd—Gillard years that was first inscribed onto stone tablets.

  Tinkering also includes previously unpublished material including the ‘Doorstop Poems’, and the ‘Letters from the School’ suggesting what a serious matter birdwatching was for John Clarke. This wonderful book is introduced by his daughter, Lorin Clarke.

  ‘His humour seems to owe nothing to anybody, it was his own, totally original, devastating and yet kindly. The nation needed John Clarke and we will miss him.’ Barry Humphries

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  What Thinkest

  by Lorin Clarke

  Origins

  Beginnings

  The Fred Dagg Advisory Bureau

  Swimming the Ditch

  Farnarkeling

  The Resolution of Conflict

  AUSTRALIAFORM

  Golf

  Australia and How to Repair It

  Itty Bitty Litty Critties

  Stiff, Director’s Diary 2004

  The Howard Apology

  Doorstop Poems

  Quiz Answers

  Saint Paul’s Letter to the Electorates

  Sporting Heroes

  Writers and Artists

  Memories and Reflections

  Plate section: Letters from the School

  About the Author

  Also by John Clarke

  Copyright

  What Thinkest

  by Lorin Clarke

  Some people’s dads spend hours tinkering in the shed. Our dad, John Clarke, borrowed the word but required only a desk and ‘gallons of tea’ for the kind of tinkering he did.

  After a day in his office on the phone, writing, chatting and reading, or, as he used to put it, ‘bent over me lathe’, Dad would snap open his laptop again late at night and ‘tinker away’ at his writing in some form or another—a script, his family history, an email, or an idea that might or might not develop into something.

  He and I used to email each other drafts of our writing. He sent various things to my mum and my sister, too, and collaborators and friends. Most of those emails are timestamped after 11 p.m. ‘Had a bit of a tinker since we last spoke. What thinkest?’ the subject line would read. Or, at midnight, I’d send him something saying, ‘Need to lose a couple of hundred words from this, what do you reckon?’ Thirty seconds would pass. ‘May I tinker?’ would come the reply.

  There were other shorthands, too. If, as is often the case, I can’t find a draft of something Dad sent me, I just type ‘Waddyers’ into my search bar. Instantly, row after row of emails appear entitled ‘Waddyers’, a more economical form of the well-known Australian expression ‘What do yiz reckon?’

  In this way, despite his hyperbolic reference to his lathe, Dad’s creative processes reflected not so much the industrial rigour of the factory as the natural rhythms of conversation. These little linguistic jokes proscribe any hierarchies or even formalities, suggesting a mutual adventure that might continue for some time. ‘Writing another draft’ sounds exhausting. ‘Having a bit of a tinker’ sounds delightful.

  His tinkering, though, was forensic and, with his own work, from Fred Dagg to Clarke & Dawe, he confidently made the final call. This was, in part, due to his early work as Fred Dagg. When he first appeared on TV in New Zealand, television production tended to the rudimentary. He was not assigned a crew. He was given a camera. He took it, plonked it down on the ground near a field, turned it on and performed in front of it. It was a film camera, so he had to edit it himself later, using scissors. He always said that being required to engage in all these elements of production gave his writing and performance a discipline he might not otherwise have had.

  It also meant that he valued all the creative aspects of production. He often said he learned to write partly by performing, and sometimes found himself performing his way out of a writing problem. Once, when he was directing Stiff for television (the diaries from which are included in these pages), he overheard the production manager fretting about the practical requirements of a complicated set. He asked what was complicated about it. She told him not to worry, he was the director, she’d deal with it. He asked her again what was complicated about it. She explained the problem. He opened his script and scribbled out the line describing the set. Always tinkering.

  When asked what his influences were, Dad had a range of answers, but he always said the biggest influence on his writing and performing was talk. The adults in the next room talking at night, the way people spoke in shops, the wording of announcements over loudspeakers. If you listen to talk, you learn about tone, about speech rhythm, and, most importantly for Dad, about how important the form of delivery is to conveying (or avoiding) meaning. You can find him playing with all this in these pages—in the earnest authority of Fred Dagg’s advice to the masses, the religious theatricality of St Paul’s Letters to the Electorates, the familiar format of the Letters from the School (applied not to children but to birds), the quiz answers (but no questions), and the reportage of industrial disputes pertaining to the tantrums of children (who bear no resemblance to any real persons past or present).

  One can often identify in Dad’s writing a form (like sporting commentary) from which he has removed key elements (any reference to existing sporting codes, for instance). This allows the form to be stripped of the cultural heavy lifting that gave it meaning in the first place. One of the best compliments he ever got from a member of his audience was someone who stopped him in the street and said, ‘I like what you do. I watch your interviews with a straight face and then I laugh at the news.’ Someone else once stopped him and said, ‘What you do is a secret between you and your audience.’ He liked the idea of that mutual understanding, that conversation between himself and his audience, recognising patterns of human behaviour together.

  We had a term in our house for some of the more obscure jokes in Dad’s work. They were ‘one-percenters’. As in: one percent of your audience might get that joke, Dad. He loved those ones the most, because the audience had to work a little with him to get to the joke. Some of the writing collected here is reflective, some of it is funny, and some of it (like politicians’ doorstop interviews reframed as poetry) is slightly surreal. There are one-percenters sprinkled throughout, and a lot of tinkering was done along the way to get here. Thank you for reading this book. Put the kettle on. It’s probably best enjoyed with a cup of tea.

  Origins

  Eliza

  The National Library of Australia is a large and impressive contemporary building looking out over Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra. Among the documents on display there at the moment are very early maps and atlases, Cook’s Endeavour journal, records from Bligh’s unusual voyage, the original sheet music for ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and the handwritten notes passed between Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm in the loud and freezing cockpit of the Southern Cross as they flew across the Pacific in 1928.

  Downstairs is a newspapers and microfilms reading room which holds millions of records. It’s a researcher’s dream and is full of people working on t
heir projects. Some of the records are available only on site and among these is a copy of the New Zealand Electoral Roll for 1893. Not only do you have to be in the building to view this; you need to be on a particular computer. When I was there I went to this otherwise unremarkable device, sat down, opened the New Zealand Electoral Roll for 1893 and typed in the name of my great grandmother. Eliza Jane Fox. Up she came. Eliza Jane Fox. Waiapu electorate. Gisborne resident. Married. The 1893 New Zealand election was the first election anywhere in the world in which women voted. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to have a runner in this event.

  I also looked up Eliza’s mother, Matilda Keys. Not there. No appearance, Your Worship. Matilda was also eligible to vote in this election but perhaps chose not to. Maybe it was all too modern for her. She’d crossed the world from Enniskillen, a perilous journey which took nearly half a year, she’d lived in often very tough circumstances, had five children, buried two husbands and had survived and made her own way, but perhaps voting was a bridge too far.

  For Eliza, as for many of her generation of New Zealand women, suffrage was a significant advance but was only a beginning. She was part of the effort to get a hospital for Gisborne and she later played a role in this and in other aspects of local politics. She came from immigrant stock and perhaps recognised the opportunity given to those who settle in a new land to define themselves in a context different from that of their parents. Eliza’s parents were from the old world; she was from the new. They were formed and shaped and taught in Ireland; she grew up in New Zealand. Her parents were Roman Catholic; she was a free thinker who was married in the Knox Presbyterian church in Dunedin when she was slightly pregnant and she sometimes played the piano in a church in Gisborne which she refused point blank to join.

  Eliza’s life falls within other great patterns of her time. Born in the Victorian goldfields in 1862, she arrived in Dunedin as a baby when the Otago gold rush was attracting people from all over the world and at the age of twenty she married a man from Dublin who played rugby for Otago and Poverty Bay and was the New Zealand rowing champion. Together they brought up seven children, most of whom I knew.

  If I were the New Zealand government I’d publish the names of all of the women who voted in the 1893 election. And I’d hope that anyone related to them or descended from them or living in the same area today would consider doing some research. What happened to these women and to their children? It’s still only about a hundred years ago. These are the women whose sons went to the First World War. Eliza lost a nephew at Gallipoli. One of her sons was gassed in France. Her grandsons went off to the Second World War, one with the New Zealand Division in North Africa and Italy, the other a decorated pilot and the only survivor of his original squadron. Her daughters and granddaughters included teachers, writers and organisers.

  If we don’t do some work on our own history, our great grandchildren will have to pay to access it online or find it on a special computer in someone else’s library. Most of the women who voted in 1893 would have been photographed. If we try really hard we might find images to match the names.

  Neva

  In 1944 our mother, Neva, was in San Spirito, in Italy, working at New Zealand army headquarters. During the Second World War, the role of women was changing. They began to do work previously done by men, in education, in health, in factories, in transport and on the land. These women often became more independent as their experiences took them beyond the lives of their own mothers. As the Irish poet Seamus Heaney said, ‘in a life the nucleus stays the same but with any luck the circumference moves out.’

  Not long before she was at the army headquarters, Neva was working as a secretary in Whakatane. Her boyfriend was a champion swimmer and they spent their weekends at dances and up the east coast. When the war broke out her boyfriend joined the air force and in 1942 he was shot down and killed over Benghazi, in Libya. In San Spirito, Neva was partly recovering from the trauma of losing her best friend and partly taking charge of her life.

  Neva Yvonne Morrison was born in Gisborne on 20 April 1920. She had a happy, confident childhood and was bright and keen to do well. But times were tough and like many others she had to leave school during the Depression and find work. She learnt shorthand, became a virtuoso touch typist and could organise anything from a standing start. After the death of her friend, and partly as a response, she joined up for overseas service herself and, after training in Wellington, she arrived in Italy with the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. In September 1944 the administrative headquarters of the New Zealand division was moved to Senigallia on the Adriatic coast and Neva was promoted to a position working directly for Major-General W. G. Stevens, the commanding officer.

  The New Zealand Division, which was sometimes called the 2NZEF or ‘The Div’, had built its reputation through tough campaigns in Greece, Crete and across North Africa and was now part of the arduous and apparently endless fighting up through Italy. Thousands had been killed. Many of the men around headquarters were on leave or were convalescing after being wounded. From them she heard of the battles and the terrible losses. She heard stories of men she’d known in New Zealand. Her sister’s fiancé had been captured in North Africa and was in a German prison camp. Her cousin had come through the desert campaign in the infantry and was now part of the fighting in Italy. Another cousin was a decorated pilot with 70th Squadron, where life expectancy was somewhat limited. She herself was the victim of a sexual assault and was mentioned in dispatches for her actions in defending herself. On the other hand, there were good friends among the WAACs, beautiful beaches, historic towns, and there were dances. An Australian pilot told me, ‘Your mother was the best dancer in the New Zealand army.’ She also learnt enough Italian to make her way around and meet the local people, some of whom she stayed in touch with long after the war. As an Allied victory became more inevitable the WAACs took some leave and hitched rides in army vehicles going to Florence, Sienna, Milan, Venice or Rome. Neva also went hiking in the Alps and climbed Mont Blanc. Throughout this period she kept a diary in which she recorded her experiences and which was later published as a book, An Angel in God’s Office.

  It was at headquarters in Senigallia that Neva met our father, Ted Clarke, who was working there for a while after being wounded. Ted was from Wellington and was in the 7th Anti-Tank Regiment. He’d been at Sidi Rezegh, Ruweisat Ridge, Minqar Qaim, El Alamein, Tebaga Gap, the Sangro and Monte Cassino. Neva was keen not to become deeply involved with anyone, but she and Ted got on well and had a good deal in common. Both had parents with strong roots in Ulster, both were interested in the arts, both had a gift for language and they shared a sense of humour.

  When the war finished Neva returned home via Britain and visited the place in County Down where her father had grown up. When she arrived at the railway station in Crossgar she approached a man with a horse-drawn taxi. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m from New Zealand and I’m trying to find the place where my father grew up.’

  ‘Is that right?’ asked the man. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘William Gibson Morrison,’ replied Neva.

  ‘Right,’ said the man. ‘I’ll take you up to the house. I was at school with him. How is he?’

  ‘He’s fine,’ said Neva.

  And that night she slept in the bed her father was born in.

  A few months later she arrived back in New Zealand and was reunited with her family and friends. She quickly realised that she wouldn’t be slipping back into Gisborne and continuing her old life. She applied to go to Japan as part of New Zealand’s postwar presence in the region but was told they were only taking people who hadn’t had the opportunity to go to Europe. She took a job in the prime minister’s office in Wellington while she considered what to do. She and Ted had begun to spend some time together and he was thinking about the future. He had gone back to the job he’d had before the war with a national retail chain and had been appointed manager of the Palmerston North branch. After a while Ted was inv
ited to go to Gisborne and meet Neva’s family and on a fine summer’s day in early 1947, in the garden of Neva’s parents’ house in Sievwright Lane, where we later spent many Christmases, Neva and Ted were married.

  Neva was a modern woman. She was intelligent, capable, talented, ambitious and very employable. She had travelled extensively in Europe at a time when travel was generally available to few. Ted was a very good retailer and retail was booming, so he was quickly marked out for bigger things in the company. I was born in 1948 and Anna in 1951 and Neva was a very good mother. As for many women, however, being confined at home and deprived of independent income or social contacts was a gender-specific restriction. Despite her love for her children, the role of housewife in Palmerston North during the 1950s was not going to hold Neva’s interest on its own.

  She got involved with the local theatre group and began to appear in plays. The local repertory attracted actors from other towns, and for years afterwards I saw people in film and television productions who had been in plays at the Manawatu Rep. Sometimes they babysat us while Neva was at rehearsals or during the run of a play; Ngaire Porter, for example, who was from Napier and later played Irene in the BBC’s production of The Forsyte Saga and Dennis Moore, who also went to London and became an agent and among whose clients were the members of Monty Python. They wrote a song about him in the manner of Robin Hood. It begins:

  Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, Galloping through the sward.

  Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, And his horse Concorde.

  He steals from the rich. And gives to the poor.

  Mr. Moore, Mr. Moore, Mr. Moore.

  Dennis and I are still in regular contact and, despite the fact that he lives on the south coast of Devon, he still knows exactly what’s happening in Palmerston North. Sometimes I was roped into actual involvement in one of Neva’s plays. When I was about eight years old a boy called Bill Woollett broke his nose in a rugby match and I was blackmailed into replacing him at very short notice as Bob Cratchit’s son in A Christmas Carol. Another time I was prevailed upon to stand just offstage in some production Neva was in and hand various props to an actor called Colin Watson, who later became a successful sculptor in New York. Colin was rather a physical performer and would dash into the wings, grab the prop and then bound back onstage, slamming the door so that the set heaved and rattled and the notion that we were in Moscow, which was already in some trouble, was briefly abandoned altogether. Brooms would fall over backstage and we’d fumble about in the dark catching cups and bits of lighting equipment in case the whole of Russia went up. I also remember an actress called Bunty Norman singing a song called ‘Making Whoopee’. She was pretending to be drunk and I was aware that I was learning about something by seeing it exaggerated.