Leon the Huguenot remembers an English professor who made him feel even more insignificant than he is.

The Blue Niles

I grew up in a rather sheltered environment; in a small provincial Australian city.  We had one small bookcase full of books and that made us fairly unusual in our street.  In most other houses the only book was the telephone book.  My family was not strong in the literary area and I do not think we have changed much.

Into my world, at about age 13, came the Niles – Professor Nile and his family.  I had heard of Prof Nile by reputation.  My tutor, a rabid, uncritical, Anglophile, was enraptured by him; how he could speak; how he could put his words together.  Warbeck apparently considered Nile, a professor of English, to be one of the wisest men to have walked the planet.  This was based on Nile’s educated, well-modulated English accent rather than any content.

After winning a scholarship, I found myself at the same school as his son, Derek, and in the same year.  Somehow Derek and I hit it off despite the fact that I was a barbaric Australian and he was a scion of the English master-race.  He was less critical than his father because he was a lot younger and had not yet developed such exacting standards.  Derek and his brother, Simon, were a strange pair though.  They had been imbued with the attitude that English things were superior and Australian things were definitely inferior.

My first meal at the Nile house was a tense affair.  Prof Nile seemed to be ready to pounce on anything I said.  I was well aware of this so I said almost nothing.  I did make a comment about some event having had occurred three times “in a row”.  He could not let that pass.  Immediately I was castigated for not having used “consecutively” since, of course, three events could not physically be placed “in a row”.  Thanks, Prof.  That lesson has stayed with me for decades along with the feeling of tension that accompanied it.

The two brothers became periodically far worse after their regular journeys back to the “Mother Country”.  On returning to Australia, they would keep their watches on Greenwich Mean Time for weeks.  This would result in such personal chaos that they would eventually revert to local time, but reluctantly.  I have to say I delighted in hearing of the appointments and lessons they had missed due to their faulty GMT conversions.

They would describe, in detail, how they would get from one tube station to another on the London underground including all possible alternative routes.  I was not to visit London for perhaps another 15 years so it was meaningless to me; I felt excluded from their conversation.  Of course, they did not want to exclude me since I was an important component; I was the one who was to be made to feel inferior and I confess I did.  I wanted to be like them but it seemed I was permanently blighted by being born Australian.  

There was no comfort coming from father and mother Nile.  Prof Nile would criticise the ABC news for being preceded by the “Majestic Fanfare”.  He considered no serious news service required a musical introduction.  Mother Nile would criticise our money, our food, our artists, our music, everything.  Both of them had special criticism for those areas in which we aped the British.  Our London-style buses were nowhere near as good, our thoroughly British trains were lacking, and areas which had been named after British suburbs and towns were mere shadows of their namesakes.  There seemed nothing of Australia they liked.  At the time I never openly questioned why they had come out here or why they stayed; yet they stayed and stayed. 

I had not yet come across the term “Whingeing Pom” and, of course, it is not politically correct to use such terms now, not that that would stop me.  This English family found fault in everything around them and spoke loudly about those faults.  They could not be covered by the WP appellation; they were in a class of their own.

I continued to be friendly with the Niles for several years – up to and a little beyond my commencement at University.  To try to improve my ability to converse with them I read well and voraciously.  It seemed to make no difference.  Every time I had a meal with the Niles I was once again put in my place by the breadth of knowledge of the parents, and the Australophobia of the children.

For my sixteenth birthday, I had asked for the Shorter Oxford Dictionary.  I thought that, if I mastered that, Prof Nile might take me seriously.  He was a walking dictionary himself and his pronunciation was impeccable.  I aspired to be like him and made up my mind that I would read through the Oxford Dictionary from A to Z.

 I started my task and had not got much beyond Aardvark when I realised that this was an impossible task because it was so terminally boring.  There were also the various exigencies of life as an 18 hear old which were crowding in.  I never did finish reading the Shorter Oxford but I find if I can keep the topic in the As before Aardvark, I can hold my own in any conversation.

As a defensive reaction to their apparent detestation of and disdain for Australia, I developed a dislike for England.  It was not a great step to take since the members of my mother’s bridge club, with their periodic trips ‘Home’ (although all had been born in Australia), and the interminable, ghastly slide evenings that would follow their return, had made me determined at age eight that I would never consider Britain in that way.  I knew my first overseas trip would be to Europe but I resolved not to use London or Britain as a base as so many of my contemporaries did; I would not visit Britain at all.

I was quite pleased when The Times was bought by an Australian (much less pleased now he is an American), Harrods by a Saudi-Arabian, and other core British institutions were picked off one by one.  However, the diminishing influence of Britain in our region did not result in our asserting our sovereignty and standing on our own feet as some nations might have done.  We just clutched for the apron strings of another major power and continue, even now, to clutch at those same apron strings, our foreign policy virtually determined for us.  

The Nile family gradually broke up.  The parents returned to England but, with delicious irony, both boys married Australian girls and settled down in Australia.  After years of decrying Australia and Australian things, they had discovered at least one thing they liked about the place.

Sadly, Mrs Nile died about three years after their return home.  I next saw Prof Nile quite by chance in the city.  He was actually glad to see me.  Now there was no criticism; no correction of grammar.  For him Australia, for all its deficiencies in his eyes, had become almost as much home as his beloved England.  And there were people here just as dear to him as any (not that I included myself among that number). 

I don’t know what caused that change; perhaps bereavement and age.  And, perhaps, the realisation that the idealised England of their imagination was becoming less and less like the England they were living in.

As part of my voracious reading, intended to rescue me from what the Niles appeared to consider abject barbarism, I search the school library for more and more obscure titles.  Finally I came upon what I think, even now, would be considered one of the daddies of them all.  One of the crowning achievements of the life of that great German philosopher, Immanuel Kant.  Even now my heart sinks just to contemplate the book – The Critique of Pure Reason. No, I did not read it in its original German as “Kritik der reinen Vernunft” but I might as well have for all the meaning I extracted from it.  I am not sure if the copy I borrowed was the Kemp-Smith, the Meiklejohn or some other translation; again, it would not have mattered.  It was 250 pages of the densest, most obscure writing I have ever come across (this was in my pre-Public Service days).  I was able to understand it sufficiently to realise that the author was of formidable intelligence but the reader was not. 

I do not think I attempted the book to impress the cleverest boy in the class although that may be debatable.  By then I had realised that all such attempts on my part to impress that gifted Adonis just succeeded in making me appear more stupid. 

No, I was driven to reading the book because of the Niles.  By the time I finished the book, with my brains almost sore with effort (although I know they have no pain receptors), Prof Nile had returned to England.  I was never able to casually introduce into a conversation the concepts of synthetic truths versus analytic truths, and a priori  knowledge with him.  If I had he would have possibly rejected Kant because Immanuel, like me, was not English and, in any case, I was not expressing myself with perfect grammar and diction. 

So the whole thing had been futile.  No, not quite futile.  The gifted Adonis met me in the library one day and said he had noted I had the book out.  I had not realised, although I should have, that he was on the library committee.  The Kant had possibly not been borrowed for fifty years.  He gave me a superior, deprecatory smile – one I recall to this day – so I felt even worse.  I knew he knew I had taken the book out to impress and that I could not possibly have understood it.

I have not read Kant since although I now have two copies of the Critique that remain unread.  I bought them in the hope that, with age and experience, the fullness of Kant’s meaning would burst on me like a revelation.  Fat chance of that now!  But I am not in such awe of Kant as I was, though, of course, he remains an intellectual giant.

I was introduced to the Compact Classics by my sister in law.  She was in the book trade and had obtained them free since they had not sold well presumably due to their relative lack of sex and violence.  But, in each of these three volumes, there were dozens of great works – of the Western canon of course – summarised completely in two pages!  The Origin of Species – two pages; the Canterbury Tales – two pages (not in Middle English); most remarkable of all, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – two pages.  These made the Readers Digest condensed versions seem verbose. 

I looked down the contents to the Ks.  Ah yes, Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason in just two pages – two very readable pages.  All these years later I now know what he was on about.  Very reassuring the author of this summary states:  “The text, however, is notorious for its difficulty due to its long, dense passages and unusually obscure concepts.  Indeed, interpreting a typical paragraph, especially for a modern-day reader, is often akin to trying to decipher an unknown foreign language.  Kant’s own colleagues- trained philosophers who studied the text in its original German – complained about its perplexing vagueness and ambiguity.” 

Prof Nile, where are you now?  I want to talk to you about the Critique of Pure Reason. Alas, it is too late; no Prof Nile.

Leon the Huguenot muses briefly on the days when television journalists were less educated.

Raw sewerage

Many years ago, while partly slumbering through a news broadcast from a commercial television station, my attention was suddenly drawn by the reportage of a Murray Flood.  The breathless female narrator, rightly impressed by the scale of disaster that had overtaken one particular town, said that large quantities of raw sewerage had been washed into the Murray. 

I watched with rapt attention, thinking I would see long lengths of earthenware and PVC pipe being swept along by the torrent (well, the earthenware pipe would have gone straight to the bottom).  I wondered just what raw sewerage could look like; would it appear like a newly extruded pipe from the factory?            

The video of the flood (almost always called inundation in television parlance) zoomed in on the water – no pipes there. There was just sewage with just a glimpse of a set of false teeth which, according to a universal law, always accompanies sewage. If you don’t believe this, asked the local sanitary people how many sets of false teeth mysteriously transmigrate through their pipes every year.  This is population movement of epic proportions – akin to the diaspora of Huguenots in the sixteenth century.

So the commentator had confused sewerage with sewage (the singer not the song?).  This was in the dark days before commercial television stations required all their commentators to have advanced degrees in grammar, writing and semantics.  Now, of course, even the most basic football commentary is given in perfect, grammatical English; well, that was the intention.

Now, of course, no commentator would confuse sewage and sewerage; the very thought is laughable. Thank heavens for first-rate public education.

Bates' Salve more

I found this reference in the Adelaide Advertiser of 31 August, 1912:

BATES' SALVE.

There is quite a romance concerning the history of "Bates' Salve," which, although the product of an Adelaide man's ingenuity, is now known all over the world because of its value in curing cuts, bites, bruises, burns, whitlows, chilblains, sore lips, inflamed eyes, corns, rheumatism, warts, and many other ills. The salve is especially effective in cases of bronchtis, and marvellous cures have been wrought by its agency. The late Mr. Bates, the original maker of the salve, resided in

Norwood for many years, having arrived in South Australia in the early fifties — in 1851 — more than 60 years ago — he sold his recipe to an English firm, with the right to make and sell it in all parts of the world, except Australia. The registered proprietor of Bates' Salve for the Commonwealth is Mr. W. Usher, of Birrel Street, Norwood, a son-in-law of the original owner of the recipe. There is a large local sale for his product, which is well known for its excellence. 

 So the product originated within 5 Km of where I was born.  I had no idea that was the case.

The SJC management paradigm for the 21^st-century workforce

Leon the Huguenot introduces a new business concept for our time.

What do you remember most about life in a former workplace?  It depends on whether the experience was pleasant or unpleasant. Little things may surface in the memory from time to time, whether you had a tolerable time or not. 

You may remember its coldness – Summer and Winter; an air conditioning system that seemed more attuned to the inhabitants of Neptune than this part of the Earth.  You may recall the coffee provided, tasting more like reprocessed worm compost than any known product of the coffee bush. You may visualise the unusually large cockroaches that would scurry away if you chanced to enter the kitchen after hours. These cockroaches would be so large that their busy footsteps could be heard from the next room.

It may be the people you remember: the bearded chap who had memorised every protocol and procedure in the place and was turning them to his own, rather than the organisation’s advantage; the prim matron whose desk was as tidy as her mind, and as empty; the two members of reception staff who spent 90% of their time talking about boyfriends and the rest of their time transcribing dictation using unknown and unknowable rules of  grammar.

I remember with pleasure a workplace that provided freshly baked scones, jam and cream for morning and afternoon tea.  Nothing prevented your eating your way to a fat, cardiovascular death and enjoying every moment but the last, painful few. 

Nobody ever questioned the benefit of this expensive provision; it was the way things had always been there.  To the staff who munched or, better, wolfed their way through several kilograms of beautifully prepared scones a day, and ten litres of cream, it meant their employer loved them and was like a fussing, enveloping, protective mother. 

Remarkably, with great self-control, I restricted myself to eight scones a day with no more than half a centimetre of jam and cream on each portion but still gained weight.  I left that employer after one year heavier by 15 Kg; an excess that I retained twenty years later. The scone-driven staff morale was the highest I have seen in any organisation.

You read so many management books that talk about ways to achieve improved staff morale.  Many of these are from across the Pacific and the habits and attitudes mentioned are about as transferable to Australia as the mating rituals of Venusians (I shall describe those one day but not in this family-oriented blog).  The authors of such books relate all sorts of convoluted claptrap and coin ghastly neologisms. I shall not do that.

Leaving aside all calorie considerations, all you need for good staff morale is to send around a few kilograms and litres of scones, jam and cream twice a day.  You get a grossly overweight staff, but they are almost eating out of your hand. If I happened to have a jam and cream-oozing scone in my hand, then I have known staff to literally eat out of my hand. It is not an unpleasant experience so long as you wash your hands later. It is also great for bonding.

Despite all approaches to improving staff morale, if your company rents office space from time to time, the building caretaker or owner will show you who’s boss.  Combination locks may be installed on the toilets so that, despite any natural urgency, you still have to contain yourself and type in a ten character password changed randomly from day to day.  The toilets end up being more securely protected than the offices, and while you are bursting trying to make it to the plumbing, someone is helping themselves to your laptop. 

Perhaps the most powerful statement or gesture the building owner can make is to clean the air conditioning filters with solvent while the workforce is in the building.  This occurred in a ten story building where I worked during my twenties.  Even now nobody is quite sure what chemical was used to treat the filters but it had a stench that was unforgettable.  If you can imagine the normal effluvium of a garbage tip, combined with the sickly sweet smell that used to surround lolly counters in department stores, and the stench of horse manure you begin to appreciate something of what I and a few hundred other workers were exposed to that day.  Some vomited; many developed headaches; nobody could stay inside that building.

The building owner explained that it was far cheaper for him to clean the filters on a weekday rather than on a weekend.  He was not at all concerned about the lost productivity and illness or our employees.  He had shown who was in overall control. A thousand scones with jam and cream would not have made any difference on that fateful day (although that approach was never actually tested).

Adverse effects on morale can also come from fellow employees. One of the more enduring stories of my office life was the one directly involving a very close friend of mine – I’ll call her Mary.  She had her own IBM Selectric Typewriter.  These, at the time of their introduction, were considered the last word in typewriting and, truly, there was nothing else to match them.  The output of a Selectric was superb. 

She had just completed a long scientific paper using the Selectric, taken into the office for the purpose.  Now was the time to take it home since these typewriters were valuable and, despite their weight, were prized by office thieves.  Parking was difficult around the building, so I parked in a no-standing area (my usual practice) while she went upstairs to get it.

A very talkative, effusive male colleague – I’ll call him Anton - met her as she was struggling towards the third-floor lift with the weight of the Selectric.  He offered to carry it for her in the lift, and she came down to the ground floor to wait for him. 

After an inexplicable delay, the lift door opened at the ground floor, and Anton burst forth in fear, the typewriter no longer in his hands.  In his addled state, he told Mary the lift had exploded.  To Mary, the lift appeared quite unexploded, its only unusual feature being the IBM Selectric typewriter visible through the upper part of the door.

With great presence of mind, Mary asked Anton to stay where he was with the lift doors open while she climbed the stairs back to the third floor.  As she now expected, the power plug of the typewriter was still protruding through the closed lift doors on that level.  The device was hanging two and a half stories down the lift shaft by its now stretched lead.

She returned to explain the situation to Anton who, with great energy, told her to look after the lift on the ground floor while he retrieved the situation upstairs.  Such was the state of confusion that she did not think to ask him what he was going to do. 

Up on the third floor, Anton used his frenetic, panicking, male strength to pull the lift doors apart sufficiently to free the cord.  On the ground floor, the Selectric, now freed, plummeted to the floor.  Mary thanked Anton somewhat wanly for his assistance and brought the wreck of the Selectric out to my car.

Months later we were able to laugh about the incident, redolent of  Gerard Hoffnung.  After having it checked for electrical safety, Mary found the Selectric could still be used, but it was never quite the same again.       

As you look back, you remember the many fascinating clients you dealt with, the enthralling files to which you added your unforgettable notes, the smells, and the wonderful, freely-given assistance of colleagues like Anton.

But the only practical lesson one can give to have prospective employer – a person who is going to retain a faithful and happy workforce – is to feed the employees scones. These have to be freshly-baked, with the evidence of their freshness permeating throughout the building in a most delightful way. There must be access to liberal quantities of home-made jam and real cream – even double cream (as per James Martin, Yorkshire cook); none of the synthetics will do.

With what I would term the scone/jam/cream or SJC paradigm in place, there is nothing to prevent a happy, loyal and highly-achieving workplace. Even the periodic major cardiovascular crises can be plastered over with – yes – more scones, jam and cream.

We are now set for a new era of calorie-led productivity and you can be part of this.

Congratulations, from the desk of…

Leon the Huguenot "shares" his joy with you about all the congratulatory messages and money offers he has been receiving – even from desks.

It is a wonder we are not happier than we are or appear to be.  If you walk around the average City area, you will observe that very few people are smiling.  Yet we have far more positive reinforcement than ever in the history of our species.

In the past you would be congratulated for writing a difficult work, passing an exam, getting married, winning a large amount of money (the congratulations in that case had a certain edge to them), or having a child.  Now we all receive congratulations right, left and centre.

For example, if you purchase a vacuum cleaner you find on opening the box, extensive congratulatory messages.  These comment on your wisdom and insight in choosing the particular product; they present a rosy picture of a future in which you and your vacuum cleaner go forward in confidence ready to deal with any dust or dirt crisis you may encounter. 

The same sort of message comes irrespective of the intrinsic quality of the product.  You receive the same encouraging message whether you have bought the paragon of vacuum cleaners or the vacuum cleaner equivalent of the Yunshu airliner. I am even congratulated for having the right version of Java on my computer, and it gives me such a warm feeling.

It is hard to resist feeling a twinge of pride when receiving these messages.  If the cleaner also happens to have been approved by a consumer organisation, you feel a veritable flush of self-confirmation, particularly if you had no inkling that the cleaner had been so endorsed.

I should just break off for a moment since, in the Internet research for this article, I have just received further congratulations.  It feels good.  Now, what is it all about? 

Congratulations!  You have been selected for a FREE membership which can secure your financial future! Earn $107.00 Daily, Part-time... Even While You Sleep! Put this NEW fully automated money-making system to work for you and soon you'll be making an extra income even while you sleep! Nothing works as easily as this does and the best part, it's FREE to try.  You won't work hard to see results, the system does all the work for you. Imagine having an extra income to spend any way you want! It won't cost you anything to try, so sign up now even if you are just curious.

I wonder what sort of selection process this resulted from.  Perhaps just that I was on the Internet.  The advantage of these messages is that while you would be crazy to fill their form in, you have been congratulated, and it feels good.

Then there are the E-mails from important people from around the world that we keep receiving -- mainly, in fact, from Africa.  When I say “we”, I know I am among the selected few who receives them; you may not be.

These famous, moneyed people have taken time from their busy schedule to let you share in their success. I have to admit I have never heard of any of them, but that could be because I'm outside the normal financial and political spheres. Of course, you will have heard of them.  They include the likes of Dr Rampam George Kedu, Auditing and Accounting Unit, Foreign Operations Department, Union Bank of Nigeria plc.  Yes, he has sent me an e-mail in the last few days.  I don’t like to name-drop, but I have had similar messages from:

-   Dr Dayo Joseph (First Bank Plc. LagosNigeria ).

-   Christopher Anaba, Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund, Contract Award Committee, National Secretariat, Victoria-Island, Lagos-Nigeria.

-   Mrs. Sese-Seko widow of late President Mobutu Sese-Seko of Zaire (now known as Democratic Republic of Congo).

It’s so exciting.  But, to be frank, in the case of Christopher Anaba it was not him writing to me, just his desk.  Yes, some of these people actually have their desks doing the correspondence but it is still impressive.  “From the Desk of Christopher Anaba”.  That’s classy and confirms without question that artificial intelligence has been developed in desks. Since it is a desk, one does not expect or get the standards of grammar and spelling that you might expect from the individual himself or herself. 

I cannot say much about what they send me since the matters are confidential. I can say these people have singled me out to deposit large sums of their money in my bank account – and I get a cut!  Such incredible trust in me; in somebody they have never met.  They could make their requests even more powerful by commencing with “Congratulations!”  They don’t seem to have cottoned on to that yet.

Of course, I never respond.  I wouldn’t give my account number or any other personal details to the British Queen, the Glid of Glood, or even our beloved Prime Minister.  So I never take advantage of their largesse, but get the full benefit of their faith and discernment in choosing me. 

Also, I have been winning a few competitions lately.  Strangely, they are all connected with free photographic sittings.  I fill in these forms offering such a desirable prize at supermarkets. Invariably, I receive a telephone call telling me that I have won.  I think my record so far is 100% success.  Strangely, this winning streak is not transferable to more useful things like Lotto, or the Boystown Art Union. 

I feel so fortunate at getting all these prizes that now my response to them, because I have been so very fortunate, is that they should offer my prize to someone else. Thus, I get the double reinforcement of my winning and my selfless generosity.  I have never actually used the prize – the photographic sitting.  It is enough for me merely to have won. 

Look, I am bursting with excitement.  While sitting here writing this I have just had a stunning e-mail from Barrister Oghene Charles (the Chairman, Contract Awarding Committee of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) with Headquarters in Lome, Togo).  People like me get these offers; just lucky I suppose.  Again I cannot go into the details since the matter is very confidential and relates to matters of state.  I can say that Barrister Charles, or perhaps he would let me refer to him as Oghene since we are so close, is sharp and to the point.  He has money to offer me and lots of it.  All he wants from me to complete the deal is:

-   My company’s name with complete address, telephone and fax numbers.(if available)

-   The name of my bank, its address with telephone, fax and telex numbers.

-   My account number

-   The complete mailing address of the beneficiary (I presume this is me) with telephone and fax numbers.

How reasonable.  I’ll get to it straight away. Uh oh, my memory is acting up again.  Now I know how the late Alan Bond must have felt in the witness box. 

Sorry, Oghene.  No can do.  I cannot recall any of these details you require, and I do not know where I could locate them.  Perhaps if you provide me with all those details about your circumstances that might jog my memory a little but cannot promise anything. 

I’ve just been congratulated once again by my computer.  Not sure what for but who cares? The effect is the same; a powerful reinforcement; that warm glow of self-satisfaction. 

Nowadays we don’t have to wait for major life events to feel important or be congratulated.  It can happen every day.  You can be heartily congratulated for buying a new type of hamburger; a new flavour of pet food, an adventurous new wash powder.  Ours must be the most fulfilled culture on the planet. 

So, to paraphrase Moby, why do our hearts feel so bad?

Three alpaca myths exploded

 For those of a camelid persuasion, Leon the Huguenot provides some timely advice.

Of course, we present our alpacas in the best light and, undoubtedly, they are paragons of animals (I was going to say bestial paragons but that does not sound as good; note that Shakespeare described humans as paragons of animals – I don’t think he was referring to alpacas).  However, there are some things one hears stated about them which are manifestly untrue.

The one poo-pile myth

I am unsure where this myth arose.  Certainly alpacas are much less promiscuous in the distribution of their excrement than many other animals.  But the idea that they use one poo pile is false on first principles.  Can you imagine an alpaca leader saying to a herd, “Gloria needs to urinate so we have to go back to Lima.”?

If the one pile myth were true why, in a recent whippersnipping exercise in a 25 hectare alpaca paddock, did I find about 30 alpaca piles surrounded, of course, by luxuriant foliage?  I was asked by my wife to clear away the foliage just in case a snake might lurk in there and strike an alpaca when it is most vulnerable.

Did I approach this job saying to myself, “I just have to find the single poo pile and the job is over”?  No. I knew there would be many.  I know that, once the grass grows heavily around a pile, the alpacas tend to shun it.

I have determined a poo pile equation which gives the number of piles per hectare.  It is given by:

Number of piles = π³*na*Hubble constant where na is the number of alpacas. 

I think it needs a bit more work.

In conclusion, it is normal for your alpacas to create several poo piles.  But by all means go on telling newcomers that they use only one pile if you can do so with a straight face.

Alpacas like Mozart

Give alpacas a break.  They no more like having Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, or, equally over-exposed, Vivaldi’s I Quattri Stagioni piped through their shed than we do.  We know this music, after the three thousandth hearing, is only suited to the cheaper, tawdrier, gift shops, perfumeries and pretentious boozeries. 

We know there is no basis for the claim that babies exposed to Mozart thrive in any way (it is one of those things we wish were so, like the myth of the arty right brain); the same applies to alpacas. Particularly avoid the operas with convoluted plots such as Il Seraglio or Die Zauberflote.  Avoid Mozart altogether if you can but, if you cannot resist it, some of the later piano sonatas or concerti are acceptable.

Spare them also the five hundredth performance of Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg-Variationen and do not follow Gould’s rather narrow and elitist taste in music.  Also avoid the sort of non-ergonomic chair that Gould sat in; that is for you, not the alpacas.

Unlike the late Gould, alpacas love the music of Robert Schumann; Kreisleriana is a particular favourite - and the later operas of Richard Strauss.  Don’t patronise them with a performance of Dvorak’s New World Symphony; even Beethoven’s ninth symphony gets a bit too much after the twentieth hearing.  While it has been shown that alpacas never tire of Schubert – particularly “The Great” symphony – I would not push that too much either (though the effect of the oboe and clarinet entry in bar 134 of the first movement never fails to send a suri into raptures).  The late Schubert piano sonatas are perfect for a very pregnant alpaca.

They do not like rap music which others have noted has a silent ‘c’.  Play rock music to them with care, keeping away from their hind legs.

Alpacas do not like chocolate

There is some truth to this myth, but that should not stop you buying it for them.  Just don’t give it to them.  You should only buy the soft-centred dark chocolates made by a certain Adelaide company (which shall remain nameless or, alternatively, Haighs Chocolates) for your precious alpacas.  Having purchased these in large quantities and quickly realising the alpacas do not eat them, send them (the chocolates) over to me and I shall arrange immediate and appropriate disposal.  There is no limit to my appetite for Haigh's Chocolates.

I trust these new insights into alpaca behaviour will enable you to handle your herd with greater confidence.  

Travails with my Aunt

Leon the Huguenot receives graphic proof of shared genes between alpacas and homo sapiens.

I have been peripherally involved in raising alpacas for the last 3 to 4 years.  I do not think I'd consciously been aware of alpacas before that, but I have just realized why they seem so familiar.  It is because many of them look like my Aunt Florence.  Of course I have not given my aunt her real name since I feel a little guilty at recognizing the resemblance; Florence is near enough.

Those alpacas with thick facial hair, quite unlike Aunt Florence, instead resemble a former school friend of mine, John.  Come to think of it John had other characteristics of alpacas including occasional kicking and intermittent spitting.  Science tells us that we share 95% of our genes with alpacas.  Well, we don't actually share them.  I tend to keep my genes to myself.  I plucked the figure of 95% out of the air but, recalling John, I reckon he had 98% alpaca genes.  This might also explain his having to be shorn during the Christmas holidays.  He always used to brag about that.

Getting back to Florence and I would certainly like to go back to Florence.  It is a beautiful city and excellent for prolonged, thoughtful wandering.  No, I mean Aunt Florence.  She did not always look like an alpaca.

I have a crazed photograph of her when she was about 21; that is, the aged surface of the photograph is crazed, not my aunt.  She is standing in a Victorian conservatory dressed in fashionable clothing of the time.  The photograph is in sepia and she is carefully posed with her right knee resting on a chair seat and a right hand draped over the back of the chair.  There seems to be an aspidistra growing out of her head (that must have been surgically removed before I knew her).  She looks anxious but beautiful; not a single camelid characteristic there.  Those came later.

Aunt Florence, by the time I came to know her, was probably well into her 60s.  The first time I recall being aware of her in my vicinity I was being bathed by my mother in the kitchen sink.  I must have been around one or less at the time; a child has to be pretty small to be bathed in a kitchen sink.  Later I graduated to the laundry sink but I eschewed the wringer.  Fortunately, in adult life, I have adapted to the shower.

For some reason I had to go through this ritual of being bathed in front of Aunt Florence, her husband the Rev Clarence Samuel (again, a fictitious name to protect family sensitivities) and their young daughter, Cecily.  One has little choice about being bathed in front of relatives, including those of an ecclesiastical nature, but I remember they were laughing and I was laughing.  Everyone seemed happy.  I must have been quite a sight – a cooing cynosure. 

There is then a long gap, perhaps to three years, to the next memory.  Aunt Florence and her family would arrive on Christmas Day and spend the whole of that day with us.  Even at four or five I was aware of that Aunt Florence had a most unusual voice.  It was rather like a strained, hoarse piping sound.  It was a sound not unlike those emitted by certain camelids when they are anxious.  She wore glasses all the time and, if you can imagine an alpaca wearing glasses, you can visualise my Aunt Florence.  Yes, you've got it!  That’s her!

Despite her appearance and her voice she was a most kindly woman.  She radiated goodness and patience.  She needed both to tolerate her husband who was one of the more opinionated, self-centred, narcissistic men of his generation.  Perhaps these days he would pass as an average bloke.

The Rev Clarence Samuel was not in the least camelid.  He was quite vulpine in appearance.  He was a small, lightly built man who always dressed in a suit and waistcoat with a fob watch, standard issue clerical collar and hat.  He moved quickly and nervously -- consistent with his vulpine tendencies.  He had a pleasant, spontaneous vulpine laugh.  He spoke quickly and in short bursts.  I'm not sure whether his speech was vulpine.  My conversations with foxes have been lamentably limited.

He had a strong tendency to stutter in public and it was said that, during his sermons, Florence would sit in the front row of the congregation and prompt him repeatedly as he ground to a halt.  In private, he did not stutter noticeably.  I can hear his voice in my head (this is not a medical phenomenon -- I am not receiving treatment for it) but I cannot hear it saying anything in particular.  From all the years I knew him, I remember nothing of what he said; just his manner, voice and appearance.  I suppose that is all we remember about many of our relatives.

Along with the vulpine and the camelid we had the daughter, Cecily.  She was a strange combination of placidity and sudden, rapid movement.  The rapid movement she probably inherited from Clarence but the placidity was more than one would expect to come from Florence.  In truth she was drugged to the eyeballs for a neurological condition; the treatment for the condition at that stage was rather non-specific.  In appearance she resembled a female Charles Laughton but less corpulent and without his outstanding thespian abilities.  I cannot imagine her acting as King Lear but I could see her as Lucia di Lammermoor.  She could do the Mad Scene with little change to her persona.

Possibly as a result of the drugs she was on she played the piano in a nervous rush.  Everything from Bach through Mozart to Beethoven sounded the same.  Dynamic and expression markings were thrown to the wind; key signatures were trashed.  She played the piano like a frenzied automaton, albeit a gifted automaton. 

I realise that I had met the Samuel family even earlier than my kitchen-sink episode.  They were present at my christening when I was just a few weeks old.  I have no personal memory of that.  My parents and I lived in Adelaide and, at that stage, the Samuels lived in the small Barossa Valley town of Angaston still noted for its excellent wines.  The Rev Samuel was the Anglican minister of Angaston.  I was taken 120 Km by train to that town, to the delightful little church which is still there, to be christened by Clarence.

Since there were Anglican ministers aplenty available in Adelaide I do wonder, thinking back over all these years, whether Clarence gave my parents a special deal for the christening but that is probably a bit cynical.  Florence was my father's sister although it was hard to believe, looking at them, they were members of the same family.  No doubt there was a lot of affection between my father and Florence.  I find it hard to believe that he had the same affection for her husband Clarence.  I would hear Dad grumbling about him whenever the Samuels left.

I was of a depressive tendency as a child.  I remember Sundays were the worst.  In the Adelaide of that era nothing happened, either bad or good, on a Sunday.  Even ball games were not permitted in council facilities.  There were still signs banning ball games on Sundays at sporting reserves until the 1980s.  I can remember crying frequently late on Sundays because those days were so abysmally boring and futile. 

The arrival of Clarence and his family on Christmas Days was almost as bad as a Sunday.  But, for a child, having any visitor is exciting.  So for me the arrival of the Samuel family just before lunch on Christmas day would evoke a strange combination of intense boredom and wild excitement such as I've experienced with nobody else.  Even the Samuels gave a child a chance to show off.

The Rev Clarence would say a lengthy grace before lunch.  For the rest of the year, unbeknown to him, we would never say grace, probably much to our detriment.  Clarence would go on and on in his vulpine way and I was never quite sure what he was talking about.  We all uttered "amen" at the end but what were we expressing agreement to?

Once he had finished grace much of the conversation would be dominated by the hoarse flutings of Florence and the strange, almost furtive utterances of Cecily.  Even though Cecily seemed indescribably old and her parents elderly beyond all that is natural, Cecily would still address Clarence as "father".  It would be “father” this and “father” that.  Heavens knows what she said to him or about him; I remember nothing of it.

Interestingly, when I was about 9, I had a small portable reel to reel tape recorder.  I set that going during one of those Christmas lunches to record all that transpired.  The Samuels had no idea what the device was.  They were just getting used to the telephone and the radio.  Afterwards, I played it back and, despite the impression of continual conversation on all sides during lunch, all that could be heard on the tape was the clinking of cutlery on plate.  So clinking and clattering is all that is left to posterity.

One of my last memories of the Samuels arriving, the Christmas before my father died, relates to a brief exchange between me and Aunt Florence.  I had suddenly realised that, now 10 years old, I was taller than all of them and I found that astonishing.  Had they suddenly become much smaller?  Were they wasting away into decrepitude?

I said proudly, naively, and without understanding alternative interpretations of what I was saying: "I can look down on you now!"  Aunt Florence immediately responded: "I hope you will never look down on us" and gave me a satisfied camelid smile.  I felt somewhat uneasy but they all chuckled at this brilliant verbal thrust.

With that they said their goodbyes.  They never came to Christmas lunch again.  My father died three months before the next Christmas and it became clear he was the only reason they ever came.

There was a strange episode when I was about 13.  The Rev Clarence took me on an extensive trip by public transport around Adelaide talking to me about man things.  Probably he felt some obligation since my father had died.  I have no idea what he told me; again only his manner, voice and appearance are retained.  He cannot have touched upon explicit sexual matters since, at 13, they would have been branded as with fire on my consciousness.  Why did he take me on this trip?  There was a reason but here is not the place for that.

I next saw Aunt Florence and Cecily in the Samuel home.  Clarence was gabbling excitedly in the background.  A further memory is of Aunt Florence and Cecily sitting on a bed in a nursing home.  Clarence was no longer.  Finally there is Cecily lying in her bed in a nursing home where she may remain to this day, well into her 90s.  Aunt Florence was no longer.  Such is life.

While the Rev Clarence’s vulpine kin are getting the 1080 treatment (sodium monofluoroacetate) in our region, each year brings more Aunt Florences.  I look into each alpaca’s eyes (except those who resemble John) and expect, any moment, to hear those old, hoarse fluting tones.  But my attempt to commune is foiled.  The animal does her business on the common pile and strides purposefully away.  I anxiously call “Florence?” and a gob of green spittle streaks towards me.  I walk sadly back to the house.

The relative persistence of memory

The 1958 Teddy bear crisis in the words or the person who was there - Leon the Huguenot

No matter how decrepit some relatives become, even if they can't find their way to their own kitchen, they will remember something embarrassing about you.  My Aunt Jean is a case in point.

It all started with a gift to me of a teddy bear by my uncle Keith when I was about three years old.  Keith by the time was exceptional in our family.  Our ancestors had been sailors; one even owned a small shipping company in Bristol.  But most of us had settled down to suburban squalor. 

Keith was still a sailor and he roamed around the world on merchant vessels.  We saw him perhaps once every two or three years but, on one memorable occasion, he brought me a teddy bear.

Now this teddy bear was a remarkable creation.  It had no label telling me where it had been made (I could read then).  It had the softest possible fur and was wonderful for a child to cuddle.  I suspect there was something which would later be politically incorrect about the bear; it might have been genuine stuffed koala.

I loved that bear, but I was fairly pragmatic about it.  I took it to bed with me, but I made no pretension that it was alive; I did not bother to include it in any games since the bear really did not do anything.  I imagined no fantasy life for the bear despite its possibly exotic origins.  During the day the bear was neglected.  It was a bear for the night; to fend off the various creatures of darkness whatever they might be.  So my attitude was very utilitarian.

As well as being a pragmatic, somewhat unimaginative, child I was a schemer.  I knew quite well how to play off my mother against my father to achieve the best result for me. 

At age five I told my mother, shortly before Christmas, my father had said Father Christmas did not exist.  This was an utter lie and a risky strategy for a child of five. I was well aware that my receipt of Christmas gifts was dependent on my playing along with the Father Christmas charade.

At the time my mother was ironing in the kitchen.  I can still picture her ironing and looking at me as I questioned the existence of Father Christmas.  Her magazines had not prepared her for this.  A person is rather vulnerable when they are ironing and you are most likely to hear the truth at such times.  Perhaps the vapours of the starch water she was applying liberally acted as a sort of truth drug.  I could almost visualise her mind ticking over, weighing up the pros and cons of telling me the truth about Santa versus undermining something my father had said.

She finally came out with the statesmanlike: "Well, if your father said that, that's correct.  Father Christmas does not exist." It was the 50s.  I liked her reply then and still do. 

I just made that digression to indicate that, although I maintained the veneer of a nice little boy, I was actually far from that.  Of course I did not drink, smoke or swear at that age; a few would say I have not changed in that respect.  But I was a schemer and, in my way, rather coldly analytical.

Aunt Jean had two small daughters, Jemima and Jade, whom she considered perfect in every way.  Of course they were self-centred little schemers like I was but they presented as beautifully-behaved children who never put a step wrong.  Possibly for that reason they were rather boring to play with, unless they fell over and bled.

One day, at five or six, I had a life-changing experience with them.  No, not what you think.  We were playing in the front lounge of their house, racing around.  I was probably yelling and screaming but, because the girls were so perfect, they just giggled in a ladylike manner.

Observing our play was a portly, almost globose, woman whom I shall call by her real name since it suited her so well -- Briony Pride.  It was clear to me that Ms Pride (she never married) had no truck with male humans of any age.  I could have been an absolute paragon of early boyhood and she would still have hated me.  I felt a cold, anti-male antipathy coming from her.

One of the girls dropped something on the floor.  Ms Pride called to me in an imperious voice: "Leon, pick that up."

I began to explain to her that I had not dropped whatever it was but she would have none of it.  She repeated in an even more imperious voice: "Leon, pick that up."

All the time I was rationalising to myself that, since I had not dropped the item, there was no reason in the world why I should take orders from this person whom I hardly knew from a bar of soap.

Pride's voice rose to foghorn volume.  It seemed like the whole of her body went into blubbery resonance as she said for a last time: "Leon, pick that up."  I recall being fearful but, at the same time, determined to hold my ground and pleased with myself for doing so.

I was punished for not obeying her; probably smacked a few times.  I left the house with a loathing for Pride which continued for many years and a determination that I would never obey unjustifiable orders.  Fortunately, I never encountered Ms Pride again.

So the years went on.  I continued loving my teddy bear in a restrained, utilitarian way.  Meanwhile Jemima and Jade flowered into the most perfect early teenagers that one could imagine.  It was sickening.

One fateful night Jemima and Jade came to my house.  The details of this whole disastrous evening are largely lost.  I think my parents had invited their bridge club friends for a Christmas Eve party.  For some reason Aunt Jean, her husband Jerry, and the two perfect children were also invited.  I must have been around 10 years old because my father was still there; he died the following year.

That evening I was "tired and emotional" in the old sense.  I might have made some show of playing the perfect host for my beautifully behaved cousins but, at one point, I cracked.  Jemima had grabbed my teddy bear, thrown it across the room, and then had poured perfume all over it.  This was more than I could tolerate so I hit her.  I probably also screamed, yelled and generally behaved very obnoxiously.  As a final, hateful thrust I told Jemima, to her horror, that Father Christmas was a fraud and I had known all about it for five years.  The last thing I remember is my father coming in and grabbing hold of me and, somewhere in the background, the voice of Barbara Pride saying: “Leon, pick that up!”  Either he knocked me unconscious or I have suppressed the rest. 

We then move forward 10 years.  I was about to get married and I took my wife-to-be around to see Aunt Jean.  We talked excitedly with her about our plans, where we would have our wedding and honeymoon, the possibility of children.  Jean went along with all this asking interested questions here and there.  Then she said: "You remember that time Jemima dropped a bit of perfume on your teddy bear and you went into a rage and spoiled her Christmas?"  I cringed with embarrassment.  Yet I did remember that time but, for heaven's sake, I was only 10 years old and that was a decade ago.  I did not say that to Jean but I think I apologised.  Then, and I shall never forget this, she dragged out the episode with Barbara Pride; Aunt Jean had thought the world of her.  Those two episodes were, thankfully, the only bad things she knew about me but she was determined to air them in front of my fiancée.  We finished our champagne and left.

Another 12 years and I had gone through a divorce.  I took a male musician friend -- still my best friend -- around to see Aunt Jean for no particular reason.  Jean seemed sympathetic, but she spoke proudly about the perfect marriages of her perfect girls.  I had dinner that night with Jean, Jerry, the girls and both their husbands -- and my friend.  Their husbands were certainly perfect.  They were charming, handsome and clearly thought the world of their wives.  There was a lot of talk about house building -- Jemima and her husband were going to make a house of mud bricks; it might as well have been made of straw. 

It was a thoroughly pleasant evening until Jean said, "You remember that time little Jemima dropped a bit of perfume on your teddy bear and you went right off?  Nobody could control you?"  Somehow I had been expecting that question, but I blushed in front of these paragons -- and my friend.  Again I could only apologise rather weakly for an event which had occurred 22 years before.  Jemima herself, a principal in the teddy bear incident, seem to expect an apology.  So did everyone else. 

Fortunately, she didn’t bring out the Pride story that night; maybe even she realised how trivial it all was.

Another 15 years and I had remarried, had a daughter 17 and a son 14.  My favourite uncle died and we journeyed to his funeral.  My son travelled with me; my wife and daughter came later.

I went to visit Aunt Jean with my son.  This time there was little talk of perfect marriages since the unsurpassed marriages of Jemima and Jade had failed; in fact Jade had been through a second failed marriage.  Aunt Jean and her husband Gerry were now getting on in years and they had had a few health problems.  We talked about this for a while, but I could see Jean was preparing herself for something; there was a twinkle in her eye but this time she was not going to do it. 

I said to her: "What happened all those years ago when Jemima poured perfume on my favourite teddy bear?  It’s all fairly dim -- it was so long ago and I was only 10 years old.  Something about Father Christmas?  I've told my son what I remember; he thinks it was funny."

Aunt Jean looked suddenly deflated.  She couldn't remember much detail about the evening either.  All she could remember that I had been uncharacteristically naughty, despite appearing to be a perfect child (of course less perfect than her own), and her own beloved Jemima had been upset.  Despite her displays of affection, she had held this grudge against me for more than 40 years, and, at a moment of near triumph, it had all come to nothing.

I went on to ask: “Is Briony Pride still going?”  There was no response.  She was beaten.

If there is anything to learn from all this it is, if someone deals harshly with your teddy bear, look the other way; or prepare for half a century of petty carping.  But if you are told to pick up something somebody else has dropped, don’t do it.