Sep 1, 2021 | Blog
Kia ora Kotou, I was thinking about the fact that I’d never written a melodrama. Not intentionally anyway. This style of theatrical presentation went out of fashion as a regular dramatic offering some time on the 1930s as the film industry, to a large extent, took over that area. Theatres still presented them on their programmes from time to time as historical pieces, to make audiences laugh and gasp, and to display individual talent. Marlon Brando’s almost inaudible one word three minutes silence one word three minutes silence style worked because of cameras, music and lighting, and of course because his personal charisma got very high viewing at the time. Close–ups of expressions caught on camera often said more than words so words, which had been the basis of melodrama, went out of fashion. It began to be realised that the fewer words you used, especially in a dramatic scene, the better. This was the exact opposite of melodrama where words, actions, music and dramatic sound effects, revved up the audience’s response to what was going on on stage. The same thing is done with films and TV now.
Anyway its Lockdown. Time, I decided, to write a melodrama. It will run over three Busks starting now.
MARTA AND THE RED SCORPION (A melodrama in three parts)…
SCENE: Interior of a small cottage on the edge of Haitaitai, Naseby, Kaitaia or Remuera – you choose… It is a dark and stormy night. Eerie music is heard, plus swirling wind sounds and the moaning whine of wild dogs calling their mates. Inside the old wooden draughty but scrubbed clean kitchen sits EARNEST RIDGEWAY an old man of 55, no teeth, white beard, blind, barely able to walk. He sits at the small wooden table in the centre of the room. In front of him is a half full glass of whisky and a glass jug nearly empty, also of whisky. MARTA RIDGEWAY (16), his beautiful granddaughter (long lustrous dark hair, large lustrous dark eyes, red lustrous lips), is standing by the stove stirring something in a big pot.
MARTA: Grandfather, how could you buy whisky? You know the mortgage is due today. You know Silas Murgatroyd alias The Red Scorpion, will come and if you do not pay the overdue rent he will throw us out into the cold cold snow.
EARNEST (TREMBLING, SHAKY, HALF–CUT): Ah bah, girl. (TAKES ANOTHER GOOD SWIG) Oh why did I have to be saddled with only a weak girl to look after me, why? (LIFTS ARM UP TO CEILING) Oh God of my fathers, why hast thou deserted me?
MARTA: You are very pleased to eat the food I cook and sleep on the bed I keep clean –
EARNEST: Bah, I’m sick of stewed wild dog, sick of it I tell you, oh for a roast chicken…
THERE IS A THUNDEROUS KNOCK AND THE DOOR OPENS. SOUND OF A CELLO…THE RED SCORPION, STRIDES IN. HE IS TALL, BLONDE WITH AN EVIL STREAK OF RED IN HIS HAIR AND AN EVIL EXPRESSION ON HIS FACE PLUS AN EVIL SMILE SHOWING EVIL TEETH.
MARTA: Oh no – the Red Scorpion.
SILAS: Yes, my pretty one, it is I, and like my namesake I sting fiercely when my will is crossed.
MARTA: Grandfather – oh God, will no–one save me?
SILAS: Earnest Ridgeway, I am waiting. The money or the girl.
EARNEST: Do your worst, you villain. You keep raising the rent, I cannot meet your demands. My lifetime savings, all gone because of your outrageous demands.
SILAS (EVILLY): And you insatiable thirst for the demon drink. You have three seconds…
EARNEST: Very well… (HE SWIGS DOWN THE REST OF THE WHISKY IN THE GLASS)… take her.
MARTA: Oh Angels in Heaven, save me..
SILAS:Come Marta. We will go to my castle where there the priest will marry us and there will be much heavy drinking and lavish feasting to welcome The Red Scorpion and his Bride, the beautiful Marta. I have had twenty turkeys killed for the feast and there are three barrels of Red Iris Shiraz, worth a million dollars a barrel, waiting.
MARTA: Oh heaven – is there no–one to save me?
THERE IS A SOUND AT THE DOOR AND A MASKED FIGURE ALL IN BLACK RACES IN.
MASKED FIGURE: Stand back from her you evil wretch –
SILAS, THE RED SCORPION, HAS MARTA BY THE ARM: Never – I have waited a long time for this moment and now she is mine – HE WHIPS OUT A WOODEN STAKE AND DEALS THE MASKED FIGURE AN EVIL BLOW. THE MASKED FIGURE DROPS TO THE GROUND. Come girl –’ THE RED SCORPION GRABS MARTA IN HIS EVIL ARMS AND STRIDES OUT.
MARTA SCREAMS, GIVES HIS EAR A HARD BOX AND HE DROPS HER.
SILAS THE RED SCORPION STAGGERS BACK RUBBING HIS EAR: You shall pay for that Marta, no–one attacks Silas the Red Scorpion and lives to tell the tale…HE ADVANCES THREATENINGLY.
MARTA: Oh oh, will no–one save me?
To be continued next week…
Chur
Renée
Aha – aha – you thought I would be deceived by your tale of illness and theft – but I am too quick for the likers of you. it is rent day Silas Ridgeway and if you do not pay then I take your granddaughter, the beautiful Marta, to be my bride.
Aug 4, 2021 | Blog
Kia ora Koutou, here it is, the beginning of August and I’m remembering my brother whose birthday was on the second. Russell, always called Jimmy by his mother and sisters, friends who knew him then, was short for his first twelve or so years, then shot up to about six foot overnight, it seemed. Tall, skinny, dark skin, dark–haired, he had a one-wheeler bike which he rode everywhere. School, shopping for Rose, football (rugby) practice, or anywhere else he wanted to go. He had great physical balance.
He played the pipes in the Caledonian Pipe Band and Rose made him practice in the woodshed. I can’t say I blame her. He looked very handsome in the green kilt and my sister and I suddenly had lots of girls wanting to make our acquaintance.
He told jokes to my sister and me, jokes we thought very funny. The three of us might be ostensibly looking for those little black seed–like things called ergot, ‘for patriotic purposes’, whatever that meant, but in reality we were listening to jokes and tall tales that kept us entertained while we did the boring job. Ergot is very small and it took a couple or more handfuls to half fill a small jar. All school kids who had access to fescue grasses (our name for them) were doing the same.
It was a godsend for parents of course especially when it was the long summer school holidays. If a kid thoughtlessly mumbled she had nothing to do, she’d be told very smartly, ‘Go and look for ergot then.’
The cat, called George as always, not the one I’ve written about before but an earlier version, was very irritated by our trampling over his hunting and playing grounds. He slithered through the grasses like a skein of black wool on legs, giving us dirty looks and keeping an eye out for any unwary mouse or bird or insect, startled into movement by our noise.
Jimmy got a motor bike which he enjoyed until he banged into the concrete fence around the Taradale Town clock one late night whereupon he sold the bike (it being the bike’s fault, you understand) and bought an old car. He never switched back and I think he enjoyed driving cars better. Years and years later he restored an old car to resplendent new life and on request, used it to transport brides or other special people to various destinations.
He and other Rotarians went to Pacific Island and helped the people rebuild houses and schools and in another Rotary–instigated job, he helped the kids of solo mothers buy shoes. Rose had had him apprenticed to a shoe repairer when he was fifteeen so he knew about shoes. Shoe repairer shops faded away as we all stopped having shoes repaired and simply chucked the old ones and bought new.
He worked mainly in the cheese and butter industry, in the factories at first and then gradually rising through the ranks, married Lillian, who’d sung in a group with Val, and me playing guitar, had a son and daughter, and lived a life, kept a big garden, grew more and more conservative, more set in his ways, maybe a bit rigid at times? However he always welcomed his older sister to his house, whatever he thought of her political stances and her lifestyle. He couldn’t sing in tune but he learned a song in te reo Maori so he could be in the group behind me when I received the Kingi Ihaka Award for services to Toi Maori.
‘I thought the way we lived was normal,’ he said to me a year or so before he died. He was referring to our childhood poverty, the bare necessities, the phrase that governed our lives, ‘If there’s enough left by next Pension Day’ and knowing there never would be. Unsurprisingly he grew up to be a saver while I grew up to be the opposite. There’s definitely a research paper there on the different ways poverty affects attitudes to money in later life.
This August 2, I have an image of him on that one-wheeler, setting off into the late afternoon sunshine, whistling tunelessly, rugby boots tied together by their laces and slung over his shoulders, not a care in the world, as he rides into the future…
Renée
Jul 28, 2021 | Blog
Kia ora koutou, the way poetry was taught when I went to school was by rote. We were given a poem, we had to learn it off by heart, then, on the Wednesday nominated, we’d all stand up and say the poem, the teacher’s eyes upon us. If her look didn’t make us forget the words we’d known perfectly the night before, then our neighbour’s stifled giggles would.
Do you remember an inn, Miranda? Do you remember an inn? And the tedding and the shredding of the grass for the bedding and the flees that tease in the High Pyrenees and the wine that tasted of taaaar?
And thirty three voices inflected upwards in varying degrees of enthusiasm when they reached that question mark. It all depends, it seemed, not on a red wheelbarrow, but on whether you were a girl or a boy or whether you were simply waiting for this horror to end.
Yes, Tarantella by Hilaire Belloc. It must have taken some courage on the part of the teacher to enter that classroom every Wednesday at 2pm. Most of us were not in the mood for poetry anyway. Tedding and shredding? WTF? Although my worst swear word was bugger at this time and it had to be whispered or (much safer) thought.
And then of course good old Alfred Noyes’ The Highwayman. Seventeen verses to learn off by heart by next Wednesday. Great melodramatic lines and I loved every one of them. Three quarters of the class ignored the teacher’s request/order and the other quarter (including me) learned the poem. It was relatively easy because it was a ballad so had story and sequence – the Highwayman rides to visit the landlord’s beautiful daughter, Bess, who sits, combing her long black hair, while she waits for him. The soldiers want to catch the highwayman, so they tie up Bess, attach a rifle pointing towards her breast, say if she presses the trigger to warn her lover, she will die. Oh God, the first time I read it and didn’t know the way the story went, by the time I got near the end, I was no longer breathing – Bess hears the tlot tlot tlot of the horse’s hooves, and she moves, oh no, her finger pressed the trigger and warns him with her death…oh the horror, poor Bess, the poor Highwayman, who turns his horse and gallops away from danger – then he discovers what the soldiers had done and that Bess had sacrificed her life to warn him…
Back he screamed like a madman
shouting a curse to the sky…
and then – oh horror…
…they shot him down on the highway/ down like a dog on the highway/ and he lay in his blood on the highway/ a bunch of lace at his throat…
Even the boys were caught up by these lines. It didn’t matter how well we knew the poem or how often we said it, by this stage the whole class and the teacher were hoping against hope for a miracle…Tess would not die, the Highwayman would not be shot down, there would be a happy ending, but Sir Alfred Noyes knew his stuff, and a ghostly voice finishes the poem…’and still of a winter’s night they say/when the wind is in the trees/and the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas/the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor and the Highwayman comes riding, riding… and he comes back to relive this story of love, life and death… and every now and then, so do I.
Renée
And still of a winter’s night, they say
when the wind is in the trees
and the moon is a ghostly galleon
tossed upon cloudy seas…
When the road is a ribbonof moonlight
over the ppurple moor
the highqwayman cos rifing, ridinf, riding,
The Highwayman comes riding
up to the old inn door.
Mar 17, 2021 | Blog
Kia ora koutou, I’ve never liked shopping for clothes. Its an activity I only indulge in when I’ve reached a certain point – I’ve put it off and put if off, as long as I can but inevitably there comes the unwelcome flurry of ‘you have to have a decent shirt to wear’ or ‘those shoes are really…’
I’ve got smaller or larger, my tastes have changed, I’ve got older and I still hate shopping but the voice of doom (or my mother) says, ‘stop putting it off Renée, you know you need some new shoes or a jersey and that shirt – for God’s sake that shirt …’ The voice is right, its no good putting it off any longer – I go shopping.
After I had the double mastectomy my shape changed but it didn’t make much different to the shape of shirts, the only thing I noticed then and which has remained is that my skin has become sensitive to particular fabrics.
I ask a friend to take me to the shop – she not only drives me there but helps me investigate the range of shirts, jerseys or trousers, she tells me the prices on the tickets and also says if anything I pick up is particularly hideous or magically perfect. I can’t see myself clearly in the mirror, just a grey shape, so I’m reliant on other’s judgement.
There’s a fashion for old women to wear pale blue or pink or mauve but I’ve declined to follow that. Our hair goes grey or white, our skin loses its tightness and sags, our bodies slump, but I’d damned if I’m going to hide behind pale colours because of that. When I exit stage left it will not be by a series of graduated delicate pastels, when I go I hope to dance out wearing purple or scarlet or yellow.
The other magically attractive thing about strong colours is that I can see them. Not perfectly, not as good as I once could, but a hell of lot better than pastels.
Shopping has changed and I think I would love online shopping if I could see the numbers on my credit card properly. However, my son, my granddaughter, willingly shop for me online. Another son buys me shampoo because the supermarket here stopped stocking the shampoo (Drama Clean) I’d bought from them since I came to Otaki to live. My friend allows me to put money in her cheque account and then she goes to the cash machine and brings me the cash. I think I told you about the time I was in Westpac at Coastlands and I needed help so I asked one of the tellers and she was great. No sign of impatience, in fact she said she was happy to help and to ask any time.
Not everyone is so cheerfully helpful. Some assistants look at me like I’m mentally deficient or I’m being deliberately obstructive and find something else to do at the other end of the shop. Its an interesting busines being old. Attitudes vary towards old people and you never know which kind you’re going to strike. Some assistants think I’m just being annoying, wasting their time, wanting attention… ‘She looks okay, she talks okay, if she just made an effort I bet she could see and not waste my time.’ Others are smiley, helpful, chat to me as though I’m someone they’re happy to see.
It would be good if all the medical profession were kinder to old people but its the same mixed bag as anywhere else. I want to say, I’ve got old but I haven’t lost the ability to know when I’m being treated with insensitivity. I want to say my body has weaknesses but I can still recognise indifference when I see it. I want to say you’ll get old one day and when you go to the doctor I hope you meet someone just like you.
But enough moaning – I went shopping with my friend a week or two ago and today I’m wearing one of the tops I bought – its got little red and dark blue slashes and curves on a white background. I look down, see the colours – my heart lifts and I smile.
When you’re old, go bold…
Renée
PS: Last night I cooked an old favourite I have not thought of cooking for years. When my kids were little we called them mock whitebait fritters. Its just grated potato and a little salt spooned in flat little circles into hot hot oil. Crisp and delicious. Especially with warmed up left over beef stew. Loved every bit of the combination. Might even repeat it tonight…
Apr 29, 2020 | Blog
Kia ora koutou, writers are missing out on reviews at the moment. Reviews mean readers get to know about books they might not otherwise see. In any case, Lockdown or not, the regular places probably don’t do many crime novel reviews and as we all know a lot of them are in trouble anyway now that Bauer has pulled the plug. So I decided to write some reviews and stick them on WednesdayBusk. I’ll do two this week and one next week, then go back to my own Busks and every now and then I’ll do some more reviews…
Here we go.
I found out about the existence of these two crime novels from the Ngaio Marsh Crime and Mystery Writers FB page. The Secrets of Strangers by Charity Norman (Allen & Unwin) & Trust Me, I’m Dead by Sherryl Clark (Verve Books).
The Secrets of Strangers by Charity Norman (pub Allen & Unwin).
Neil, a rough sleeper and his dog, Buddy, are waking up, Neil wants coffee and hallelujah someone has left some money in his mug. Abi is due at St Albans Crown Court where she’s defending a woman accused of shaking and injuring her nine–week–old baby. Abi’s also waiting on word to say if she’s pregnant (or not) but first – she has to have her early morning kick, that cup of coffee from Tuckbox Cafe. Mutesi is on her way home from a nursing shift. She’s going to meet her daughter–in–law Brigit and grandson Emmanuel at Tuckbox. Others with the same urge, must have my fix of coffee, rush into the café.
Nek minit a man walks in, shoots the proprietor and from that moment, everyone in Tuckbox is a hostage. And so is the reader.
The Secrets of Strangers swoops you along and you go willingly – this is taut, assured writing from a writer who knows what she’s doing. A weaver of words, she holds the separate strands effortlessly and winds them into a gripping read right to the last page. And she does that fabulous thing that the best writers do – she makes me care.
Highly recommended.
Trust me, I’m Dead by Sherryl Clark (Verve Books)
Judi is digging compost into her garden in the little town of Candlebark, when the local constable walks down the path. The news is bad. Her brother Andy, a drug addict she hasn’t seen for years, has been shot. The Melbourne police want to see her. Unwillingly she gets out the keys for the old pale blue Mercedes Benz which she’s inherited from her sod of a father and drives to Melbourne. There she walks into some big surprises, not least of which is that Andy has made her legal guardian of a two–year–old niece she didn’t know she had. She also comes up against Ben Heath AKA ‘Hotshot’, a Melbourne cop, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, after a visit from the very nasty and brutal Spaz and Baldy, Judi ends up in Emergency.
Just like he did when they were kids, Andy has left clues but Judi wasn’t much good at them then and she’s not much better now. She has to crack the mystery though or her little niece, Mia, not to mention herself, will be killed. These guys mean business. The nasty kind.
Trust Me, I’m Dead, is fast paced, well structured, twists and turns on almost every page – some brutal, some tender, and hallelujah, Clark follows the great rule of writing crime novels. Keep the suspense level high – make the reader wait. Halfway through I nearly flipped to the end but I restrained myself. Well done Renée.
Trust Me, I’m Dead is confident, funny, full of surprises. Clark’s hero Judi, is grumpy, resourceful, stubborn, cynical and underneath all that, carefully hidden, she has a heart. What’s not to like?
Highly recommended.
Both these novels are available as ebooks (the only kind I read now that my eyesight is failing).
Next week I’ll post my review of Southern Crime – the pocket essential guide to the Crime Fiction, Film and TV of Australia and New Zealand, written by Craig Sisterson.
ps You haven’t read Kim Hunt’s The Beautiful Dead or Vanda Symons’ Containment yet? What the hell have you been doing?
Renée
Apr 8, 2020 | Blog
I first read the NZ Listener in the 50s when they published columns by a writer called Jillian Squire. She wrote about things I knew about, kids, domestic life, day by day stuff. It was a bright funny spot in a magazine that published mainly male writers, who seemed to me then to have no idea about what real life was about. I guess if you’ve never had a period, been pregnant, or experienced menopause, you don’t see writing from those who do as important. Was it Rex Fairburn or Dennis Glover or another member of that group who described Robin Hyde’s work as ‘outpourings of menstrual rubbish’?
This is the problem with history – its mainly been written by one particular gender so we get that particular point of view. If the situation had been reversed and only women wrote history, our idea of it would be very different although still one–sided. We need both. The Labour History Project does a great job of recording working class history, Broadsheet has notched up a heap of well–researched articles on the history of women in this country but just think – if Jesus had had periods … yes well, mustn’t get too carried away but the gospels (and the world) would have been different if two had been written by women and two by men.
I have a wee link with the NZ Women’s Weekly too because they published an article about Eve Ebbett from Hastings who wrote romance novels for Robert Hale Publishers in the UK. In the interview Eve mentioned the New Zealand Women Writers Association which, until then, I’d never heard of, so I found her number and rang her and asked if we could meet. We discovered we had two things in common. Her father repaired shoes and so did my brother at an early stage of his working life, and we both liked jazz piano. We became good friends and in These Two Hands, I talked about when in 1979, everyone crossed me off their Christmas cards list, Eve remained staunch.
So, unless new financial support comes along, both these two publications (and others owned by Bauer) will cease. Ihope a solution is found that makes it possible for people to keep their jobs. Hard enough to be organised your life around Lockdown without having to organise your life around the fact that you now have no job.
A great–granddaughter and a great–grandson are learning to be magicians. Her auntie and grandmother and his mother and grandmother, demonstrate their prowess on video. Given that I can get lost on a street that I know well, I think I can say goodbye to any dreams of a career as a magician. You’ve got to be quick and know the moves perfectly. Now you see the pencil, now you don’t, then – aha – there it is somewhere else and I simply cannot work out how they do it.
Fun though and we all need a bit of that…
Renée
