Zane Lovitt

This review first appeared in The Christchurch Press on 15/9/12

The Midnight Promise.  Zane Lovitt. 2012.  Text Publishing.  Pp 283. $37.

Ken Strongman

The subtitle of ‘The Midnight Promise’, Zane Lovitt’s first book, is ‘A detective’s story in ten cases.’  There are indeed ten cases described for John Dorn, who styles himself as a private inquiry agent.  Mostly, the cases involve stuff-ups, either for the person in trouble, or for John Dorn or simply for life in general in the western suburbs of Melbourne.

Each case is unique and each involves one of life’s imponderables and yet they build inexorably to the final case in which John Dorn meets his midnight promise.  This final case is grittier than the others, but still revolves round some surprising puzzles.

The publisher’s blurb describes this as “The outstanding literary debut of the year”. Setting side the hyperbole that typifies such comments, this might well be the best first book to appear in Australia this year, and it is definitely interesting and unusual as an example of crime fiction, but ‘outstanding’? Almost.

John Dorn is a typical private eye, going from non-paying case to non-paying case, helping the abject and the bereft in the true Robin Hood style.  He has a seedy, run-down office, that, as his life worsens, eventually doubles as his living quarters.  He struggles to stop thinking about the woman to whom he was once engaged.  He struggles to remain un-envious of a successful layer friend who attempts to throw him crumbs of financial comfort.  Above all, he has a wryly self-deprecating view of life – the stuff of internal smiles rather than guffaws.

‘The Midnight Promise’ is, then, nicely amusing, particularly in the tortuous conversations that John Dorn has with his clients as he makes his slightly bemused way around suburban Melbourne. But its singularity comes from Dorn’s way of looking at life.  He sees merit where others do not, he sees angles that remain obscure to others.  In many ways, he gets himself into situations that beset all other fictional private inquiry agents, but for all the wrong reasons.  And it is this that makes the book unique.

The final puzzle for Zane Lovitt is what he will do next for John Dorn.  There have to be further cases. To predict their direction is hard, but they will be singular.  Lovitt is a new voice in crime fiction.

Chris Culver

This review first appeared in  the Christchurch Press on Saturday Sept 8, 2012

The Abbey.  Chris Culver. 2011. Sphere.  Pp391. $27.99

Ken Strongman

“The Abbey” is Chris Culver’s first novel and it is inevitable that it will prove to be the foretaste of a successful series.  There has been so much crime fiction written that it becomes increasingly difficult to find a new angle.  But Chris Culver has done it.

Ash Rashid is a former homicide detective now working for the prosecutor’s office and attending law school part-time.  As an Arab, he is also enshrouded in the Islamic faith and if possible has prayers twice a day with his wife and daughter.  But the strictures of his faith apart, he needs one or two quick snifters to get him through his day and uses a mouthwash to keep it from his wife.

In the way of crime fiction detectives, Ash is both tough-bodied and tender-hearted.  And he is driven in his battle with Indianapolis’s forces of darkness by his previous mistakes.  Why set the book in Indianapolis?  Well, as one of the characters says, it is only six hours drive from 50% of America’s population.  One always learns something from crime fiction, if such observations can be believed.

”The Abbey” of the title is a nightclub that caters to young would-be vampires in goth garb.  The drinking of phials of blood is part of this sub-culture.  The plot of the book revolves round an interplay between said phials and the import into the USA of other phials of a liquid, agua rica, that forms a stage in the process of making pure cocaine.  Along the way, young people, including Ash’s niece, are murdered; thus his involvement.

“The Abbey” is a fast, satisfying read with nefarious criminals, corruption in high places and some iffy members of the IMPD.  There is even a highly qualified female biochemist who essentially forms a modern version of the yellow peril. Murders are made to look like suicide or made to seem committed by the wrong people.  Ash Rashid walks on the edge of the law and at one point even manages to be arrested. He is a compelling new protagonist, an Islamic Dirty Harry with a prayer mat.

TVNZ 7

There is no doubt that New Zealand is a pretty good place to live. There is the natural environment, most of it in the South Island, but with a few fine spots in the North. There is the country's remoteness from the remainder of the world, keeping some of that world's less desirable aspects at a good arm's length while allowing many of the more attractive bits of consumer nonsense to find their way into our lives.  There are the people, mercifully only a little over 4,000,000 of them.  Many of them are interesting and good fun with the comforting she'll-be-right, we-can-fix-anything, frontier attitude not entirely forgotten.  The big village feel of the country means that those who upset us, especially the politicians, don't have anywhere much to hide.

But sometimes we get it wrong. The shutting down of TVNZ 7 is the latest example.  If we are to regard ourselves as part of the modern, sophisticated 'Western' world, then public service broadcasting is an essential part of this.  It is not something put there in times of plenty for the titillation of the chattering classes.  In fact, I am fairly sure that it is not the chattering classes that watch it, as some have said.  Yes, this channel might not be watched by as many people who watch TV2 or TV3, or Sky Sport, or even those children's channels that allow parents extra time in bed at the weekends.

BUT THIS DOES NOT MATTER.  The important thing is that TVNZ 7 or its equivalent exist in New Zealand. It should be there, with a degree of serious-minded intellectual content (that can still be entertaining and amusing) if anybody should want to click onto it. If we want to we can find out what is going on in the arts and sciences, in public and current affairs or in society at large, in more depth than the commercial interests of the remainder of television allows.  And, it should be said, it is a huge remainder, even if one considers only the free-to-view channels. Commercial interests dominate our world, this cannot be helped.  But they do not have to dominate everything.

The idea of cross-subsidy runs throughout society.  In the business world, products that sell well sometimes support those that barely break even.  This is because there is some demand for the non-profitable item. In the University world subjects that are of high demand and that are relatively inexpensive to run support those that of lesser demand and more expensive to run.  This is because a University is not regarded as a University if it does not include, say, Music or Philosophy or Classics.  So. surely the more commercially viable parts of the television enterprise (and that, after all, is most of them) could find a way to support TVNZ 7 or its equivalent.

It is important not to get this wrong.  The strength of being a small country can also be its weakness.  When we get something wrong, it is completely obvious.  It cannot be hidden behind complex social structures or smothered under a blanket of political or commercial rhetoric.  And we are about to get this wrong and to revert to being a slightly less sophisticated and less desirable society than we were before TVNZ 7.

Dereliction

A few days ago I was taken to ex-Cathedral square in Christchurch.  Feeling slightly fraudulent in a bright yellow overjacket and bright orange hard hat I was guided through the wasteland that was High St to what used to be the square.  I was accompanied by two young men who are working to re-establish c1, a cafe that was an integral part of the CBD until February 2011. That they are undertaking this at all, given the devastation that surrounds them, is both remarkable and admirable.

In a prime position in the square is a hamburger and soft drink cart. This was our goal.  The women serving were full of good humour and the men surrounding the cart, in their colourful jackets and hard hats seemed oblivious to where they were.  The mildly scatalogical jokes and general piss-taking at first seemed exactly appropriate to the surroundings.

With dripping hamburgers and cans of soft drink we sat in a line on some concrete slabs.  Ahead of us was what remains of the cathedral, stained glass replaced by timber and spire replaced by sky. It looks not unlike the much older remnants of churches carefully preserved in English county towns. It perhaps should stay like this and provide a poignant memorial to the pre-earthquake city.

In all directions beyond the cathedral are large buildings.  For a while our conversation consisted of me asking whether or not particular buildings were due for demolition, to be told that they were, for the most part.  In the background were the constant grating thuds coming from what seemed like a crane that had been modified to wield an enormous hammer.  It was thumping and grinding away at the last few floors of the Crown Plaza.  If these buildings are that difficult to demolish why did they have to be demolished at all? This might be a question that relies on a thorough-going ignorance of engineering, but it is still a question.

On our way back through what was the central part of Manchester Street, I was told that last week men had been seen with new brooms, sweeping a bit of street that was otherwise piled high with debris.  Being surrounded by dereliction for the first time takes people in different ways.  They have to sort out new ways of being.  Sweeping seems an odd way to go though.

The overwhelming sense of dereliction in central Christchurch is hard to bear. It is a sad place that will take a long time to become enlivened once more. The humour that can be heard from those who are working in its midst sounds just a little hollow, but it is better than nothing.

Jo Nesbo

The article that follows first appeared a few weeks ago in The Press Weekend magazine.  Since then I have had the good fortune to act as the interlocuter in a public literary liaison with Jo Nesbo. On the basis of this experience, I would add that he is a fast-thinking, intense man with a good sense of humour who likes rock-climbing and tends to arrive for appointments either at the last moment or late.  And that the thing to bear in mind if and when you read 'Phantom', which you should, is that Harry Hole did not take off his bullet proof vest.

Phantom.  Jo Nesbo. 2012.  Harvill Secker (Random House).  Pp452. 

Ken Strongman

Viewed from almost any perspective, Jo Nesbo is a very creative, highly intelligent man.  It took him several years of exploring various avenues before he settled on writing.  In his teens, he thought that he would become a professional footballer.  Crook knees dashed this dream.  He joined the armed forces in northern Norway and while there completed sufficient study to gain entry to University.  He completed an economics degree, but also wrote rock songs and eventually had a rock band.  It was successful.  He became a stock broker, a career choice that would clearly not last.  He took six months off and wrote his first novel.  It was published to great success in Norway and he has now written  a dozen or so novels and sold over 11,000,000 books. 

This is phenomenal success.  He has now completed eight novels featuring detective Harry Hole, another crime novel ‘Headhunters’ (now made into a film to be released in New Zealand in March when Nesbo is visiting the country) and some children’s fiction. ‘Headhunters’, by the way, seems to divide readers.  It is interesting and well written, but to this reader suffers from the slight disappointment of not featuring Harry Hole.

Harry Hole is destined to become one of the great characters of crime fiction.

In the earlier novels, he was an inspector in the Norwegian police and happened to be the country’s most expert tracker of serial killers.  So, in spite of his total disrespect for authority (where this respect had not been earned or deserved) he had to be used by those same authorities if serial killers were involved.

Harry is tall, spikily blond and craggy, and in ‘The Leopard’ and now ‘Phantom’ has a severe scar down one side of his face.  He is intuitively brilliant, but like many great fictional detectives, he is also flawed.  He fights a constant battle with alcoholism, makes poor decisions in the tatters of his personal life and almost inevitably has some Scandinavian angst in his personality.  Of course, and again like all great fictional detectives, he has his own idiosyncratic brand of morality.  In other words, he is a maverick and in ‘Phantom’  he is functioning in a private capacity, no longer being in the police.  This is of course where mavericks belong, slightly outside the law.

Although each of the Harry Hole novels in translation (The Redbreast, Nemesis, The Devil’s Star, The Redeemer, The Snowman, The Leopard and now Phantom) stands alone, they follow on from one another as Harry’s life develops.  In ‘Phantom’ Harry returns to Oslo from South-East Asia, where he has been recovering from the physical ravages wrought by The Leopard and working as a sort of enforcer.  He is back because a young drug seller has been killed and the son of Harry’s ex-girl-friend, Rakel, has been arrested for the killing.

As Harry tries to make sense of what has happened, and of what in many ways is a new Oslo to him, so he re-establishes relationships with Rakel and with the few members of the Oslo police that can tolerate him.  This allows Nesbo to turn over the stone that conceals Oslo’s drug world, which is being run by a shadowy figure known as Dubai, but clearly of Russian pedigree.  The description of Harry’s progress is interspersed with the rambling thoughts of the dying druggy, and corruption in high places, including the police.  Meanwhile, the drug baron knows Harry is in Oslo and has set a trained assassin on his trail.

‘Phantom’ is slightly different from the other Harry Hole novels.  It begins more slowly and changes the vantage points of the writing more than the other novels.  It is perhaps slightly more ambitious.  The ambition is realized however, and the book is as satisfying as the others, in spite of a somewhat equivocal ending.

The Harry Hole novels are first-rate crime fiction.  Their plots are satisfyingly replete with twists, turns and surprises and show the genuine creativity, perhaps better described as maverick thinking, of the author.  There must be similarities between Nesbo and Hole (in fact, there are - a few).  The other characters are convincing and properly three-dimensional.  And the atmosphere that Nesbo manages to create in each of the books draws one in inexorably.  Norway and in particular Oslo are brought to life, bringing about disturbingly expensive thoughts of wanting to visit.

These books then, with ‘Phantom’ as no exception, are truly hard to put down.  They grip, they are sheerly enjoyable and they are very well written (in spite of being in translation from the Norwegian).  This is crime fiction of the highest order.

Comparisons should be made, particularly given the welcome proliferation in Scandinavian crime fiction.  In my view, Jo Nesbo is a better writer than Stieg Larsson.  Larsson’s Millenium trilogy tells a great story and he has created a wonderful character in Lizbeth, but Nesbo and Hole are simply better.   Nesbo and Hole even have it over Mankell and Wallendar for sheer enjoyment coupled with the keen creativity and intelligence that has gone into the writing.  Perhaps Australia’s Peter Temple comes close, but Melbourne is not Oslo and Jack Irish is not Harry Hole. 

If you like crime fiction you must read Jo Nesbo.

A touching affair

Sport used to be relatively impersonal, if one excludes wrestling and the various forms of football.  Even then the scrums, although sometimes vicious, were not to be taken personally.  And in soccer the only touches were in the form of 'fair' barges and a bit of shin-raking with the boot studs.  And in the individual sports such as those involving rackets, there might be a polite handshake at the end of hostilities, but nothing more.

Things have changed and at times the actual play seems merely to be an excuse for all manner of new types of touching.  Take doubles in tennis.  After EVERY point those on the same side of the net HAVE to touch.  It either takes the form of a low five or, more often with the men, a fist to fist touch - more manly of course.  Every point, win or lose.  At the end of the match things have not changed much.  It is mainly rather stiff-lipped smiles and hand-shakes and some air-kissing by the European women, plus the obligatory touching of the umpire's hand no matter how much invective has been aimed at him or her during the match.

In the team games, most sports now seem to have set up the business of each team lining up and everyone shaking the hand of everyone on the opposing team.  It can take an age and somehow seems to be part of the general crowd entertainment (songs, anthems, cheer-leaders and frantic dancers, and a surprising number of silent minutes).  They used to just get on and play.  In rugby and league they tend to go further than the hand-shake and do a hand-clasp and a man-hug with the other arm, somehow demonstrating that 'we might be tough but we are also sensitive new-age guys underneath'.  And even the scrums have become more personalised, although that one league player did take it too far a couple of years ago, poking a finger where very few would want it poked.

In soccer, the main attempts at manly touching happen after a goal is scored, which somehow suggests an element of surprise that it should have happened in spite of it being the point of the encounter.  Anyway, the major reaction of the goal-scorer is either to run around with arms outspread mimicking an aeroplane or to pull his shirt over his head and run around seemingly headless (this always seems strangely appropriate), or to run very fast and then slide along on this knees in front of the crowd.  One might be forgiven for thinking that these are all individual triumphant pursuits,  but they all culminate in most of the scorer's team-mates (excluding the goal-keeper who is too far away) running and jumping on on the scorer, the whole thing ending in a melee in which it seem limbs are more likely to be broken than in general play.

It's cricket though in which the most sophisticated and complex patterns of touch have been developed. A wicket always results in high-fives between the bowler and all of his team-mates who can get there.  Fair enough, the high-five is one of those little habits that we seem to have adopted from the American way.  But this is merely a prelude to the hair-roughing. They HAVE to do it even though at times with great difficulty - to see a one meter sixty-five batsman trying to reach the hair of a two meter bowler makes a nice image.

The only hugging that occurs with any regularity on the cricket field is between the batsmen.  If one scores a century or even a half-century, once he has completed his minor victory dance and saluted the crowd and those of his team-mates who are not reading or watching the tv, the other batsmen comes and gives him a big hug, a little more than the manly one-handed grip of the league players.

This is all quite ritualised, but what the cricketers have developed into an art-form is the bum-pat.  After every over, all of the bowler's team-mates that can get near him will give him a bum-pat.  Look as I might, I have not yet seen any reaction to this.  Nor have I seen one bowler do it to another, which may suggest what they think of it in general.  It is hard to know what exactly it means and how it developed, but cricket is a subtle and intricate game and no doubt the bum-pat will find its way into the rule book at some time.  I'm not sure whether it is allowed at Lords' or not.

It might be said that sport, like literature and art, reflects society.  Have we become more touchy in the last twenty years or so?  We probably have; there is certainly a lot more hugging goes on than used to, even between men - blame the Europeans.  Perhaps it won't be long before two men at the supermarket check-out exchange high fives to mark the successful conclusion of a basket-ful.  And there might be the odd occasion in daily life when the one-armed man hug is appropriate.  But the bum-pat in the office to mark the circulation of a well-expressed memo?  Probably not.

Iconoclasticisms

Last week, in Christchurch, the front page of The Press informed us that the city is to have an 'iconic' gateway.  The writers did have the decency to place the word iconic in quotation marks.  Although this is a hint that they knew something or the other was not quite right about the word, it was not enough.

Icons used to be paintings of Christ or other holy figures, usually on wood and usually pretty old.  In recent years, icons have assumed other meanings, for example, being in abundance on the screen in front of me as I write this.  They have also come to refer to persons or things that stand as a representative symbol of something.  And they are now all over the place.  On most days we come across reports of icons in the newspapers, from the tv news reporters, and even from those who are interviewed.  In short, the word, like many others, is losing its meaning.  As soon as an All-Black stands out for something other than a drunken misdemeanor, he assumes iconic status.  Perhaps all of the old tall poppies of the 20th century have become icons in the 21st.

Anyway, assuming that the proposed bridge over Memorial Avenue is not to be constructed of wood with a painting of Christ on its side, then it is presumably to be seen as a potential symbol of post-earthquake Christchurch.  An overpass.  In what way might this be seen as symbolic?  All that springs to mind is that Christchurch might be a good place to overpass, next time flying straight onto Queenstown.  Surely not.  Then it might be seen merely as a bridge.  Perhaps to higher things.

In the body of The Press article, the phrase "iconic gateway" was quoted, presumably from an original report.  Then the question becomes, how can a gateway be an icon for a city?  In fact, as one drives from the airport along Memorial Avenue one will presumably be aware of an overbridge rather than a gateway.  However creative the design, it is hard to imagine instant iconic status.  In fact, can anything have instant iconic status?  Isn't this something that has to be earned by lengthy association?

On the following day, an image of the proposed icon was shown in The Press, although it was not possible for the reporter to say whether or not it would be exactly as portrayed.  It looked fine and might well add something to the approach to Christchurch from the airport - although Christchurch being Christchurch, many people will find it objectionable whatever it looks like.  But instant icon it cannot be.  Whether or not in the fulness of time it comes to be iconic is a question for public reaction.  At least it is not the equivalent of a huge L&P bottle.

Bugger - ah, that's better

A recent article in the scientific/academic literature reports that swearing definitely offers relief from pain.  When we swear so our pain tolerance increases.  This report is not yet another example of the laborious discovery of the obvious. Although we might have suspected that an instantly bellowed oath somehow lessens the pain of the hammer blow on the thumb, we did not  know for sure that this might be a real effect, that is an effect that might have some physical basis rather than merely reflecting a cherished belief.  The authors suggest that it works by producing an emotional response.  I should think that there might be several emotional responses involved at many points, from the hammer blow onwards.

There is more and it is less comforting.  They also report that those who engage in a great deal of daily swearing, not merely in reaction to the stubbed toe, cracked shin or crushed thumb, become somewhat immune to the increased pain relief from the instant expletive.  In other words, overuse of swearing lessens its effectiveness.  This again, might come as no surprise to those who make observations of daily life.  The once a year, rather politely enunciated 'fuck' from an otherwise closely defended coffee morning wife from the affluent suburbs has far greater effect than the word's admittedly creative use many times in any single sentence in other quarters.  But the effect is to lower the pain tolerance, so it is better not to overdo it.

By the way, in the summary of their article the authors mention swearing, of course, but in brackets they put 'cursing'.  Is this because they believe the reader might not know what swearing is?  Or might there be some subtle academic distinction here?  The concise Oxford does not distinguish between the two words to any great extent, so this might be the shape of things to come in academic papers.  Every time a word (particularly an everyday word) is used, then its synonyms will appear in brackets (parentheses), just in case the other handful of academics who read it somehow miss the point.

The point of all this however is that we now have an excuse, well actually rather more than an excuse - perhaps, to put it academically,  a rationale - to let rip when the hammer slips or the little toe catches on the chair leg or we attempt to walk through the closed ranch slider yet again.  We are simply lessening the pain, which surely no-one would begrudge.

There are implications though, possibly indicating further research.  There is more than one sort of pain.  There is all manner of social and emotional pain when people make adverse remarks or criticise us or suggest that we are to be blamed for something that was nothing to do with us.  Might this type of pain also be relieved by a sudden 'bugger that!', or even by a string of neatly created curses?  This could change the tenor of meetings across many walks of life.  It is surely worth a try, but don't forget not to over do it.  It will lose all effectiveness if you do it every time the chairperson speaks - and so might you.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22078790

Presence

Idris Elba has presence. It's hard to define, but one knows it when one sees it and one sees it in him.  He is a superb actor.  Just compare his performance in The Wire and in Luther.  In The Wire, he is the brains behind a Baltimore criminal gang.  He doesn't say much but he gives off a smiling menace that fills the screen.  He is the thinking person's American gangster through and through.  Even his walk seems to be exactly what one imagines it should be.  And there is a moment in an early episode when he is clearly entering a liaison with the wife of a jailed gang member.  All we see is his hand slowly undoing a zip.  That's it, nothing else, but it is very sexy.  That is presence.

Then, in Luther, which is Neil Cross writing at the top of his game, Elba is a London police detective.  Again, he doesn't say much but his miniscule facial expressions say it all.  And he walks with the shoulders first, rolling style of a London bloke.  Again, he fills the screen with his presence.  It is not because he is a super-hero.  Clearly, he is an anti-hero in The Wire and in Luther, he might be simultaneously sharp-witted and intuitive, but he also has difficulty with relationships, particularly with women, and he often finds himself in lonely places, troubled by what to do next.  Throughout all though, his presence is magnetic, drawing one into the small screen.

There are others with presence who appear on the big or the small screen.  It is not a quality that gradually emerges but one that is apparent almost immediately.  It is hard to pin down what it is about the person that make it so obvious.  It could be size.  One might think that being very large would create presence.  It certainly helps if the person is filling more than the average amount of space.  But size is hard to judge, particularly on the small screen and certainly not every basket-baller that one sees interviewed has presence - in fact quite a few have whatever is its opposite. And then there are actors like Al Pacino.  He has instant presence in spite of taking up very little space.  He can do it with his voice, but he also has it just by being on screen.

Idris Elba is big, of course, but this is not it.  It is something to do with stillness.  At times, he might walk fast or even run, but mostly he is quite still, seemingly slow to react and sometimes apparently not reacting at all.  This is Clint Eastwood in the spaghetti westerns.  The most one saw was the rolling of an unlit cigar in the lips.  It meant many things, depending on the circumstances, but it usually involved mayhem for someone else.  Idris Elba has no cigar.  The sheer immobility of his face results in either a few words that penetrate whatever is going on or in some rapid physical action.

In the right person then, whether on screen or not, this stillness generates presence and the writers of The Wire and Luther are astute enough to have seen it in Idris Elba and he is astute enough to project it.  If you haven't yet seen any of either series, I envy you the experience to come.

Today

Shop assistants have started putting 'today' on the end of their questions.  Would you like chocolate or cinnamon on your cappuchino today? Would you like sugar today?  Would you like to pay by eftpos or credit today?  Would you like me to put it in a bag today? Would you like anything else today?  Is there anything else I can help you with today?

What does this mean, today, or, in fact,  any other day?  Does it imply that one is thought to live a life of complete inconsistency, one day bearing very little relation to another with respect to one's wants, desires or even behaviours?  Have they been taught to give the impression that every customer is a free agent, entirely unconstrained by the exigencies of life from one day to the next?  Or is it intended to imply that somehow they know that this is a special day for us?  If so, this is something that might begin to lose its effect if one hears it every day.

More importantly, how is that that it suddenly seems to have begun in all shops and cafes, not just in New Zealand, but also in Australia?  Is this perhaps the latest example of an a-causal connecting principle, Sheldrake's morphic resonance at work in the everyday world?  I suspect though that Sheldrake was thinking of something a bit more profound and far-reaching than the 'today' effect.

Or perhaps there is some ubiquitous training manual, that is updated to all establishments.  If so, who makes the decisions and writes it?  Or perhaps the shop assistants pick up the new ideas from other shops when they themselves are customers.  If so, where did it begin?  Who is ultimately responsible for this new awkwardness that has made its way into our daily lives?  It is yet another thing to deal with, to make a decision about, to work out a clever response that will fall on ears that do not want to hear it.

Anyway, I suspect that we are stuck with it for a while, much as we have been stuck with "Have you had a busy day?" This is a question to which it is almost impossible to reply satisfactorily.  "Yes" seems a bit peremptory and "No" seems to imply a less than adequate life.  And to offer more than a simple affirmative or negative somehow takes the whole matter too far, something shown readily by the puzzled look from she who is by then proffering the bill.  Clearly, the checkout people couldn't care less about the progress of one's day.  Fair enough, although one does have some sympathy for the progress of theirs. What must seven or eight hours sitting there and making much the same enquiries of everyone be like?  But, why then do they continue to ask these questions?

But at least we have not yet had to face a question that's not a question at the end of nearly every utterance, as with the British "...in it?" Perhaps it is a little like the New Zealand rising inflection that turns everything into a tentative, I'm-not-sure-if-I-should-be-saying-this-at-all sort of statement. The impossibility of resolution leaves one feeling slightly tense, the entire conversation lacking a firm end. On reflection though, the British "...in  it?" is more of a challenge, it carries an aggressive you're-not-going-to-argue-with-this flavour to it. Might this be a final hangover of the difference between the colonizer and the colonized?

It's a wonder that we  manage to get through day to day interactions at all. Of course, on some days we don't.

Showers

A word beloved by the compilers of cryptic crosswords is 'showers'.  It's obvious when you think about it.  Showers can refer to sprinkles of rain, a deluge of water in some or other cabinet that sets the day in motion, or (and this is the bit the compilers like) show-ers, that is, people that show.  Bear this in mind as I relate this recent experience.

I attend a gym regularly. Reasons such as the desire to age gracefully or not at all, don't matter for the moment.  Like all gyms, this one has showers in the changing rooms.  For years the showers were a puzzling mixture of a sort of open-plan and private possibilities.  So there were three or four ranged next to one another separated by nothing other than air, frequently foetid.  And there were others that were arranged singly, either behind their respective curtains or, in one case, behind a lockable door.  Having little or nothing to hide, I almost aways used the open plan variety, lined up beside others similarly absorbed in silent but watery reflection about their sagging muscles.  There were inevitable sidelong glances for purposes of comparison, over the years the glances decreasing as the comparisons became more fraught.

Occasionally, the communal stalls being full, I would be forced into one of the singles.  This always made me uneasy, so I would leave the door well open or the curtain un-pulled.  Why? Well, sometimes one would be quietly changing and someone would stride purposefully into one of the more private showers and firmly pull the curtain across or, in the more extreme case, close AND LOCK the door.  Those who did this would always be in their private stall for a long time.  What defines a long time for a shower?  Anything longer than about the two or three minutes it takes me to deal with all possible bodily contingencies.  WHAT ON EARTH ARE THEY DOING IN THERE BEHIND A LOCKED DOOR FOR ALL THAT TIME?

It is almost impossible not to speculate, however disturbing the speculation might be.  It is precisely the same question that arises in an airport when, after several calls, including the final call, for a particular flight, the announcer, sounding slightly frustrated, asks for Mr McCavity and Ms Savanarola or some-such to please join their flight.  What are they doing?  Where are they?  They know as well as all of the other travelers when their flight is due to board.  Are they deaf, drunk, hopelessly self-absorbed, or up to something unspeakably interesting behind one of the intriguing No Entry doors?

To return to the showers, it is almost impossible to see someone go into one of the lockable showers and then come out again.  It takes too long.  One could be getting changed several times, something in itself that might occasion sidelong glances.  But sometimes someone emerges from a lockable cubicle who has been in there before one's own trip to the changing rooms.  Said person always has a towel wrapped and fastened in that cunning tucked in sort of way around the waist.

Now, emerging from showers, whether communal or not is in itself a matter for comment.  It can be done with the wrapped towel, with a casually draped towel, or with an insouciant, mildly extrovert abandon.  But the person from the locked cubicle always has the wrapped towel.  Again, it is impossible not to wonder about this.  What is there to hide? Is there some or other size extreme?  Is there some deformity or question of number?

Anyway, this is not the point.  I have simply been setting the scene.  Recently, the changing rooms, my changing rooms as I think of them, were closed for several weeks and alternatives had to be used.  A good thing, my gym colleagues and I thought.  The rooms were clearly in need of refurbishment.  Eventually, they re-opened and with some relief and mild interest one could return to a familiar pre- and post- exercise routine.

At first blush, there seemed to be little that was different.  Some walls had not been refreshed, the floors had not been re-sealed, the lockers were still in their usual positions.  It was the showers.  The communal showers were gone.  There were now five cubicles in a row, all with their individual lockable doors.  What was one to think about this?  What had those who run the gym been thinking?  Had there been complaints about what went on in the communal showers from people who felt that the sidelong glances were too much?  Had there been complaints from gym users who wanted their own lockable cubicles?   And the absence of choice in the matter is disturbing.  Perhaps I'll have to learn to fasten the towel in that special way.

And then I noticed a hair drier hanging from a coat-hook but chained to the wall.  I have not yet seen anyone use it, but it's presumably only a matter of time.

In the end, then, there might be less difference than the cross-word compilers believe between showers and show-ers.