Play With Strangers Has Moved House

Like so many things on the Interweb, this will probably way outlive me. In fact, I now maintain my blog at www.playwithstrangers.com. Many more recent posts there.

The Camino Mirrors My Life Back At Me - Even the Schoolyard

It was only my sixteenth day; I would have bet, with real money, that it would have been six or seven more. But time, like everything else, puts on a different face on the Camino, or rather shows its true face. It has been wonderful, terrible, gruelling, easy, profound, irritating, painful, joyful and even hurtful. Perhaps pilgrimage is the Christian route to the Buddhist blessing of instant karma – whatever you need to happen to reveal what you need to know the Camino serves up. You just need to be paying attention.
The last three days have been coloured, although not dominated, by ... bullying, I suppose. The incomprehensibly cold shoulder.
Evening One: I am seated at a table reserved for pilgrims in the Benedictine abbey restaurant in Léon, buying the standard pilgrim meal. The waiter seats me beside a strikingly beautiful young Brazilian of German extraction; no intention on my part. We talk, and discover that she has put the exact same image of the Camino as the new header on her Facebook page as I have. Of the thousands of Camino images on the Net, this seems an extraordinary coincidence. She invites me as an FB friend. We spend the evening in one of those lovely, deep conversations that the Camino offers.
We arrange to catch up the following night but she cries off because of pain and fatigue. Not a brush-off; when I pass her the next day she is crawling along.
That night we both stop, without arrangement, in Rabana del Camino, the last stop before Cruz de Ferro. I stopped for a spot of tourism during the day and when I arrive she is already there, drinking with a handsome young American and two Australian gay men. We drink for an hour or so, big-time bonhomie all round. I play my guitar, the party cranks up, they leave to find more wine, but I just go to bed.
Over the following stretch I keep pace with the four of them. I say hi when I see them but ... the blinds are down. The younger Aussie spends the first morning in blatant pursuit of the handsome American, who does a runner at lunchtime. From then on it's a club of three and I am not included. It goes on for the next two days. At stops on the road, in the albergué at night, anything I say to them receives a closed response. Uh-huh. Hmmm.  By the end of the second day I stop trying. As I pull into the next town I see them gathered around a sign, checking out the map to find the albergué municipal. I say Hi and just keep walking. That night I'm put in a room with Hilary from the States, young Mary and old Joseph from Ireland. When I (Christopher) arrive Hilary derives great value from being with the Holy Family – Joseph, Mary and Christ, all Catholics. We have a riotous evening.
The next morning Justin the American-chaser passes me in the café and, for the first time in two days, acknowledges my existence with a 'Hola'. I ignore him, because I instinctively understand what's going on.
They want me on the periphery, to define the boundary of their little clique. It's no fun if you don't have someone on the outside wanting in. I don't.
Later, as I enter Villafranca I pass the young Brazilian saying goodbye to the two Australians as they toddle off. I walk past, again having no interest in greeting them. But: I see no hugs, no love you, missing you already, be in touch, blah blah. It seems evident that the young woman's earlier affection has waned.
It seems a little egocentric, but I can't help wondering whether my lack of interest in knocking on the door of their little clique has taken the energy out of it. Or, perhaps she has developed a slightly guilty conscience, because my rejection has been very clear and, frankly, pretty hurtful.
The next day I run into her in a café in La Faba. She is effusive, says she is so happy to have caught up again. I am so delighted; I feel as if she has recovered from a bad trip.
Why did this happen? The only explanation I can come up with was that I wasn't beautiful enough.
Hey - we're the beautiful people, dahlings. We don't want ugly, old people around.
It was a wonderful experience; a catharsis, laying the demons of the playground. I am, once more, profoundly grateful to the Camino. 

The Camino de Santiago de Compostela

Two months ago I returned from a trip to India in the worst emotional condition I had experienced since my teens.  I had made the mistake of going back to Darjeeling, where in my 20s I had spent several of the happiest months of my life. I was hoping to meet my Tibetan landlady (and lover) and her son, seven years old at the time I left. Darjeeling, 7,500 feet up in the Himalayas, was truly a jewel of the Raj, an exquisite town full of Victorian houses and shops surrounded by tea plantations, facing the biggest massif in the Himalayan range. Not only was Dawa dead, so was her son in tragic circumstances. 45 years of rampant, random, cheapest-possible-way development has destroyed the jewel. Only traces remain. Other influences bearing down on me - isolation, the failure of my book to find a publisher, and more - were crushing the life, and faith, out of me. I found myself wishing for death, utterly heart-sick.

With desperation comes inspiration. I remembered that some people from my parish in Auckland had done a pilgrimage in Spain a couple of years ago. Yes! Within days I was in Burgos on the Camino Francés, chosen as a starting point to land me on Maundy Thursday in Santiago de Compostela where the relics of St James, are believed to be held.

So God was looking after me after all. What a wondrous, magical thing is the Camino. Especially to do it in the way I and many others did it - alone on the walk, talking in the evening with kindred spirits. Or the opposite - both have their gifts when you're in a watching and learning state of mind. 500 km, walking every day. With a 10 kilo pack on my back and my guitar slung over my shoulder I resembled a badly assembled dromedary. I crossed two mountain ranges, right up to the high spring snow line. Twice I walked almost 20 kilometres scarcely seeing another person. The old Roman road to Transalpine Gaul, the Via Aquitana, leading into the little village of Calzadilla des Hermanillos, leaves the vehicle roads completely and runs as a harsh, pebbly track straight across the high plains for a four-hour walk through nothing. No houses, no anything but scrub, broken forest and occasional wheat fields. And then, once or twice, the white bullet train appeared and rocketed by. I waved my stick around and leapt in the air like a madman, shouting "Praise God!" at the top of my lungs.  Pure impulse; it felt wonderful! Surely, liberation is simply the freedom to respond to impulse.

What an extraordinarily simple and beautiful thing it is to just walk every day. No wonder posties are always happy. Just drop into your ryhthm, which in my case was precisely 120 steps per minute, 5 km/hr, and encounter whatever turns up, which is often nothing. Lovely, yummy, rich, meaningful nothing. Thinking, praying, meditating, walking. Day after day after day. 

Distance comes to mean nothing - it's all about time. In fact, the distance markers can be wildly unreliable. Shortly after the ´409km to Santiago´ sign I was photographed next to there was one saying 453 km! So you just walk. Unlike most, I didn´t have a guide book, just a print-out from a website which gave me a reasonable idea when I would find the next spot and whether there would be an albergué municipal, as they call the public pilgrims' dormitories.

Of course there is so much beauty. So many remarkable sights. Like the Cruz de Ferro at the highest point of the Francés in the Léon Mountains. The +/- 9 metre pole surmounted by a simple iron cross dates back at least 1,000 years. The pile of stones at the base is maybe 20m long, six metres wide and four high and has been created by all those pilgrims since then, a pebble at a time. Tradition encourages pilgrims to leave a stone for some person or intention at the Cruz. I stuck a sharp little stone in a split in the wood to thank my mother for getting me there/here. (Too complicated and odd to explain.)

Going up to Cruz de Ferro was a hard climb, but not the worst, which was to O Cebreiro in the Cordillera. A remarkable thing: I approached the Cruz through cold mist and snow drifts, and literally as I walked away the clouds parted, the sun came out and ten minutes later I was descending through fields and the odd ruin basking in spring sunshine, the apple blossom thick on the trees and the air full of bird-song. It was exactly like the scene out of Shangri La where the travellers descended from a freezing, treacherous high pass in Tibet and found themselves in the land of perpetual spring. I came around a corner and wham! there in the distance was the full stretch of the snow-covered Cordillera. Just like that, completely unexpected. Beautiful. And then I slipped on an invisibly wet rock and smashed my guitar! The descent was wicked and falls are common. 

Up till then travelling with the guitar had been special. Almost no-one passes the first 100km of their walk with unnecessary weight, in fact there is a special postage rate to Santiago from anywhere on the Camino to accommodate the shedders. So the pilgrims really appreciated an evening with music. 

The Camino took my guitar but, typically, it returned it too, not only fixed but improved. I wrote to Camps, the manufacturers in Catalonia, with photos showing that only the table was broken and asking the cost of repair. Shocked by a two sentence reply saying it was uneconomic. For a €750 guitar! I didn't believe them but had no idea who would affordably fix it. At English craftsman's rates, assuming they would even be able to fix a flamenco guitar properly, it was a no go for me. But the albergué in Sarria, just over 100km out from Santiago, has walls and shelves full of woodcarvings made by the owners. Craftspeople. As I was leaving in the morning it occurred to me to ask them. Yes, there was a celebrated instrument maker just two blocks away! I checked it out as I went past. Closed. I knocked. No answer. Oh well. The urge to walk was irresistible, so off I went. Then I arrive at the albergué in Portomarin, my next stop, go to produce my credencial, the pilgrim's passport which is stamped along the way. Not there! The one thing you do not want to lose, after your real passport, is your credencial. I call Luis and Beatriz from the Sarria albergué. Yes, they have it. Onto a bus back. The walk from the bus station takes me past the instrument maker's workshop. Open! And yes, he will fix it, for $150, more or less. And he did. Incredibly well, and modified the bridge for more accurate tuning and a lower action into the bargain. I took a bus back to Sarria after Santiago, collected my beautiful new guitar and was treated to a performance on the xanfon, the traditional Galician hurdy-gurdy. Lust flared in my heart for the beautiful thing, made by Xerman's own hands. Three thousand euros. Oh well...

Honestly, I could tell half a dozen such stories, as could most serious pilgrims. The only experience to which I can compare it is my time taking teachings from Lama Kalu Rinpoche. Like others on the same path, I found that things happened around me, unlikely stuff, to illustrate a point I was working on or to give me the sense that I was being looked after. Spooky? Believe it!

Finishing is hard. For most people there's no apotheosis. You just stop at the Cathedral, and it's over. The next day you feel wrong - you should be walking. For me it was a huge moment, engulfed with gratitude for the continuing existence of this ancient, holy, mysterious method of healing. I charged into the cathedral, tears streaming down my face, threw myself to my knees at the first pew and sobbed my heart out. No-one seemed to take any notice. I guess it's common. 

The crying thing. Strange. I had this thing going on which I can only describe as splacxnomai, the Greek word in the New Testament usually translated as compassion, or sympathy when referring to Christ's reaction to, for instance, the misery of the leper. But what it really means is a shaking of the bowels (the 'noble' bowels - heart, lungs, liver and kidneys.) I was very far from sad but cried at the drop of a hat. If the hat is hurt, so to speak.

They showed a clip of the Boston bombing on a TV in a bar, followed by a row of crosses memorialising the dead. Whoops! Here we go... Crying at television!! Crikey! It was a bit embarrassing, as you can imagine. But what goes with it is wonderful. Wonderful. I met another pilgrim, a devout Christian woman, in the cathedral at Santiago who was experiencing the same thing.

Sadly I feel my shell slowly growing back. Inevitable and probably necessary.

Now I'm back in Bristol, I'm well, and mainly I´m clear. Physically clear, like water from which everything has settled out. Of course, bump the jug enough and it goes muddy again, but the knowledge that the Camino is just a 24-hour bus and boat trip away means I will never get that desperate again. 

What a gift it is.  In Léon someone mentioned that of the 160 Holy Grails in Spain, two historians had just published a book establishing that in all likelihood the one at the Basilica of San Isidoro in Léon is the actual, real cup Jesus used at the last supper. I immediately jumped on the net and yes, it does seem very likely. So off I trotted to the Basilica, to find out that a) it was in the adjacent museum, not the church and b) big disappointment: since the book was published they have hidden the real one and have a copy on display. I asked at the desk and the attendant confirmed that it was actually in the building. It felt very strange and mystical, to be standing close to Christ's cup. I returned to the basilica and prayed for my faith to be returned to me in its fullness.

And it was. Thanks be to God. And now I'm starting to cry. Oh well, that's life these days. Joy.

And now for the pictures at : A first cut of pictures from my Camino

Poor, Poor India: Remembering the Raj.

India. What a place. A country the British made and the populace wrecked. I know, I know. Colonialism is evil. One country should never rule another. This is Holy Writ in the politically correct world of the 21st century.  But just keep reading.

The Brits made plenty of mistakes in their first hundred or so years, and not just errors but acts of greed and ill will. The Rebellion of 1857 didn’t happen for nothing.

But their response to the uprising was simply extraordinary, and reveals the British as masters of the art of colony-building. They poured massive resources into creating a highly educated class which would effectively run India for them – the indian Administrative Service. Now the Indian Civil Service, a vast sink of corruption and nepotism which daily sucks the lifeblood from the country. Bravo.

By the turn of the 20th century, having established top-quality schools modelled on Eton and military and engineering colleges of equal quality, the British were doing their very best to rule the country as well as they could. Their greatest offence by that time was their intensely irritating, condescending and even racist behaviour, when judged by modern standards. Yes, they held themselves above the ‘natives’. But it is sheer revisionism to see this as wrongful. It was a necessity. Although India is enormously diverse, one quality the common people share with many Eastern cultures is their reservation of duty and respect to those who occupy a rarefied position above them. You think the Mughal emperors chummed around in the bazaar with the hoi polloi? Hardly. Look at the behaviour of the rulers of the princely states like Hyderabad. Absolute despots. And at the present day, they tolerate the most flagrant corruption and self-serving in their numerous ‘royal families’ like the Gandhis, people who live lifestyles of extreme luxury and occupy a fairytale zone not unlike that of England’s royal family. 

The British attitude to Mahatma Gandhi and the other leaders in the independence cause was correct. They had been in the country for a long time, many of them loved it, and they foresaw that the end of the Raj would be a serious setback in the lives of most Indians. They were right, even leaving aside the millions who died during Partition. What we see, still, is a country stumbling though a mire of corruption and neglect.

The British built the largest, most comprehensive rail network in the world, a task no Indian government since could even contemplate. And here’s a sobering statistic: it is estimated that one Briton died for every mile of rail laid. Of disease, alcoholism and exhaustion. The British gave the Indian people the only honest judicial system they have ever known. Gone. And not only through the courts, but by the District Inspectors who would decide petty cases judiciously, quickly and fairly, by and large, and – perhaps most importantly – at no cost. Unimaginable in modern India. Of course there were exceptions, but they did their best.

Gandhi was a nutter. He was. His ashrams were nightmarish; in declaring caste nonexistent he created, among many other quarrels and privations, the absurd situation where Brahmins would sneak out at night and ritually cleanse themselves. He spent most of his energy doing battle with his own body; his greatest frustration, by his own declaration, was that even by restricting himself to five plain foods in minimal quantity he failed to quell his appetite. He was brahmacharya, a celibate, although he was married. He did not ask his wife’s permission to sentence her to a life without sex. Hardly a model of compassion, but consistent with his view that women should remain in the background, serving their men. When the independence struggle was at his height, he envisioned victory coming through mass spiritual purification. He wrote that the people of India might have to forgo having children for a period of time in order to achieve this purity. In fine, Mohandas Gandhi has been of infinitely more use to his people dead than alive.

Now India is preparing to go to the polls and we see the mess in its glory. The Indian obsession with politics is in full cry and newspapers are packed with even more political stories than usual. But any observer from a Western-style democracy would be baffled: there is virtually no discussion of policies and platforms. In three weeks of reading the daily paper, snowed under with acronyms – UPA, CPI, CPM, BJP – and politicians’ names, (many have only one, others two or three different names), this morning I came across my first story mentioning specific issues. That is all they were – mentioned.

So what are the stories about? Alliances, mostly. Who is prepared to get into bed with whom. And political debuts, all either of celebrities from the world of the screen and the sports field or of young members of political families, because in India politics is a family business. They are basically gossip. One of these was the most extraordinary political story I have ever seen. 

This handsome young son of a senior political figure, having starred in a Bollywood flop, has decided to go in for politics. The interview filled half of a tabloid page and contained not one word about issues, problems he wanted to help solve, beliefs, aspirations, political philosophy. Nothing. The theme of the piece turned on whether he had the know-how and clout to win a following. Correctly, actually, because Indian politics is entirely about charisma and followers. His answer, “The offspring of a fish does not need to be taught to swim,” was satisfactory and appropriate, because it constituted a claim that he knew the individuals and their followers. He knew who owed what to whom. He knew the history of the major players’ affiliations. Which meant he knew how to get things done. 

Another story demonstrates the importance of followers. The Ghorka people in the Darjeeling hills are up in arms because Mamata Bannerjee, the West Bengal Chief Minister, has fielded an ‘outsider’ for the seat of Darjeeling, a soccer star called Baichung Bhutia. But hang on. Bhutia? The Bhutias are a clan of Tibetans whose presence in Darjeeling and adjacent Sikkim, which used to include the territory of Darjeeling, long predates the Chinese invasion of Tibet. He’s from Sikkim. How can he be an outsider in the hills?

Their point is, he has no followers. So who cares, if he wins the seat on the back of his established popularity? The followers of a local candidate, that’s who. Because in Indian politics the followers of the successful candidate win prizes. Big ones. Jobs, first and foremost, for themselves and theirs. Projects they favour get funded, and the jobs on the projects go to them and those around them. And at least 20% of those funds go straight back to the politician who signs them off. Always. These vast networks run India.

If Bhutia wins, and he probably will, there is no-one there to collect. For the followers of the local aspirant this means years of work and support wasted, a disaster. So what will happen? No-one can say, but historically it is not unlikely that the local Ghorka Alliance will break away and join forces with another party, in the hope that their combined votes will defeat Bhutia and everyone will be rewarded.

To try and understand how life in general and in business in particular functions in this bizarre system, I spoke to my friend Sanjay, a successful businessman, devout Christian, a man who would greatly prefer to play with a straight bat. I asked him if it is possible to run a business in India while refusing on principle to pay bribes and kickbacks.

“I wish it was. But the answer is, absolutely not. Impossible.”

“Why not.”

“Well, let’s consider tax. When the tax inspector comes to look at our books, I have to pay him or he will take me apart. You know how many people work in these departments? They will go though everything with a fine-tooth comb. Of course there will be mistakes, Everyone makes mistakes. For every mistake, I will be fined. They will come back again and again. Multiply that by four, because there four departments, all huge – central government income tax, luxury tax, that’s the state tax, service tax, an industry thing, and VAT. If I don’t pay, can you imagine the consequences? I won’t have time to run my business. They will ruin me.”

“So what happens?”

“What happens? He comes, he says, ‘I don’t want to waste your time. I will fine you a few thousand rupees. Then it can be seen that I am doing my job. Whatever you declare, that will be satisfactory. I don’t need to look’. Of course, over and above the fine, I have to pay him. And it is not just paying him once. He comes to my restaurant on a Sunday with his family …”

“He doesn’t get a bill?”

“Exactly. ”

This may indicate why in Gujurat recently there were 400,000 applicants for 1,500 jobs as junior tax officers.

Sanjay continues. 

“Now, we pay tax. We don’t have to. My competitor down the road pays no tax and I have to sell my goods at the same cost as his, because of competitive pressure.”

“How can he pay no tax?”

“Simple. He doesn’t keep accounts, runs a pure cash business.”

“Why don’t you do the same?”

“Because to do that, you have to sit with the cash, all day long. You go into his shop, either he or his son-in-law will take your payment with his own hands. You will get no receipt. (I tested this; it was as he said.) I don’t have time to do that. And of course I can’t trust employees to do it. They will help themselves. So at least, keeping a full set of books we get all the money which comes in the door.”

He goes on to paint an ever more detailed picture of how corruption pervades everything. To buy a new house one must pay the developer at least a quarter of the price in unaccounted cash. I suggest that this places an obstacle before the buyer, a problem usually solved by open competition. Surely a developer who does not make such a demand will sell his house more easily?

“No, because his house will cost you more. If he pays tax on the whole price the buyer has to fund that.”

I noted that Chief Minster Bannerjee was promising to deliver a new water supply to Darjeeling. What will happen? Will Darjeeling get its water?

He laughs. 

“Actually, that project has already been funded. Sixty miles of pipes have been laid, the pumps installed. But the hills leader suddenly announced that the water from that source is not fit for drinking and that it needed to come from somewhere else. So everything has stopped.”

“Why did he do that?”

“Because the party pushing the project through is not his. He gets nothing from it.”

I pause to absorb this, the consequences. They are barbaric. People get sick every day, babies die, because of the state of Darjeeling’s water supply. But one of their own leaders will let that go on and on until someone pays him to get out of the way. Horrible. But consistent with everything else I know about India minus the Raj.

“OK. Say that had not happened. How would the money flow? The money voted for the project – will that all get spent on supplying the infrastructure?

Another laugh. 

“No way. First, the person approving the project, the politician, will take at least 20% of the funds. Then every pair of hands the money passes through will take its share.”

“So how can the project happen? Surely there won’t enough to do it?”

“Oh, it will happen, because the contractor who gets the tender will quote twice, or three times the actual cost of building it.”

“But surely others can come in with lower prices?”

“No, because the tenders have to be handed in. When a contractor who is not part of the system goes to put his tender in, there will be a bunch of goons who will stop him from delivering the papers. That’s assuming he can get his hands on the tender documents, which is unlikely.”

“But I saw an ad in the paper calling for tenders, and they were on-line. You could download the tender documents.”

“Is that right? Well, there may still be obstacles. But actually, it is getting better. They are using the Internet and other things to try to change things where they can. The UPA government has put a lot of good laws in place, for instance the Right to Information Act, other laws like that. Rahul Gandhi (Indira’s grandson) has a very modern outlook. He is trying his best, I believe.”

“But it’s a long slow job.”

“A very long, very slow job. But I will say this: twenty years ago it was worse – much worse.”

He explains how technology is transforming the economy. 

“Now I can pay my tax online. You can’t imagine what a blessing this is. Also, now, to open a bank account you have to provide ID and this is checked. This means that black money which people used to stash in multiple bank accounts has to be kept in the house, or somewhere out of sight. This make it more difficult. This is a definite improvement, thanks to technology and new laws.”

People like Sanjay are growing in number, members of an expanding middle class of  professionals, entrepreneurs and industrialists. Their children are all either at or are heading for university, becoming professionals. But the young Indian in the street has no such aspirations. His or hers are focused entirely on the ICS exam, the one you need to pass to be qualified to take a government clerical job. The ultimate dream for the masses is a lifetime ticket on the corruption gravy train. The walls in town are littered with education businesses all promising the same thing – success in the exam. Not degrees, professions. Just that golden exam.

The Cloud

But over this agonisingly slow improvement a dark cloud now hangs. If the predicted outcome of the upcoming elections is correct, the next Prime Minister will be the charismatic demagogue Narendra Modi, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, basically an alliance of Hindu extremists. He has been the Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat since 2001. In 2002 Hindus, following the burning of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims by a Muslim mob, went on a rampage, massacring Muslims, with Muslims responding in kind. Modi, who held sole responsibility for internal security, insisted on bringing the bodies of the train victims to Ahmedabad against specific police advice that this would cause a riot. When the riots started it took the police 24 hours to intervene; more than a thousand people died in the worst communal violence since the granting of independence and the creation of Pakistan. Modi went unpunished, but he is recognised as so rabidly anti-Muslim, anti-Christian, anti all non-Hindus that he was banned from visiting the UK for 10 years, and denied a diplomatic visa to the US. It was in his state, where he claims to have solved the problem of unemployment, that the 400,000 applied for 1,500 government jobs. Some 800 farmers have committed suicide there in the last few years. A million famers have no electricity. And he is accused of giving his industrialist cronies huge tracts of government development land at nominal prices, often driving farmers off their land.

We in New Zealand remember a populist demagogue, Robert Muldoon. He used divisive, populist strategies, cynically stirring up hatred and fear  to hang on to power. The consequences for New Zealand were serious, but no-one died.  But if Narendra Modi and his BJP cronies win, as anticipated, people now alive in India are about to die horrible deaths. Many, many people. I expect that even the announcement of victory will spur riots, with ecstatic Hindus burning mosques and churches in celebration and butchering whoever gets in their way.

Only India’s federal structure stands between Modi and a terrifying fundamentalist regime; thankfully the real power on the ground lies with the state governments, who control the police. But in states like Modi’s Gujarat, with small Muslim minorities and vast numbers of illiterate or semi-literate Hindus, the embers of communal violence never die. The election of a BJP national government will blow them into a blaze. And it is not only a problem for Muslims. Sanjay’s wife Mary and millions of India’s Christians are openly afraid of what is about to happen.

So, facing the prospect of an openly corrupt, hate-mongering demagogue like Modi as Prime Minister, I say again: What price independence, India? Poor India.

 -

When "Balance" Goes Wrong in the Media

Got up. Turned on Radio 4. As usual. Within two minutes my blood was boiling and I was forced to hastily flick over to Radio 3, the classical music station. Why?

Because, in the interests of 'balance' in a discussion about NHS safety they had a doc from somewhere in the system and a woman whom I shan't name from an organisation called 'Cure the NHS.' In the two minutes she delivered one howler of a false analogy and one outright falsehood. CtNHS is a small group of people (its own description) who campaigned to expose the disaster at MidStafford Health. Well done.
Bur here's the problem: all that group had on its side was a) persistence and b) a genuine disaster which had been deliberately but clumsily hidden by the perpetrators. Note the absence of qualifications, expertise, objectivity or anything else which I would like to imagine plays a part in the selection of spokespeople on issues of national interest.
The spokeswoman's tone of voice was one we all recognise in many amateur campaigners on an issue which has caused them harm: sustained, monotonous sadness. This person, in my opinion, needs a long rest and some counselling to get over the trauma she experienced in losing a relative unnecessarily (I assume this to be the case. Most of the group are in that position.) Not being elevated to a status for which she is not qualified and in which she is now doing serious harm.
The false analogy was that the airline industry gets it right, now the NHS needs to do as well. Those with enough brains will immediately recognise that everything that can be known about an aeroplane is known and can be measured with high accuracy. The human body is orders of magnitude more complex and far from completely understood. But, and here's the problem, it sounds perfectly reasonable, and many listeners will be saying 'Yes. Absolutely.'
The falsehood was another catchy statement: 'The NHS spends a fortune on harming people.' Sorry - it doesn't. 'On' in that sentence is a synonym for 'for the purpose of' or 'in order to', in other words, intentionally. Not true, but again, sounds good.
And the harm she does? Blinding the citizenry to the fact that they still have one of the very best free health systems in the world. The only countries with better ones tend to have far higher rates of taxation than the British would tolerate, so value for money, it's the best there is. They need to be defending it, not badmouthing it.
What galls me is that Radio 4 is paid for out of the license fee. It has no need to sensationalise, to grab listeners by any means possible. Its license is to inform, so the criteria they should be applying to producing balanced stories is to ensure the representatives of competing points of view are qualified, well-informed and articulate.
If they took that approach, that woman would not be allowed anywhere near a microphone and the world would be a better place for it.

My Campaign Against the Bishop of Bristol

Background: Bristol is the refuge city of choice for quite a few refugees and immigrants from Africa because the city has a policy of welcoming the world to Bristol.

Our parish is about 65% black and  10% Indian (the music is outrageous!), many of them illegal or refugees pending resolution, during which time they are prevented from working or receiving welfare. Literally made destitute by decree. Our priest, the remarkable Fr Richard Mackay, has run up a thumping overdraft paying for lawyers, investigators and travel costs to tribunals, on which trips he usually accompanies them. He rescues people from vile detention centres. The diocese has hung a sword of Damocles over his head: stop it, or else.

14^th June 2013

The Annexe
Hobwell Lane
Long Ashton

Dear Bishop Declan, Your Grace,

I am a parishioner at St Nicholas Tolentino. When I first came to Bristol 15 months ago from New Zealand, my first priority was to find a parish where I felt at home, which would mean with the same priorities and spirituality as my beloved and dearly missed St Patrick’s Cathedral at home.

One of the elements important to me can be referenced by this line from St Pat’s published priorities:

• supporting  inner city out-reach to those in need or who are marginalised. We support and encourage Catholic social service agencies as well as the initiatives provided by other Churches in the downtown area.
  
  

They mean it, and they do it. Street people recognise the Cathedral as a home, and often wander in during Mass and at other times for a snooze on one of the back pews (they’re usually remarkably polite and considerate, even the mentally unwell). They are known by name and welcomed, grieved and prayed for when lost to death or institutionalisation.

Often at night Hindus can be found praying on the church steps. They say they recognise St Pats as a holy place, a shrine. It’s so lovely to come to Mass and see marigolds and daubs of colour on the steps.

It’s a hard act to follow. St Nick’s is alone in Bristol, at least that I could find, in practising that standard of Christ’s teaching. I don’t condemn – it is a high standard, difficult and, for the devoted clergy, demanding at all hours of the day and night. The St Pat’s presbytery is across the square, twenty yards away. People know they can knock on that door at any hour and it will open. It’s not a life for everyone.

What I do find hard to understand is that St Nick’s, far from being held up as a shining example by the diocese, is being brought to heel like a disobedient dog. The diocese’s website appears to show no wish to own and praise the enormous amount of time and money invested by Fr Richard and his team in helping the poor and marginalised, finding and sometimes funding lawyers, personally going to detention centres, police stations and courts to be a champion for the friendless.

I searched the site for anything that looked like a concern for the struggling and sometimes oppressed migrant communities of the city. The Justice and Peace Committee? Sorry. Advocating for justice in Brazil? ‘Investigating the possibility’ of working on human trafficking. ‘Re-examining racial justice issues.’ It hardly paints a picture of a church championing the kind of people Our Lord spent most of his time with.

The Annual Report, what does that say? Unsurprisingly, the first half of the narrative is about buildings. I have a fair idea what our magnificent new Holy Father, God protect his shadow, would have to say. A poor church for the poor? Clifton Diocese?

My point is: what a waste of riches. How about turning all this around in one simple stroke? Recognise that Fr Richard and St Nick’s are actually carrying Christ’s cross on behalf of the Diocese. Honour them as heroes, which they are. Feature their work in Diocesan reports. Appoint St Nick’s as the Diocesan Migrant Outreach Centre. It already is, de facto. Fund the Borderland Trust. So many of the stories are heartbreaking, but thanks to Fr Richard and his team, many fewer than might be. (I love this country and adore this wonderful city, but have been deeply shocked by some of the actions of the Home Office. But nowhere is perfect.)

What I suggest is the simple recognition of fact after all – the oppressed of this fair city already know where they can go and be sure to receive time and help. The buzz is on the street. To the Catholic Church. But not the Cathedral. The one at Lawford’s Gate.

I am sure you find some of Fr Richard’s viewpoints unacceptable, even unruly. But with good management, supporting his work need not necessarily provide him with a platform for all his views. He is a clever man, and not one to bite the hand that feeds his flock.

The Holy Father is looking for a new face for the Church. Clifton Diocese has one, ready-made. All you have to do is be proud of it. And fund it. You can certainly afford to.

Indeed, the question in these new times is – can you afford not to? I don’t imagine for a second that the Holy Father will be content to exhort and encourage. He knows what he’s up against, and is an untiring activist. Sooner or later there will be reviews. People may even ask for them – there’s a great deal of discontent out here among the laity. We have been scandalised for decades. We’re not happy. You have been doing good work with your review of Vatican II, but they are just words and words are never enough.

Remember what St Francis said. “Preach the Gospel by every means possible. Even use words, if you have to.”

This is exactly what Fr Richard and St Nick’s are doing, and we have an apparently endless stream of catechumens to show for it.

Enough. You get the point.

Respectfully, may God bless and forgive us all,

Christopher Hegan

cc: Fr Richard McKay

His reply:

Dear Christopher

Thank you for your letter in support of Father Mackay at St Nicholas of Tolentino. I will certainly take note of your comments.

With my best wishes

Yours sincerely

+ Declan

Rt Rev Declan Lang
Bishop of Clifton

My Campaign Against the Bishop of Bristol (continued)

26 July 2013

The Annexe
Hobwell Lane
Long Ashton
Bristol

Dear Bishop Declan, Your Grace,

Thank you for your reply of the 5^th inst.

I must confess I had hoped for a substantive, if not necessarily lengthy, response. Although I am but one parishioner of many, I hoped that the subject matter might elevate our exchange to a level of intercourse, albeit brief.

I refer you to the homily delivered by Pope Francis at Lampedusa, on a matter of such importance that it prompted his first visit outside Rome. He coins the memorable phrase “the globalisation of indifference” in a homily he specifies as intended “to challenge people’s consciences and lead them to reflection and a concrete change of heart.”

As we are all seeing, the Holy Father is a powerful and thoughtful user of language. His homilies and statements are entirely devoid of platitude and formula. He could have declared to some effect that he wanted a “new church for the poor.” He didn’t. He quite specifically said he wanted “a poor church for the poor.” (My emphasis.)

How can we square this with a diocese which has funds to invest with JP Morgan yet has not the money to pay for a lawyer when one of its own is threatened with being sliced away from home and parish in a grossly unequal battle? Such was the fate of John Patrick, a member of our choir, last Friday.

Let me answer: we simply cannot. It remains a broken circle.

Why is the diocese investing so much money? Against the future? What future? A future when we have too few parishioners to support our institutions? To plan for such a future seems to me verging on sinful. Did Jesus not say, “Sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof”? Or was He a bit off the mark with that one?

I am, from where you stand, a lone, insignificant and probably presumptuous voice. But I have had a lifetime as a communications professional and know very well how to create a ‘story’ when I need one. I know how to reach people. This is my committed campaign: to see Clifton Diocese become an active, visible champion of the poor and the discarded, using both its voice and its assets to help them.

Remember, Jesus did not say in Matthew 25-36 “I was in innocent in prison and you came to me”. You and many of your congregation may be concerned, as many are, about the problem of illegal immigration. If it is a problem – I’m not so sure. Even if those arriving become a burden on us, history tends to support the proposition that their more numerous young will be working to support us in our old age, when our too few children cannot. But it is beside the point. No position on this issue can provide an excuse for a wealthy church not to succour the penniless and over-whelmed in our midst.

So I say this: if you continue to rein in St Nicholas’ spending on helping the poor, I will do my best to out you. It may not concern you. I will probably fail. But not certainly. I have pulled offer tougher assignments in my time.

Respectfully, God bless and forgive us all,

Christopher Hegan

January 2014 Update: Although still technically in place, the order to stop helping people out of parish funds is not being enforced. Good on ya, Declan me old mate!

The Dishonourable Sword: Workers’ Welfare as Covert Industrial Subvention. 

The United Kingdom probably has the largest and most complex welfare system ever known. Much of its workings are the standard stuff of modern economics – the pretence that everyone should be in education, paid employment or retirement, i.e. full employment, continues as usual. This in defiance of the plain fact that for more than half a century standard economic theory has held that a certain level of unemployment is both desirable and necessary as a hedge against inflation. The clear and present threat of loss of employment is the sole available brake on wage demands in those economies such as the UK still locked into the adversarial employment relations model.
The German mitbestimmung, spectacularly successful as it has proved, is of course an effective alternative. Germany’s experience has shown that wages can effectively be limited by mutual agreement based on open books. Workers under mitbestimmung have shown themselves well able to recognise wage thresholds beyond which the success of the enterprise and therefore their jobs cease to be viable. This holds little political appeal in the left-right obsessed minds of British politicians and workers’ advocates, with each side holding the other to be unrestrainedly greedy. This is a pity and a waste, but it is business as usual, neither likely to change nor even particularly interesting, the quotidian folly of a society mired in 19th Century industrial relations philosophy.
I am more interested in the other, possibly larger slice of the welfare bill: payments to the poor in employment. In the mid 1980s New Zealand introduced a purer form of monetarism than that of either Britain or the United States; Thatcher was a fervent admirer of Minister of Finance Roger Douglas under the unfortunate Lange government, who swept away every single vestige of state support to the employed. Not that there were many to start with. The child benefit of around £7.50 per week per child had been around since Michael Savage’s far-reaching welfare reforms in the thirties. I part-funded the purchase of our first house by the common practice of child benefit capitalisation, which gave us 18 years’ worth of child benefit for both of our children – a substantial sum. The only other benefit was the ability for the employed to claim work expenses – study and training, work-related travel beyond the daily commute, clothing allowances, etc, which also went in the late 80s.
So arriving in the UK to see vast sums disbursed in welfare payments to the lower-waged was something of a shock. In my world it is now an absolute given - to go into work is to leave direct welfare behind. Free or subsidised health care is not viewed as welfare, but as a right, derived from the shared value that access to healthcare being dependent on wealth is immoral, an anathema.
So why is it seen as necessary in the UK? On the face of it, you could call it the good old British sense of fair play, simple compassion for the strugglers. But scratch the surface and we see a deeply unpleasant underbelly: a hidden subvention for British industry and agriculture, direct support being under the firm and ungenerous thumb of Brussels.
Suppose the housing benefit, the winter fuel payments, the child tax breaks and all the rest of it were swept away in one fell swoop. What would happen? Housing costs would white ant the rest of the family budget. Then what – imaginable, if unlikely, rent and mortgage default on a huge scale, hundreds of thousands of simultaneous evictions? If that were the only consequence, well, rents would simply have to drop. So what? The consequences of that are not hard to calculate – thousands of highly geared landlords going bankrupt, for a start. A squeeze on the income of thousands of retirees living off investment properties.
But that would not happen, because experience shows that most people will freeze and starve before they give up their home to go – where? If there were any slack in the system, the lowly paid might stand some chance of enduring the shock. But there isn’t any, at least not nearly enough. My son-in-law and his family simply could not survive on their meagre earnings alone. Most people would simply choose unemployment and continuing welfare support. And it would be a valid choice. You can’t hold your job if you can’t afford to get there. You can’t put in a day’s work if you’re constantly hungry. You can’t show up to a retail or office job in shabby old clothes. Of course the first to go would be the Smiths, the Perkins, the Jameses. The Wronskis, the Odungas and Wachikes would hang on longer, the ones who will live six to a room and subsist on rice and beans, a dynamic already observable under the current system. Cue deepening hatreds, the oppressed turning on the oppressed. So often ‘taking our jobs’ really means doing our jobs under conditions we refuse to accept and should not have to accept.
Shutting down workers’ welfare could not be made without declaring the whole plan, being an intention to divert those billions into supporting capacity and advancement in agriculture and industry, into research and development and where necessary direct price support. The British public has become so used to ubiquitous welfare it is likely that, even if the scheme were openly described as a reallocation of resources, the reaction from the street, the pulpit and the leader page would still be to flay the heartlessness of the politicians driving them. The British sense of entitlement to welfare has become endemic. I suspect very few see workers' welfare for what it really is. From the other side of the fence, the beneficiaries of these hidden subsidies would howl about the unavoidable wage increases which would follow, ignoring or not trusting the intention to replace them in a more open and targeted manner.
It is a fact that, failing that strategy forbidden by treaty, many British products and services would become more expensive than those of their competitors. So we see what this really is all about – international competitiveness. A deeply dishonourable covert subvention that reduces its recipients to the role of part-time beggars on their knees before the armies of bureaucrats employed to administer their welfare. Their day-to-day existence haunted by the spectre of The Cuts. Perfectly honest hard-working workers who deserve decent wages and the respect due to those who thrive by their efforts are often driven to become cheats, sharing with their mates every new wrinkle to work the system, escape deductions, drive up entitlements through falsehood and secrecy. Absolute loss of belief in the political process and the law.
It is a terrible price to pay for staying in Europe and exalting the Holy Grail of free trade. This is the hidden cost of Europe: the humiliation of the British worker.
It is too high.

It's the Tax Laws, Stupid!

Yesterday Google admitted that in ten years they had paid £10m in taxes in the UK and collected £12bn. Then they said they had obeyed all the UK tax regulations. The chilling truth is that they probably did. I wonder how many people like myself are shouting at their radios "It's the tax laws, stupid!" It is not greedy evil capitalists. They have been encouraged by the ethos of modern crony capitalism to do exactly what they have done. By the standards of the market they have not 'been evil.'

So why are successive governments taking so agonisingly long to change, if indeed there is even a serious intention to do so. I suspect that Europe is the lesser obstacle. Indeed the anti-Europe lobby, growing stronger every day and with good reason, could seize on exactly this fiscal necessity to lever us out of Europe.

The greater reason, one of which we are fearful in so many economic spheres, is the spectre of international competitiveness. The argument goes that if we step too hard on the multinantional's toes they will simply lose interest, up stakes and quit the market. OK, maybe that wouldn't cost so much in taxes. But the jobs. And the insult. Cue collective shudder.

So here is a lesson from little New Zealand. In the reform of the health system the labour government of Helen Clark instituted Pharmac, a body whose sole function was to manage the supply of medicines. In order to get the best deal for the New Zealand consumer they started to play hardball with the pharmaceutical companies. Unfortunately they had to show their cojones to be taken seriously, which they did in a couple of instances by refusing to pay the demanded price and refused to fund the cost of the drugs in contention, forcing some patients to settle for a less effective alternative. In effect, they used patients as hostages whom they were clearly prepared to shoot. Ouch!

It worked. The drug companies sat down, furious, squirming, at the table and started to talk. Impressive deals started to flow, to the benefit of sick kiwis. Over the next couple of years one company after another declared in the media that this had gone too far, they couldn't recover their costs, they would pull out of the country. No big deal, surely - four million customers? Ha! The loss of the NZ account would scarcely register on their global spreadsheet.

To date, how many companies have actually quit the market? One, their product easily replaced by generics (another reason they hate leaving any market). Lesson - never, ever, underestimate the greed of the multinational corporation. Who would have dreamed a tiny handful of customers on the edge of the world could produce so much muscle? I promise you, no corporation will forgo a single penny they can get their lunch-hooks on.

Look at the fines Microsoft paid in Europe. Even when European Court fined Microsoft €561m for leaving the browser choice pop-up out of 15m copies of Windows 7, finely calculated to equal their total share of income from those sales, Microsoft did not consider for a second quitting the European market.

Because it is also not just about the money, but global strategy. The world-dominant brands cannot afford to leave any significant market open to give a competitor the space to grow and become strong. The UK may be smaller, but in the English-speaking world - the rich part - the UK is still hugely influential.

Conclusion: no matter what they threaten, no significant multi-national will quit the UK over tax rates. The implicit threat to quit the UK if the taxes become too fair is a paper tiger. Do it, Jimmy. Do it George.

Thatcher - Saw Everything But the Utterly Obvious

Thatcherism and Populist Capitalism. Virtually synonyms. The idea is that you turn everyone into a grocer, funding the project out of the sale of all those enterprises put together in over two centuries for the public good - water, power, broadcasting, railways and much more. Create shares for them to own, and trade in, giving everybody a chance to become even wealthier grocers.
It's a brilliant idea and it works. Unless you're no good at being a grocer. Then, you're stuffed.
Well, the grocer economists respond, people must accept that if we are to be a strong and prosperous society people must get up to speed, stop expecting the state to watch out for them. We have provided the means, now get on with it.
Unfortunately Thatcher in England, Reagan in the US, and Roger Douglas in New Zealand who, it can be strongly argued, did it first and gave those other big fish the idea in the first place, were all blind to one toweringly obvious fact, something that any first year psychology student could have told them. Some people are just too thick. Low IQ. Born that way. Hardware, not software, and unfixable.
The old system had a place for those people, and not just paternalistically. It gave them simple, lowly paid but utterly secure jobs in the public service. The man behind the counter at the Department of Railways was dull, unambitious, knew his place and was happy to stay there stamping pieces of paper. Actually, the pieces of paper did need to be stamped, so we had a society that had an honourable use for everyone from the high flyer to the lowly plodder. It was a perfectly good system, and it worked.
Until, let's be frank, greedy, selfish and corrupt unions wrecked it. Take careful note of the qualifier corrupt; I'm certainly not anti-union, but corruption will ruin anything. In the post-war era we had rotten trade unionism and it needed to be taken out. For that the United Kingdom owes Margaret Thatcher a huge debt, although the pendulum, probably inevitably, swung too far and needs correcting. Strong, honest unions are an essential component of a fair and successful democracy.
But back to the thesis. The neo-capitalists respond that society can take care of the incompetent with welfare support, a specious idea shot full of obvious holes. For one, a supply of money that can be ratcheted freely up and down is no substitute for essential services, because the services tend to be absolute, rather than unitised. You either see a doctor, or you don't. In NZ if you don't have any money you, or your child, simply does not get to see a doctor. The visits may be subsidised but they are not free. There's no such thing as a part of a doctor's visit, or a tap out of which water partly flows, in the way that a pound or a dollar can be reduced or increased in infinite fractions. So there's that.
Then, there's the opprobrium. Sure, we used to look down on and make jokes about the dummy behind the railway counter. But we did not vilify him as a parasite.
Worst, there's the fear. When there is a real possibility of falling into utter destitution simply because you're not bright enough to make the right choices at the right time, you feel fear. Fear which further cripples the already compromised ability to comprehend and succeed.
By creating the society we have to day, in which the least talented have no place, the neo-capitalists have worked evil.
Since the brightest and most avaricious will never choose to work for the Inland Revenue, there will always be an echelon of human swine smarter and more motivated than those we hire to collect their share from them. They may always make obscene amounts of money and pay little or no tax, growing inexorably wealthier at the expense of the rest. But in creating a society which venerates the individual acquisition of money as the greatest of all goods, the neo-capitalists have removed the stigma from these people, the true parasites. In this too they have worked evil.
Trust me - they were and are not stupid. They surely foresaw this, and see it now, and choose it. It is a simple, moral truth that these people, the Thatchers and Camerons of this world have been the agents of a great evil, and not unwittingly either.
Actually, there was another aspect to the great and failing neo-capitalist experiment. It was the choice to reject as superstition the old saying that money is the root of all evil, and instead turn to money for a single yardstick by which absolutely anything could be measured. And yes, they added, absolutely everything can in fact be numerically measured. Who is the best doctor? Why, the one who treats the most patients for the least amount of money. Reward that man or woman. Which is the best school? The one that educates the most pupils for the least amount of money. It may be squalid. The teaching might be rubbish. The doctor's patients may be sick and in pain. No matter. The providers are heroically productive (and wealthy), and there is no greater good than that.
It is surely time to recognise that the experiment is a failure. The patient is miserable, possibly dying. Call it off.
If only we could unbreak that egg. In a better world we might set our minds to rebalancing the operational structure of society so that we intentionally created honourable work for everyone. I refuse to believe that human beings, who have learned to manipulate systems of far greater complexity than a modern economy, can't do this. The solution is actually as simple as it is apparently unachievable: end the worship of money. Although in fact money is just the measuring stick. The underlying dehumanising principle is that idea of universal measurement, the belief that absolutely everything can be quantified. In business it is a time-honoured principle - if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. In that limited sphere the proposition stands, but you simply cannot measure the kindness of a nurse, the ability of a great teacher to inspire. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle applies even on this scale: it is impossible to absolutely measure anything without altering it, so it is theoretically and practically impossible to know everything about anything. Teachers preparing reports into the small hours, teachers who are restricted to dispensing named and quantified units of information according to an iron-clad curriculum cease to be great teachers. Nurses and doctors, a similar lot.
There are societies which seem to have a better grip on this - Sweden is one. And what do you know? They are not only happier places than most, they are also wealthier. Odd, that. I believe - no, observe - that a caring society where no-one has to live in fear of destitution enjoys a collective lightness of spirit which transcends the crude maths of economics and produces genuine prosperity.
A synonym to start, a tautology to finish.
Goodness is good.

The Fencible Girl, Chapter 13: First Encounter

Marshall McLuhan, smart bugger that he was, said the best way to tell if you would like a book was to turn to page 69. As it happens, Chapter 13 of The Fencible Girl starts on page 69. So...

Rawiri and Winnie took less than ten minutes to reach the beach called Takapuripuri. The tide was racing out – there was now less than two feet of water in the bay and within ten or twenty minutes there would be half a mile of mudflat between them and the water. There was not a moment to lose.

They both avoided looking at the churned up stretch of sand a few yards away where the raiders had driven their captives on board the waka with shouts, kicks and blows with the flat of their taiaha spears.

Rawiri plunged into the undergrowth on the foreshore and came back dragging a light dugout canoe less than four yards long. A single outrigger shaped liked a solid, miniature canoe was attached to the main hull by two poles lashed across the gunwales, or top edges of the hull. The design was simple – being double-ended, the craft could travel in either direction in order to always have the outrigger on the side away from the wind, keeping it stable in all weathers.

Wasting not a moment they threw their loads into the hull. Winnie jumped in while Rawiri heaved the craft forward and threw himself aboard, jumping into position and paddling in long, strong strokes. The light craft shot forward and within minutes they were out of the tidal flats and on the outer edges of the channel.

While Rawiri kept the craft steadily into the wind, in water deep enough to not run aground but still clear of the outgoing tidal flow racing towards the distant harbour mouth, Winnie opened the bundle wrapped in the big mat. She passed the musket in its holster to Rawiri, who clamped its upper, open end between his legs to keep it dry. Then she laid the pole across the outriggers and the long side of the mat beside it. Taking Rawiri’s largest bone fish hook with its finely woven flax line attached she swiftly, using a long running stitch, fastened the long edge to the pole.

She fastened the three strongest cords they had to the top of the long pole she had chosen for the mast and tied one to the stern outrigger arm, one looped around the pointed bow of the waka and the third to the side opposite the outrigger, where the arm at the front crossed the hull.

Then she changed places with Rawiri. Although Winnie had never used a paddle before, it was quite simple to paddle this way and that to maintain a steady position pointing into the wind so the sail would not catch.

As Rawiri set to work, they heard cries from the shore, now some two hundred yards away. Winnie’s heart sank. It was her parents, accompanied by three of Edward’s men. She could hear them clearly across the water.

“Winnie!” called her father. “Come back. Please don’t do this! Come back now.” She glanced at them, feeling her heart wrench with the conflict between wanting to obey her parents and her compelling need to help Rawiri. He suppressed any acknowledgement and went on rigging the sails, raising the pole and sail upright against the forward outrigger arm where it crossed the waka. 

“Winnie! Come back this instant, young woman. How dare you!” She could see her father touch Freddie by the arm, shaking his head. She shook his hand away, repeating her demand for Winnie to return. Her anger made it easier for Winnie to ignore her. Rawiri, who had only his mother to whom he felt deeply protective, lost his resolve and looked at Winnie with pleading eyes. He knew only too well that if it had been his mother on the shore he would have turned back.

Winnie tried to think of some way Rawiri, who had never as far as she knew sailed anything, could carry on by himself, and failed. If she returned, if that is she could persuade him to take her back, it was all over for him and his chance of rescuing his mother. Rawiri stood the pole with the three cords attached up in the boat, against the front outrigger arm. After gently tightening the three main cords Winnie had put in place, Rawiri took more short lengths of cord and lashed the pole to the arm, using more lengths to secure the pole however else he could. While Edward called out again in a more encouraging tone, Winnie tried to focus on admiring Rawiri’s speed and method. The previous year she had seen a music teacher re-string a violin; he first put all the strings in place, and then tuned them up one by one until they were all correctly tensioned and in tune. Rawiri took the same approach, first choosing the right lengths and thicknesses of cord for each position, and then ‘tuning’ them one by one until the makeshift mast was locked firmly in position, each lashing tightened to perfection. 

After watching him for a couple of minutes, during which he looked at her twice, seeing her struggle against her father’s calls, he just said, ”Please. Please, Winnie.” She could stand it no longer and started to paddle along the current parallel to the shore, driving the boat forward until her parents were almost out of sight as they followed the boat’s path along the shore. Just before she lost sight of them around a point, she turned and saw her mother with her head in her hands, sobbing, with her father’s arms around her. At that moment, with the paddle in her hand, she came closer to turning back than at any point in the escape. Finally she waved. “Don’t worry – I will be back. I love you. I love you.” She tried to shout but her voice choked in her throat. Shaking her head to clear her feelings Winnie turned and dug the paddle in hard. Within seconds they were gone. Rawiri saw the tears pouring down her face and said, “Thank you. Thank you, Winnie. It will be all right. They will forgive.”

Winnie wasn’t so sure but there was no turning back now. She rested and let the sail swing free for the five more minutes he took to complete the task.

When all was ready, Rawiri returned to the paddle position and brought the waka around into the wind. As the wind drew the sail across the boat Winnie grabbed the lower cord. Rawiri turned the waka stern to the wind and the sail swung out and filled with a powerful jerk.

The effect was so dramatic they were taken by surprise – for a second, as the boat leapt forward, the outrigger reared up in the air and only Rawiri’s lightning reaction in throwing his weight onto it prevented a disaster which could have ended their expedition then and there. Once steadied and brought into the wind the little waka with the two youngsters aboard took off like a horse under the spur. Within seconds they were flying along at a speed that unnerved them both – it was certainly faster than Rawiri had ever travelled on water before. A huge, exultant grin lit up his face and, for the first time since Winnie had met him, he roared with laughter. Even Kura joined in the fun, flying up into the air above the boat and ducking and diving around their heads for several minutes before settling on Winnie’s leg, fluttering her wings to steady herself against the wind and the movement of the boat.

In the note to her father that she had placed under his saddle, Winnie had promised him to remain safe and contact him when she could. But she had not revealed what Rawiri had explained, adding to his earlier comment that he thought they were heading for the Hauraki Gulf. Rawiri, clever as he was, had worked out that there was nowhere else for such a large party to be based. South of Auckland was densely populated by the well-organised Tainui tribe. North was held by a variety of smaller tribes dominated by the Ngapuhi, a federation of independent sub-tribes. Although not as organised as Tainui, with frequent feuds and inter-village raids, their territory was still too thickly populated for so many warriors and slaves to remain hidden.

The final point, which confirmed his theory for the pair, was the question of why they were taking so many slaves. Not just those of Rawiri’s village, but the others her father had told about. The gang was up to something big, needing up to a hundred workers. This meant that they must be based in some unpopulated region within reach of the waka.  Only one place met that description – somewhere in or across the Hauraki Gulf, the wide body of water between the east coast of the mainland and the long mountainous peninsula that stretched north, twenty miles away on the other side of the water. The gulf contained numerous islands, but the larger ones were inhabited, the smaller too small to conceal any large undertaking. But the peninsula itself had been so emptied of population by Hongi Hika’s massacres that large tracts were still uninhabited thirty years later.

Although currently crossing the Manukau Harbour on the other side of the mainland they were making towards one of the narrow points on the island where a river flowing into the Manukau harbour was only a short haul overland to the head of a river feeding into the gulf. These places where the two coasts were very close to each other had long been used by Maori as ‘portages’ for their canoes. They would paddle up one river, drag their vessel across land and launch into the other.

The most important portage was at Otahuhu, the site of the shortest crossing. Both Rawiri and Winnie doubted the raiders would use this because of the Fencible fort that commanded a complete end-to-end view of the busy slipway and road.

Rawiri knew the names but not the locations of the others, while Winnie, from having studied the large chart on the wall of her father’s home office, had some idea of their location but not which was which.

Their only chance of knowing where the raiders would cross would be to catch up until they had them in sight and keep as great a distance between them as possible.

In this respect both wind and fortune were with them. They sailed for almost an hour south-east toward Otahuhu, during which time Rawiri fed Kura and the two bagged tui from a large bottle of honey water. The wind, as Rawiri had predicted, held true and steady and even increased in strength on the open water, driving the little craft through the water at the speed of a galloping horse. Suddenly Rawiri gave a shout and pointed. Sure enough, by squinting into the distance Winnie made out the form of the great waka taua, white-tipped paddles flashing in the sunlight as they rose and fell in perfect unison. It was making good speed but the belting breeze drove the little waka before it at twice the pace of their quarry. 

To avoid coming up upon it, Rawiri altered their course to due east, putting them on a long line that steadily brought them closer to the big canoe, one that they could easily shorten or lengthen by small adjustments of their course.

Within twenty or so minutes they were as close as they thought wise. Rawiri’s spirits soared when he realised that they were now in control of situation and, short of an accident or failing wind, the waka could do nothing to shake them off. He leaned forward at the paddle, grinning with intense, joyful focus, the expression of a hunter who knows he has his game cornered and is merely choosing the moment of the kill. He altered their course again to further avoid coming too close and arousing suspicion on board the big waka.

Their intentions were in any case well hidden by the number of other craft on the vast harbour. The two hours before and after low tide were prime fishing time; at least fifteen boats of various sorts were scattered across the water, some areas of which were now separate channels between flat expanses exposed by the tides. Groups of women and children gathered shellfish from the rich beds of cockles and the larger pipi, shaped like a flattened egg, big, tasty and nutritious. In some shallows the even larger round flat-sided scallops, most delicious of all and usually found in deeper water, could be gathered by hand. A two-masted schooner was cautiously navigating the channels under light sail on its way towards the port, having crossed the fearsome Manukau sandbar at the harbour’s entrance a few hours earlier on the high tide, the safest time to make the run.

From the position and direction of the big war canoe they could see it had skirted around the southern reaches of the harbour to avoid coming too close to other boats. Winnie and Rawiri were under no such restriction and were able to set a straight course through the fishers, not all of them Maori. Winnie’s thoughts returned constantly to the tremendous trouble she was in with her parents. She hoped that one of the two or three European fishing boats would notice them and report their well-being to her father once back on land; she had no doubt Edward would soon put out the word for everyone in the community to be on the look-out.

As they flew along, keeping their distance from the big waka, Winnie noticed a sailing dinghy labouring along in the direction of the great canoe. After keeping an eye on the boat as they drew closer she became certain that this was indeed the lone sailor’s objective. She could also see that the man was facing difficulties. His sail showed an ugly tear about half way up the mast where the fabric had torn away. Although also rowing strongly, he often paused to bail water with a billy, the basic tin can with a wire handle used by workers and travellers to brew tea and cook food.

Bit by bit Winnie started to feel sure this was the same lone European they had come across that night in the forest, a feeling heightened by a return of the weird sense that she knew him, or had met him somewhere before. He was still too far away for her to be able to make out his features, but she kept her gaze on him in the hope that she might finally recognise him.

She was roused from her staring by a shout from Rawiri, who was pointing at the waka, now some thousand yards distant.

So far, the waka had appeared to be heading straight for Otahuhu, which could now be made out in the distance. Rawiri’s call had been to alert her to the fact that it had turned to the south, heading down harbour, no doubt to one of the longer, less-used portages. Within a few minutes of their holding this new course the man, who was about the same distance from the waka and still closing, quit rowing and, after hurling a few billies-full of water from the bilges, appeared to be fossicking through something out of sight in his boat. Soon she could see he had something under his arm and was struggling with it in some way. Next moment his intentions became clear as he threw both hands in the air and released a bird, which circled the boat two or three times in an ever higher and wider arc before flying off in a direct line to Onehunga. It was a pigeon. 

The man now changed course, rowing hard and with an almost desperate energy, heading straight for Otahuhu about two miles distant. As she watched, Winnie saw the sail, now receiving the full force of the wind, ripped further until it was almost in two almost useless parts. 

Again she heard a shout from Rawiri, this time a fierce cry of alarm. He pointed again at the waka. Horrified, she saw that it had changed course again and was now pursuing the stranger. She tried to calculate whether he would reach the safety of the settlement before being caught. He was a powerful oarsman with seemingly unlimited energy, with the wind behind him and providing some push even to the broken sail, but the waka had now picked up speed. She could see a man in a cloak moving up and down the length of the boat, obviously shouting, gesticulating with his spear and even, once or twice, using it to beat one of the paddlers on the back.

It now seemed likely but not certain that he would be caught. He was rowing at a tremendous pace, pausing every couple of minutes to frantically bail water before returning to his task. To Winnie’s alarm Rawiri had changed heading to intercept the canoe and was pointing at it and shouting, “Look! Look!”

Winnie’s heart sank as she made out the cause for Rawiri’s alarm. Two warriors had abandoned their paddles and were making their way through the captives, kicking them and striking them with what Winnie saw were muskets. They were going to shoot the fleeing stranger.

She looked back at Rawiri. He responded by nodding his head toward the musket holster lashed to the mast. There was no mistaking his meaning. Winnie felt as if a steel band was being tightened around her chest as she sized up the situation and the ways it could go. She had taken the musket without having a fixed idea of its purpose; it was simply to equip themselves as well as possible for what could be a dangerous venture. Now she was confronted by a hideous choice – sit by and watch this man be shot or take up the musket herself and … She pushed the thought out of her mind. The Maori were shooting from a moving canoe; they were still quite some distance away; reloading a musket took most people quite a long time and they may get only two or three shots away before he was safe.

Almost as they formed in her mind she saw the arguments fail. As she watched, she could not avoid noticing that the great heavy waka cleaved as steady as a rock through the small chop on the harbour, and that the paddlemaster’s calls had produced another significant speed increase. They fired their first pair of shots and, as expected, missed. 

But the second shots came quickly – far too quickly. The Maori were doing something ingenious, something she had never seen or heard of. The standard military procedure was to pour gunpowder down the barrel, then remove the ramrod from its groove underneath the barrel, use it to ram paper wadding down the barrel to hold the powder in place, then drop in the lead ball and ram that home, return the rod to its groove and finally shoot. The average soldier could do this twice in one minute, a fast one thrice. She had counted on the Maori taking considerably longer, giving the stranger time to get away.

But even from this distance she could see that they were doing away with the time-consuming business with the ramrod altogether. They seemed to simply pour in the powder, add a piece of wadding, then the ball, then compact the load by slamming the butt of the gun once or twice on the decking before firing, then quickly repeating the procedure. 

“Shoot! Shoot!” shouted Rawiri, not understanding her reluctance and gesticulating at the musket still in its holster. They could both now see that unless she did so, the stranger was a dead man.

Although the distance between themselves and the waka was at least four hundred yards, Winnie knew she held a deadly edge.

Among Major Meldon’s various interests was a consuming passion for military technology, above all the various kinds of soldier’s musket. 

Always up to date with the latest developments, Edward had seen to the delivery in England of twenty of the latest Springfield musketoons, a shortened version of the standard musket. But these were special: the barrels, normally a smooth tube, came with long, spiralling grooves on the inside and had mounted sights, new features normally found only in advanced types of sporting rifles. The grooves, or ‘rifling’ caused the lead ball to leave the barrel spinning rapidly, making the ball travel much further and in a reliably straight line – a huge advantage over the older smooth-barrelled weapons. 

With these, instead of a group of soldiers blazing away in a barrage, the individual soldier could pick a target, aim, and expect to hit it. This revolutionary weapon would change the nature of warfare. It was one of these precious, state of the art guns that Winnie was now going to use, accurate to an incredible five hundred yards in the right conditions. These conditions were far from perfect, but the range was now less than three hundred yards, and closing, and Winne was a crack shot.

Although scarcely able to breathe, she took the musket from its holster and spoke. “I’m going to put the barrel on your shoulder. When I am in place, let go the sail and bring the boat to face straight into the wind and waves. Do you understand?” 

He nodded, pale under his brown colouring.

“When I’m ready I’ll nod. You must stay as still as you can. The shot will make a very loud noise. You might not hear properly for a few minutes. Do you understand?”

Another nod.

Winnie desperately fended off the thought that she was going to try to injure or even kill another human being, fixing her resolve by remembering the dead children at Parekaroro.

Winnie took a cartridge from her father’s case and quickly loaded the musket, going through the step-by-step routine she knew so well. She tore the top off the paper cartridge with her teeth and put the lead ball on top in her mouth, both to hold it and lubricate it with her spit. She carefully but quickly poured the powder down the barrel, then screwed up the paper to make a wad. She slid the long brass ramrod from its groove under the barrel and rammed the wad and powder down hard. Finally dropping the ball down the barrel she tamped it home with one more push of the rod and returned the rod to its groove. All this took her less than twenty seconds – a fast time even for a top musketeer.

She knelt on one knee before Rawiri in the classic front rank shooting position and lowered the barrel to rest on his shoulder. Two more shots rang out – five times in less than a minute, Winnie thought. Unbelievable. A quick look confirmed that they were still shooting standing up and had both missed, which was good, but the range between them and their target was closing fast, which was not. Luckily they were standing well away from the captives on the platform surrounding the majestic and beautifully carved prow, giving Winnie a clear shot. 

Rawiri let go the sail and let the boat’s momentum spin it around into the wind, holding it as still there as he could manage; not as steady as she wished, but Rawiri deftly adjusted his posture slightly to provide her a solid support. At the last minute, she thought of the possible effects of the recoil. The last thing they needed was for the barrel to kick up and knock her friend unconscious. 

Leaning forward she gently pushed Rawiri’s head to one side, gesturing with the palm of her hand that he was to stay in that position. He gave a slight nod to show he understood, bending his neck even further to stay clear of the barrel. She extended her back leg and braced it strongly against the outrigger and took aim. 

Now Winnie put to use the training her father had given her with the sporting guns they had used in South Africa. She knew how far to aim in front of a moving target depending on how fast they were moving and how far away, that is, to shoot to the place the target would be at when the bullet arrived. She was also skilled in allowing for the effect wind had on a bullet as it flew through the air. The barrel still moved slightly, but she fixed her eye on a spot about a foot in front of the nearer warrior and tracked it steadily with the waka’s forward motion. The man was quickly reloading, which kept him in a fairly still position. She breathed out slowly to calm herself and nodded to Rawiri. As the barrel swung slightly with the movement of the boat to meet her imaginary target point, she fired. The recoil pushed her backwards but she held her position. Rawiri jumped with the shock but reassured her with a nod.

As the wind quickly blew the smoke clear she saw that she had missed, but must have been close enough for the man to hear or feel the ball whistle past. The waka was still closing on the man in the boat, but now the warriors’ attention was divided.

Winnie noticed with surprise but also relief that, in spite of the fact that she was engaged in the deadly and horrifying process of taking human life, an extraordinary calm had settled on her. She felt no fear, and neither reluctance nor eagerness. She was in a state of…efficiency. That was the only word. She felt perfectly efficient. These thoughts flashed through her mind as her hands raced through the familiar routine of reloading. They could hear shouts from across the water – a glance showed that many of the crew had spotted them and were pointing their way. She noted with satisfaction that her first target had now finished reloading and had turned to fire upon her. She took up the firing position again, knowing that her target would be attempting to steady himself, offering an easier target.

She nodded again to Rawiri. She took aim and fired while her target was still taking aim. A split second after her shot he too fired. Through clearing smoke she saw his head snap back and he toppled backwards into the water, out of sight. A small hole appeared in their top of their sail. Rawiri roared “Maté! (Dead!) Maté! Ta heke é!”

The effect of her shot was dramatic. At least half the warriors dropped their paddles and scrambled for their muskets. The waka slowed dramatically. Instantly they saw the big European from the forest leap to his feet, roaring commands. Some warriors responded, others didn’t. He fired one pistol and the air and levelled the other at a nearby warrior who had started loading his musket. The man quickly returned to paddling, as did his fellows, but the delay had given their quarry the chance to widen the gap between them.

By now, Winnie had reloaded. Checking the stranger she saw that he was rowing more strongly than ever and was now within half a mile of the shore. She had improved his chances considerably but not enough to be certain. 

She knelt again and lowered the barrel to Rawiri’s shoulder. The lone musketeer had recovered his senses and was raising his musket for another shot. Two more were coming forward to join him. As the waka following the man was now closer to their little craft it was an easier shot. Going for safety, she lowered the barrel slightly, breathed out and squeezed the trigger.

The remaining marksman doubled over, dropped his musket and, clutching his side, toppled off the bow into the water.

“Quick Rawiri. Let’s go!”

With the sail flapping in the wind by her side, she had no difficulty grabbing the line while Rawiri spun the little boat round away from the wind. The sail snapped tight and they shot forward, rapidly picking up speed. The big waka, now less than three hundred yards away, turned to chase them, but a few seconds’ observation reassured Winnie that as long as the wind kept up they would never catch them. Rawiri headed straight for the Otahuhu channel, less than fifteen hundred yards away now. The tide had slackened to still during the exchange of fire and the wind was carrying them towards the shore.

“No Rawiri. Not Otahuhu. Father may have sent word and they may well be looking for me. Follow the wind and take the quickest way to land.”

The landscape ahead consisted of a few farmlets separated by areas of well-developed second growth forest, and it was for one of the larger forested areas that they were headed. 

Once more, Winnie checked the waka and was worried to see that it had given up the chase and was now broadside on to them. The entire crew had dropped their paddles to load their muskets. With thirty or muskets blazing away in the quick-fire Maori style they were far from safe, even at the slowly lengthening range, still about three hundred yards as they were not heading straight away from the waka. 

The shooting started. At least half a dozen bullets hit the boat and the sail, but not only were neither of them were hit, she saw a ball fall into the boat after failing to pierce the sail. The range was now about three hundred and fifty yards and the firing was constant. Suddenly Rawiri yelped and clutched his right arm, although still managing to retain his grip on the paddle.

He let go again and grabbed the paddle with both hands. Winnie saw a nasty bruise starting to spread out from a blackened spot on his arm, but there was no blood. Looking down she saw the ball rolling around at his feet.

She burst into a peal of relieved laughter. Rawiri glared at her, furious that she could think of his injury as a joke.

“I’m sorry, Rawiri, I’m sorry. But don’t you see – the bullet didn’t hurt you – they are too far away now. Look!” She retrieved the ball from between his feet and showed it to him. “We’re safe! We’re safe!”

At this, Rawiri too started to laugh. For a good minute or more they were both shaking with laughter, grinning hugely at each other. Rawiri clapped her on the back once or twice. It was the laughter of release, of the end of fear, and it felt good. Even the sudden sobering recollection that she, a girl of twelve, had just killed a man and wounded another, possibly fatally, could not dampen her happiness at having saved the stranger and escaped with their lives.

Shots continued to ring out, but now they were falling in the water between twenty and fifty yards behind them. It struck them both as vastly comical and their laughter continued to ring in the breeze. Even Kura seemed to share their delight, wheeling and diving around their heads, once giving Winnie a playful nip on the ear. As she watched she saw the waka turn and resume its southerly course, which relieved her completely.  They were safe.

But then she saw in the distance that the European in the stern had a long spyglass to his eye trained directly upon them. Instinctively she ducked her head to conceal her face under her bonnet but knew that her move was too late. He would have been observing them throughout the barrage.

They may be safe for the moment, but they were now also known. As they closed on the shore, Winnie felt the cold chill of returning fear.