Farewell, readers, fair and few

Peter Hawes wonders if he ever had any readers, given no-one ever commented or complained to the editor.

There’s an eerie little tale that has been around for thousands of years and was probably in the Bible, until they realised its metaphysical preposterousness gave the game away.

It has been rewritten by short story writers such asWSomerset Maugham and Jorge Luis Borges and goes like this:

A merchant in Baghdad sent his brother to the market to buy, say, figs. While there in the throng of shoppers, he was jostled by a person behind and, on turning, found it was Death.

Death looked at him and made, what he later described to his brother as ‘‘a threatening gesture’’.

The merchant, pretty sure that Baghdad was no place for his brother, gave him a horse to flee his fate and off he galloped to Samarra, 110 kilometres away. Then the merchant, brave and loyal, marched down to the market, found Death and confronted him: ‘‘Why did you make a threatening gesture towards my innocent brother?’’

‘‘That wasn’t a threatening gesture,’’ replied Death, ‘‘it was a gesture of surprise at seeing him here. I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.’’

Neat, eh? Well replace the brother with me and Death with the editor and you’ve got my own story. I have felt Death gesturing towards my column for some time. I have hidden behind a barricade of words, but he tracked me to my Samarra at the beach. You can type, but you can’t hide, so Curmudgeon is dead.

My demise began with the incredibly rapid changes in the English language. For example, ‘‘Awesome’’, ‘‘choice’’, ‘‘whatever’’, ‘‘transparent’’ and so on all meant what they really mean only 10 years ago. In the same period, verbs were also perverted. The ‘‘a’’ of the preterite was replaced by the ‘‘u’’ of the past participle: ‘‘I swam strongly but drowned’’ has been replaced by ‘‘I swum strongly but drowned.’’ No wonder I drowned, I was swimming in the wrong part of speech.

TV ads scream about their ‘‘great prices’’ – don’t they know what great means? The effect is that Harvey Norman, Briscoes, Countdown et al, are publicly confessing that their prices are astronomically huge, and nobody notices.

I have given up on ‘‘few’’ and ‘‘less’’ – the fewer said about it the better. Last week, a TV3 bozo told me that ‘‘a consignment of 7000 cows are being shipped to China’’. Such infantile transgression of good linguistic manners grieve me. Increasing numbers of people couldn’t care few!

A confession I can now make is that Mary at the Dairy in Upper Turakina, after ordering copies of the Standard on the strength of my contribution, then cancelled because I was so dumb no-one could understand what I was talking about. One sympathetic local defended me: ‘‘I don’t think you’re dumb, Pete, I think you’re a smartarse.’’ The world has left me behind and moved into new-speak, a word I nearly pinched from George Orwell’s 1984.

So I remain alone in an ancient language. I feel much like the ape that stood on the lowest branch of the tree of life but wouldn’t jump, wouldn’t follow his fellows down onto the savannah.

In one’s valedictory, one is supposed to mull pleasantly over one’s years on the job and obtest that the decision to cease was entirely mutual, as did Mark Sainsbury after being shafted by an Aussie who then went back to Channel Nine. Knickers, I was fired without consultation.

Curiously, for one working under the name Curmudgeon, I bear Death the editor no ill-will. In fact, I hope to make further contributions to his newspaper. Frankly, it’s a relief not to have to confront the brutish world each week in search of something to be outraged and meanspirited about.

I’ve noticed how my savagery has progressively waned, from the early days of suggesting that we eat the shareholders in large companies to recent dreamy vignettes of rustic preposterousnesses.

After all, to satirise liars, cheats and other politicians and chief executives, you must enter their fetid lairs – what ghastly places to voluntarily enter! I no longer have to. And I can cancel my subscriptions to Economist, Newsweek and the Guardian, and buy the Woman’s Weekly. Who knows, I may end up talking in neo-speak.

It is also obligatory in one’s last column to thank readers, which, alas, in all conscience I cannot do. I have little proof that there were any, apart from the above mentioned.

I remember an interview with Relda Familton, who told me how she ranted into the Radio New Zealand microphone all night, without any proof that there was a soul listening.

I know the feeling. As far as I know, my column never provoked a letter to the editor of any kind. I’ll give it one last shot: You are all going to win Lotto this week, but must apply for your prize through the letters column of this paper.

So Curmudgeon, a name I always detested and which was not of my choosing – it should have been called ‘‘From Hawes’ Mouth’’ – hereby ends. I have more important things to do. There is a meeting at the Ben Nevis tonight. We are demanding that an ‘‘h’’ be put into ‘‘Turakina’’. Adieu.