Orwell’s ‘1984’ had it right, if a little early
MY youngest son is studying George Orwell’s masterpiece 1984 at school. It’s not the easiest book to read — I think it took me a couple of attempts to get through it, and the bookwithinthebook is especially easy to get bogged down in.
Anyway, all this talk about facialrecognition software in supermarkets and closedcircuit television cameras watching many of our moves made me think of the society Orwell envisaged for that year nearly 35 years ago, when he wrote the novel just after World War 2.
He didn’t do a bad job with his imaginings. As well as predicting the everpresent surveillance of our activities, he also picked the rise of fake news/alternative truth, call it what you will, and a society where some world leaders alter the facts to suit and fall not far short of actually changing history.
Perhaps 1984 wasn’t so farfetched after all?
Gravity rules
Remember my runaway mandarin last week?
Margie Beyer, of Ravensbourne, emailed the other day with her own particular tale of gravitational horror on the London Underground:
‘‘On a trip to London not that long ago, I was near the bottom of one of the steepest and longest underground escalators, going up. There was some distance between me and a dad with his young son, above.
‘‘The youngster was in charge of a wheeled suitcase, but had no understanding of the impending doom between suitcase/steep escalator/small child/me — but I reckon that you do already!
‘‘Once the case was released, it took off — quite quietly at first, but soon gaining momentum as it cartwheeled towards me, the extended handle waving at anyone who had time to look.
‘‘I was some distance from that red emergency triangle that, once pushed, will immediately stop said escalator in its tracks. As the case sped ever faster towards me, I pondered just how I could cope with the 23hour flight back to New Zealand in the morning, with two broken legs.
‘‘To cries from above, of ‘very sorry, lady’, I managed to ram my walking pole diagonally across my body and into the escalator tread, while barely managing to remain almost upright. The bag bounced off me and the pole, and shook me up quite a bit, but with nothing major to report, thankfully.
‘‘You could say I was shaken but not stirred.’’
Thank goodness for the walking pole, Margie.
Mt Cargill aerial
Maurice Hayward, of Opoho, recalls being a pioneer in radio at the top of Mt Cargill.
‘‘In the mid1940s, as a 9 or 10yearold, I found my way to the top of Mt Cargill with a friend.
‘‘I don’t recall any tracks up from Bethunes Gully — we simply kept going up and up. I recall struggling through bush much of the way.
‘‘Anyway, at the top, I set up my homebuilt crystal set, strung some wire across the trees as an aerial and pushed a metal pin into the ground as an earth. Eventually, I found the best tuning spot on the cats’ whisker.
‘‘How exciting it was for two young boys to hear 4YA through old, heavy, and very hard to get headphones.
‘‘Maybe a plaque should be attached to the 1970 tower, showing they weren’t the first!’’
I asked Maurice if he perhaps had a photo of their early endeavours.
‘‘Sorry, our family didn’t have a camera. However, I do still have the basic crystal set.’’
Thanks for getting in touch, Maurice.
Sweet poetry
Stephen Estall of Portobello has penned this commemorative poem wrapping up the new Dunedin Hospital in the old Cadbury factory:
Our new hospital is very special prescribing chocolate bars for
measles.
For those with mumps there’s
Pineapple Lumps and Mars Bars for assorted
sprains and lesions.
Their favourite dish is a
chocolate fish for those with gout or
housemaid’s knee, and then the Caramello bars
come out for those with an inability to
pee.
If you’re a bloke who’s had a
stroke to help you to survive, no sooner has the defibrillator
gone when the chocolate nuts arrive. So when you’re ill, in need of
pills, there’s no better place to be than Dunedin’s brand new
hospital at the chocolate factory.
Then, when they’ve mended all
your bones and you’re in the mood for
parties,
I’m told they always send you
home with a Toblerone and Smarties.
Next column
Sorry to say this is the last column for the week. I’m off to Wellington for a couple of days to be a proud parent as my eldest son graduates from Victoria University.
See you on Monday.