The Good Life: Presents of greatness

NZ Herald

4 days ago

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Sqweaky: She of the magnificent whiskers. Photo / Greg Dixon
Greg Dixon is an award-winning news reporter, TV reviewer, feature writer and former magazine editor who has written for the NZ Listener since 2017.
Come July, it is always the same: what the hell should I buy myself for my birthday?
The Victorian artist and poet William Morris famously said, or is said to have said, that one should have nothing in one's house that one does not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. With this as my creed, I have given myself, at various times, a chainsaw and a book about firewood. I will leave it to you to decide what category those fell into.
This business of self-gifting has arisen not because I do not trust Michele to get me something beautiful or useful for my annual celebration of not dying for another year. It's just that for one birthday about a quarter of a century ago she bought me a deep fat fryer.
I was not sure, and remain completely mystified, what this said about me. Was I oily? Was I hot? Did I smell of chips?
We used the thing, which looked like a toy version of what you encounter at a dodgy suburban fish and chippy, only once. It required what seemed like 40 gallons of cooking oil, splattered hot grease about like some sort of weapon of mass destruction and left Michele, the cat and the house smelling of chips, just like me.
The deep fat fryer eventually went to the tip, but not before I had quietly determined that it might be best for me to buy my own gifts then give them to Michele to give to me, like the aforementioned chainsaw and the book about firewood.
But not this year. This year, I couldn't think what I wanted, other than a bit of peace and quiet and a lunch involving more of the delicious dumplings they serve at the White Swan in Greytown.
Fortunately, Michele had an idea – a secret idea.
When our old cat Arnold died back in 2010, we commissioned the Auckland artist Kirstin Carlin to paint the dear dead fellow. Pretentious? Pas nous!
Anyway, Kirstin's study is a wonderful, amusing work, a bright oil that she decided to paint in the style of a Hans Holbein the Younger portrait of Henry VIII. Though Arnold is now 15 years gone, he continues to be present in our lives because he hangs in the dining room in an enormous gold frame. And just like when he was alive, he appears to spend his days considering whether we should keep our heads.
Michele's secret idea for my birthday this year was to commemorate Sqweaky, who we lost in February, with a similar memorial, this time a sculptural ceramic by her friend, the Auckland artist Bronwynne Cornish.
To arrange it, I understand a series of secret squirrel phone calls took place over several weeks, usually after I had gone to bed. Cunning! Actually, given my bedtime is similar to that of a preschool child's, it wasn't as difficult as it might sound.
Come my birthday I thought, after I'd unwrapped it, that the highlight this year was a little book titled Twelve Poems About Chickens. They are all odes to how beautiful but also how maddening chooks can be, with my favourite a rant about a rooster from one Sir Charles Sedley (1639-1701), titled On A Cock At Rochester:
'Thou Cursed Cock, with thy perpetual Noise/May'st thou be Capon made, and lose thy voice/Or on a Dunghil may'st thou spend thy Blood/And Vermin prey upon thy craven Brood …' Quite right, Sir Charles, quite right.
However the Cursed Cock with his perpetual noise was not the highlight after all. That was inside a box couriered from Auckland.
We have a number of Bronwynne's pieces about the house, but the one I will now treasure most of all is her wonderful and playful ceramic of Sqweaky, something that is beautiful, but also useful, at least for me.
I think, should I be spared, I will leave my birthday gifts to Michele from now on.