Clarke - A Dagg at My Table : Selected Writings

A DAGG AT MY TABLE

OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

The Dagg Who Came in from the Cold
The Naked and the Dagg
A Dagg of Ones Own
Moby Dagg
A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Dagg
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Dagg
Wuthering Daggs
Daggness at Noon
Dagg the Obscure
Daggenwolf
Principia Daggmatica
The Dagg Is a Lonely Hunter
I, Daggius
Of Human Daggage
Summoned by Daggs
The Brothers Daggamazov

FOR YOUNGER READERS

The Dagg in the Hat
Dagg of Green Gables
Dagg of the Rings
The Once and Future Dagg
Watership Dagg
Charlottes Dagg
The Dagg in the Willows

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Copyright Roderick Willows Pty Ltd 1998

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

First published in New Zealand 1996
First published by Text Publishing 1998, reprinted 1998 (twice)
This edition 1999, reprinted 2000, 2003

Printed and bound by Griffin Press
Designed by Chong
Illustrations by Jenny Coopes
Photograph of Fred Dagg by Peter Bush reproduced courtesy of VIP
Typeset by Midland Typesetters

EISBN 9781921776779.

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Clarke,John 1948- .
A Dagg at my table: selected writings.

ISBN 9781876485290.

1. Australian wit and humor - 20th centry. 1. Title.

A828.302

contents

This book is dedicated to the memory
of Richard Priest, a gifted and loving friend.

M any older readers will recall an earlier time in Australia and New Zealand, a vivid and exhilarating time when our two nations were poised on the threshold of the greatness into which they have subsequendy descended. In the case of New Zealand, this golden period called forth a natural leader.

From the starkly beautiful central North Island, erosion capital of the world and home of the Raurimu Spiral, came a figure uniquely attuned to the hour. No problem was too great, no matter so Byzantine in its complexity that he could not cut to its heart. He was fair-minded in all things, graceful under pressure and was capable of developing strong opinions unspoilt by knowledge or formal logic. He specialised in the common sense solution and the self-evident truth, and his language was that of Arnold, of Herbert and of Trevor.

His name was Frederick, of the House of Dagg. Born many years earlier, for reasons which need not trouble us here, he had undergone a comprehensive training in all aspects of farmwork and had then attended school from the age of five. His schooling was typical of its time and extremely effective in every way. The New Zealand Education Department had set rigorous standards. Fred learnt that the angles outside parallel lines were equal to the opposite ones inside the lines. He learnt the French for big absorbent bath towel. By the age of 17 he knew the valency of carbon and the German for I have fallen in love with the exit to the static air-display. These skills have not been required nearly as often as the Department led him to believe but there is still time and, should the need ever arise, Fred and a whole generation of New Zealanders will be able to calculate the compound interest on the square root of x, or the use of irony by Jane Austen, whichever is the lesser, and discuss its impact on the Chartist Movement. (30 marks).

As he obtained to the estate of adulthood, Fred was already instinctively grappling with important issues of nationhood and philosophy. He supported the dropping of superphosphate on farms because he had a brother-in-law with a dung-dusting concern up the Pohangina Valley but he was troubled by the realisation that the cobalt in the soil of the volcanic plateau was building up to a point where they would soon have to drop soil on it to prevent it from becoming a cobalt deposit.

Matters came to a head when Fred received a letter from his friend Bruce Bayliss, who was at that time a seasonal mutton-birder on Stewart Island. Bruce was not a man given to display but it was obvious that he had a problem. There was no work on the island and Bruce was obliged to pick up the unemployment benefit, which at that time was $137. There was no unemployment officer on Stewart Island and in order to obtain the benefit Bruce caught the boat to Bluff, travelled by bus to Invercargill, collected the emolument and arranged lodgings for the night since the next bus back to Bluff did not leave until the following morning. The next day he caught the boat at Bluff and arrived home in the middle of the afternoon. The total cost of this exercise was $138.

Bruce wrote a letter to the Department. The problem with collecting the assistance, he pointed out, was that it was not commercially viable. The Department replied that Bruce was the victim of an anomaly in the system. They thanked him for calling it to their attention. The reason there was no unemployment office on Stewart Island, they explained, was that for some time there had been no unemployment there. But since he was now unemployed and since he lived there, would he care to become the unemployment officer for the island? Bruce accepted the post and was sent a box of forms which were to be filled in each month, the top form to be sent to Wellington, the office copy to be filed alphabetically and cross-referenced as to date. At the end of the first month, Bruce sent off his first report stating that, since he was employed, there was now no unemployment on Stewart Island. As a result of this, the Department sacked him.

Fred decided at this point it was time to clear his throat and deliver himself of a few opinions. This book contains some of them. They wouldnt all fit.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Mr Dagg graciously consented to broadcast regularly on radio on matters of the utmost importance ranging from the general character of the human experience to the offering of helpful hints to those entrusted with the care and governance of the nation and its economy. His broadcasts were extremely valuable in every way although ultimately, of course, those entrusted with governance worked out what he was saying and he was stopped.

CAREERS

One of the significant services provided during these radio years was that of the Fred Dagg Careers Advisory Bureau. Its work was broad in its scope and has proved to be of lasting value. It has never been more important than it is now and young people continue to flock to it.

G idday. If youve ever walked into a room and had everyone in it try to get out through a very small air vent, you probably know what it feels like to be a dentist. You have to be a fairly resilient sort of character because you have to spend all day seeing people who dont want to see you. Lets just take a typical dentistorial episode and give it the once over. You, the dentist, enter your surgery with considerable foreboding and seated in the waiting room is your first patient, Mr Jones, hiding behind a big stack of