Open Writing

The box is bulging. It is too full to close and it beckons me. The computer lurks on the desk and my fingers had better get busy. The time to commit all this lovely research to print has arrived and the publishers are waiting.

What fun I have had as my story about the old hall has taken shape. Anyone who has done research will know how much goes into the gathering of the facts and how, as one bit of information is garnered, doors open into other areas. I delved deep into the minute books of the Hocken library, the repository of all the archives of Otago and beyond, at the university. Hidden behind the fine copper plate writing of motions proposed and passed lay the story of the hall’s beginning.

First it was to be a Sunday School, just one room, but reading between the lines, it soon became apparent more was going on behind the scenes than the records revealed. Names cropped up, names still prominent in the town, loans were made, builders and architects consulted and ladies worked behind the scenes, obviously causing stress to their husbands, until finally the old hall came into being. Not just a room for Sunday School but a stage and ante rooms, kitchen and copper to boil hot water. Later plans revealed further extensions and from those precise, neatly, written records grew a story worth telling. But that was only the beginning.

Where to next? Well, this was obviously social history at its best. This old church hall had been the focal point for all the social events of the town and where else to find social history but from society?

The old folks gathered and out came my tape recorder as they wandered down my garden path and then sat around my dining table. “I’ve not much to tell you, really” said one elderly gentleman who, an hour later realised he had had a great deal to tell and proved to be a fount of knowledge on bricks, cement and supporting beams, fund raising for restorations and the days when he sang in the choir.

A dear old lady told me stories of all the soft toys she had sat up making into the early hours of the morning for “Church Bazaars.” Bazaars of the old days with cream teas, games for the kids, sides of meat for sale, not to mention the cake and craft stalls, the sausage sizzles and “all the fun of the fair.”

But I am not going to give you a detailed account of all this information, I’m going to simply choose a very special afternoon when my sides ached.

Down the path they scuttled, talking nineteen to the dozen, clutching photographs, records and notes in their hands. I had washed the best china and even made a sponge cake, after all ladies like afternoon tea and nice things and it was a chance to use my embroidered table cloth which hadn’t seen the light of day for years.

“Oh the Scottish nights.” “We had them once a month and all us kids were allowed to stay for the first dance after the concert. It was always the palais glide.” “Do you remember? First two up then four and we were all up, row after row.” The old lady leapt to her feet and demonstrated the 1 and 2 and 1, 2, 3 of the dance movement, her eyes sparkling with laughter.

"Don’t I remember them,” said another, she had been the pianist in the band which played for the dances. “When Tom So and So forgot his music stand I had to stand with my back to the audience in front of him, holding up his music for encore after encore, my arms were shaking.”

The palais glide came up again as one of them confessed to staying on for the second dance with her sister. “Only the adults could stay on after the palais glide.” She described the scene as her grandmother, in long white nightdress and slippers, rounded them up and chased them home.

After the Scottish concerts came tales of the Saturday night dances, “where many a match was made.” It was a typical dance of the time, with girls in their best dresses sitting round the room, being “eyed up” by the boys round the door. “Do you remember how the boys used to try and sneak in bottles of beer in brown paper bags?” But apparently a certain PC Snow, the village “bobby” had his eyes open and dispatched them with a strategic kick and orders to report to the police station the following morning and he “would tell their mum.” One boy, escaping from our PC Snow, jumped over a barbed wire fence and tore his trousers, so spent the rest of the evening dancing in his overcoat.

Eyes sparkled and scones vanished. I topped up the teapot and changed the tape, I was on a roll here.

The Sunday School concerts seem to have been a big thing around about Christmas every year. One lady confessed to being so frightened when her turn came to perform that she hid under the stage, another told of having a fit of the giggles half way through her rendition of “Away in a manger.” “And we always had a big tree full of presents, blue for the boys, pink for the girls.”

Story followed story, as one argued with another about who did what and what happened when, and the clock ticked on.

I saw the pianist, well into her memories, eying Martin’s piano. “Go on, have a go,” I said. No second invitation was needed. Gay Gordons, Military Two Step, Valetta and many more of the old dances were beaten out loud and furiously, as she shouted over her shoulder, “I used to have to bash the piano to make it heard.” We all started to sing along and I felt Martin cringing as he hid in the study and thought of Chopin.

But time had passed and they had to go, if somewhat reluctantly. “But what of Sunday School?”

I asked, as the last one left. She stayed on in the kitchen, “I’ll tell you a funny story about that,” she said. “Every month we all had to go into the church and answer questions about what we had learnt.”

“Who can tell me what an apostle is?” asked the serious Cannon Small.

“Please sir, Please sir, me sir,” said the lady’s little brother, jumping up and down and getting redder and redder in the face.

“Yes Jim,” said the Cannon.

“It’s a furry thing like a cat with a long tail which you can swing round your head.”

The perfect description of an opossum. Of such is social history made.