Card Table, Breakfast Table
When up, the folding card table
with spindly legs - don’t sit on it,
don’t even lean! - dominated
the living room. Sometimes, Dad,
rather than trek to the office,
wrote reports on it. It was that
or the kitchen table. He’d finished
being head of primary schools
from the north of the island
to the south, and proudly joined
the Primary Inspectorate.
This meant a desk I never saw
in Newmarket, a Government car
sometimes, brought to the door
late on Sunday, impressing the whole
street, a dark suit and satchel,
trips Monday to Friday off
to the outer reaches
of the Board, staying at pubs,
or easier weeks round Auckland.
Even Catholic schools the State
inspected, always stimulating:
ah, the nuns are so welcoming -
they seldom see a man unless a priest.
The lunch they put on for us!
Just don’t go in Lent.
As for the suspicious polish
on the children’s work - those nuns!
(Maori Schools had a separate -
pakeha - Inspectorate,
extra tasks, longer journeys,
rougher pubs overnight.)
I’d look over Dad’s shoulder
as he drafted and wrote fair copies
of the week’s reports.
Never more than a page long.
The handwriting was steady,
regular, just like I’d seen
chalked up on blackboards
at Randwick and Epuni Schools.
Fourth form, my ‘grammar school’ report
said: English good. Dad would ask me:
'Is this sentence clear?' Simplicity
we both admired, tact also.
Some reports had warnings in them.
Encouragement was better.
Good advice he loved - when young
he’d feared Inspectors too,
and - they got on with him.
They knew his father was
in Parliament, front bench.
It made for respect.
Reports went to the office
where typists admired his hand.
Now fold away the card table,
or was I up for more gin rummy?
I pleaded homework - grammars
he knew nothing of, Latin and French.
I was moving beyond him,
trying out words too long for him.
Tact! - at breakfast I was denouncing
politicians over the marmalade
and The New Zealand Herald,
in terms like ‘stupid idiots!’ -
adolescent arrogance,
infuriating Dad,
upsetting peace-loving Mum.
She made two breakfast times -
an early start for the Inspector
driving north to Omapere;
a later for his son pedalling
pushbike through hot sun
and often pelting rain
round Mount Albert’s steep roads,
in his satchel a cut lunch
and 'The Golden Treasury',
to school - secondary,
so one Dad never inspected;
nor visited, despite respect
for their reports (‘good progress’).
Mum turned up to watch me run -
third in the Open Mile -
generous handicap - which Dad
had never needed when he won
the Teachers’ College
long distance events.
I cycled home while
Mum went home by bus.
Around the dinner table
there’d be no politics.
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