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Butter When the butter doesn't spread, but makes my knife drag, instantly I'm back in Auckland, seventeen, wielding a spatula over bulk butter in cartons. I'm slicing from each two ounces; numbered they go to shelves to see if any carry nasties. My first job after high school it was - at the government bureau that oversaw dairy exports. 'temporary junior labourer' - nothing could have paid less. Down on the wharf just along from the ferry building chilled cartons of butter arrived from every factory in the North Island, paused briefly in the big cool store, were loaded on the cargo ships, and sailed away, mostly to Britain, keeping New Zealand afloat and Britain's bread buttered. Where was the guilty factory? My boss the Pommy scientist cast me as assistant sleuth. We're getting to the bottom of this! Slice and shift, number and store. In my breaks I worked my way through the three old Pelicans: A. L. Bacharach, 'Lives of the Great Composers'. Of most I'd never heard a bar. I'd plodded steadily as far as Monteverdi. Ahead lay Bach and more Bachs. My boss pounced on the name Bacharach - a well-known chemist from his own home town. Read on, Max, but don't neglect the butter. At last, the moment - Eureka! The dirty-water factory was way past Tauranga and even Whakatane, almost at East Cape. Retribution followed. The lab staff celebrated, my job was terminated. Music-less in an uncle's beach bach,* I read up Bacharach's Bachs spending my hard-earned quids on ice-cream from a clean source. [*bach: New Zealand word for week-end shack]