In My Room

There’s a Chance that we Might Fall Apart Before Too Long

When I was 9, our family went through a tough time. I believe it started with my mother feeling highly stressed, and it subsequently transpired that there was a good reason for it, but nobody knew that at the time.

We were living in Scenic Drive, in Titirangi. It was a great place to live, nestled in the west Auckland rainforest, with wonderful views of Auckland. I have some good memories from my time there, but also some very dark ones. This was a pivotal time for me which would impact me for the rest of my life.

The Beatles had hits throughout my childhood. In the year this took place, 1966 they were singing “We Can Work It Out.” The lyrics seemed to tell our story pretty well.

“Life is very short, and there’s no time
For fussing and fighting, my friend…..

There’s a chance that we might fall apart before too long”

My mother wasn’t well. She was suffering from feelings she didn’t understand and she didn’t feel right. She went to the doctor many times and was told that she was suffering from depression and he prescribed drugs like valium for her, to calm her nerves.

She didn’t agree with him, but he was the doctor, an arrogant one at that, and in those days you did what the doctor said. There was no Dr Google, and the GP was considered an authority on all things body and spirit.

It was perhaps the beginning of the age of The Passionless People, where tranquilisers and antidepressants were dispensed to New Zealanders by the handful. According to Gordon McLauchlan, we were one of the most drugged-up nations on the planet.

Things got worse at home, and my parents argued a lot. I remember nightly raised voices, thuds resounding through the wall, and the drywall-dampened sound of my mother crying from behind their bedroom door. I felt terrible. Sometimes I would try to listen at the door, but I didn’t like what I heard and I felt helpless and very insecure.

These fights went on for hours and of course, it affected me pretty severely. Eventually, my father moved out to a batch at Titirangi Beach that had previously been the home of family friends.

Ironically the batch was one of the shelters where I stayed with those family friends some weekends when the stress got too much for me. They were very bright, kind, and interesting people. He was an American draft dodger, who left the country to avoid being sent to kill people in Vietnam. I enjoyed spending time with them.

Dick was a genuine pacifist and one of many people the FBI decided to make an example of in the 1960s. They followed him from California to New Zealand and were determined to arrest him and either convince him to serve in Vietnam or send him to jail.

They found out where they were living, and he and his wife quietly left New Zealand, making their next home in a remote village in India for some years. My father told me that the FBI had visited him, demanding to know where our friends were, and told him that he was now on the watch list for assisting a ‘criminal’. The FBI continued unsuccessfully to hunt for Dick and didn’t give up until America ended their war on the Viet Cong. Periodically my father would get phone calls from the FBI asking if he knew where they could be found. He had no interest in helping them.

Often I was left as a 9-year-old, with a brother of 3, sisters of 2 and 1 to babysit, on some afternoons, when my mother was at work. Sometimes there would even be another 2-year-old from a solo mum that my mother had offered to look after, forgetting that she wouldn’t be home at the time. She couldn’t say no because we needed the money she gave her to look after her child.

I remember one day when I was driven to despair. I was on my own with 4 kids. 3 of them were busy filling potties in a row. One of them stood up and the potty stuck to their backside. Then it dropped to the floor, tipping urine onto the carpet. I must have yelled out with anger and frustration. The kids got a fright and like a domino effect, they all toppled, tipping over their do’s onto the carpet, looking at me and crying. It would have scored well on America’s Funniest Home Videos, but it wasn’t funny to us, especially me. I had to restore calm as well as clean up the mess!

The Beach Boys song couldn’t describe my situation better. My parents were in the process of breaking up. Life was very stressful. My security and sense of home had become a place I needed to escape from, to find some sense of peace.

I don’t know how it came about, but I started staying with different people for 3-4 weeks at a time to give me a chance to get away from the terse environment. One couple who kindly took me in was Peter and Manuela Hill.

One of my regrets is that as an adult, I never went back to thank them for providing me with a safe haven.

I spent a lot of time in their home, just sitting on my mattress on the floor, in their spare bedroom reading and listening to records. Peter was a radio DJ at 1ZB and had so many great records. I still have a few of them. One of them was a Beach Boys album and one of the tracks that expressed where I was at, was In My Room.

“In this world, I lock away my troubles and my fears.”

“Now it’s dark and I’m alone

But I won’t be afraid

In my room

In my room”

This was where I first read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I was 10 and the 4 books afforded me hours of escape. I was Frodo and Bilbo Baggins.

When I was in Form 3 at Kelston Boys High a few years later, the Hobbit was one of the books we had to read. I was more than happy with that. I still have my school copy of the book. One of my treasures, ironically from another place that I didn’t want to be, but more of that later.

It was amazing when the movies came out, because Peter Jackson and crew did such an amazing job, because the scenery in the films was very much as I imagined it, sitting or lying on the mattress on the floor, engrossed in the big adventures.

This year I had the pleasure of visiting the movie set of Hobbiton, which was a wonderful experience. If you ever get to New Zealand, I strongly recommend this as a great tourist attraction, and if you are a Kiwi and you haven’t been yet, we have a long hot summer coming and the complimentary fine cold ale went down a treat at the Green Dragon.

Peter also kindly gave me some records to take ‘home’ with me after my last stay. The Beach Boys album was one of them. He also gave me some treasures, 78s including Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti and George Formby, I’m the husband of the wife of Mrs Wu, which I performed at the Titirangi Folk Club on the mandolin banjo. I learned that instrument when my fingers were too small for the guitar. Later I would play mandolin, tea-chest bass and guitar in a jug band.

Kind of funny because I barely understood that the song, which was banned from radio, was fairly suggestive. “In the market square of things I bought a few, they tried to sell me silk pyjamas too, I said I might admire them, but don’t think that I’ll require them. I’m the husband of the wife of Mr Wu.” I loved playing the strummed solo on the mandolin banjo.

Eventually, my mother’s stomach started getting bigger and bigger. It transpired that all this time during which she complained that there was something not right with her, and the GP fed her more and more drugs, there actually was, and her body had been trying to tell her. After a couple of years, she went to the hospital and they operated on her, removing a huge tumour. Fortunately, it was benign. She hadn’t needed drugs at all, she needed a good diagnosis! If the GP had made the effort to look beyond prescribing tranquilisers our future lives would have been very different.

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