Something there is that does not love a gnome, and that something lurks in Otaki.
I was sad to see, last week, the image of an 80-year-old chap clutching the last remains of his precious gnome collection and factory, after an arson attack there. It was a soot-blackened gnome fellow, this survivor, moulded with a container suitable for a small cactus, and the chap looked for all the world, bearded as he was, like the model for the quirky product he held. Such things had earned him a modest living in his old age. It was a mean trick that was played on him, and whoever did it is a scoundrel.
Arthur Ray had devoted the past decade to making gnomes and other garden ornaments, and lost his entire collection of 450 rubber and fibreglass moulds in the deliberately lit fire. As local policeman Stephen Yates observed, "It has totally destroyed an elderly man's livelihood, cottage industry and passion." And a little joy has gone out of the world.
I am an admirer of the gnome in all his garden guises. A gnome lends a garden a touch of levity; he greets passers-by as a friend. I especially enjoy those gardens where the gnome lives with an entire family of spotted toads, flamingoes, toadstools, bird baths and lurking plaster cats. There may be little room for plants, but there is a whole cheerful world to enjoy, entirely and blissfully artificial. No weeding needs to be done.
The gnome is the cornerstone of much suburban pride. He has suffered in recent years from knives in the back, and from seemingly being run over by trucks - but he endures. With him thrive the metal butterfly stuck to the side of the house, the whirring legs of Roadrunner nailed to a post, and large artificial sunflowers with smiles painted on their faces. It is a sourpuss indeed who cannot raise a smile at such nonsense.
I would rather see the works of Arthur Ray lurking in a backyard than the dismal "native" gardens that puritans make, all lack of colour and all politics. The Great New Zealand God did not create suburban back yards in the Great Beginning. They are in themselves unnatural, and do not become more beauteous because they hold clumps of dull flax and a withered titoki bush, along with a large dog relieving himself liberally therein, and barking between-times out of boredom and ill temper. How much more harmless is the child's wonderland of story book characters that men like Arthur Ray produce, for the pleasure of children and old ladies. And it is tactfully silent.
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A pox upon the arsonist, and a pox, too, on the dismal world of business where yet another New Zealand brand hit the asphalt last week. I am sorry to see the Canterbury brand go the way of so many others, all of which gave not only work, but a sense of cautious national pride.
I do not need a gnome in my garden, or - god forbid - a pair of track pants with stripes down the side to understand the kind of loss this is. It was a bad thing when the All Blacks abandoned the brand, and maybe things have been downhill for it since then.
We who scavenge in junk shops find there a whole world of good things that were once made in New Zealand, too, but which long ago went to the wall in the interest of some greater purpose that quite eludes me. Think of Crown Lynn pottery, now so collectable, for a start. It was once a household mainstay, and a cup of tea in a chunky NZR Crown Lynn cup was a proper kiwi experience, a rite of passage: you had to be quite grown up to handle the thing with one arm.
And what about the woolen mills we once had, producing warm blankets and knitwear that dressed generations of us well? You find those blankets now and wonder what on earth happened, what with this being a country of sheep. I love their woven labels: Maori chieftains, Pania of the Reef, tikis, images of factories, Robins (why?) and the memories of being tucked up on lumpy kapok mattresses under layers of their warmth. Are duvets really the same? And then there were the tartan picnic rugs we made that traveled in the backs of many cars, and covered old sofas when the upholstery gave way. You can't have a decent picnic on a duvet, but you could on a proper tartan blanket, pure wool, with a fringed edge.
Nowadays you can buy a synthetic imitation of those blankets, cold and light, and not the same, and we have no skilled workers holding down steady jobs in mills that kept communities alive. This, we are told, is a fine thing. It is better to have idle hands here, and cheap rubbish to buy from overseas. So we are left with backyard gnome factories. And somebody burns them down. Rosemary McLeod - Sunday Star Times
Last updated 05:00 19/07/2009
