Trial And Nearer

We bought our first house in 1973 for $17,750 and we borrowed something like $17,000. It had been built in 1902 and had had little improvements since then. The floor was shaky and uneven, the roof rusting, the paint and wallpaper were peeling inside and out and it was full of a very busy family of borers who had flicked their dust everywhere. Years later Mum admitted that when she first saw the house, she went home and cried all night, feeling sorry for her son living in such a run-down hovel. But we saw nothing but potential – move this wall to there, put in windows here, change this, add that and pretty soon we’d have a charming cottage, with our own imprint, to live in for a very long time.

Apart from three weeks working for Brian Cunliffe, a builder, some four years earlier, I had no building experience. My father, the perfectionist, could not abide anything done by anyone unless they were an expert with at least 250 years’ experience.

I had once collected what scraps of wood I could find – mostly flimsy apple-box wood – and made myself a sledge to scream down grassy hills. The wood was crap and my seven-year-old carpentry skills were crap but I was inordinately proud of my new creation which had taken hours to cobble together and days to plan. I had a sneaking suspicion that it might not last a life-time or my bodily weight and I looked forward to the process of trying it out and continually improving it.

My father saw it quite differently. Snatching it from my gently cradling arms, he tossed it into a broken heap, explaining, “Good God, man, that’s a complete mess! It’s already fallen apart so I’ll show you a sledge.” He shoved me aside and, after two days, appeared with THE PERFECT sledge. It was beautifully sculpted – nailed, screwed and glued, sanded to polished perfection – it was heavy enough to have sunk the Titanic faster than an iceberg and accounted for the massive shoulders I soon developed. I used it a few times and it went downhill splendidly owing to its weight and waxing, to the deep consternation of two sheep and a dog – their mothers now miss them deeply. However, getting the beast uphill proved too arduous and I’m sure future archaeologists will gaze in wonder at it as they ponder the possibility that gravity was ales of a challenge in this era than theirs.

In that and so many other ways, I found myself unable to experiment with construction and, quite suddenly, I had a whole house to experiment with.

I went to the local council to apply for a permit to renovate the house. I’d sketched some rough ideas on a scrap of paper and explained what we might do with the house. For $10 the building inspector gave us a permit that said, “Alterations as per owners’ needs.” In other words, we could do anything we liked and we never saw a building inspector. No one checked on us at all.

Some say it’s good we didn’t know what we didn’t know but I would do it all again in a trice. In fact we did it three more times and I love taking a building mess and turning it into something creatively liveable. I also love doing things people say I can’t. The kitchen ceiling was tongue-and-groove (i.e. large grooves along it) and many, many layers of paint had been slavered over the pitted and gouged surface. It was beyond redemption and had to be covered up somehow – heavily embossed wallpaper seemed the best idea we had for it.

The man at the decorator shop said no one could wallpaper a ceiling. I told him it was gloss paint and, with an astonished and then dismissive look said, “You definitely can’t do that. Don’t bother.” I then said I was going to use heavily embossed paper and he took on a scared-rabbit look and I feared he was about to walk out on his job as he patiently (as to a stupid child) explained, “You definitely, definitely, definitely can’t do that. Sell the house NOW!” I insisted he sell me the embossed paper, paid quickly and then made a dash for it before he had time to alert the local mental home of my whereabouts, to take me away. I sanded the worst of the eruptions and craters, made up my own secret sizing recipe, made up my own secret glue recipe and, together, sandy and I papered and painted the ceiling. It looked stunning … so stunning, in fact, that the real estate agent (quite unbeknown to us till much later) told prospective buyers that the house had a pressed-zinc ceiling.

I taught myself carpentry, plumbing, electrical wiring, roofing, wallpapering, painting, brickwork, concreting, glazing and a few other skills and it became my obsession.

After seven years we doubled our money on that house, doubled it again in four years in Taupo and did the same in Rotorua and Tauranga.

I also reveled in the realization that I had skills I’d previously had no knowledge of. I just had to start a job and my body and mind would make it happen. It was an adventure and everything was possible. Sadly, I see mothers telling little Timmy not to climb a tree as he might fall and hurt himself and so many people trying to protect us from ourselves. I see so many people holding themselves back from attempting the possible for some unknown (and unlikely, usually) creature from the dark which will arise and devour them, We’re forced to wear bicycle helmets, seat belts and fence our pools for fear of injury. But I learned to drive the Land Rover at ten years old and had to drive it over treacherous country roads and we all just did that. We rode dangerous horses and swam in unfenced rivers and, yes, we got hurt. But we got up again with the realization of a new limitation and determination for ourselves. And then people wonder and shake their heads at the young people (mainly men) who drive their cars at mad speeds and take all sorts of risks – they’re going to test themselves out some way or another and if that is stifled early on, they’ll just do it later. What most people don’t realize is that that later we leave it to allow them to do their boundary-testing, the more frustration and pent-up anger goes into it … and the more dangerous it is for others. Better to allow it in their toddler years than stifle it till their late teens or much later to come out as political leaders who love to damage whole populations and environments.

Protective devices do not stop people damaging themselves – they only stop us thinking adventurously. They implant a timidity, an obedience that stops us questioning any insane authority and any insane rule they put upon us … for our own good!

My father had kept me “safe” from making imperfect sledges and huts in the trees but, eventually, I had to break out into self-discovery and find that, by creating imperfection over and over, I could eventually teach myself to create beauty.

Many of the Beatles’ first songs were crap and many of Picasso’s paintings were crap. But they kept creating and creating and creating and then beautiful music and art arose.

If we stop people before they make their first, imperfect move, the world is denied great beauty.

This story is from 42 Moments With Men, soon to be published.