Copyright 2009
You may know that my daughter is a musician of some quality. She sings and plays the piano. And even though she might be my pride and joy and I may be marginally biased in the view, she does so, so that the angels might weep. But every now and again there is a jarring note. A moment of discord.
It happens when she hits C on the lower register. In truth she cannot be blamed. It is a fault with the piano. Or at least that is the way it seemed until we discovered that in her wisdom, that is the place where my dear and rather quaint wife had chosen to hide her jewels.
That is where todays? story begins.
My rather quaint wife was blessed with two eccentric and diametrically opposed grandmothers. The first fancied herself to be the Queen of England. She had a long classical nose, a haughty look and the brainpower of a matza ball. Much like our venerable queen I suspect, although in her case, gin had done the damage.
The other was a short, pug-ugly woman with temperament to match. She was well known to accost rather violently and armed with her umbrella, teenagers in the back row at the Astra Cinema who had escaped for a little slap and tickle.
But she was as smart as a hunted shrew. In her day, it transpires she had entertained the British troops barracked in Potchefstroom where, God knows they would need some entertainment. And she might have had some gypsy like attraction back then for when she departed Potchefstroom for the big city, she left behind her husband to look after the vulcanizing factory and took with her a rather handsome young corporal from the aforementioned intrepid band of troopers.
In later life, and without doubt, driven by the fact that British troops are eminently loyal, the Russian peasant grandmother, Bobba Rita as she was known, was much envied. Envied for the fact that she was waited on, hand and foot throughout her life by both her son and her soldier. And no-one envied her more than the haughty Queen Annie.
They would compete with each other in the Grandmother stakes. The grandchildren and their affection was the battleground. And it was my quaint little wife, the mutual apple of their eyes, whose attention and affection they most sought.
I was an unfortunate addition to this ménage welcomed by no one but my quaint wife. ?Used goods?, hissed the Russian peasant. ?And a yok too?, sniped the other. But once they knew that my quaint wife was not for the turning, they fell meekly into line.
In this particular process I was of little aid, encouragement or succour. My hair was long. My clothes were disheveled. I was far more interested in my guitar than their small-minded rivalries. They had little expectation and no indication that I would achieve anything whatever in life. And I was not going to give it to them either.
It is said that where you see a successful man, you will find a woman. And behind her, his wife. (Groucho)
In my own case, behind my wife were the looming specters of grandmothers, dead-set on my inevitable failure. And for me that was always ample motivation.
Perhaps it was because they believed that the apple of their eye would land up poverty stricken with a dead-beat husband that a distinct part of their competition was the lavishing of heirlooms.
In the Queen?s case, my quaint wife was bequested in a ceremony laden with flourish, pomp and performance, an amber necklace. It was said to be Russian amber and was promoted regally as ?they don?t make stuff like dis, dese days?.
The Potchefstroom mauler, whose extended family, for those who do not know, were a melange of con men and circus show freaks, including the only famous Jewish wrestler in the history of both wrestlers and Jews, left her a diamond ring.
But this was no ordinary diamond. It was clearly fit for only one purpose ? an industrial drill bit. No sane person could possibly wear a diamond of this nature. Not only because it would be a luminous signal of unrivalled bad taste but quite simply because you would trip over it and get caught in revolving doorways.
And so the scene moves to New Zealand where one unfortunate day, our house was stripped by burglars. It was soon after our arrival from a land where burglary was the most commonly stated form of regular employment to a place where, naïve as it might seem and simply stupid as it turned out, we believed, that burglary was not or at least it was not openly proclaimed as a form of income and where anyway, you could burgle a regular living from the taxpayer.
As a passing fact, the single largest budget line from our Government ahead of both health and education is welfare. But then we are fortunate for we don?t have a defence budget. You could invade New Zealand with a herd of goats and we?d throw in the towel instantly.
So we were robbed. In the melee the robbers quickly discarded the industrial drill bit for if it wasn?t glass from a lucky packet it was simply faux bling. The amber necklace survived only because it happened to be around the quaint wife?s little neck at the time and that wasn?t on offer to the burglars. When it was over and the insurance men had picked their way through the remains, we were told to have a valuation done of the stolen jewellery.
?But?, we pleaded, ?its been stolen. It?s gone ? what ?s the value of fresh air. How do you value a hole??
But the insurance industry remained imperturbable in their purpose and it turns out, jewelers are equally implacable. This is what they do. There are people, who claim to be jewelers, who sit the whole day, giving value to invisible objects. Yes, this imaginary gold necklace is worth thousands and that diamond which you can?t see because it isn?t there is worth a mint. This must be the same way that the economic walls of Jericho just came tumbling down. They weren?t there in the first place, so we can pull them down in our minds as quickly as we can build them back up again. Bernie Madoff didn?t really steal anything. No one really had it, it was all imaginary and it just disappeared. Poof ? I think it?s mirrors?
But, in the process of valuation, we did dutifully take the two precious remaining heirlooms to the jeweler, one Herb Merkle, for his assessment. On handover he went into raptures about the amber necklace. ?They don?t make stuff like dis, dese days? he eulogized. And with the handover of the diamond he simply brought out the forklift.
Two weeks later we were greeted through the post with an official letter bearing certificates. Most were for jewels that no longer existed other than in the imagination. But in their midst were two certificates ? for the heirlooms.
In the case of the amber necklace, that bequested by the haughty Queen of grandmothers, and after thorough and extensive testing, it was found to consist of pure plastic. No amber to be found.
And the industrial drill bit ? $50000
Since that day, the C on the lower register of our piano makes a terrible clunking noise whenever it is struck.