Thurbage Reflects

The square, plaster concert chamber was hardly half full for the: chamber music concert. Old ladies with umbrellas; students upstairs with their feet against the balcony, politely unorthodox; stray people sitting. An orchestra with an energetic, intense conductor. Five precise pieces — specially composed. A cello, a violin, and a pianist sitting upright in pink with a diligent helper to turn the pages. Another pianist, more strings—Schubert. Practice, rehearsal, worry and performance to a half-full house of late lunchers and students. Outside, the rain stopped and traffic cops eyed meters curiously.

I Met 19 people looking for mythical parties, peering down long steep paths, quizzical, with dour, anti-Wellington faces. The drinking horn was packed, from those standing on the window sills, to the contestants kneeling before the varnished bar. The electronic timing clock failed, shouting was huge, partisanship fervent, spillage high. At ten past four the cops came in and the crowd thinned out. Discreetly.

The ball had lost its decorations as garlands for proud necks at least by midnight, and by half past it had its second wind. Reinforced with curry we retreated to the semi-dry area in the middle of the floor and danced until two o'clock. Jarring, exuberant, shaking to the fixed grinds of the lapel-less guitarists, and the smiling amplifiers. A trestle table collapsed, a girl in a white dress and gloves tried valiantly to foxtrot, and a dinner-suited dancer went to sleep on a tubular steel chair, cradling a beer bottle.

Everyone was knocked out by Otago's play, "Next Time I'll Sing To You." and clapped like hell at half time because they thought it was the end. A most endearing set like a progressively tilted swastika. Fine performances.

Late mornings, hazy afternoons, long nights.