Dialogue: I've no worms in my apple today

By GORDON McLAUCHLAN

Here I am, relishing the golden morning, counting my bountiful blessings, polishing my Braemar apple, ready to enjoy it before I have my swim, but wondering, could there be a worm in the apple of my day?

I feel a twinge of guilt living in so peaceful a country within such a war-mad world, a bit like the hero of C.K. Stead's latest novel, The Secret History of Modernism.

I mean it's winter in Afghanistan, where Americans and Afghans are prowling the blasted landscape trying to kill each other from behind the scream, flash and rolling smoke of technology. Lethal hate is crisp in the icy air.

And as for the Middle East, this sequence from television news lingers in my head: A Palestinian terrorist has just shot dead some young people at a religious celebration in Israel and a middle-aged Israeli woman rushes outside shouting, in her grief, "Why? Why?"

I think: My God, no solution to this problem is possible if a mature person from a culture as old and as worldly as hers doesn't understand why this is happening, doesn't understand that violence endlessly begets violence until sane people break the cycle.

The madness of the terrorist is unquestioned, generated as it was by oppression and perverted religious conviction, just as the madness of Ariel Sharon, which must now be obvious to all, is born of the fear and anger that meld into megalomania.

Further down that elephantine continent, Robert Mugabe makes mayhem a vote-catcher. A mate of mine, poet Denys Trussell, wrote to Mugabe asking him if he minded not being remembered as the freedom fighter he was but as the jailer he had become.

An elderly fellow swimmer stops to say how sad it was that the doctors years ago didn't tell those people about keeping hearts of the dead for experiments, but what wonderful life-saving work they were doing at that same time.

"I don't much mind what they do with this after I'm gone," he says, pointing to his body. "In fact," he laughs, "if the sharks get me tell the doctors they can have what they can find." He pushes out into the water. No worm in his apple.

I like Braemar for the red at the top, signalling sunshine's sugar, and for the green, downward stripes that promise tart crispness. They polish beautifully. Pacific Rose are too febrile a red outside for me, and too sweet and soft inside.

I could find no particular worm that day, but Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, of all people, did; so did Russell Crowe, I'll bet; Maori found yet another; and the Tongan royal family found a veritable wriggle of them in their papaya.

Maori, you see, smoke more than Pakeha because the portrait painter Charles Goldie wrongly interpreted that mercilessly misused concept, their culture. Put that in your pipe and smoke it! They smoke so much also because the American servicemen of World War II glamorised the cigarette. So Maori are victims and can relax and smoke themselves to death, happy in the knowledge it's not their fault.

Peter and Fran made this amazing movie you all know about. They have been bombarded with justified praise, acknowledged by their peers with Baftas, honoured by their country, rewarded with riches that no one I know begrudges, but all this is not enough because it falls short of worship.

Peter and Fran want to copyright their exalted names to leave them absolutely unsullied by lesser mortals. If you happen to be Frances Walsh then change your name to something else, or at least proclaim that you're not the Frances Walsh. Otherwise, you might offer an opinion that the Frances Walsh thinks might sully her divinely shining persona.

As for Russell Crowe, he knows the power of poetry and he wants you to know as well or he might push you against the wall and tell you about it in a loud voice.

Some eaters of wormed apples will mutter that ridiculous salve for wounded pride about tall poppies, but we know too much about the sin of pride for that to wash; and pride is, as any educated Christian knows, the indisputable sin that leads on to all the others.

In Tonga, the royal family find worms in their papaya every day because some of their subjects are becoming less pliant, less reverential than they were. The King's daughter, Princess Pilolevu Tuita, wants to put a stop to this by closing down a newspaper that shows disrespect, and disrespect might distract her from the noble work of ripping off her fellow citizens.

The Tonga Chronicle, she says, spreads misunderstood news that's not true. And according to our customs, to our Tongan culture, it is not fair to say lewd things to the King of Tonga or to the Government.

Useful old word "culture". You can make it mean what you want to.

Well, I'm down to the pips and have that wonderful taste in my mouth that only fresh fruit leaves behind. And not even the hint of a worm on this lovely day. Perhaps that's because I don't want more than I've got.