Simple living lost in luxury

Tuesday was the family dinner steak day. As us kids valiantly tried to chew through our weekly fillet, mum always reminded us that when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

The steak came from Harry Hitchens' farm up Stony Creek Road - apparently it was a toss-up whether to name the road after the creek or the equally stony paddocks. Other farmers' cattle chewed cud, but Harry's mainly sucked stones, with an occasional sprig of pennyroyal thrown in if they were lucky.

Nevertheless, if - after a productive afternoon with your mate Barry Hitchens experimenting with matches in the Hitchens' hay shed - you were invited to stay for dinner, their own steak seemed as succulent sirloin in comparison.

Word had it that Harry's bovine home-kill was reserved for the house table, while customers got horse rump culled from a small posse of geriatrics he kept up the back. The chiller unit he'd scored from the Stony Creek recycle centre conveniently situated down a nearby bank. But yet - aside from a bit of eroded dental enamel - we lacked for nothing.

First thing home from school, we'd naturally raid the fridge. This was actually a bit of a drag because, given the fridge was a wire-meshed tin box hanging from the old fig tree out back, you had to find something to stand on in order to reach it - and, apart from a hank of old mutton and maybe a half pound of butter, there was never much in it anyway. Usually mum's biscuit tins had better pickings, although the peanuts in the peanut brownies were a bit tough on the gums.

But life wasn't all a bowl of brownies ... we had our chores, too. For instance, every five years my brother had to tend the water tank inlet filter for the roof run-off.

The filter, itself, was a sophisticated model organically constructed from random twigs, leaf matter, bird skeletons, stray feathers, and the like. Changing the filter was a fraught operation, though - once removed, there was a critical period during which the entire family were dangerously exposed to germs before the filter was able to organically reconstitute itself.

However, despite the risk, this process - being free - was very cost efficient. Come nightfall and dinner over, we'd all gravitate to the entertainment station. The station was normally ZB, but once Selwyn Toogood has asked the good folk of Hokitika for the umpteenth time whether it should be "the money or the bag", it was time to boogie down.

To boogie down, though, meant getting wound up - and on the side of the gramophone was a handle for doing exactly that. Oh yes, many's the night that K-K-K-Katie came into the k-k-k-kitchen courtesy of my virtuosity on that old handle.

But maintaining hi-fidelity meant regular replacement of the sensitive steel needle in the ram's horn stylus. Accordingly, a faltering needle was replaced by one that had been equally faltering a few weeks before, but had hopefully benefited from a fortnight's R & R.

Above all, the family watchword was personal hygiene. A bath every Sunday night was mandatory whether needed or not (showers, then, were only a type of rain). To this end, we had a no-expense-spared ex-suite.

The outhouse toilet was what's known now as the Obama "Yes We Can!" model - and dad had to bury its contents every Saturday.

The bath in the outside wash-house was hand-filled - only once - from the boiled copper, and immersion was by strict seniority, which meant mum went first, and me, as the youngest of four, decidedly last. But the Lord provides, and come my turn a generous scurf had settled on the surface which acted much like a modern day spa cover, helping retain what few shreds of heat were still lurking in the murk. Oh what we took for granted before getting all affluent and poverty-stricken.