ENCOUNTERS OF A VERNACULAR KIND: Philippa Werry

Written by Philippa Werry

Anyone Can Play by Philippa Werry (2nd Prize Winner 2011: Cultural Icons & The Vernacular Lounge Non-fiction Writing Competition, ‘Encounters of a Vernacular Kind’)

The Depot is pleased to announce the winner, runner up and highly commended writer of the 2011 Cultural Icons & The Vernacular Lounge Non-fiction Writing Competition, ‘Encounters of a Vernacular Kind’, a narrative competition on the topic of New Zealand’s distinctive local culture through its everyday icons.

The competition was judged by Graham Beattie, Linda Blincko and Federico Monsalve.

The 1st Prize goes to Anna Harding with her entry A Mall to Remember.  Anna wins an eight to ten week writing course at The Creative Hub in Auckland.

The 2nd Prize goes to Philippa Werry with her entry Anyone Can Play.  Philippa wins a $500 book package from Random House New Zealand.

Highly commended:  Derek Jones with his entry A Sense of Itself.

The Cultural Icons project www.culturalicons.co.nz and The Vernacular Lounge are both initiatives of The Depot with the aim to identify, discuss and debate New Zealand’s continually emerging cultural identity and to celebrate those who have significantly contributed to it.

The winning entries are available to read online at www.morphmagazine.co.nz and will shortly be available as podcasts on www.jamradio.co.nz.

Anyone Can Play by Philippa Werry

Two small boys are hanging over the railings, eyes fixed on the gutter. Their ball has hurtled over the fence and rolled to a stop against a car wheel. The boys know the pavement is out of bounds; they are clinging to the railings and looking up and down the street, hoping someone will pass by who can pick their ball up and return it to them.

Behind the small boys, an even smaller girl is focusing on the bars, preparing to launch herself at them. And behind her, the school playground seethes with lunchtime activity, but she is oblivious to all of it.

As you trundle past in the bus, or jog past on your early morning run, you can be equally oblivious. It’s a place that doesn’t affect you, apart from a minor delay before nine and after three o’clock when the poles with their orange circles swing out and the children on road patrol chant their commands.

“Signs out.”

“Check.”

“All clear.”

“Cross now.”

As you wait, you might hear the bell and be transported back to your own primary school. For a moment, before the echo dies away, you will remember the smell of school cloakrooms, lunchboxes, paint and wet raincoats, and the image of a favourite teacher will dart into your mind.

It’s lunchtime again: an endless hour of play. Children are skipping, running, swarming over the bars and slides. Over by the steps, a cluster of little boys, aged about six or seven, are absorbed in a make-believe world of knives and guns. One boy is lying down, quite comfortably, while another one shoots him with his finger. A third boy rolls on top of him and makes his hand into a knife to stick between his ribs.

“Is he dead?” a girl asks.

This is serious business. The boys ignore her.

“You guys get back to Base,” the first boy hollers.

“I can handle this guy.”

“No, get back to Base.”

The knife wielder gets up and runs off.  Soon afterwards, the dead boy gets up and runs after him.

Outside one of the classroom blocks, an older girl has a younger boy bailed up.

“Who does Jack like?” she’s asking him. “Who does Henry like?”

All over the playground, a world separated by the railings from the real grown-up world of jobs and mortgages and houses and cars, children are playing on the bars, on trolleys, pouring water in the water troughs, trickling sand through their fingers. Then the bell goes and they run or skip, hand in hand, back to class, while others dawdle, stopping to pat Tess, the school cat, on the way.

Later, when your own children start school, you become drawn into that world: a community not only of children but of parents and teachers, and not only the children, parents and teachers who are there now, but the hundreds of others who have passed through over the decades.

To begin with, you take the surroundings for granted, but soon you notice slight changes with each passing year. A new play area, a sunshade over the lunch area, a change in classroom numbering, sunhats, a new patch of garden, a fence, a mural. Some of these changes result from fund raising that you’ve been involved in, so the new play area is more than slides and climbing walls; it represents meetings and glasses of wine and laughter and planning, movie nights and sausages sizzles and annual galas.

By the time your children have been there for five or six years, you understand that the school is more than buildings and play areas. This one is in Brooklyn (equally famous for its windmill and the wonderful Penthouse cinema) but it could be anywhere; it is repeated many times in many places, all over the country.

You see the children lining up - sunhats on, lunches and drink bottles packed - before setting off on expeditions to museums or the waterfront. They wait for the bus to take them to the pool for swimming lessons or the sports stadium for athletics day, or – most exciting of all - to school camp. Once, shrieking in delight, they are let out from class to see snow fall for the first time in their lives.

Now, when you go past (stopping to pick up the ball lying in the gutter and hand it back) the playground carries the echoes of numerous other events: outdoor assemblies, wheelathons, hip hop performances, talent quests, Bad Hair Day parades, end of year carol concerts and Anzac Day services that draw people from all over the suburb. At three o’clock (“signs out!”) you can see the parents, caregivers, grandparents, gathered in the playground, chatting, sharing parts of their lives as they wait for school to finish.

You remember some sad things as well. The playground world is not exempt from sickness, accidents, unhappiness, difficulties, divorce and death.

You can still picture your children and their friends at five, six, seven, eight, ten years of age. In Year Nine, newly at high school, caught between childhood and adolescence, they come back on teacher-only days and sit in the playground, eating fish and chips and reminiscing. By Year Ten, it’s not cool to do that any more.

By the end of high school, when they are launching themselves into the real world of jobs or heading off to university, you sometimes hardly recognise them. The boys are tall and good-looking, the girls are all gorgeous, and the children playing on the bars and in the sandpit now look tiny. But in twenty years time, they too may walk or bus or drive past a school playground, hear a bell ring and be transported back to the world and the community of their childhood.