Features

As Critic reaches the ripe old age of 85, we decided to have a chat with some other 85-year olds about some of the highs and lows of their lives. Susan Smirk chatted to Jenny Lambert, who used to go dancing every night; May Munro, who once caught a 385-pound shark; Len Robinson, who taught Anatomy at Otago; and Joan Robinson, who watched Manchester burning from her bedroom window during World War Two.

May Munro – Outdoor Adventuress
   May Munro never went to high school. Her parents had a small dairy farm on the Hauraki plains, and during the war she was needed to work on the farm. “I was more or less in the land army,” says May. “They were hard years – oh my golly, we had to work! Because the boys were all away overseas, so somebody had to do it, didn't they? We had to do the jobs that men would normally have done.
   “It was a sad time. Something you don't really want to look back on. My brother went away, and several of my friends from where I lived. Two of them never came back.” May gets teary as she speaks. “Even after all this time, I still get emotional about it.
    “But there were happy days in between the sad times” she continues. “With all the boys being away, we had to make our own fun. All the farmers’ wives, the farmers’ girls, we used to all have good fun together.” She adds, “But we had rationing. Butter was rationed; tea, meat, clothing. If you wore anything out, well okay, you just lived with it!”
   May went on to do dress making, domestic work, and even picking and drying tobacco in Nelson. “A jack of all trades, that was me!” May's claim to fame is having hitchhiked with a friend all the way from Auckland to Bluff, when she was in her twenties. She says: “It was fun! We biked over the Cashmere hills for goodness’ sake! When I think about it now ... whew, man! The funny thing about it is, we never hitched once, but people just went out of their way to pick us up. We had a ball of a time. We never had any problems at all, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I wouldn't want to go hitchhiking now! There's too many rogues around.”
   Another adventure she had was working on a big sea fishing resort, on Mayor Island, offshore from Tauranga. Men would come from all over the world, she explains, for a week or so of fishing. May and her friend slept in tents, and worked in the dining room, but had plenty of time for swimming and tramping too. “We had a whale of a time!” said May. “We went out deep sea fishing one day ... and I was so seasick they had to bring me home again! Another time I went out, and I landed a shark. A 385-pound Reremai [basking] shark. The big one, that would have been a world record, it was so heavy that it straightened the hook out and got away. Only the fact that there were others with me on the boat at the time, who verified that, just to prove I wasn't skiting!” May smiles and laughs as she remembers. “If I was young again, I'd go back down there tomorrow!”
   May met her husband while working at a hotel in Christchurch. He was trained as a psychiatric nurse, and they moved to a small farm in Seacliff, where he worked at the psychiatric hospital. Two of her sons also did their training there, both becoming psychiatric nurses. “They never talked about it,” says May. “Once they closed the door at night, that was it. No one around Seacliff, who worked there, ever talked about it. They were just pleased to get out of it.”
   May misses the trams, and the railcar she used to be able to get from Seacliff into town, since she didn't have a car. The other invention she is happy to sing the praises of is the washing machine: “I can still see my poor old mother, scrubbing on the scrubbing board, and boiling up the copper, that sort of thing. The washing machines were a godsend!”
   On a more sombre note, May muses, “I don't think any of the young ones could ever understand what the War years were like. But then I suppose it was the same with us young ones, with what it was like for the First World War. My pop was in the First World War: he was a stretcher-bearer in France. We sort of had a different outlook on life altogether.
   “I think the kids today don't have as good a time as we had growing up, even though it was wartime, and rationing,” May says. “If I was young, I'd have it all over again ... but I'm not going to, I know that!”
 
   Jenny Lambert – Belle of the South
   Jenny Lambert was born in Scotland. After high school she spent seven years training in her trade – she was a cutter, making men's suits. Nearly all her work was army work during the War. She spent her time almost solely making officers’ uniforms. “I knew quite a lot of people who went to fight. I lot of the neighbours had to go away to fight.”
   Jenny immigrated to New Zealand with her family in 1947. “When I came out here it was very, very quiet ... and I thought it was dead, to be quite honest! Everything was old fashioned – very different to home. I thought I was back in the dark ages again.”
   Out here to the 'colonies', Jenny found the clothes to lagging behind in style. She says, “I came out with a lot of new stuff, and it was all modern. People used to look at me!”
   As a young person Jenny loved ice skating, roller skating, and above all, dancing. She went ballroom dancing “every night” and later took up modern dance as well. 
   She says, “Dunedin has changed a terrible lot.” Jenny lived for a while in Southland but she definitely prefers Dunedin because there is plenty to do here, now: “ It took a while to get into the swing of things. But it's come out a lot since then ... I've enjoyed it.”
   Jenny says that young people today are “all very good – there's good and there's bad anywhere you go.” Her advice is to “Just go and enjoy life. Enjoy it as it comes!”
 
   Len Robinson – Anatomy Expert
   Len was born in Hamilton, and grew up in a country village of only ten houses. He had a few jobs during secondary school, including helping in a meat works in Petone, and working in a timber yard. He then came down to Otago to study: “I went through the medical school, and then I was a demonstrator, and then I was a senior lecturer, in the Anatomy department, teaching.” Len joined the University staff in 1952, when he took special responsibility for the Anatomy Museum, working with three technicians to produce anatomical models for teaching. 
   Len says of his years at Otago that he “didn't get mixed up with the University politics. I knew plenty of friends who were involved very much, but I didn't participate in any protests and things.” Len's studies coincided with World War Two. He explains, “We were sort 'protected' and exempt from conscription. But we did have the Medical Corp of course, and we used to meet during vacations. Of course we took a great interest in what was happening overseas, but we were, inadvertently, somewhat sheltered.”
   Len also describes some of the changes he has seen in Dunedin over his years here. “There were different shops then. Nowadays everything is lumped together in these bigger stores. Then you would go to a particular shop to get something, they would specialise in that activity. Nowadays going into a big stores you just walk along the aisle and get whatever you like. The shop assistants are still friendly and all that, but I don't think you've got the same kind of helpfulness as the people they used to have.”
   Always the techno-phile, Len has kept up with the latest inventions. He rode a bicycle during his days as a student, but admits that “We couldn't hardly do without the motor car, now.” He always liked to own the latest camera and video gear, editing and projecting equipment, and owned a computer before most of his adult children bought one – an Apple Power Mackintosh 6100.
   Television isn't high up on his list of favourite technologies, however. When Len speaks about the youth of today, he says “There's usual range I think: the ratbags, and those who are quite normal. I'm afraid that many of them are being influenced by what they see on the television.” Ever the anatomist, Len adds a scientific explanation to his reasoning: “In a sense, well, the brains aren't developed properly until they're 22 or 23, so I'm quite sure they're influenced by what they see on the television, and by what their companions are doing. Which is usually for the worse, I'm afraid,” he adds. 
   “I have the impression that young people are doing things at an earlier age than they did in days gone by. So I suspect it's common to mature earlier – though I'm not sure that 'mature' is the right word!” Len laughs.
 
   Joan Robinson – Policewoman
   Joan Robinson grew up in Manchester, in the north-west of England. As a child her favourite games were hopscotch and hide-and-seek. At school, she remembers having to learn a lot of things by rote. But Joan also vividly recalls some of the more dramatic moments of her youth, during World War Two. 
   “I was in the middle of it in Manchester. We used to have air raid warning quite often, when the Germans would come over, dropping bombs on the city. They'd start with setting the place on fire first, then dropping the big bombs. You could hear them whistling down, and my father used to say if you could hear it coming down it wouldn't hit you! We used to look out of the window upstairs and look at Manchester burning.
   “In the summertime there were dogfights in the air, with the RAF and the Germans. You'd see them battling it out ... people were standing and gazing up at the sky watching these dogfights going on, not giving a damn as to whether anything hit them or not. We had the Anderson's shelters in the gardens, so when we got the air raid shelters we used to go out and get into the air raid shelter, taking with you a blanket and a hot water bottle and a thermos flask and anything else you could carry, ‘cos you never knew how long you'd be there.”
   Joan worked as a clerk in a department store, then for the IRD for a while, before eventually joining the English police force. When she arrived in New Zealand in the early 1950s, she was impressed by the landscape: “I thought it was great, because of the big open spaces which I wasn't really used to in Manchester, which is a big built-up industrial area.”
   Among Joan's favourite modern appliances are the microwave and the hair dryer. She says, “When I was young you used to have to sit in front of a fire to dry your hair, and put your head down. Hair dryers weren't available in the home like they are now, portable things. You could only get your hair dried at the hair dressers.”
   When asked about young people today, she says “they try a lot more things now than they used too. There are lot of things around that weren't available when I was young. And of course a lot of drinking goes on today, which we didn't do much of in my day. You could always have a drink, but you had to go with your parents.”