The Path of the Ancients

Mike Bodnar sets off an a short odyssey to try out the newly-opened Te Ara Tupua - a shared walking/cycling path along the western coast of Wellington Harbour...

The Walking Man

Wellington's harbour (wake up at the back there; we're in New Zealand...) was unexpectedly gifted some land in 1855, which made quite a few things possible that hadn't been before. This surprise donation didn't come daintily wrapped ,or with a bow tied round it; it was an earthquake, of serious magnitude - 8.2 to be precise.

I'm not here to give you a lesson in tectonics though; just know that the quake uplifted certain parts of the Wellington coastline between 1.5 and 2.0 metres, especially along the western shore. Over to the south-east it rose as much as 6.4 metres. I know, right?

There's a certain irony in useful land being created not long after British colonials had bought (or 'stolen', some would argue) whatever useful land they could from local Māori, because the uplift of the terrain along the western edge of the harbour - and especially around the nascent city of Wellington - enabled much reclamation and development where there had been little or no opportunity before.

It also allowed a road and rail link to be established from the city to the north. Prior to the uplift, there had been no useful shoreline on which to build what we now call a 'transit corridor.'.

So here I was today strolling along the newly-opened Te Ara Tupua, the Pathway of the Ancients, which follows those same shoreline contours and serves all sorts of useful purposes - until the next major earthquake returns it to the sea. But let's not think about that right now (although I will return to it shortly. There's no escape. No, literally: there is no escape. You'll see.)

The northern end of Te Ara Tupua

This new pathway is a shared cycling/walking facility, running alongside the aforementioned transit corridor carrying a railway line and a major road - State Highway 2. In short, what they've done is build a rocky seawall/defence in the shallows, and on the inside of that have created a flash new dual-purpose pathway, safe from the railway and traffic on one side, and from the crashing waves that bless our coastline on occasion on the other. Having only just opened (at time of writing), it has yet to weather its first major storm, so we'll have to wait and see just how robust it is.

Today though the harbour was calm, with just an amateur northerly blowing. Wind? Pfft. I chose to do the trek from north to south so that the breeze and sun would be behind me. Wasn't born yesterday.

An infrastructure minister (left) and son
Image: RNZ

Pathways like this don't come cheap, and as soon as I'd set off after leaving the train at Petone station, a media story replayed in my head from the previous weekend. A man named Chris Bishop, (a minister of infrastructure, m'lud) officially opened it on 15 May, taking the opportunity to criticise the overall NZ$348.7 million cost of the project.

Which made me realise that even after just my first ten metres, I had walked along a section costing almost NZ$775,000. Ka-ching! (No, I didn't do the maths in my head - I cheated)

But hey, I'm not here to be churlish about it. Don't get me wrong; I believe in investing in car-free alternatives, and I'm sure those who now zoom along the new pathway on their bikes thoroughly enjoy passing the traffic in its rush-hour clog evenings and mornings. I do worry, however, that projects of this nature cost so, so much.

The arguments for this particular pathway are many and sound though. It's not just a pathway; it's a 'resilience project' - a buzz-phrase which actually has some merit in this case. In 2013, a major storm washed out portions of this coastline, undermining the railway line and causing fairly major disruption. Given the effects of climate change, it seems sensible to build a robust seawall to counter future such incursions, and within it place an alternative transit corridor.

In the event of an apocalypse...

I haven't read this anywhere else yet, but it seems obvious to me that if the western hillside were to slip onto and block the state highway (as it does on occasion), then the new Te Ara Tupua is actually wide enough for, say, emergency vehicles to use it. Or, in the event of an apocalyptic event, zombies would be able to shuffle from Wellington to Pito-One at a horrifyingly leisurely pace. In perfect safety.

But I digress. The pathway is split unevenly: two-thirds of it is given over to a cycling lane, while the remaining third is for those of a more perambulatory nature. This distinction hadn't made it into some people's brains though; I had covered no more than fifteen metres before a cyclist pulled over and stopped literally in front of me, blocking the whole walking lane. She hadn't even seen me. What am I? The Invisible Man? I gave her a full-on EXCUSE ME and pushed past, listening to her and her partner, and the man they'd stopped to chat to, guffawing in laughter. Sorry cyclists, but behaviour like that does nothing to endear you to the rest of us.

So, while I'm on a rant, let me just point out two other niggles. One is that there are no toilets, either at the ends or in the middle. Secondly, not a single rubbish bin in sight. 

On my stroll today - a normal Wednesday late morning - the vast majority of those using the

Searching for a toilet?

 Path of the Ancients were, well, ancient. It was definitely Te Ara Senior, and although I'm sure not every one was incontinent or suffering prostate issues, if one were to be, shall we say, "caught short" in transit, then to nip behind a coastal rock would be to take your life in your hands, among other things.

Oh wait, a third niggle. To prevent us from straying from the path onto the railway line and causing inconvenient bus replacements for the next day or so, there is a chain-link fence along the entirety. From a health and safety point of view, that's good, until the next 1855 earthquake causes a large tsunami. In which case we'd have a hard job 'getting to higher ground' - as we are advised to do by the emergency management services. See, I warned you: literally no escape.

Oh, and I just remembered a fourth niggle, but let's just call it an 'observation': There are three 'AED' cabinets (AED = automated external defibrillator), one at each end and one in the middle, so plan your heart attack carefully, or be prepared to run approximately two kilometres to the nearest paddles. Clear? Clear!

Drainspotters have it easy...

On the plus side, Te Ara Tupua is flat along its length apart from the overbridge at Ngauganga, but even that's a gentle gradient. There are many attractive Māori motifs built in to stonework, and on pou (poles) at various places, as well as Māori-influenced patterning on pathway signage. Even the manhole covers have Māori 'location finder' paintwork across the entire path so that they're easy to spot (for those who like manhole covers, i.e. Drainspotters).

Information boards telling of local wildlife or history are plentiful, and there are multiple rest areas - or ūranga - along the way, with seating, so that you can watch the whales and dolphins frolicking in the harbour. Or, as an ancient, check your heart rate or work out how long it's been since you last had a wee.

I noticed there's lighting as well, which suggests evening or night-time strolls are doable. Personally, and this really is just me, I would love to ride my motorbike along Te Ara Tupua around three o'clock in the morning; there's nothing stopping a motorcycle accessing the path either end. (But shhh, don't tell anyone).

Just before I reached the overbridge at Ngauranga I was treated to a brief but obvious whiff of eau de sewage, which was a shame. And no, despite the lack of conveniences, it wasn't me.

But let's not end on that. During my stroll I admired the harbour a lot, looking in the hope of seeing the aforementioned whales or dolphins, but sadly I saw only a few shags, who seemed to appreciate the 'islands' that have been created specifically for them just off-shore. I did see one of the interisland ferries coming in, and saw at least four fisher-folk who had obviously taken advantage of the path giving them access to previously unreachable fishing spots. 

All-in-all, the distance from Pito-One to Ngauranga is just under five kilometres, but you could walk another five and you'd find yourself in Wellington city. I didn't, and chose to catch the bus at the Ngauranga flyover instead. I mean, I didn't want to end up a zombie.

(Author rating of Te Ara Tupua: 8 out of 10)

I say! The story behind screamers, and other literary curiosities...

Mike Bodnar explores some of the stuff we take for granted in literature every day...

"We all know what exclamation marks are for!" smirked Julian.

"I didn't ask you what they're for," retorted Gabby, "I asked if you know where they come from, not what they're for or where they go."

Julian shuffled on his knees to the door of the tree hut, then turned. "You're a girly swot, Gabby. I'm not playing!" And with that he exited the structure, and - forgetting the ladder had been hauled up - fell immediately to his death.

The End.

Okay, not your average Enid Blyton snippet, but, y'know, lol! It's just to grab your attention.

Because, while I was reading a novel the other day (Mick Herron's latest Slow Horses book, Clown Town, since you ask), I suddenly wondered where exclamation marks came from. 

No reflection on Mr. Herron's writing - I am easily distracted - but when he relates that one of his characters says something 'in italics' - that got me pondering the origins of italics too. There is a link between exclamation marks and italics, and it's called Italy. The clue, obviously, is in the word italics itself. Jackson Lamb and his clowns had to wait while I investigated.

So let's start with - yes let's! - exclamation marks, because I have done the legwork for you. 

"Guarda! Posso mettere più parole sulla pagina!"

Turns out we must travel back to the 13th or 14th centuries (the jury is still out), where, stepping from the Tardis, we discover that monks, toiling away on their tomes, would use a particular way of spelling 'joy' ('io') in Latin, which was to put the 'i' directly above the 'o'.

Over time, the 'o' became more of a dot, and the word eventually ceased to be a word and became the exclamation mark we all know today. Does that bring you joy?

If it does, you'll also be delighted to know that io is pronounced 'ee-oh', or even 'yo'. So when someone in your 'hood calls out, 'Yo!' you know they are really shouting joy to you. Either that or they're about to mug you.

But here I am being flippant again. Straight face, let's continue.

The man himself

For evidence, while we're in bygone Italy, we can meet Coluccio Salutati, where in one of his manuscripts we find the very first example of io written as an i above an o. 

However, he wasn't the one to popularise it; fast forward just a few decades - still in Italy - and we find printers such as Venetian Aldus Manutius standardizing the i above the dot to express and emphasise strong emotion. The rest really is history.

(As an aside, printers later called the exclamation mark the 'bang,' 'screamer,' and even the 'shriek'!)

Italics

As mentioned, the word italics provides a glaringly obvious clue to its origin, and once again it's printer Aldus Manutius who is the prime suspect. And we don't even have to get back in the Tardis.

Just a year or so after he discovered and popularised the joy of the exclamation mark, he got his assistant to craft a more cursive script for an edition of the Epistole of St. Catherine of Siena

Italics in action

. There followed rapid adoption of the slanting italic script by Manutius, but not, I must emphasise, for emphasis.

No; instead, the smaller slanting cursive script was used because it took up less space than more traditional typeface, enabling the publishing of more compact pocket books, in, for example, octavo format.

Not that cursive script was new - scholars and other scribes in the 14th century had often written in italics, but it was Manutius who began using it in print, and he in fact modestly named the type 'Aldino.' 

We don't call it Aldino today, because, very soon after Manutius claimed ownership (which, by the way, received papal approval three times, bless), competitors outside Venice also adopted it (some say counterfeited it), but called the script 'italics' as a way of giving Italy as a country ownership, rather than just one man. (I'm surprised they didn't call exclamation marks 'exclamitali' ©Mike Bodnar).

Just my type

Italics have a special place in my heart because when I was about ten or eleven years old, I was given a brand new typewriter, an Olympia 33 portable. I didn't think twice that it actually had italic type hammers, and that everything I typed was strongly emphasised. Writing a letter, I'd begin with, 'Dear Shaun,' except it would of course come out as an imperative Dear Shaun, and finish with an emphatic 'Your friend, Mike.' 

My school assignments likewise were presented in urgent typeface, though not, it has to be said, always in a timely manner.

But I learned to type on that machine, and it was my trusty workhorse for at least the next ten years.

Ellipses...

And so, at least in this article, to the final item of punctuative interest: dot, dot, dot - the ellipsis. Ellipses have, of recent times, become somewhat controversial. But first, some more time travelling. Follow me.

Terence, Andria, translated by Maurice Kyffin: 
London, 1588
(The British Library Board, C.13.a.6 sig. Iiiiir)

The use of dots to show a pause or a tailing off in speech can be seen in an early Roman play, Andria, in a 1588 English translation of previous Greek versions. Here, it seems, the translator has taken the liberty to introduce a pause or tailing off in speech using a series of dots. In this case (see pic) there are four, and they are more dashes than dots, but their purpose is the same: they demonstrate a deliberate absence of words.

Literary academic Dr. Anne Toner, in a paper on the origins and use of ellipses, has this to say...

But an absence of words usually signals a heightening of emotion or action ... The ellipsis acts therefore as a form of stage direction. As such, it has proved to be a powerful and extremely useful dramatic resource. In speaking aloud, pausing is, after all, a vital aspect of the delivery of meaning: a slight hesitation speaks volumes. As Toner says: “...not saying something often says it better."

Which makes me want to leave the rest of this article blank, just so you can marvel at the creativity that isn't actually here...

'Jack sweeps Rose up in his arms
and takes her into the bedroom...'

But you don't get rid of me that easily. I agree with Dr. Toner that something unsaid can also be something revealed. I feel, for example, that ellipses are the equivalent of the slow mix between scenes in a movie, something that suggests time passing, or a 'meanwhile moment.' 

Also in movie terms, ellipses are like the fade-to-black at the end of a scene, where no more needs to be said. For example, 'Jack sweeps Rose up in his arms and takes her into the bedroom...'

You could adopt this in a practical sense at home. For example, tomorrow evening, when it's approaching bedtime, try saying to your partner, 'D'you fancy a bit of dot dot dot?' and see what happens. Don't blame me if you get a black eye.

'Boomer ellipses'

So, to the controversy. Ellipses, when employed in a messaging or texting context, have taken on a tone of aggression in today's internet-based communication. Apparently. But - it must be stressed - this interpretation is entirely the domain of... young people. (See what I did there?)

Ooh, sarcasm!

People my age - and let's not say anything about that other than I was a teenager when Apollo 11 landed on the moon - and 'boomers' in general, have been accused by Gen Z and millennials of not understanding ellipses, or at the very least, misusing them. 

Seriously; they even call them 'Boomer ellipses,' because, duh, they're so old fashioned? (The question mark is so that in your head this sounds like a young person speaking.)

A Gen Z or millennial today will typically use ellipses in their phone messages to indicate sarcasm, displeasure, hesitation or annoyance, whereas we boomers continue to employ and interpret ellipses as they have been understood for over 500 years. In short, we have a generational divide; we employ ellipses as they were originally intended - to show a continuation, a pause, or a passage of time, while Gen Z and millennials have reinterpreted them as the bad guys - the Three Dots of the Apocalypse.

It's just one indication of how language usage is evolving at an increasingly rapid pace. But at least, for now anyway, bangers, screamers, shrieks and exclamitali (© Mike Bodnar) are safe. 

But, one wonders, for how long...

(Cue dramatic music. Fade to black.)

Epilogue

Julian didn't really die after falling from the tree. No characters were harmed in the writing of this article, although some Gen Z and millennial egos may have suffered mild bruising.

Double-Oh Really??

Mike Bodnar breaks cover to reveal that he's been of interest to the Hungarian intelligence service, and that spying is in the family...

Secret meetings must have taken place
during Hungary's communist era...

Surreptitiously checking our surroundings, I mutter: "The roses attract handbags early this year." To which you respond, "Fish swim backwards when the moon is full." 

And with the security protocol satisfied, we can continue our conversation, comrade. It's good to know who's on your side.

However - and before you swivel the lamp in my face - I have to declare I am not a spy, and never have been. Okay, stick needles under my fingernails if you must, but my story will stay the same. 

I do love spy books and movies though, so when, in 1964 I found myself in the lounge of a posh Hungarian hotel room in Budapest, with my father checking the chandelier for microphones, I was enthralled. Yes, even at the age of double-oh nine-and-three-quarters, I'm fairly certain I had already seen Dr. No, From Russia With Love, and maybe Goldfinger, so I was well-educated in the world of secret agents, foreign powers, and hidden listening devices. 

My father tapped the lamp shade and mimed someone listening with headphones pulling them off their ears in annoyance. I thought it was funny.

Listening to Double-oh-nine and three-quarters
and his parents

Spoiler alert: he didn't find any listening devices, but that's not to say there weren't some in the bedside lamps, or the telephone. Because it turns out my father, André, was of interest to the Hungarian intelligence service - then under communist rule - and three years later he would be recruited by them as a spy.

How do I know this top secret information? Because I have been party to some declassified Hungarian state files. Of which, more later. But first, a bit of context...

My father - André Balint Bodnár (Codename Franz. No seriously...) - was born in Hungary in 1922. Despite Hungary being land-locked, he became a seafarer in the merchant navy, rising eventually to captain. His travels by ship took him to many foreign ports, including Liverpool, England. It was here he met, wooed, and married my mother. I was born after an appropriate interval in 1954, but four years later my parents divorced. Wasn't me, your honour.

Who's that man?

So I grew up without a father most of the time, although he did have legal 'access' to me, and when in port he would come and visit, and treat me well, buying me new clothes, taking us into town in a taxi, and once even building me a train set that was so big it had to be hung on hinges from a wall. But for all that, he was a stranger. I remember whispering to my mum one day during an early visit, 'Who's that man?'

Fast forward to 1964, and suddenly (at least it seemed to me) my mother and I were travelling to Hungary, where we were to meet my father for a two-week holiday, which is how we came to be in the Duna Hotel in Budapest looking for microphones.

1964, in Tiszalök, Hungary.
L to R: my half-brother Endré, my Hungarian
grandmother, me, and
spy-in-waiting, André, my father

Over two weeks we travelled around Hungary's hotspots, including to the village of Tiszalök, where André's mother and her husband lived. My half-brother Endré was there as well, at least for our visit. There were no microphones in Tiszalök either, but who knows who the chickens in the garden were reporting to?

Within the 111 pages of declassified file material, recently received by my Budapest-based nephew Csaba (pronounced 'cha-ba'), I am mentioned multiple times, including, erroneously, that at the age of nine I learned to speak Hungarian. If you use the needles on me, I will confess (quite rapidly) to learning how to say good morning, thank you, and cherry lemonade in Hungarian, but that's about it. I could never have passed on information on troop deployment, tank movements or the daily habits of the local Bolshevik command. But I could have quietly informed you where to find the best thermal baths, and wiener schnitzel - hardly intelligence that MI6 would value. Of more interest is that the majority of the 111-page documents focus much on my father.

Image:  Public Domain, httpscommons.wiki

While I make light of needles under fingernails, for many Hungarians in the 1960s and throughout its communist rule, the prospect of being interrogated was very real. In Budapest today, there is evidence of that, at 60 Andrássy Avenue, the Terror Haza - The House of Terror Museum.

Director-General of the museum, Dr. Mária Scmidt, explains: "The House of Terror Museum is a building which commemorates two tragic eras in Hungarian history. From 1944 to 1990, our nation was robbed of its independence and freedom - first by Arrow Cross thugs supported by German Nazis, and then by communists backed by the Soviet Union. We have since recovered both our independence and freedom, to become free citizens of an independent Hungary. Because we Hungarians are a people of freedom!"

Crest of the
State Protection Authority

The Terror Museum - which is in the old headquarters of the State Protection Authority - celebrates escaping the oppressive fascist and communist regimes, while also reminding Hungarians and other visitors of the cruelty and fear of those two particular eras. In the basement there is a cellar dedicated to the torture of suspects and prisoners, of which there were so many that those in charge - the political police - had to take over the basements of other nearby buildings, creating a terrifying maze of cells and torture rooms. 

About now you're probably keen to attach bits of me to a car battery and interrogate me about how my father became a spy for the communists. Well, put down the electrodes because I will sing like a canary.

Nephew Csaba, who has the declassified files (which are all in Hungarian), tells me that my father was recruited as a spy in 1967. His 'operational area' was the Middle East, and as mentioned, he was codenamed Franz.

A Dilmun tanker being guided by a tug towards
McDermott's Oil Storage on Deiraside of
Dubai Creek. Image: dubaiasitusedtobe.net

I'm not too surprised that he was recruited, because, as a captain, he was commander of a small oil tanker for the Dilmun Navigation shipping company, and was based in Bahrain. 

At that time, despite being oil-rich, the area was devoid of the infrastructure necessary for the transport of oil and fuel locally. Rail and road networks were poor or non-existent, so fuel delivery around the Gulf depended on a fleet of 'small ships', owned and operated by Dilmun Navigation. This included the delivery of aviation fuel to a jetty near Dubai Airport, from where it was pumped via underground pipes to the airport itself. The ships became a familiar sight around Dubai Creek and Port Rashid.

A page from The Franz Files

It was on one of these vessels that my father was captain, and with oil wealth expanding in the Middle East, it is hardly surprising that the Hungarian intelligence authority saw him as an easy and convenient local source of information, an agent already-in-place. Our Man in the Middle East.

However, despite this sounding like a good premise for a John Le Carré novel, Franz, it seems, turned out not to be good covert operative material. Csaba tells me, "I think he wasn’t a good spy, because the file was closed one year later."

Which is a bit disappointing to me as Double-Oh-Seventy-One now. He had plenty of other talents - he was a cartoonist and artist, and spoke multiple languages - but spying seemingly wasn't one of them.

The files show he had been monitored as a potential English spy for years, which is possibly why Hungarian counterintelligence recruited him. Maybe they thought it was better to 'keep your enemies closer.'

Csaba says he doesn't see any big surprises in the files, despite their length. "What I see is that he was very naïve," he concludes, and that he had accepted the role "for money and patriotism." 

Which sounds about right. He was a charmer, probably fancied himself as James Bond, loved to spend money (when he had it), but later in life I always thought of him as what we call in English 'a wide boy.' Wikipedia has it in a nutshell: Wide boy is a British term for a man who lives by his wits, wheeling and dealing. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it is synonymous with spiv.

"Or... he was really an English spy," adds Csaba at the end of one of his messages, given to me on a microdot hidden in a newspaper and surreptitiously handed to me in a brush-pass one foggy night in London. (Actually by Facebook Messenger, but the London bit sounds better).

One day I hope to see copies of the intelligence files on my father, even if they're in Hungarian. I won't understand a word of them, unless there's a reference to cherry lemonade.

So for now, case file closed.