My god, who was this ninny? I began to feel sorry for Dalzell’s ideal reader – her life was being narrowed, targeted, held upside down by the ankles in the hope subscription money would fall out of her purse. Dalzell said she had been brought in as a consultant to bring that reader back to the fold. The magazine’s editor, Simon Wilson, had had his job ‘disestablished’. He later wrote an essay in Metro about the Cuisine ‘saga’, claiming that Fairfax management simply wanted to cut costs and turn the magazine into a cash cow.
Dalzell: ‘I used to say to the writers, “You’re not writing for yourself, you’re writing for the readers.” In my opinion, which is why I was brought in, Cuisine had become a little academic. It wasn’t quite as friendly. It had some very good writing, excellent writing: Simon in his tenure raised the bar. But food-writers are not writers. It’s not their natural métier. They’re cooks.
‘Simon introduced perhaps a higher discipline to the writing, but in doing so there was a perception among our readers that they were being delivered too much information rather than inspiration. It was perceived to be a little long and complicated. It needed not to get back, but to go forward, to recognise the reader’s needs, that she’s busy, she doesn’t want too many complicated ingredients. So we needed to undress the magazine. And stop telling readers off. A tone in some of the writing was becoming a little prescriptive…’
And what was her role in all this? Was she the wedge to remove Wilson from office? ‘I wasn’t his boss,’ she said. ‘I was contracted to help the team towards a simpler, clearer, better navigation.’ I pointed out that no one is there to navigate since the magazine disestablished the editor’s position. ‘An unusual concept,’ she said, ‘but it works.’ The editor’s position has also been removed at North & South – and Metro, where Wilson is now employed as a staff writer.
Dalzell will continue to consult for Cuisine – and, next year, for another Fairfax publication, NZ House & Garden. She said, ‘I can’t move house without first putting in my herb garden and my veges. I’ve always got perpetual spinach. New Zealand spinach is a great vegetable. It grows in six weeks, it’s cheap, it’s healthy. Anyone can grow it.’
She was suddenly possessed with a vision. She declared: ‘I hope vege gardens become the sex of the 2000s.’
I thought: The nation’s beetroots may never be the same again. And: I’m hungry. I wolfed down my morning tea as soon as I walked out of her door. It may have been the best mince savoury I’d eaten in my life.
[December 16]
27 Glynn Cardy
More Jesus, Vicar?
Some clown wrote in The Sunday Star-Times last week, ‘Christmas is about Jesus, vaguely, and food, definitely, heartily, massively.’ It turned out that I was prescient, because much the same message appeared a few days later in Auckland’s morning paper. The author was an Anglican priest, Glynn Cardy. ‘Christmas,’ he declared, ‘is about more than Jesus.’ He went on to say that Jesus is all very well and good, but religious notions needn’t concern us. It was more important that we uphold values of ‘generosity, caring, togetherness and hospitality’. As such, he wrote approvingly, Christmas is about food. ‘Food plays a major part in our Christmas communion. We give gifts of food … Food connects us.’
Except that Jesus isn’t invited, or at least not at the head of the table. As we prepare to celebrate Christmas, the last rooster I expected to put God on a diet was a vicar. I went to see Cardy. He was a very nice man, forty-eight years old, his hair thinning on top. He possessed a lovely smile and a round, smooth face. He really did rub his hands with delight. His article had done the trick: ‘It’s got traction. You’re here!’
But that traction also included two rather cross denunciations. Michael Hewat, vicar of the West Hamilton Anglican parish, wrote in reply: ‘I do not like the idea that Jesus is no longer the primary reason for celebrating Christmas. I like the idea even less when it is peddled by a senior cleric.’ Hewat dismissed Cardy as a comedian: ‘He’s not to be taken seriously.’ Quite right, wrote Garth George, a columnist and Christer, who flicked Cardy aside as a ‘troublesome priest’ given to ‘ramblings’ and a ‘philosophy of extreme liberal correctness that verges on dottiness’.
Cardy is the Anglican Archdeacon of Auckland, has a Venerable in front of his name, and serves as the vicar of St Matthew-in-the-City in downtown Auckland. His immediate neighbours include the casino, a twenty-four-hour pub where he sometimes breakfasts on Sundays before service, and the truly heathen Gomorrah of the TVNZ network centre. St Matthew is a beautiful church, a peaceful sight. A pohutukawa tree was in crimson bloom in the backyard. ‘It’s used as a urinal,’ he said. ‘People don’t have any fears of pissing in church grounds anymore.’ It didn’t seem to bother him. Nothing seemed to bother him; he had such a pacific temperament. He was, he said, a born optimist.
Our interview was conducted in the downstairs crypt. It was a bare room, rented out to a Buddhist meditation group and Alcoholics Anonymous. Upstairs, an office Christmas party was in full swing. A broken glass lay in front of the pulpit; a man dressed in a monk’s cowl played Doobie Brothers remixes on the turntable. They sang, ‘Without love, where would you be right now?’ I suppose that belonged in the church, although it was a shame the DJ hadn’t played the great Doobie hit, ‘Jesus is Just Alright with Me.’
But was Jesus just all right
