Some people can't help being low rent

DAVID BRAY

Tenants. There are many of them and most are no doubt caring, careful god-fearing citizens. But there are also more than a few who are malicious, destructive, thoughtless characters who apparently deliberately trash the properties in which they spend a few days or weeks.

Holiday renters are the problem. Two of our family own beach houses, one recently built just outside Hervey Bay, the other near Byron Bay. Good houses on beautiful sites. The places are no longer offered for rent through agents and the owners have lost some belief in human nature. Damage, burnt-out roller door motor, stovetop ruined, lavatory seats repeatedly destroyed, television untuned, furniture taken out for shallow water party time….. Real estate agents have been useless, collecting the rent but taking no interest in the care of the properties. There are vandals out there, despoilers, destroyers, wasters, pillagers, plunderers and ransackers. Could that be why I have never been a landlord?

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When is a lady not? There was a bit in a Sunday ”social” page recently where a woman’s photograph identified her as Lady Gertrude Bysea.

I won’t reveal her real name because it may not be her fault that she was so identified. She is the widow of a well-liked and, if you believe in such an honour, a man who was entitled to be Sir. The imperial system under which he was knighted holds that she cannot be Lady unless she “holds a peerage courtesy title in her own right” – born to it, in other words. Another moderately prominent Brisbane woman apparently finds this hard to accept, insisting she always be referred to as Lady Matilda Jones, thus annoying many men and women who have to deal with her. NZ now has its own honours system, as opposed to imperial. So do we.

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 So we turn to television. A generous son pays for Foxtel. I enjoy cricket, the five-day game, rugby – even when the Reds are in a temporary slump – tennis and golf when they are played in this country.

  It is good to see the new arts channel (132) on Foxtel. It’s ambitious, alone on the small screen though there was something like it years ago, with the same presenter, the ubiquitous urbanely expert Leo Scofield. It has so far shown a mix of good, indifferent and, once in a while, excellent material. Some are kept, building into a replacement for all the vinyl discs and DVDs tossed out over recent years.

  Some examples in the early weeks, typically top of the classical pops and of some age: Beethoven’s fifth piano concerto, 20 plus years old with Bernstein having the time of his life and Krystian Zimmerman combining with the Vienna Philharmonic. A Don Giovanni with no subtitles. A Nabucco from Parma and an excellent Vivaldi Four Seasons with Gidon Kremer and the English Chamber Orchestra. But very ordinary in others. Who the fornicating flamingo is this Jools joker who turns up in what threatens to be perennial filler?