Tiki Cootes' cricket ballad

Another New Zealand poet I came across recently is the rollicking bush balladeer, Tiki Cootes. He wrote one New Zealand cricket poem which I am delighted to share with you:

TIKI COOTES

That’s Not Cricket Nor the Rata Flower in Bloom

I was working over Golden Bay

In the late fifties in my teens

I knocked around some hard cases

Not crooks by any means

Now we were full of life

And sometimes full of beer

And mostly full of beans

And of trouble try to steer

Anyhow this Friday night

We’d all gone to Collingwood

The pub wouldn’t serve us

We got beer just where we could

We managed to acquire some Harley’s

That tasted like home brew

And to get all kind of groggy

Well it only took a few

It got to Sunday quickly

We decided to go back

25 miles to Mangarakau

Along a twisting bushy track

We had the odd ale aboard

To guide us on our way

We even had some Snapper

Freshly caught that day

At an urgent call of nature

Just past Pakawau Flat

We decided to play cricket

With a snapper for a bat

We even found a tennis ball

Belonging to someone’s mutt

With a pine hedge for a wicket

I hollered ‘batter up’

I swung back my snapper

To get a good fine edge

The snapper shot out my hands

And landed in the hedge

One guy joking asked me

As at his ‘bat’ did grip

Would fielding in the hedge

Be just like playing slip

Some were quite proficient

Some showed style and dash

Some had no fin going

Others had a bash

One said I’ll stick to rugby

As at another hit he falls

Can’t play bloody cricket

Anyhow rugby don’t have scales

The cricket test was ended

We appealed against terrain

And our scaly cricket bats

Were snapper once again

If we had been clairvoyant

With futuristic flashes

We would have seen ourselves

Paying for the ashes

At another call of nature

Much further up the scrub

We stopped and all got out

When someone mentioned ‘grub’

I was feeling peckish

And being not the only one

I set fire to a gorse bush

To cook the snapper on

The fire soon got out of hand

And quickly it did rage

Burning up the scrub and bush

Lasting five whole days

They traced the fire to us guys

For later in the week

Along comes a Policeman

And to us he’d like to speak

The cop asked us questions

About the smoke and gloom

“What’s that glow on the ridge up there?"

“Just the rata flower in bloom"

Well the answer didn’t please him

And to make it understood

I found out what a ‘flat foot’ is

He kicked my arse real good

And so in well pressed suits

Up the courthouse we made tracks

We got all fined forty quid

For being pyromaniacs

Well whatever that there meant

For I was just a pup

It had something to do with burning

Well I was sure burned up

Two things I learned when I was young

Two things I learned off pat

Don’t use a gorsebush for a skillet

Or a snapper for a bat

Oh yes

Or not to cheek a policeman

If at all his feet are flat

Poem © Tiki Cootes

(from Tiki Cootes’ There’s Some Hard Cases About!, John McIndoe, Dunedin, 1979)

Tiki Cootes was born in Nelson. He worked at a wide variety of jobs and at one time made a living as a wood carver as well as working for the Ministry of Works at Cromwell. He played the banjo and guitar and wrote mainly bush ballads which were collected in There’s Some Hard Cases About!: A Poetic Round Up of Some I’ve Met, 1979. His family had a strong oral tradition and entertained themselves by rhyme-making.