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David Harcourt
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| Joined: | 31 Dec 1969 |
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| Posts: | 1127 |
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Posted: 2 Aug 2008 07:01 am |
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Have you ever thought about the letter "Z"?
No, of course you haven't.
What kind of a daft question is that to ask anyone?
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David Harcourt
Administrator
| Joined: | 31 Dec 1969 |
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| Posts: | 1127 |
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Posted: 2 Aug 2008 07:19 am |
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I, however, have often thought about the letter "Z", and have in fact been doing so for more than sixty years.
Which may tell you more about me than I really want you to know, but let me explain. When I was a small boy a map of the world was mostly coloured red. Red, for the British Empire; a largely fictional contruction already, and about to become a total fiction sooner than anyone knew. Also, in that far away, Golden Time:
* there was no Zimbabwe, no Zambia, and there were no Zip codes
* Zucchini hadn't been invented yet (they were called "courgettes")
* Zionism was very new (or, at least, new to us)
* words like Zloty, Zulu, Zebra and Zircon existed of course but were hardly part of everyday speech
* J D Salinger hadn't written Franny & Zooey
* Ben Stiller hadn't appeared in Zoolander
* But there was a country named New Zealand, and the people who lived there were called "New Zealanders".
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David Harcourt
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| Joined: | 31 Dec 1969 |
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| Posts: | 1127 |
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Posted: 2 Aug 2008 07:20 am |
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In short, the letter "Z" belonged to us.
When you saw a capital "Z" anywhere it nearly always meant that you had come across a reference to New Zealand.
This made me irrationally proud as a child. We had our own letter of the alphabet. How many other countries could say that?
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 2 Aug 2008 07:21 am |
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Now, of course, we have Derek Zoolander, and Zimbabwe, and Zooey Glass, there's Zionism everywhere we look, and there are "Z"s all over the place.
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David Harcourt
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| Joined: | 31 Dec 1969 |
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Posted: 2 Aug 2008 07:21 am |
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It's rather sad really.
I still get a thrill when I see a capital "Z" in print, but most of the time it's a bit of a let down.
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David Harcourt
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| Joined: | 31 Dec 1969 |
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| Posts: | 1127 |
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Posted: 2 Aug 2008 07:22 am |
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So if anyone ever tries to tell you that life in New Zealand was uniformly dull in the 1950s you now know what to say:
"Ah yes, but they did have the letter 'Z' all to themselves. How cool is that?"
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