Happy New Year all!

May the good get better and the bad get gone.

Auld Lang Syne - Sex and The City

Next year it will be different...

So as the old year lurches to its end, inevitably we review what has happened. It's been a slightly below average year for me, no great new passions or directions, pretty much same as it ever was. On the positive side are the cats, Thomas my young friend, my constant source of amusement, and my dear old Emma who has made it through another year and can still give Thom what for if he gets out of line. I discovered  new places to holiday (Nelson Lakes and Golden Bay - it's always good to have a bolthole or two). Movie and book-wise the year has seemed unremarkable, can't think of anything that has been even vaguely memorable. I was EQC'd and survived. The quakes have died down, but of course, we still live with the thought that there might be another Big One. The weather has been unpleasant, two snowstorms and too much cold weather for my liking. One of my customers came in the other day and complained about the heat (30 degrees). Stupid, stupid woman, just enjoy it while it lasts because we get little enough of it.
    Of course, next year will be different. It will be a marvellous year, full of adventure and weight-loss. I'll travel business class to Italy to live the life of Reilly in my Tuscan villa. The (young, gorgeous) man of my dreams will sweep me off my feet and will help me spend the millions I am going to win on Lotto. I will retire early. I will buy a little red sports car and get everything lifted, so that I don't embarrass my young man. My talents as an artist and writer will flame into incandescence and a trilogy will be filmed from my first book. I will become both a popular and a cult heroine. I will appear on American Idol or something and Simon Cowell will weep at my feet in adoration. Kevin McCloud will design my caravan, and Posh Becks will do my toenails.
     Not.

The lillies of Christmas

 

Here in New Zealand, a perpetual joy of the Christmas season is the flowering of the regal lillies, (Lilium regale) commonly known here as Christmas lillies (natch). Fortunate us, here in the Southern hemisphere Christmas comes at midsummer, and no Christmas would be complete without the glorious fragrance of these beautiful flowers combined with the smell of drying pine-needles (from the tree) and whatever food is being prepared for the annual feast. We've had a large vase of them on the desk at work, and customers come in asking "what's that beautiful smell?". Lillies appear in force on the Christmas altar too, filling churches with their own particular incense.  The scent is such a part of a NZ Christmas, and one that evokes an instant trip down the nostalgic path of Christmas past.
My Dad used to grow them right at the end of our quarter-acre, in the shade of an ancient pear-tree in deep, rich soil created from years of leaf-mulch. Every year we would send a large bunch to Mum's church (Dad was an atheist, but didn't begrudge his lillies for the enjoyment of others).

 

Other lillies also arrive around the same time, usually just a little later. White Madonna lillies (Lillium candidum) are a nice reminder of the Annunciation, but I have a burgundy one in the garden which seems a lot more pagan. These also have a powerful scent.

 

 

 And last but not least, the Asiatic and Oriental lillies, of which there are many, many cultivars.

 

 

 

 

Back to normal

    Two days after the season of goodwill and TV is back to normal. Criminal minds, CSI etc.etc. are back with the usual slew of psychotic slayings, the more twisted the better. Does anyone else think there's something just a little hypocritical about this? TV says "OK, the season of goodwill and peace is OVER, get it, and we're back to the bloodfest". And Christmas Eve viewing was more suited to Halloween than Xmas - Disney's Christmas Carol was real dark and creepy, and the Corpse Bride? Weird choice, guys. Of course, we can't show anything religious, that might offend people who aren't Christian. Even though it is a Christian holiday, and if it wasn't for Christianity we wouldn't have a day off at all.  Now, I am an atheist, but I really think that since one of the foundations of Western civilisation is Christianity, like it or not, then perhaps it should be celebrated. Bring on the hymns and the story of the Nativity and the star shining at midnight, the shepherds getting their socks washed and the Three Kings orienteering across miles of trackless waste, following a star and a hope. Isn't that magical? Isn't that better than a three-day greed fest? It is, but it doesn't make any money, of course, so kick that to the kerb. Christmas now is more full of humbug than it ever was in Dicken's tale.
     Grump, grump.

The way it was

 

Woman magazine, Family Christmas cookbook insert, 1963

 

They'll be eating that giant pud till next Christmas.

Wallace & Gromit 03-snowmanatron

Didn't happen

Well, there's only 25 minutes before the last day of the world ends. Then it will be tomorrow and we'll still be here. Wouldn't it have been a bummer if you'd rushed around getting ready for Christmas and spent large sums of money on presents and food and decorations, only to be drowned in a lake of fire? You know what this means, though, don't you? You're going to have to cook Christmas dinner for your flatulent in-laws after all. Damn.

Facebook

Facebook has a new feature that shows your greatest 20 personal moments of the last year. Strangely. facebook has selected the only three posts that I made while tipsy. (Remember tipsy? - it's what our mothers got with the sherry during the sixties).  And the only three times this year that I drank too much. Facebook obviously has a metacrawler that looks for words like "drunk", "alcohol" "wine" and "beer". Proof once again that little clever editing can tell a completely false story.
    Of course, drinking is one of those things that the more you deny the more you confirm, so I'm on a losing wicket whatever happens.
    Anyway, thanks, facebook for presenting me to the world as a lush.

Memo to self

I have to stop wasting time on the Internet!

Happy birthday, Jane

"Why not seize the pleasure at once, how often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparations."
--- Jane Austen

Yesterday was Jane Austen's 237th birthday.

   Many years ago, I visited her grave in Winchester Cathedral. It was a moving experience, to realise that all that was mortal of Jane lay beneath my feet, the closest I would ever be to her physical self. Yet through her novels, she has become immortal; what we know of her is there in her writing.
    Films have been made and books have been written about her life and the puzzles and conundrums posed by it.   Why did she not marry? What was she really like ( as evidence is often contradictory)? What did she die of?
   To the last two questions, I'd have to answer It doesn't matter.
   To the first, I'd also have to answer, It doesn't matter, but also, that she was wise enough not to.
   She knew herself and her talent well enough to know that marriage and children were not for her. Marriage and children would have deprived the world of her genius, and we, her readers, would be the poorer for it.
  Happy birthday, Jane.

"Fortunes of War"- 1987

Fortunes of war

This is the name of a TV series that first screened, well, back in the 80s I think. It's all been posted on youTube and very enjoyable it is too. Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh star, and lots of other English actors like Rupert Graves, a very young Rupert Graves, fresh from Room with a view. What a cutie.  The series is from the books The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy, written by Olivia Manning, worth tracking down, but probably not in print at the moment.
    One of the sad results of our earthquakes is the closure of numerous second-hand bookshops. These were usually located in low-rent, run-down shops in the older part of the city centre and the older suburbs. One of my favourites, Smiths Bookshop, has now reopened in Woolston. The old shop was a constant wonder, three rickety floors of all sorts of books on all sorts of topics. The upstairs was particularly Dickensian, a narrow staircase leading to a large attic, with views down into the street and onto a dark back alley. When I first started going there as a child and into my teens, the shop was owned and run by Mr Oberg. He was a constant wonder too. Whatever you wanted, be it poetry or a motor manual, he always knew where in the shop a copy would be found. The area around the counter was always stacked with cardboard boxes full of books that people had bought in, waiting to be sorted onto the shelves. After Mr Oberg died, his wife and family continued to run the shop for some time, but then it was sold to some less congenial operators and was never really the same. Just prior to the earthquakes, the shop moved to another location further down the street, as the old building was becoming too old for safety. Just as well they moved; the whole (empty) place collapsed. The new old shop was badly damaged as well, and Smith's bookshop had only an online prescence for some time. I hope to make a trip over in the next few days (it's only in the next suburb) and indulge in the delights of old books again.
     I've gone off contemporary authors of late; few seem to know how to write well, and just rehash the same plot with different characters. So many seem to be about a character who goes back to his/her hometown after death of spouse/parent/grandparent, to discover the 'truth' behind the lives they thought they knew. If I've read one plot summary like this, I've read a hundred.  So back to the old novels, the Waughs, Mitfords, Greenes and Mannings, real writers who knew that writing was more than just putting one word in front of another.

TED

Been watching some of those TED things on youTube, where someone gives a fifteen-minute lecture on something.
       I've liked these in the past, but maybe it was coincidence, or my cynicism gene is going into overdrive, but the four I watched last night seemed from the lunatic fringe. The best one was some guy on the topic of Why you won't have a great career. His message was a bit conventional, "follow your passion" stuff, but his saving grace was that he was a good speaker and funny. (I have a problem with "follow your passion" - this is a very comforting mantra for middle-class, university educated persons, but the reality of life is that someone still has to do the shit work - cleaning toilets, working in Macca's . I would think that very few people have a real passion for cleaning up other people's shit, but someone has to do it). Anyway, he was tolerable.
       The next speaker was a woman whose passion was the pursuit of the Female orgasm as a spiritual path. You can meditate, do yoga, or have lots or orgasms, to fill the "hunger of the western woman for connectedness". She was an engaging speaker, but I remain unconvinced. She was so sure that she had found some new truth, when what she was describing was something that Hindu tantra practitioners have known for three thousand years.
      The third speaker was so irritating I had to turn her off. Obnoxiously perky, attractive thirty-something physician. "I had everything, the beach house, the condo in the ski resort, but I still wasn't happy. Something was missing in my life.....blah, blah, blah". After a series of challenging personal events (none of which were all that unusual, just life events like bereavement and ill health) which she interpreted as some kind of sign from the universe, she turned to practising holistic medicine, but I turned her off before she could really annoy me. 
      And there was a fourth speaker, a man, who decided that the life he and his wife and child were living was "inauthentic", so they sold all their possessions (sold, you notice, not give away) and moved to a rural backwater to pursue a more "authentic" life. If he wanted "authenticity" he could have gone to live in a gutter in Bombay, but no, they relocated to some chintzy place in Maine or Connecticut. I turned him off too.
     The underlying message of all these people was "I want it all" - a great career, fabulous orgasms, total happiness, a "real" life. It's all utter self-indulgence. Why do people with so much material wealth think they are entitled to unending happiness too? Whatever happened to altruism, thinking of how to improve the general lot of humankind? Such poverty of spirit, such woolly thinking. The most materially blessed, best educated, healthiest people in the history of the planet, and the best they can come up with is "I want to have better orgasms"? It's disappointing, it's embarrassing, it's verging on pathological.
     I don't understand.
     

Today

Not much to write about. Still floating on the after-holiday glow, but a bit peeved that it's now work for me all the way into the new year and beyond. I've only got Christmas day off this year, working all the other days. The usual Christmas socializing; the interdepartmental work do, which glorious repast consisted of a piece of stale focaccia and an overseasoned sausage full of preservative. Not very festive at all. The usual people making the usual fools of themselves in fancy dress, ho ho hum.
  Mr Machinery has been going wild this week, no doubt trying to finish for Christmas, but I'll bet you anything he has it going on Christmas day, just for a little amusement before Christmas dinner. Nutbag.
  Starting to formulate New Year's resolutions yet? One of mine will be to get away more, whether it be to Blenheim or Bhutan. Christchurch is very hard to live in now, with the endless roadworks, rebuilds, demolitions, and general angst. Plus my personal nemesis (see above). Driving back from holiday along the motorway, I couldn't help but think "Why do I live here?" There has to be a better place.

Fabulous Wharariki

The highlight of the trip north had to be Wharariki Beach, away in the far north-west of Golden Bay, beyond the Farewell Spit turnoff. It's a bit of a trek to get there, but well worth it. The weather was very unsettled, with rain and sun, but it produced some wonderful cloud effects that wouldn't have been seen on a fine day.

 

 

Golden Bay stay

After St Arnaud, I went up to Golden Bay, to a place called Rock and Rata, near Clifton, near Takaka. It's an organic orchard, with a nice modern cottage to stay in, but with recycled windows and joinery - very comfortable. It backs on to limestone hills covered in rata and native bush, and is only a short walk from a reserve called The Grove, a limestone outcropping full of huge rata trees and weird limestone forms.    It rained almost all the second day, but cleared in the evening so I went down to the local beaches, Tata and Pohara beach, and took the nice shot of Pohara with the norwest clouds on the horizon.              

 

These grapefruit blossoms smelled wonderful.

 

Strange nikau palm growing at The Grove.

 

A vertical slot in the limestone - leads to...

 

this lookout over Golden Bay farmland.

 

 

Two shots of the house I stayed in - very comfortable

 

Rata in flower at the Abel Tasman Memorial

 

 

Funky tiled seat at Tata Beach

 

Tata Beach

 

Pohara Beach

 

 

 

Speed!

This morning at 6.30 I was on top of Marble Mountain in Takaka, having a pee under the 'Welcome to Ngarua Caves" sign. Now I'm back in Christchurch (dirty old town), thanks to my trusty car, my Toyota Cynos. Quite a drive, I have to say, and I am tired, but also wired which is one of those unfortunate effects of long-distance driving. I've had a great holiday at Nelson Lakes and Golden Bay, but really too far to drive all the way from Takaka to Christchurch in one day. On the way up I broke the journey at Nelson Lakes, at St Arnaud on Lake Rotoiti, in a wonderful old bach (this is what NZers call holiday homes) that dates from the late 1920's. The owners have left it much as it was in terms of decor, but there are mod cons. like a shower and an indoor toilet. I last went to St Arnaud over thirty years ago, and it was only an overnight stop, so it was good to discover this less-visited national park. It must be wonderful in the snow.

 

This is Maruia Falls, where I stopped on the way. Apparently these formed when an earthquake thrust one piece of land up and the other down. The river continued to flow over the split.

 

 

Interior of the retro bach. The kitchen still has an original deep sink with a wooden surround.

 

 

Lake Rotoiti in the afternoon sun.

 

 

One of the other older baches in the settlement.

 

The second day was not so good weather-wise, but provided this beautiful serene landscape in shades of blue and grey.