It's okay

The ditch-digging is over and everything seems to be working. The ditch-digger is an interesting machine; it's not like the old-fashioned manual digger, but operates on a suction pump, and sucks the earth from the trench after it's been loosened by a person wielding an air hose. This is much less likely to break pipes and chop through tree roots. So you learn something everyday.

Beautiful spring day again, this has been the warmest winter on record, the weather mavens say. Magnolia and plum blossom in full ramp, first pear tree blossom any day now.

 

 

The weather's been so good I've even tidied up the composting area. Plants in bags on right are a dwarf cherry, and Old Port and Auckland Metro roses, waiting to go in. Somewhere.

 

Lovely 'Thalia' daffodils

 

This is a variegated symphytum with double mauve violets coming up through it - quite a good pairing.

 

Lay awake most of last night with buyer's remorse and anxiety about the trip I'm planning. This always happens, the great What If...? Oh phooey, feel the fear and do it anyway.

 

Watched "The Shipping News" again last night, I haven't seen it for years, been trying to find it for ages. Cate Blanchett unrecognisable as the tarty wife. Quote of the movie:

"Tea's a good drink. It'll keep yer goin'"

More roadworks

The continuing saga of roadworks continues. Today they're going to be doing something outside my house, probably ripping up the daffodils planted on the roadside easement (which we call a berm in NZ). I don't know whether to leave to escape the noise and return to the surprise of mess and chaos later in the day or stay home and look at it through twitching net curtains while they murder the plants. Bum. Hope to Goddess they don't cut through my sewer, water or phone lines. Again, bum.

Excited!

I've just booked a plane ticket to Rome and back for a big trip next year. Wow! I'll be there all of April and half of May, I'll be there for Easter. Now to plan where I'm going and get my accommodation sorted. Need a new passport, travel insurance, cat-sitter, etc. so lots of bureaucratic stuff to do over the next seven months, but yay! Am I stoked.

Station life in New Zealand - Lady Barker

 

Just a bit more about Station life in New Zealand, by Lady Barker. Mary Ann Barker was one of those intrepid Victorian women who managed to make a life of adventure while still staying perfectly proper. She and her husband, Frederick Broome, bought a large farm (station) in the Malvern Hills of Canterbury during the first era of European settlement here. "Station life" was published much later, when they had returned to England, but was based on Lady Barker's letters to her sister Jessie. It was an instant success, and has rarely been out of print since, one of the classics of NZ pioneer literature. It's attractiveness lies in great part in Lady Barker's own personality. She was a great optimist with an engaging manner, who saw fun in just about everything. (Except perhaps for sea-sickness "I find that sea-sickness develops the worst part of one's character with startling rapidity"). Her  adventures on the 'station' are well worth reading, even if by modern standards they seem blithely naïve; her delight in setting fire to acres of native grassland to provide new pasture for the sheep would make a modern conservationist weep.  You can read about her varied life here:

http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Literature/People/B/Barker_Mary_Anne/
and the full text is available at  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6104/6104-h/6104-h.htm and as a Gutenberg Project free e-book

(Those of my readers in Melbourne may be interested to read her thoughts on mid-19thc Melbourne).

In which I get my ear re-pierced at The Tannery

Today I decided that I really must get my left ear repierced. It grew over some time ago, and I haven't been able to wear my earrings for a while. My grandmother used to re-pierce hers with a hot needle, but I'm really not up for that. So I went to Absolution at The Tannery, a new mall that has opened in some old industrial buildings in the next suburb.

 

 

This is Eden at Absolution, who reopened my hole (!) (Remember the old Bette Midler song, Dr Longjohn, about her dentist?) Fortunately, I didn't need a totally new piercing; he just got a needle thing and jerked it around and inserted a nice new, surgical-steel grade ear-bud. Yes, there was a certain erotic sado-masochistic buzz; he is a bloke and he did ask me to lie down while he did things to my body. He didn't numb my earlobe either; I'm lying there thinking Oh, okay, perhaps pain is all part of the process, some sort of proving-ground thing required for entry into the secret club of The Pierced, but it didn't hurt a bit.  Last time I had my ears done it was in a chemist shop with a needle-gun. This is not a desirable way to do things, apparently, and Eden's establishment is very proudly piercing-gun free. Everything is autoclaved and surgical and sterile, and now the newly-pierced lobe actually feels better than the old one, which gets a bit inflamed sometimes. He gave me a brochure which told me things I didn't know about body jewellery as well. Thanks, Eden.

 

 

Then I went and investigated the rest of The Tannery. It's the brainchild of a local businessman, Alastair Cassells, who decided to develop it as an upmarket boutique mall after the earthquakes

destroyed so much of the central city. I like it; it's a refreshing alternative to the usual mega-malls.

 

 

Located in an old industrial part of town, which used to host objectionable industries like tanning and wool-scouring. It's close to the Heathcote River; those industries needed lots of water.

 

 

Gustave's restaurant and bar. Very Arts and Crafts, with Morris wallpaper.

 

The original tannery complex, Woolston Tanneries, one of the biggest and smelliest in the Southern Hemisphere.

 

The second stage is well underway.

 

Nice touch; the bargeboard at the top of the window is an Arts and Crafts version of a Maori design.

The Arts and Crafts movement was popular in New Zealand, and often used Maori patterns to give a uniquely NZ feel. Yes, Mr Cassells has done his art-historical homework. This is so rare among businessmen that it deserves special mention and acclaim.

 

Before

 

During

 

After - recycled bricks from the many millions that were knocked down.

 

And, oh heaven, there's a bookshop there. Smith's Bookshop, which specialises in second-hand NZ imprints. I bought this mint copy of the 1956 edition of Lady Barker's Station life in New Zealand, of which more anon.

 

Couldn't resist this dress. It's a size too small and I can't wear it but just to have it! (I always rationalise impulse buys by saying that I'm supporting local small businesses). I love the vintage style and the furnishing fabric look. It's very well made of good quality linen, and may even prompt me to lose some weight. I feel like Joan Harris (Mad men) in it; it certainly shows a womanly figure to advantage. This was from Time and time again in Opawa Mall.

 

As was this pretty scarf. Only $4.

 

And...the very first tulip is out.

 

Bump!

No more earthquakes for the moment, but the road fixing is going on and on and on. The workmen are replacing the wastewater main in the adjacent street; they start at 6.00 in the morning now, and have a pump (they call it a de-watering device!) going all night. It's not too noisy, I can sleep with it going, but it's there. There's a lot of heavy lorries and diggers too, and they are shaking the place every now and then. I had to get out of bed this morning because I could feel the shaking of the earthmover, and I swear, I was sitting on the toilet and bounced after one particularly hard bump. What I wonder is, are they doing damage to the houses around in their zeal to get things done? I must take a sqizz at my foundations to see if anything has recracked or reopened. Everyone in the city is fair fed up with it. At first we were philosophical, yes, it has to be done, but now it seems to be taking so long. Particularly swearworthy is when a road is 'finished', then along comes another lot of workmen and it gets dug up again. There seems to be little co-ordination between the various contractors.  It also makes it difficult for shopkeepers and businesses that have re-opened; one shopping area, Victoria Street, an upmarket boutique-y area reopened in a blaze of publicity several months ago, but now their economic viability is threatened by yet another round of roadworks.
  At least there's the garden to admire.

 

The plum tree is full of blossom, and the magnolia is coming out.

Earthquake further north

Another large earthquake here today, but this time further north, in Wellington and Marlborough. A 6.6er which is fairly large, and has caused quite a lot of damage but no loss of life, thank Goddess.  Thinking about my fellow countrypersons tonight, it's a very scary event, and the aftershocks are continuing. (This is something that no-one tells you about earthquakes, that there are aftershocks). Back in 2009, there was a massive 8.9 quake in Fiordland. I think that the Christchurch quake and those that are following now are part of this, moving north along the fault lines.  How insignificant we humans are in the face of nature. How easily scarred by the utter randomness of the universe.

For this invites the occult mind,
Cancels all our physics with a sneer,
And spatters all we know of denoument
 across the wicked and expedient stones.

The Young Montalbano DVD

Young Montalbano

I've raved before about Andrea Camillieri's Ispettore Montalbano detective series, and now I've been watching the DVD Young Montalbano, a series based on yes, young Montalbano. The star is the incredibly sexy Michele Riondino, and the series was produced by RAI and  written by Andrea Camillieri, the suppostition being that the Ispettore is young and incredible sexy. Anyway, you don't want to hear the sexual fantasies of a middle-aged woman (or do you? Signore Riondino reminds me of the reasons why I know I am not gay). What I want to tell you is that our slang word for leave, scarper, comes from the Italian verb scarpere, to leave, which is also tied to the Italian word for shoes, le scarpe. And the word that the Americans often use for late, tardy, is the same word in Italian, tardi. Interessante, no? Ah, la lingua, e bellissima.
  And the series uses Ragusa, in Sicily, as the fictional Vigata. And I have been there! Che bella.

Spring pics

 

Crocus 'Cream beauty'

 

The back garden smells of violets

 

The old umbrella cloche has worked quite well - lettuce seeds are up

 

 

 

It's so nice in the sun

Shroedinger's cat

Today is Erwin Shroedinger's 126th birthday. I've read the blurb on Wikipedia explaining the thought paradox of Shroedinger's cat, that the cat can be both dead and alive, until it is observed to be one or the other.
"Our intuition says that no observer can be in a mixture of states—yet the cat, it seems from the thought experiment, can be such a mixture. Is the cat required to be an observer, or does its existence in a single well-defined classical state require another external observer? Each alternative seemed absurd to Albert Einstein, who was impressed by the ability of the thought experiment to highlight these issues. In a letter to Schrödinger dated 1950, he wrote:

You are the only contemporary physicist, besides Laue, who sees that one cannot get around the assumption of reality, if only one is honest. Most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality—reality as something independent of what is experimentally established. Their interpretation is, however, refuted most elegantly by your system of radioactive atom + amplifier + charge of gunpowder + cat in a box, in which the psi-function of the system contains both the cat alive and blown to bits. Nobody really doubts that the presence or absence of the cat is something independent of the act of observation."

Someone should have reported Shroedinger for cruelty to cats. Yet I guess it's a sort of compliment; Shroedinger's super-subtle cat gets to explain a concept in the observation of phenomena, while Pavlov's dumb dogs just have to salivate on demand.

Ho hum day

Boring day today. Went to work, but the Internet and our phones were down so didn't have much to do.  I had to resort to hand writing some project material, and I have to say it's very different to writing on a computer. Much more static, without those little serendipitous typos that sometimes make a weird kind of sense. Also quite hard to get a sense of flow with the writing; you end up considering what you're saying too much. I love the cut and paste, the delete and backspace functions of computer writing; you can see at a glance what works and what doesn't, chop and hack and change things around. It has a speed more akin to the speed of thought than hand writing. You can "lure it back to cancel half a line" quickly and easily. The only danger is that some deathless prose gem may be obliterated forever by a careless movement, but at least the delete button is a long way away from the main keyboard.

Looking at the City Council's job advertisements, I saw this one for a Category Analyst. I know what a category is, and I know what an analyst does, so I could be one, right?

Q. So what do I have to do then, in the course of my daily work?

A. "As Category Analyst, you will enable more effective delivery of procurement activities through the insight and support of, pertinent, key data sets leading to better, more informed, decision making, lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and the Council always being a 'smart buyer'. This includes leading and delivering work streams centred on building subject matter expertise, robust data analytics and market analysis, and targeted procurement and spend performance reporting. Your activity will inform the development of category procurement strategies influencing the entire end to end procurement process enabling the Council to best target services and product, supply and demand."

Ummm, WHAT? I thought I was an educated, literate person, but this just stumps me. They must run these job descriptions through a special computer programme designed to write in code. I think it means "you will find out what we need and try to buy it more cheaply".  (The commas between of and pertinent and pertinent and key data sets are superfluous for a start). It could be used as a high school english exam question - "Describe your understanding of the following passage"...
  Perhaps I could get a job writing plain English job descriptions.

Carol Burnett Show - Star Trek Parody

The SS Enterprise passes through the Estrogenas 7 Anomaly.

To complain or not to complain, that is the question?

 

Camellia and daphne - 'Nicky Crisp' on the left, 'Barbara Clark' on the right. The camellias all over the city are stunning this year, we've had no frost or rain to damage them.

 

I've started with a nice pic because I have a feeling that what I have to say may not be very nice. Today I went to the hairdresser's. Now, I hate getting my hair done. I know some women like it but I don't; I don't like people touching my head, never have, never will. For me it's a bit like going to the dentist, not quite as painful but just as awkward. A bit like having a smear-test, in fact. Anyway, it was time for a cut. Unfortunately my usual hairdresser is in hospital (he's 73, with a bad hip), so another person cut my hair. Damn. She hardly cut anything off, but styled it and asked me if I used 'product'. This should have been my cue to leave. When I said no, just a bit of mousse now and then, she said "Oh, we'll have to sort you out, then". She then tried to sell me 'product' worth $50. I hate, hate, hate this school of hairdressing. She was an older woman, too, and I thought she would actually cut my hair, but no; trim a centimetre off the ends, fwaffle the blow-drier over it, spray it, then charge $51 for 10 minutes 'work'. So now, do I go back and complain? And why, oh why did I say I liked it in the first place? (Trained to please from an early age is my only excuse). I'll probably take the true introvert's option and just never go there again; she'll probably hack at my hair a second time in revenge. If only I was Arya Stark; I'd call up my dyrehound and...Damn you, woman, you've ripped me off. I'll not forget it.

 It's like that quote from Monty Python's advert for  Llap-Goch (an ancient Welsh form of self-defence) - "I understand that if I am not totally satisfied I have been had".

Latvia

For some reason, this blog has become extremely popular in Latvia. I think this is another of those blog URL highjacking things, only now I've been highjacked into Latvia. Not that I know very much about Latvia; I did go to school with a NZ-born Latvian girl, whose name was Mara and wore her hair in two long plaits and was very clever. There was a small Latvian community here in Christchurch, mainly people who managed to escape after Soviet Russia took over after the war. The Christchurch community was surprisingly diverse back in the '60s; people think it was very monocultural, but in my neighbourhood we had a Polish couple, German, Dutch, Scots, Brits from all over and Hungarians, all part of the big European diaspora after the Second World War. The children of these immigrants are now in their fifties with children of their own, and sadly some of the cultural links are only maintained in the family name and a few bits of family lore. The inheritance from the female side is doubly invisible; once a woman marries and changes her name who she was and her own culture largely disappear.
    One of our genealogy customers was surprised and delighted to find that his great-grandmother was Swedish. Her existence as a native of Sweden had been blotted out by her name change, and the old-fashioned notion that there was something "a bit off" about not being a born and bred NZer.
  So hello, Latvians, welcome, whatever reason you have for reading this (you were referred by a porn site, maybe - I knew it).

Sunday stuff

 

Went down to the market today, and bought these lovely freesias. My freesias probably will be rubbish this year, as our early snow froze the leaves into a black pulp. The glass they are in is my Dad's old beer glass; it's perfect for freesias because it lets the flowers splay out and you can see their form. The glass has a picture of a ship on it

 

 

Dad used to tell me that if I looked closely when he drank from it, I'd see the ship move on the tide of beer. I never really understood that he was joking; I could never see the ship move, at all, and wondered what he was talking about.

 

Also went to the garden centre and bought stuff I don't really need, but want. More dahlias (can never get enough of these) and some seed for Baby bear pumpkins. I had a plant of this last year, bought from the school fair, and the pumpkins were delicious, very sweet. Great for stuffing or roasting whole.

 

Thomas poked his nose in. He is in my bad books today, he slashed at my mouth when I picked him up, making my lip bleed. Vicious little shit.

 

Also bought cheese at the market from a lovely Italian lady (I practise my not-too-great Italian on her), shiitake mushrooms from a charming Japanese couple (never had shiitake before) and a chai from the local Hare Krishna people who have a stall there. Then came back home and gardened for the rest of the day, until a Nor-east drizzle sent me inside. I'm roasting veges for my dinner, then I'll watch Game of thrones (new addiction). And the whole house smells of daphne from the bunches I gathered today. Io sono contento, as Lucia would say."The days that make us happy make us wise."

Spring garden pics

Spring seems to be about two weeks early this year. The garden has never been so tidy, as I've been able to get out in it every day. Here's a quick look at some things that are blooming now.

 

Camellia 'Nicky Crisp'

 

Camellia 'Baby Bear' or 'Quintessence'?

 

Yes, this is a rose. "Phyllis Bide", just a few flowers picked during pruning.