Spring fair time

Yay! Spring fair time, when all the churches, schools, scout groups and service groups have garage sales, fairs, and boot sales.
  Today all the action is at the St Mark's church fair, just a few minutes walk away from me. Here's my haul, a goodly selection of books, a raspberry lampshade (to go with the raspberry wall), a lovely old beechwood plane to plane my garden gate so that it shuts ( a casualty of the quake) and a pretty 1940's plate. There was no plant stall this time around, they have no room for it as much of the area around the church has been fenced off, but will have it separately in November. Usual crush of people, but that's OK, it adds to the atmosphere, as long as it's not standing room only.
   Sometimes people get uncomfortably close, I well remember standing next to a woman at the bookstall one year who leaned on me to get me to move, the way a cow leans on a fence to get at the greener grass on the other side. I just leaned back. Give way, will I 'eck!
   You can of course do some guerrilla warfare tactics. I don't brush my teeth before I go to these shindigs; one blast of foul gas from my unwashed, overnight mouth usually gets them away. Leaving your hair unbrushed  is good too, plus some sort of irregularity about your attire; I've found that if you look like a psychiatric patient on day release, people will give you a wide berth. And keep your elbows sharp. In extreme cases, a little light elbowing will have an effect too.  Ah, happy days! The cut and thrust! (Especially the thrust,  says Julian).

    Emma is much better today, thankfully. She slept most of yesterday (mind you, she usually does anyway) but was perky and affectionate this morning. Poor wee sausage, but at least we don't need her fitted with dentures. Just imagine how that would be.

Veterinary things

Just picked Emma up from the vet. They've taken out 13 teeth, all rotten. I feel like the worst cat mother ever. Why didn't I notice? Because cats won't let you look at their mouths. She's been in an out of the vets for rhinotracheitis for the last three years, so it's a wonder they didn't notice anything either. Poor baby, she's very groggy, just sitting around looking at the floor. She's also pooed herself and walked in it, so she's smelly as well. I'll try and clean it off when she's asleep. Poor little puss, it would have saved her some pain just to have her put to sleep, I think the vet was shocked when I said this but really, it's true. But then I suppose I wouldn't have had myself put down when I had my wisdom teeth out, so I guess the vet was right to be horrified.
   And coming home in the dark, I noticed that I only have high beam on my lights; those fools at the garage have rewired it back wrong. So. Damn, damn, damn.

Pretty

aaaargh!

Just come back from the car mechanics. After assuring me this morning that it would be ready by 4.00  I arrive at 4.30 - 'oh, we're not finished yet - we've forgotten to replace the park light'. 15 minutes later - 'we don't have the right size in stock, can you bring the car back tomorrow?' No, I can't, I'm totally fed up with the whole thing, having had to wait for a bus and walk half a mile in the freezing cold, through the zone of destruction that used to be a city. I took it to this garage because in the past they've been good, but the boss is on holiday this week (just my luck) so everything is all ahoo. So now I still don't have a warrantable car (no park light, which I never use anyway), and will have to get it fixed and warranted hopefully back at the original place (which was too busy the other day to do it within a week). And as I left, the mechanic told me that my battery needed replacing too, it's old and past its best, hoping no doubt that I would change my mind and leave the car overnight again. No. I was not in the mood for doing this all again tomorrow. Was he trying to drum up custom? They can't deal with what they have now. $555.00 and the car still doesn't have a warrant, and still needs more work!
  And the weather is lousy, Emma has just sicked up violently (poor babe, it's not her fault) and still we have the trauma of the vet and the tooth removal on Thursday to go through. And my holiday is nearly over, and soon I'll be back at work, which I loathe, and it will be the school bloody holidays again, with the nasty kiddies and their even nastier mothers. I'm starting to find that I can't understand what people are saying to me, they seem to gabble in a mock English. And I feel I'm being lied to, all the time, by everyone.
  Life sucks. I am so over it.

CBD = City Bloody Depressing

Had to take my car into town to get it fixed, so I took the opportunity to walk around while I waited for the repairs. I was supposed to pick the car up at 2.00, but come 2.00 the mechanic had only just started work on it! so I'll pick it up today. I had to go home on the bus, pretty much a whole day wasted.
  Some pics from the walk round:

 

Michael Parekowhai's sculpture of a bull standing on a grand piano is packed up for storage; the sculpture was the focus of a fund-raising campaign to buy the bull for the city. It was the first positive thing that we saw after the earthquakes. The top picture show the bull already crated up on the back of a lorry and the piano remains. What was weird was how quiet the work/workers were; if this was Italy there would be a lot of shouting from the workers and good advice from observers, it would have been much more entertaining.

 

 Our poor old Cathedral, or what's left of it. Prolonged squabbles about what to do with it have left it like this. Pigeons now roost in the rafters, and rats make nests in the kneelers and prayer books. Disgraceful.

 

This is what a large part of the CBD looks like now. A wasteland, huge desertlike spaces with ruins dotted throughout.

 

This is the new 'cardboard' cathedral, designed by Shigeru Ban as a temporary home for the Anglicans, and a venue for events.

 

 

These are figures from the rose window (now destroyed) copied onto polycarbonate panels.

 

Can't decide whether I like it or not. The clutter of stuff around the altar detracts from the austerity of the structure.

 

 

This is the site of St Lukes Anglican church, an old stone building dating from the 1870s. Now completely  demolished, a labyrinth has been built from bricks on the site. Churches were particularly hard-hit in the quakes, being both old and poorly maintained.

 

Very handsome and healthy borage growing on a vacant section - used to be someone's garden. 

 

This is McLean's Mansion, built in the 18 somethings for wealthy man Allan McLean. The owners want to demolish it, although it is structurally sound. I think the problem is that they are woefully underinsured so cannot afford to do the cosmetic work and earthquake strengthening required. I have hopes that it will be preserved (local music groups would like to use it as an education and performance centre, as our old one was destroyed) but I'll bet one morning we'll wake up and it will be gone.

The Spanish/Deco/Hollywood fantasy that is New Regent Street. Most of the shops have been restored. The man in the hat is the Wizard of Christchurch, local identity and eccentric.

 

Reading and viewing

Some brief remarks about recent reading and viewing:

At home with the Georgians DVD - fascinating look at the Georgians' invention of domesticity as we know it. The rise of the middle class in Georgian England started the English fascination with houses and interior decoration;  they invented wallpaper, changed laws to reflect their obsession with home security, and men were obsessed with marriage as a status symbol! Very enjoyable, using letters and diaries of the period.

Renaissance people: lives that shaped the modern age. Short readable biographies of well- and less-known Renaissance characters. So many things that we take for granted now (double-entry bookkeeping, secular books, Protestantism) all owe their beginnings to the Renaissance. The obscure persons are the most interesting.

The skull and the nightingale by Michael Irwin. Had great hopes of this, but a bit disappointed at the end. The writer is very knowledgable about 18th c England in the time of Hogarth, but the story just seems to go on and on, more as a vehicle for showcasing the writers knowledge than providing a gripping novel. Reviews led me to believe this would be more Gothic and shocking, but a bit of a damp squib really.

 Paris: the luminous years DVD. Paris 1905-1930, teeming with new ideas and breaking new artistic boundaries. Hard to believe that some of these paintings are now over 100 years old. Still viewing this.

The Ladies' Paradise by Emile Zola. Came to this via youTube- posted series made by the BBC, called The Paradise, that I happened to chance on, based on a novel by Zola.  The BBC have shifted the action to a department store in an unnamed English city, but the original novel takes place in Paris, modelled on the setting-up of one of the great department stores of the mid- to late 19th C, the Bon Marche, and the social and economic upheaval caused by this new phenomenon in shopping. Denise, an impoverished country girl, comes to Paris and finds employment at The Ladies' Paradise, a department store run by the charming but ruthless entrepreneur, Mouret.

Interrobang?!

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/15/social-media-icon-interrobang

You learn something every day!? (or ?!)

Seeds

Rainy day today, but not cold, so I got up to some seed sowing in containers out in the garage. Sowed beans (borlotti, bush and runners) tomatoes (Astro ibrido and Roma) pumpkins (Baby Bear and Marina di Chioggia), scallopini, peppers, zucchini, eggplant and sweetcorn. And basil and chives and striped carnations. Don't know if any will come up as the seed might be too old, but we'll see. Seeds are always a bit of a gamble anyway; someone one described it as a race between rooting and rotting.
  The old umbrella cloche was very successful for the lettuces, so I've put some of the more delicate stuff in trays under the cloche.
  Still undecided about what to do with the holly tree. Should I take it down completely, or just top it and topiary it?
  Went to the Lions fundraiser and bought ten bales of peastraw, the which I'll have fun strewing around. I like peastraw, it seems to do something magic to the soil, loosening and aerating it.
  Poor Emma still suffering with the tooth. What a pity they couldn't take it out right away.

 PS. I see by my stats that the bastards at Broken Controllers have hijacked me again. I can tell this because all of a sudden I have a whole lot of hits in Russia - they put my blog on a porn browser called Progolom! I usually have a few hits in Latvia and the Ukraine, but today my Russia stats are through the roof. Hope they can fap off on gardening hits and talking cats. (Yes. Fap - new word, means to masturbate to, as in "I gotta fap to her"  - got it off a youTube comment.)

Talking Cat

He speaks English, Jim, but not as we know it.

Not a great day

   1) Today my car failed its warrant of fitness, and has to have fairly major surgery before it can get another, so I'm carless until Monday when it can be fixed. All of the mechanics in Christchurch are flat out; our crappy roads are playing with people's suspensions, CV joints, wheels and tyres.
   2) Emma, my old cat, has to have surgery to remove a very rotten tooth. This will happen next Thursday. In the meantime I have to pump her up with drugs to get rid of the infection in her nasal tubes. I took her to the vet tonight, and she had to be 'burritoed', wrapped in a towel so that she wouldn't scratch everyone within a paw's length radius. This is very unusual for Em, she's ususally pretty good, but she must have been in a lot of pain with her tooth - her face has swollen up on that side. When I put her back in her carrier she just slumped into an exhausted sleep from the stress of it all.
   3) Someone left a message on my phone. "Oh, good" I said to myself, thinking to hear a friend's voice. No, it was some bloody automatic message endorsing a candidate for the local council. Well, I surely won't be voting for her.
   4) The men doing the wastewater system are still here, and they've destroyed a clump of daffodils growing outside on the berm. I noticed they were inside the neighbour's garden this afternoon, so my garden is next. I'll be so pissed off if they destroy anything. The fall-out from the earthquake just goes on and on. I know a clump of daffodils is not much compared to 185 lives, but it does seem symbolic somehow.
  "Fair daffodils, we weep to see you dug up by a bunch of insensitive clods in high-vis".
  5) I won nothing on Lotto. Again.

Decluttering the garden

Is there anything more beautiful than a plot of earth ready for planting? This is my potato patch, just pulled up the vetch, pea and mustard green crop, I'm waiting for the plants to wilt so I can dig them in.  The red tulips are Ile de France, my favourite. It's not dwarf and doesn't grow too tall either, so you can see the flowers well, but they don't get stripped by the wind. And such a glorious colour.
   I'm having a day in the garden (as usual). The men are out in the road doing things to our wastewater pipes again, but it's not too noisy, thankfully. I'll stay around the back of the house in the sun anyway. They had a conclave a few minutes ago. Hope they haven't found something amiss.
  Decluttering seems to be as important for the garden as decluttering the house. I'm trying to get a lot of potted things into the garden beds, as having a lot of small pots is visually messy. The vegetable area had a lot of small pots sitting on the concrete, stuff waiting to be put into the garden; I've planted or given away most of these and kept the larger potted plants only - the garden looks a lot tidier as a result.
    I've compost-binned some of the things that I don't really like or don't fit into the bigger scheme, and will donate some plants to the church fair. I have a pohutukawa in a pot, which will be too big for my small garden if I ever plant it out. There's a few bits and pieces of kitsch garden pots too, things that Mum gave me or were left by the last owner. It's only taken me 11 years to get rid of them. Kitsch-y little things make the garden look like an old person lives here - I try and avoid getting cutesy-ier as I get older.
    The key to garden decluttering is to be the Spanish Inquisition - utter ruthlessness; that plant that has struggled for years, or has never flowered because its tropical and your garden is not - out it goes! Utter ruthlessness and total unsentimentality; it's no good keeping that poor doer. It will only raise feelings of failure and disgust every time you see it. Getting rid  is good for your self-esteem.
   Please take a look at the mystery plant below.  Cue music -"Mystery plant, are you ready for your mystery plant?"

Mystery plant

Does anyone know what this is? I've seen it before growing wild up on the hills, but never known its name. There's a very healthy clump in my vegetable garden, come from who knows where? The flowering stalk comes up from the centre of a large flat leaf and looks a bit like a chickweed flower. I ate a bit of leaf and it tastes the same as chickweed and didn't kill me, so I guess it's fairly benign. Please comment if you think you know its identity. Or just make a guess - I have no idea at all.

Halswell Quarry Park

Now that my old walking place along the cliffs at Sumner has fallen into the sea, I've started going to Halswell Quarry Park, about the same distance in the opposite direction.  This park has not been in existence very long, and celebrates our relationship with our sister cities around the world; Adelaide, Songpa-gu in Korea, Kurashiki in Japan, Gansu in China, Christchurch in England, Seattle in the USA. Each country has a garden set aside for it in a style that is typical of gardens/vegetation in that country.
   The most advanced garden is that of Japan; some of the other gardens seem only rudimentary so far. There's quite a lot of statues and things in the park; it's a useful place to put all the things that ambassadors and international friendship societies gift to the city - totem poles, stone lanterns, ancestor figures, ceremonial gateways, etc. - things that probably wouldn't really fit anywhere in the city. It's a nice park, becoming better as time goes on. There's a walk to the top of the quarry for the energetic, lots of picnic spots for families and a dog-walking area.

 

View of quarry with kowhai in flower

 

Stone seat gifted by the Haida people of the Seattle area. This end depicts a whale, the other an eagle and a frog, ancestral emblems. Very dramatic, a focal point when seen from far off.

 

The Japanese garden

 

 

This is stunning, hadn't seen this in flower before.

 

The old quarry - I think quarrying stopped here in the late 1950s

 

"Halswell stone" was popular for building because it naturally came in small, pre-dressed pieces, owing to the way the rock fractures. A lot of Halswell stone was used to build Christchurch in the early days. Sadly, a lot has been dumped in Lyttelton Harbour and/or landfilled as the old buildings were demolished after the quakes. Any other country would have preserved and stockpiled this resource; not in NZ. The people in charge just don't give a damn about heritage, they want shiny, they want new.

 

 

Rock face - see it?

 

 

 

The quarry site was basically a volcano that didn't erupt - the magma couldn't escape, but solidified instead, a bubble that didn't burst.

 

Wetland plantings give an idea of what much of the area originally looked like before settlement.

 

So if you live in Christchurch and you haven't been here yet, do. (There's also a great outlook over the Southern Alps from the top of the quarry, but it didn't come out well on the photos).

See what I mean about English eccentricity?

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2013/sep/14/mighty-boosh-noel-fielding-photography#/?picture=417119692&index=0

BUGGER

Protest song from Christchurch about treatment of locals by authorities over delayed repairs to damaged homes. This is one of the things I do love about Christchurch; we have a full complement of eccentrics. This is what really makes us the most English city in NZ, not the neo-Gothic architecture. I particularly like the Bluebottle shout right at the end.

Tulips

Two beautiful days of spring weather, and lots of gardening getting done. The tulips are starting to come out.

 

Not a tulip, but magnificent anyway.

 

Think this is Tulipa kaufmannii; I knew it was dwarf, but not this dwarf.

 

Sometimes a planting just works. The end of the Baroque bed, facing my living room window.

 

Tomorrow, if the weather is fine, I'll do even more gardening. I'm starting to get a bit worried about gardening; perhaps I do too much of it. I've turned down three social occasions lately, one because I was tired after working all day, two because I was tired after gardening all day. Is it dangerous to become a recluse? Am I getting weird? Have I always been weird but it's only now that I live on my own and have no relatives that I can indulge myself? I do like to have acres of time to spread myself in, to focus on one thing. Gardening. Oy, what a nut!*

 

*Oy, what a nut! This comes from 'Seinfeld' :Ever wondered why your appointments with your shrink are only for fifty minutes? So, what does he do with the other ten minutes? Sits at his desk, going "oy, what a nut!", that's what.

Villa I Cancelli

On a continuing conventual note, I have been accepted into the convent of the Suore Orsoline di San Carlo. No, not as a postulant, but as a paying guest. I found the Villa I Cancelli on a site called Monastery Stays, which offers convent and monastery accommodation for travellers in Italy. I stayed in a convent in Venice using the same website, and it was great. It's particularly good for women travelling alone, no strange men trying to get into your room or steal your stuff. Very clean, well-situated with breakfast included in the price, which is very reasonable. There is usually a curfew, very strictly applied, but if you're not a nightclubber/party dude this is fine. I'm usually so tired from sightseeing that an early night is all I want.
    Villa I Cancelli is up in the hills to the north of Florence, a part of the city that I had no time to explore last time I was there. Google Villa I Cancelli Florence and drool.

Hildegard von Bingen - Columba aspexit

Illuminations

Just finished 'Illuminations' by Mary Sharratt, a novel about Hildegarde of Bingen. I enjoyed it, but, as with all historical novels, so much has to be invented by the author, particularly when the subject is an eleventh-century visionary saint. Her official life, the Vita Sanctae Hildegardis, is full of things that the modern mind can hardly credit; miracles, prophesies and visions, taking us into the realm of folklore and legend rather than historical biography.
   Her music speaks for itself, though. Many years ago now, I bought a copy of  "Feather on the breath of God", a compilation of Hildegarde's songs. Beautiful music, very different to the very orthodox and programmatic Gregorian chant sung by monks as part of the Divine Office, full of wonderful imagery and glorious harmonies that were all Hildegarde's own.
   The best thing about her music is that most of it was composed specifically for the female voice, so a woman (or women) can sing along with it without having to lower or transpose her own voice. Hildegarde has become something of a feminist/New Age heroine, because of her visions of the feminine aspect of God.  She was tried for heresy, her visions considered so unorthodox that they might have come from Ole Scrat himself, particularly after she castigated her male colleagues for their corruption in a blistering sermon delivered in Cologne in 1170. The German Lutheran church considers her to be a prophet of the Reformation, and she continues to inspire people from all parts of the religious spectrum.

Quiet and the New Yoga

 

I've just finished "Quiet; the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking" by Susan Cain. Very interesting, full of aha! moments for innies like me. One of my favourites was her statement that blogging is tailor-made for introverts. We can consider what we write, cancel it, change it, so it comes out saying exactly what we want. Unlike speech, where words once said cannot be recalled and edited. The introvert, who stresses out completely at having to give a speech to 20 people, is totally unfazed at blogging to an audience of 20 million! I had to give a short presentation recently, what a train wreck. I don't think I even know what I said, and I caught one of my colleagues looking totally horrified, as if she had never realised that I could balls something up so conclusively.
   One of the things about modern life that so horrifies me, is how noisy everything has to be. Even yoga, the age-old practice of quiet meditation in physical form, has been transformed into something hip and young and noisy. A recent edition of Yoga Journal, a magazine that I used to look at quite regularly, made me feel sick. It's now full of adverts for slick merchandise, covering gorgeous young bodies in peak condition. The articles about meditation are gone, replaced with an almost total obsession with the acquisition of a gorgeous body. There are celebrity yogis and yoginis, advertising their own particular 'brand' of yoga, with attendant merchandising.  And the advert on the back cover sums it up:

   Freestyle yoga and a killer playlist make Goldie's Wednesday night black light class one of out favourites. It's like a party you never want to leave.

Killer play list? Black light class? Party? No way. The extroverts have taken over yoga, damn them. They ruined libraries ("we want them bright and buzzy with things going on") said our extrovert library planner, now yoga hits the deck. (Funnily enough, the biggest demand in our libraries at present is for quiet places where people can study, how hopelessly un-hip).
    Introverts unite! Take back the world!
 

 

 

Mr Collins

I had occasion the other day to renew my acquaintance with one of, nay, my most annoying customer. I realise I should not write about other people, but really, it is beyond temptation. This man is my Nemesis. I shall call him Mr Collins, though this is not his real name.
  This is a man who always, always has something wrong with his account. Fines not paid, books assumed lost, card left at home or also lost. For some reason, these things are all the library's fault, never his own. He is a pompous ninny, who once asked me, in his pompous ninny voice, "I don't understand why I get all these fines; isn't there a special card I can have?"
    No, there is not. And even if there was, you would lose it, Mr Collins. And why are you so special that you should have a special card?
    Oh, he does try my patience sorely. I was reduced at one instance to informing him, that no, he could not get another card because he had 'mislaid' his current one. The library did not issue cards for the amusement and employment of its staff, I said. This is about as rude as I have ever been to a customer.
    I had not seen him for some years, and hoped that he had gone away, but no, there he is still, that great rock of obtuse stupidity against which the futile waves of common sense break and leave no trace.

Countdown

Only four more days of work and I've got two weeks off. Yes, I am counting the hours.

Pseudo-Friday night

It's odd working weekends. Tonight is Tuesday and I have the next two days off, so tonight is my pseudo-Friday night. I do get confused sometimes, especially first thing in the morning. "What day is it? Do I have to work today?" Added to the fact that I work in two different places, I'm sure one day I'll turn up on the wrong day in the wrong place, causing my colleagues a great deal of amusement.
     Tomorrow is the 4th of September, the third anniversary of our first large earthquake. It struck at 4.40 in the morning, waking everyone and terrifying everyone, but no one was killed although there was a lot of damage throughout the province. It was a long quake, about 40 seconds, and as I crouched under the dining-room table muttering Hail Marys, ("now and at the hour of our deaths") I thought it would not end until everything was destroyed and I was dead. It did stop. I found a mouthful of whisky in a bottle that had fallen over, and very good it was too. Then I went out into the garden. The stars were bright and shining in the frosty air and I had the illogical thought "I wonder if they know what happened here".
     Tomorrow is also the second anniversary of my mother's death. It's so unfair that death cuts us off from each other so completely. If only we could be allowed to talk on the phone to our departed ones. That's what I miss most, just the inconsequential daily chat about little ordinary things, particularly those memories that we shared as members of the same family. Now there's no one to talk to about my childhood, or to remember funny old Mrs Malone next door, with her purple hair and incontinent cat. Ho hum.