Resurrection

Resurrection, a photo by jwyg on Flickr.

Piero della Francesca's Resurrection of Christ, named by Aldous Huxley as the world's greatest picture.

Serious planning for my trip to Italy next year (April-May). I've booked to stay in Sansepolcro, a small town that houses this painting in its Museo Civico, plus other Piero masterpieces. I've never been a big fan of Piero, so won't be doing the whole "Piero trail", but feel I must make an effort to see this. Christ resurrected and militant; the expression on his face is so uncompromising, so hard, no namby-pamby Christ this one. Magnificent.

P.S. I notice from my statistics that the horrible vampirestats has temporarily relinquished my blog. (This is a referrer that refers sites on to pornwatchers.) No doubt they will return; here's hoping they get an eyeful of this vengeful Jesus ready to whop them with his flag.

Reading binge

 

"Double delight" - with a perfect attar of rose perfume.

I've been having a real reading binge lately. I've just re-read "In this house of Brede" (Rumer Godden) that I talked about a few blogs back. Really enjoyed it, practically read it cover-to-cover at one sitting, only interrupted by the necessity of going to work. Also read another Ariana Franklin "Grave goods" and another Sarah Dunant "In the company of the courtesan". Now on  to a Georgette Heyer I've never read "The unknown Ajax" and half way through "Parade's End" (Ford Madox Ford), so the old reading muscles are getting a very good workout. We've had horrible wet weather this week and it's forecast to continue, so I'll just keep going with the books. Just reminded of my Mum, who used to say "What do people do, who don't read?", and thankful that she let me read as much as I liked. Her own mother was convinced that reading was a waste of time, and once threw one of Mum's books into the fire! Horrible.
    Having thoughts about the ideal public library I would create if I had the werewithal. It would have the atmosphere of a gentleman's club, leather seats and beautiful art-deco reading lights. Admission would be by subscription only ("keep the riff-raff out" as Basil Fawlty would say). There would be no computers or Skyping, and you would have to hand your cellphone over at the front desk. Any infringement of a very long set of rules would get you a demerit, and if enough demerits were accrued, out you would go, banned for a year. There would perhaps be a coffee-room, which would also serve tea and classic baking treats, where people could discuss the books they had read in quiet and learned tones, but there would be no eating in the reading areas. There would be no taking away of books, but you could have them bookmarked and shelved for your next visit. And the Librarian's word would be final. The bookstock would all be classics from before the nineteen-sixties (when the literary rot set in, IMHO - that annoying concentration on experimental form at the expense of plot). It would be interesting to see if anyone would turn up!
  Think I'd call it The Bookery.

Potager pics

 

Here is the pumpkin patch, Marina di Chioggia and a couple of strays that have germinated in the compost. I think I might put a couple of tomato plants here as well, as the pumpkin will grow out and down and the tomatoes up.

 

Giant red cabbage 'Red Rooster' goes well with the vivid magenta of Lychnis coronaria. I'm not that keen on cabbage and grow these mainly for the coloured leaves! Vigorous plants of 'Russian Red' tomatoes planted too close together in right foreground.

 

Looking the other way - potatoes under the apricot tree have done very well this year. Not many apricots though - I didn't summer prune last year and the tree is very leggy.

I ate the first of my broad beans last night with cavolo nero and roast pork. Today I had planned to get a lot of work done in the garden, but a nasty north-easterly wet fog has come in, so I'll have to scale Ironing Mountain instead. Blah!

More roses

 

 

The magenta rose is 'Big Purple', the pinks from an old rose that was planted before I bought the house. Now I'm going out to put 'Smelly' on my vegetables before I go to work. 'Smelly' is my name for a disgusting but fertile concoction of cow poo, seaweed, comfrey and fish bits that I brew up with water in an old paint pail (securely lidded). It stinks to high heaven but the plants seem to like it. My zucchini plant leaves are looking very yellow, so hopefully 'Smelly" will provide them with the will to live.

Greengage summer

Haven't blogged for a few days because life is very humdrum at the moment. Worked, finished painting the toilet, washed the car, you know the sort of thing.
  I've been re-reading Rumer Godden's The Greengage summer and enjoying it. I read quite a lot of her books when I was a teenager, most of them seem to have a theme of loss of innocence and coming of age so perhaps they were appropriate. "In this house of Brede" started off my life-long fascination with nuns and the conventual life, and several of her other novels are set in India, another fascination of mine. I'd like to get hold of the film of Greengage summer, there is a short clip on youTube, featuring Susannah York and an absurdly young Jane Asher. "Black Narcissus" was made into a film, wretchedly, I think; I bought it once, but ditched it. Some of the Indian characters weren't Indian but obviously just cast because they were dark-skinned. The femme fatale was particularly bad. Same with 'A passage to India' which featured Alec Guiness in brownface as Prof. Godbole - awful. I felt embarrassed for him; what ever persuaded him to take such a part? Money, I suppose.
  Also re-re-re+ reading 'Persuasion' - think I know it by heart now. Just can't get enough of the wonderful Captain Wentworth!

Roses, roses

My idea of luxury - to have many, many roses.

 

 

'Peace'

 

 

'Crown Princess Margarethe'

 

'Gruss an Aachen'

 

'Buff beauty'

 

 

The stunning 'Crepuscule'

 

'Penelope'

 

'Sally Holmes'

 

 

 

And a pretty dress that I got from 'Time and time again' - fits perfectly and was only $27.50!

Sculpture on the Peninsula

 

"A young woman in blue" - Margriet Windhausen

 

Today I went out to Charteris Bay to see Sculpture on the Peninsula, a large annual sculpture exhibition held as a fundraiser for Cholmondely Children's Home, who offer residential care for children in temporarily difficult circumstances. Their home was condemned after the quakes, and this money will help to ensure that the new buildings will be largely debt-free. The works are all by professional sculptors and artists, some of our best among them. We could also vote for our favourite, to win the Viewer's Choice Award. "A young woman in blue" is mine. She evokes the kore of the Greek Archaic era, serene and unfussed, focussed on something way beyond the viewer.

 

 

 

The site for the exhibition is the farm estate of Loudon, and the works are dotted around, some hidden in farm buildings, this one on the skyline.

 

This is not a sculpture but should be - the old travelling PA system. Marcel Duchamp would have loved this. The line between sculpture and 'real' things has become increasingly blurred; people look at an object unsure of whether it's an exhibit or not. You could leave a wheelchair or a bicycle in the middle of a field and it would be a sculpture.

 

"Burden" - Sam Mahon. I think this is a comment on bringing up children; the parent goes through a huge balancing act to ensure that the child's life can be undisturbed.

 

Corrugated iron cow - don't know the artist.

 

"Rabbit on top" - Paul Dibble

 

These ceramic beehives were intriguing, covered with pictures and historic images and maps, with sayings in Slovenian and English, inspired by the artist's visit to the Bee Museum in Radovlijic.

 

"World apart" - Graham Bennett

 

"Top spot" - Hannah Kidd

 

My other favourite. "Harestand Edition No.4/6" - Julie Ross. Light, elegant and joyful.

 

"Teaching an old dog new tricks" - Hamish Southcott

 

"Laid" - Eggs et al. Sited outside the real hen-house, it looks like the hens' pile of rejects.

 

I don't know what this was called or who by, (apologies to the artist) but it was very attractive to the children present. Lots of photos were taken with this steel plated bear and his (her?) shopping trolley.

 

All of the works are for sale, alas, way out of my reach financially, but good to see them in such a spacious setting, and such a wealth of sculpture, almost 200 items.

Recent reads

It's not often I manage to read two good books one after another, but I got lucky with my recent purchases at the Shabby Chic market on Sunday.
  "The whole day through" is a contemporary novel by Patrick Gale, who I have read before. "Notes from an exhibition" was very good. Gale's writing is very gentle and subtle, sort of bittersweet and understated. "The whole day through" is the story of a rekindled love affair between two people who knew each other as lovers when very young, and meet again in middle age when both are facing challenges in their lives.
  Sarah Dunant's book "Sacred hearts" is very different, set in a convent in Renaissance Ferrara, and is the story of a reluctant novice and the effect she has on the sisters who have to live with her. I hadn't read Dunant before, most of her novels seem to be set in Renaissance Italy. I think I may have passed them by because they seemed to be an example of an author annexing an historic period for marketing purposes, but I did enjoy this.
  I've now started on "Suite Francaise" but haven't really read enough to comment on it yet.
  Talking of sweets francaise, I went to our upmarket shopping mall today to try to buy some clothes suitable for work. Garish, unco-ordinated colours seem to be the thing this season. I cannot, will not, wear lime green or acid yellow, so chose a white blouse and felt very discriminating and stylish. Or just old and frumpy. Then I went to J'aime les macarons, who make the most delicious macaroons, and bought three different flavours ($2.80 each!) and had them at home with coffee. The salted caramel macaroon was so damn good! People who make such things should be running the world.

Toilet

 

Spent most of the day redecorating my toilet (or bathroom if you are American). It's a funny little room with a distinct 60s feel; the ceiling is coved like a caravan ceiling, I've never seen this in a house before. The room was an extension to the laundry during the sixties when someone decided they needed more room there. The laundry itself is a lean-to, so the toilet is a room made out of a corner of the kitchen, with the doorway in the laundry. Some fairly ordinary things were used to construct it, bits of offcut wood for the wall edgings, hardboard wall-linings (very 'sixties) and an old shed door for the toilet door, which I really like (perhaps it came from the original nineteen-thirty eight outdoor dunny which was probably where the vegetable garden is now, in a wash-house where there is still an old stand-pipe. I couldn't dig it out so disguised it with a terracotta strawberry pot).  The door is green and it's on the right in the top photo. Anyway, I've painted it this nice 'sixties retro pink. Pink toilets and bathrooms were quite the thing, I remember, along with dolls that hid the toilet paper under their skirts and the IGA calendar. I probably won't be going that far, but who knows?

 

 The wall with the lunatic art work is a bit of a mess, it was very hard to get the paint off. I'll coat it heaps, but could cover it with some orange wallpaper left over from the bathroom if it doesn't cover up enough. (Perhaps I should have left it as a feature but it's really not that interesting.) I even managed to get the copper window fittings off and cleaned them up. It's all come up quite nice.

Bits and pieces

 

Found this growing out of the chaos that is the front garden. It's a rugosa rose, Agnes, the only yellow rugosa. It's growing in a stupid place and I don't know why I planted it there, hidden by an aggressive pittosporum and a rhodie.

 

Very hot day yesterday, good for doing what I call 'big washing' - things like bedspreads and duvets. The weather changed about 6.00, and I took this picture of a thunderhead coming up over next door. Today is much cooler, a good day for doing some painting. I'm redecorating the "smallest room in the house". Someone many years ago painted a mural on the wall that faces the loo; it's been painted over but the paint is so thick you can still see it. Looks like the work of some maniac or druggie in the grip of a delusion that he was a great painter. Sadly, this is New Zealand; if it was Italy it would be the work of a great 13th century master (Cimabue preferably) and would be worth restoring, probably re-writing a whole chapter in the history of art, (although great artists usually didn't paint on toilet walls, unless it was the Pope's) but not in this country.

 Some would say that NZ is lucky as we have so little history, but to me it often feels like people don't really belong here. People rave about the beauty of NZ, but it's a cold beauty that cares nought for humankind. The hand of man has not softened it with caring husbandry; probably the reason why we do the gothic horror/psychological thriller stuff so much in our movies. ("The cinema of unease" its been called). An Irish friend described the landscape as 'bleak', which really puts it in a nutshell.

Hmm. Once again I have waffled on. Time to do some housework. Again.

 

New season's roses

 

'Royden'

 

'Gruss an Aachen'

Bad day at the office

   One of those days today. Everything is broken or not working (toilets, water) and there was a succession of stupid people. One woman complaining about the blue water in the Portaloos we have while the public toilets are being fixed. Umm, lady, the blue water is the chemically treated water that ensures that your effluent is made biologically inert. If the water was yellow or brown you would have grounds for complaint, blue, no. I think her real gripe was that she felt she was too good to use a Portaloo. Welcome to Christchurch, we all shit in the same pot here and there are no first-class toilets just for tourists. Sorry. After what we've been through we just don't care much about trivial whinges anymore.
  Two imbeciles from the UK wanted me to plan their Sunday drive for them. They hadn't even got a road map of the city and obviously had no idea of how to use one anyway. His complaint was that tourist brochures tell you where to go but not how to get there. I was tempted to say that it was all an evil plot to make tourists use their brains. After telling them about the no-go Red Zone area where the streets are ruptured (earthquake) the man then pointed at the area on the map and said "oh, so we can drive through here then?" No. I have just finished saying that you can't!
   And we've only just started the tourist season! How will I cope with the fools off the cruise-ships? Maybe have a nice, quiet breakdown? Become a hermit.  Take up extreme sports. Have large amounts of promiscuous sex with lovely young men. Chocolate and wine no longer work for me, I feel too bloated and racked with guilt afterwards.
   There's always the garden, I guess, but with that comes work and responsibility too.
   And no Emma-cat to come home to at the end of the day. Thomas is going to become very spoiled, as I focus my thwarted affections on him. Poor baby, it's going to be tough being the Indoors Cat.