Day 1: A Very Long Flight

Our flight really started wtih check-in - since this can be done online, it was a couple of days before hand when P checked in, changed our seat allocation and printed out our boarding passes.

I'm sure I remember that in the past, seats were never allocated until check in. It seems that now, every passenger is allocated a seat before hand. So the facility to change seats if you don't like what you are given is good in theory, but in practice, the flights are almost full and there isn't much choice of seats to change to.

However we were able to obtain our favourite seats for the Christchurch - Singapore leg. Right in the back of the plane are two rows on each side where there are only two seats across, instead of the usual three. That means an aisle seat and a window seat, and no one else to disturb if you want to get up and down during the flight. (I've heard that the back of the plane is safest too, but then, we don't expect the plane to crash).

Singapore Airlines is a very popular airline to fly from New Zealand as it has excellent service. It helped that we were able to fly more directly than on any other carrier - Christchurch all the way to Manchester (or Heathrow if you wish) with only one stop at Singapore. The alternatives were Air New Zealand to Heathrow via Auckland and Hong Kong, or Emirates to Heathrow, Manchester or Glasgow via Sydney and Dubai.

I'm told that not all airlines have these individual screens for each seat in economy class. Besides watching your own choice of movie or TV program, starting when you want, or playing games, you can learn a language or watch the progress of the flight.



You can see why I had to take a photo of this one with my name up on the screen - though the Australians get the spelling wrong!

For a couple of hours there is nothing to see but ocean. And then we started crossing Australia, and went on ... and on ....

The photos are adjusted in Photoshop to try and improve the contrast - they were rather hazy and indistinct - after all we were 10,000 feet up.





After we left Australia I thought there would be more ocean, but I hadn't looked at the map properly. There are chains of islands pretty much all the way to Singapore.





This is somewhere in Indonesia.

We left Christchurch about ten in the morning and arrived at Changi airport around five at night - it's about a ten hour flight with changes of time zone - and had a six hour wait at the airport for our connecting flight. I find it a little disturbing that it is named "Changi" given the context in which I have previously heard the name (for my younger readers, a notorious Japanese prison camp during World War II). I expected to feel that I was somewhere new and exotic, however in reality there weren't too many more Asian faces than you see in Christchurch airport. Although the potted plants were more tropical. And the transit lounge is vast, with endless shops - although the prices seemed rather high. We found an internet connection and sent messages to our family, then strolled about until it was time to board our flight to Manchester.

We hadn't been able to change our seats for this flight and were seated in the middle section of the plane. It didn't really matter as it was dark and there was nothing much to see. I enjoyed watching the progress of the plane, with exotic names like "Samarkand" and "Tashkent" popping up on the screen. At one point I got up and peered out the windows by the toilets where I could see a few lights, somewhere over Czechoslovakia. That was a very long time after boarding - it's about fourteen hours from Singapore to Manchester.

I did manage to catch some sleep after dinner, but not as much as I expected, because I found that breakfast gets served very early in the morning (around three a.m. UK time).

And then we arrived in Manchester.... (Next post).

Four Seasons in One Day (Make That "Week")

Yes, I'm back. In fact, I've been back for a few days, but very busy doing laundry and dealing with a month's worth of e-mails and snail mail, not to mention catching up at work.

At my newer job they just continued without me, but at my other job I found that there was more work than I had hoped piled on my desk. A lot of things had been only half done, and not done quite correctly, so I went back and fixed things up. Since nothing too bad would have happened if I had left them as is, I guess I am being a bit anal. If they had actually been finished, it would have been too complicated to alter them and I would have left them as is. Just a matter of changing a few figures here and there...

Back to the title of the post. When we left the UK last Friday it was definitely feeling like autumn. The trees are changing colour and there was a chill in the air. The heather is starting to bloom in Scotland. Then it was Singapore where it is meltingly hot. And humid. I couldn't call it summer as they really only have a dry season and a wet season (and the wet season is fast approaching, but fortunately it didn't rain while we were there). Then it was back to Christchurch where it should be spring. The daffodils are fast wilting, there is blossom on the trees still but they are breaking out into green leaf as well. But the day after we returned there was hail, sleet and slush. Winter in October? That's definitely not right in the Southern Hemisphere. And the next day there was a small earthquake. It sure makes a girl feel welcome!

We were watching the news late one night in Singapore when the subtitles came up "Earthquake in New Zealand. Australia on tsunami alert." That was a bit worrying, until the caption changed to "earthquake near New Zealand" which is not quite the same thing. In the next morning's newspaper we found that it was a 7.4 quake centred near the Auckland Islands which are 350 miles (or is it kilometres?) south of New Zealand - far enough to be about two countries away, if we were in Europe. So, no real problem.

I was busy unpacking on Tuesday evening and discovered I didn't have my camera. I was stressing out, thinking it had fallen out of the luggage trolley in the carpark, until I rang the airport in the morning and found that I had actually left it at the security check on the way through immigration. I was able to collect it from the airport police kiosk. They had quite a collection of cameras there. P. suggested I could have chosen the best one and I replied that mine was the best one.

I put my forgetfulness down to tiredness from the long flights and a lack of caffeine. I cut right back on coffee for travelling. Then I found research that suggests drinking coffee protects women from Alzheimers. (Not men, strangely enough).

So my new excuse is that drinking coffee is good for me. (Though there's bound to be a study somewhere which says it increases my risk of something else).

We took about 15,000 photos between us. I need to get them transferred to my computer from P's laptop, then I will start posting a diary of my trip with pretty pictures. My daughter thinks it's very odd to blog about my trip a month later. Well, maybe so, but I couldn't do it while I was there due to a lack of time and lack of internet connection - and when we did have free time, P was mostly using the laptop anyway.

Watch this space!

I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane

...and I do know when I'll be back again - so I'll be back on line in October.
Please check back for news and photos

Weekend Photos

We have been having spectacularly glorious spring weather over the last week or so. I had quite a few errands to do over the weekend so I took my camera along and made a few opportunites to relax and take photos on my way to and fro.

On Saturday I stopped for a little while at the Arts Centre market:



This is "Lord Livingstone". My mother never told me not to take sweets from stone statues!



Another of the Arts Centre's regular buskers, with the tram, a local tourist attraction, in the background.



On Sunday afternoon I had a meeting to attend, near the estuary:

Getting Ready

Only a week to go! Since The Trip is so much on my mind, I figured there'd be no blog entries unless I blog about it. E-mails are flying back and forth, advice is being offered, and this is the weekend for packing, just to make sure I have everything I need, as there won't be much shopping time during the week - and we leave early Saturday morning.

We received a "welcome pack" from the resort where we will be staying for a week in Scotland. Hmmm. Do we want to play golf? "Only" £60 per person. (Club hire an extra £20). No thank you very much, we can play for about a tenth of that in New Zealand, should we ever get the urge. Not something I'd cross the world for (unless maybe I was a golf fanatic, and the course was St Andrews?)

Do we want the hot water and heating turned on before we get there? There is a charge for that, too. Do we want to order a "welcome pack" of groceries from the village shop. There is an order form but no prices. Choose from a list, or order the £25 Arrival Pack which includes tea, coffee, biscuits, milk, cornflakes, bread, butter, cheese, bacon, sausages, eggs, olive oil, orange juice and a bottle of wine. Or for £50 they will add a bottle of spirits, oatcakes, haggis, sliced ham, a whole cooked chicken and a box of fruit and veg. Again, this is looking a lot more expensive than our local prices. The there is theleaflet from the local butcher, again with no prices. I may just try the haggis, but for the basic groceries we plan on shopping in the cheaper supermarkets, so "no thank you, no thank you, and no thank you" to all their helpful offers.

I note that the village shop offers vegan haggis. Vegan haggis? Isn't that an oxymoron? Can someone please explain vegan haggis to me? The thinking around here is that it is various grains mixed up and packed into the stomach lining of the soybean plant.

Poetry Thursday: The Penultimate Week

Yes, I have been an absent blogger lately. I am rather busy working in the day, and procrastinating in the evening. I haven't written much poetry lately, but when I read that Poetry Thursday was winding up at the end of August, I didn't want to miss the last two weeks.

So, here is one of the few poems I have written in the last couple of months. My uncle recounted how he saw my greatgrandmother reading a Gaelic newspaper sent from Scotland, when he was a boy. He assumed that she was a native Gaelic speaker. I worked out later that couldn't have been true. She didn't come from a Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland.None of the relatives remaining in Scotland were recorded as Gaelic speakers on the 1891 census (the first year that question was asked). She must have learned it, but why? Her obituary suggests she was well-educated, but well-educated young ladies at that time were taught French, art and needlework, not Gaelic which was thought to be a barbaric language. Just one of those questions I will never really know the answer to (unless there is really an afterlife, where we will all meet up).

Please keep in mind that this is very much a first draft.

Jessie Reading a Gaelic Newspaper, circa 1920

After a day of hard work, she sits
and loses herself in imagination.
The words sound in her head, consonants a tangle
of tree roots on her tongue, soft aspirates
like the hills melting away into the mist.
Her Scottish cousins humour her, post her the news
in this language of the uncouth Highlands
which they do not understand. While she scrubs floors
and carried loads of heavy laundry
they serve tea in fine china and send their daughters
to learn French and fine needlework.
Not because it is the language of her forebears, then
and not because it is the mark of education
though she was a scholar once,
certainly not for the news it bears,
now three months out of date,
she reads because of the mystery
of another language, of the remoteness
of its speakers, and the power of believing
that in words there hides the possibility
of becoming someone else.

Birthday Jottings

I had a strange experience driving home from work. I reached the first major roundabout, which is where the traffic to and from the airport crosses the major ring road around the city, which usually carries a constant stream of traffic. Today, there was virtually none. No traffic queued up for a hundred or so metres down the airport road. I sailed straight through, and continued to sail through every traffic light controlled intersection until I was nearly home. This strangely surreal experience came to a halt when I reached the last traffic light but one, and again had to queue through three changes of traffic light before reaching the intersection, But it was wonderful while it lasted.

I reached home just in time to grab my credit card (which I realised earlier in the day I had left at home) and get to my doctor's appointment with not a minute to spare. On the corner just before the medical centre, a giant chicken waved at me. Or at least, a man in a black and white chicken suit waved at me. (No camera, and no time, so no photograph, unfortunately).

It's my birthday. Which is not a huge deal for several reasons. One is that we had the family birthday dinner last night, since it was a Sunday and therefore no one was working. I don't tend to attach a big significance to the actual day. I remember birthdays more by events that happen in close proximity. This year, it's our trip to the UK which I view as a giant birthday present. All our spare cash (and more) is attached to the trip, so any little fun presents are a bonus. I have "Kiwi Magnetic Poetry". And chocolate. (I may not have chocolate much longer, at the rate I am nibbling it.)

Other birthdays I remember are the year I got engaged, five days before my nineteenth birthday. Or the year my parents came for a birthday dinner, on the night of my birthday, which was a Friday. I intended to have the birthday dinner on the Saturday, since I was working. But since my parents were leaving on holiday on the Saturday morning, I held the dinner on the actual day of my birthday. The next morning, early enough that it was still dark, I had a phone call from my mother to say that my father had died suddenly some time in the night. I don't think I feel sad about that birthday (though I do about my father's death) - I feel grateful that we were all together on a happy occasion, on his last night alive.

Despite not making a huge deal of my birthday, it was very nice to wake up to birthday e-mails from blog friends (thanks, Dana) and e-mail friends from around the world. Especially since they had taken the trouble to work out that it is actually my birthday in New Zealand almost a day before the calendar hits the same date elsewhere in the world.

I had a blog visit from the wonderfully entertaining Mr Farty yesterday. He left this comment:
"Lions! You've got lions! Not fair, we've only got cows in Embra.
Or did have until your lions ate them."

(Go ahead - click the link - you know you want to.)

Spring Photos

We have been having beautiful warm days, so that it would be easy to think that winter is over - especially since all sorts of spring flowers are beginning to put in an appearance. I remind myself that heavy snowfalls are not unknown here in August and even in September, but for today I am enjoying the warmth. I took my camera for a short walk down to the river - here are some of the results.







This tree is a kowhai tree, and its yellow flowers are as much a sign of spring in New Zealand as daffodils.

Poetry Thursday: Thinking of Scotland

Thinking of Scotland brought to mind a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. He is one of the poets we studied at high school, and I've loved his poems ever since. Although he wasn't Scottish, this particular poem appears to be about a spot that is not too far from where we will be staying:

Inversnaid

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

- Gerard Manley Hopins, 1844 - 1889

For more poetry, visit Poetry Thursday

Only One

- A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.
- William Faulkner

And here is the photo for the day: since we will swap the best month of spring for a northern hemisphere autumn, I am delighting in all the signs of spring I can find.

Snippets

1) All the tests were negative, and the hospital let P come home on Saturday afternoon. As he says, it's one way of getting a free medical check before our trip. I'm really glad they didn't keep him till Monday, because it would mean lost wages if I had to take time out to trip up and down to the hospital.

2) The new Guardian Poetry Workshop is up. Check it out. There are ten different first lines - the idea is to choose one and write a poem using it. Every month I print the workshop out and I never actually do it. Unfortunately, they don't give a very long time frame for submitting the results. But I keep all the exercises in case one of them inspires me in the future. I also like to read the poems they select from those submitted, and the comments.

3) One of the reasons I won't be doing it this week is that I have to produce a bunch of mailing labels, subscription reminders, invoices etc for Takahe magazine. I decided to give up this job now that I am working full time, and I was just about to hand it over with this issue, but they want me to stay. Money is being offered (it was previously unpaid) - not a huge amount, but enough to make me think. There won't be much in the bank when we return from our trip. I haven't been in my new job long enough to be paid while I'm away.

4) I hope the foot and mouth outbreak in the UK doesn't spread. I have memories of various parts of the countryside being closed in the last outbreak over there a few years back, and I'd hate to think we mightn't get to see everything we want to. So far, it's confined to a part of the country we don't intend to visit.

5) I've slacked off on the photography over the last few days. So here is one I took some weeks ago, that I rather like.

Making a Difference #4

Sunday Scribblings this week posted the topic "decision" which reminded me of the decision I made to try and find new things to do each week to reduce my impact on the environment. I haven't posted about it for a while, but I have made some further changes. For instance, I defrosted and turned off the bar fridge.

We inherited this with the house, and it seemed convenient to have a separate small fridge to keep the drinks cold, especially when we were entertaining. But to be honest, not much as moved in or out of it in the past (insert fairly large number of) years. It's a no-brainer to me that it's pretty pointless to keep the same six pack cold for about ten years, just in case you want a cold beer. (I don't - I don't drink beer). So I turned it off, defrosted and cleaned it, and told my husband it was OK if he turned it back on if he really wanted to. It seems he didn't.

Not quite so obvious is Sainsbury's decision in the UK to trial wine in plastic bottles, because it is better for the environment. In fact, I find this one rather ironic. It seems not so long ago that there were big protests over the move to plastic milk bottles in New Zealand, rather than glass - the protestors saying that glass is better for the environment. Of course, the glass milk bottles were reused rather than just recycled - we used to put them out for the milkman the next morning, and they would be returned to the factory and refilled.

Clearly, Sainsburys are going to save a lot of fuel moving the wine around the country, because the plastic bottles are so much lighter. And yes, the bottles are recyclable. But whether, in the whole of their life, a glass bottle or a plastic bottle is better, is not really clear to me. And we do have to consider that making plastic bottles uses up scarce petroleum deposits, whereas glass is made from sand which is plentiful.

Since one of the wines being trialled is a New Zealand wine, our local winemakers are not happy. They say that it won't help the quality image they want to project. They may be right, though I suspect that ultimately, plastic bottles will be well-accepted and not considered a sign of an inferior product.

In this household, we buy mainly cask wine anyway, so it's all packaged in plastic.

More decisions at Sunday Scribblings.

Normal Service Will be Resumed Tomorrow...

When I arrive home this evening, I found a signed copy of Chiefbiscuit's new book in the mail. I've been waiting all week for it. I would jump into bed and read it, except that I think I will fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. That's because....

I had about two and a half hours sleep last night, maybe three before the phone rang. I was lying in bed thinking "isn't P (my husband) going to answer that?" (since he is a real night owl and stays up far later than I do). Finally I figured he must be in the bathroom or something, and got up to answer it, only to find that it was actually P calling from downstairs on his cellphone.

He was having disturbing symptons - chest pressure, shortness of breath, etc, - and decided he should go to hospital. So we headed off in an ambulance to the ED where they did tests, found nothing wrong, and eventually he started to feel better. Of course once there, they don't let you go so easily. At least, not with those symptoms. By 6 a.m. it was clear that a) the promised cardiologist would be round sometime, but no one knew when and b) anyway, he would have to stay till at least ten hours after he first went in, for a second blood test. But it did seem that if that was clear, which was what we expected, he would be able to go home. So I went home, got ready for work, and promised to come back and pick him up as soon as he rang me. I didn't take much lunch, because I thought P would want lunch when he got home.

By two thirty I still hadn't heard, so I rang the hospital to find he was on a ward, and I could speak to him after 3.00 when "rest time" finished. When I finally found out what was going on, it went like this:
All the tests were clear. But they wanted more. Probably a treadmill test. But that's not available until tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon, so he had to stay in overnight.

On the other hand, they might decide to do a different test. But the hospital shuts down, rather, over the weekend, so they couldn't do it till Monday or Tuesday. But no, even though he is now feeling fine, he couldn't go home over the weekend.

This is what our tax dollars pay for. People who are feeling well take up hospital beds for three days longer than necessary, because nobody can do required tests promptly.

Of course, I am glad we still have a semblance of a free public hospital system, but still. Only a few days ago the hospital was in "red gridlock" because there wasn't a single spare bed, and no one could be admitted for 20 hours. It seems like such a waste to hold someone in unnecessarily just because it's the weekend. It's not as if they even pay penalty rates for weekends any more.

After that I finished up at work, went home and fetched a really large bag of books, and went in to see him. This morning when I left, I had said "shall I bring a book in for you?" and he replied that it was OK. I think he has changed his mind :)

The ED was good practice for our trip to the UK. English and Scottish voices all around us. That seems to be where most of our junior hospital doctors come from these days. Not that New Zealand pays well, but they seem to like to come here for a few years anyway, which is just as well, because we don't seem to train enough here, and those we do train head off overseas to earn larger salaries so they can pay off their huge student loans.

It wasn't altogether smart of me to go with him in the ambulance instead of following by car, because there I was in the middle of the night with no transport. By 6 a.m. when I left, the buses were running. And I had a bus card, somewhere in my purse. But somehow, it all seemed too much mental effort to a) find the bus card b) find the bus stop and c) figure out the timetable. So, I just put one foot in front of the other until I arrived home an hour later. It was actually a very pleasant walk.

Now, I'm hoping that he will get the treadmill test tomorrow and be sent home, because I don't want Monday or Tuesday messed up. Because those are the days I'll be working at the job where I don't have any sick leave, so if I'm running up to the hospital and back, I'll get less pay, and P has already done the sums for August and September which show that the bank balance will be not exactly large by the end of our trip.

And now, I really should stop rambling and fall into bed.

Poetry Thursday: Meet My Family

A post for Poetry Thursday:

A while back, immersed in genealogy, I found myself wanting to write about the interesting stories that some of my relations seemed to have. Since I didn't really know enough about them, I sprinkled the meagre facts with a seasoning of imagination and wrote a series of brief poems. Since I'm immersed in genealogy again as I prepare for my big trip, it seemed a good time to share some of them.

Of those below: David is my greatgrandfather's brother (on my father's side), a watchmaker who emigrated from Scotland to the United States and arrived in Wyoming on the first ever train to reach that far across the continent.

Alick/Amos is my greatgrandfather, (on my mother's side, alternating between male and female lines) who was a bit of a mystery until I managed to work out that he was a bigamist who had changed his name. I believe he probably married his first wife because she was pregnant, and when the baby died he left her, joined the militia and went to Scotland, where he married again under a different name.

Ann was my greatgreatgrandmother's sister (aunt of David above). Census records revealed that both she and her shoemaker husband were deaf and dumb. Sadly, their four daughters seemed to have been similarly handicapped, and all died young in the poorhouse. But for a while, things went well. I came across the account of a deaf and dumb marriage ceremony in a genealogy magazine, and I put the two stories together.

David
Wyoming 1867

He arrives in Cheyenne with the railroad
There in a room behind the shop
he mends watches,
shutters drawn
against the heat and the dust.
They tick the years.
The railroad moves on, the trains
rumble westward. For a second
he lifts his head, then bends to his work,
sets all the watches to high noon.

Alick/Amos
Leeds 1876

He is running away again, but
this time his wife comes too
Five children journey with them.
He opens his cabin trunk,
packs spare shirts, a Bible,
his carpenter’s tools-
hammer, plane, chisels, auger-
and just in case, several extra names
all matching the initials
on his handkerchiefs

John and Ann
Stirling, Scotland 1842

They make their vows like this:
hands on heart, hands on the others heart,
hands raised towards God.
He mimes a grave, signifying
“till death us do part”.
Now wed, they make a home.
She stirs porridge, scrubs floors,
gives him daughters.
He crafts shoes, which speak for him,
eloquently, with many tongues.

*******************************
Today's photo celebrates my garden which is beginning to bloom again. Spring is on its way!

Two Busy Days

Yesterday the Poetry Chooks finally got together. Supposedly we meet once a month, but the date had been postponed for a week several times running. One of us, C, was working till 7 in the evening so we met at her house and all took food. Over dinner we discussed C's recent trip to Poland, my upcoming trip to the UK, the behaviour of clever cats, and our opinion of the winners in the Montana New Zealand book awards.

We were universally disappointed, though not surprised, by the winner of the poetry category. The award went to Janet Frame, for a collection of her poems, three years after her death. This seems wrong to me for several reasons. Firstly, the substantial cash prize would have been much more use to a living writer. I agree with a column written by Christopher Moore in our newspaper today, when he says that giving awards to dead writers sets a dangerous precedent - how far back in history do you then go? Of course, if the writer was alive when the book was published, and dies between then and the announcement of the award, it's a slightly different matter. Janet Frame's estate was left for the purposes of funding awards to writers, so there is something strangely circular in the process, except of course there will be leakage of money to administration along the way.

Secondly, she copped out. It was often suggested to her that she edit her poems, and she said "that will have to wait for someone to do it after I'm dead". Of course, editing after you are dead means correcting obvious typos, choosing which poems to include, and putting them in an appropriate order. It's not the same as the more radical revision that only the poet can do for themselves. And these poems, for all their flashes of lush and brilliant language, really needed editing.

I think we universally would have preferred James Brown to win.

Of the three candidates for best first book award for poetry, the winner was the only one I haven't read so far. So I can't really comment, but it didn't find much favour with my fellow chooks.

The fiction awards produced a rather more satisfactory result. Lloyd Jones won the fiction award for his book "Mr Pip". Since it had already won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, it would have been a little strange if he hadn't, but as he said, different readers have different preferences, so you never know. I haven't read this one yet, as I'm still in the waiting list at the public library. But we had all read, and loved, Rachel King's "The Sound of Butterflies" which won the best first book award for fiction. It was really good enough to compete for the main prize, but wasn't included. It's good to see New Zealand writers stepping away from this small corner of the world to find plots and settings for their work. This one is set in the Victorian hey day of flora and fauna collectors. Sophie marries Thomas who has a passion for collecting and studying butterflies. He has the opportunity to go on an expedition to the Amazon, but when he returns, it is clear that something very disturbing has happened to him there, and as the book proceeds, we gradually discover the details.

After dinner it was time to share our own writing. I really haven't written much since NaPoWriMo finished. I had one very rough draft that I hadn't taken to either of our two previous meetings, because I didn't think it was ready. But I was tired of not writing, so I printed out copies of that, and in the space between work and the meeting, spent five minutes hastily typing up a new poem, and printed out copies of that as well. (I didn't really write it in five minutes. I've been mulling it over in my head for a while). I was quite pleased by the reception which suggested that the poems aren't quite as unfinished as I thought. Now, I just need to find time to put them through my patent editing method, which is to read the poem aloud half a dozen times, go and do something routine like gardening or ironing, and wait for my subconscious to speak to me.

Overall, the evening was a good reminder that instead of indulging myself with inner dialogue that says "I don't have time", it takes surprisingly little time to "just do it".

I know, the title of the post says "two busy days". I think an account of today's activities will have to wait for another post. In the meantime, here's the photo for the day. This is the wall at the back of our local swimming pool, or at least a small section of it. I have many bare tree branch against pastel sky photos, but I thought I'd post something a little more colourful for a change.



(I should really have added lots more links to this post, but I'm a bit short on time. If you want to know more about the writers mentioned, you could always try google).

And Another Glimpse

Since I've had a really busy day, I'm posting another of yesterday's photos - a further glimpse of the inside of the boatsheds. With luck, I'll write a longer post tomorrow.

Rainy Days and Mondays

I lay in bed last night thinking of England. Outside, the rain was coming down so hard it sounded like being in a cave at the back of a waterfall (at least, that's how I imagine it would sound at the back of a waterfall). I thought of the flooding in England and the old nursery rhyme:

Dr Foster went to Gloucester
in a shower of rain
stepped in a puddle
right up to his middle
and never was seen again

Which just goes to show that England has always been a rainy place, and maybe the current extreme weather there isn't about global warming at all.

Interestingly, I've heard nothing about floods in Scotland. Is it dry up there, or is it always so drizzly and misty in Scotland that they haven't noticed any difference?

Whichever it is, I'm hoping that September will be fine, so we can see some of the landscape we are going to visit. And take photos. My digital camera doesn't like rain that much. P. was commenting that the camera he covets is on special at about $700 below its RRP. It's an SLR and is sealed so that it's weatherproof - perfect for taking photos in a wet English summer. And in fact, he had planned to buy one before we went, but now he has no job, so it is off the purchase list for the foreseeable future. Maybe I should just buy an umbrella, and one of us can hold it over the other during photo taking endeavours.

As it happened, the rain stopped here by lunchtime. So I was able to make a photo stop on my way between jobs at lunchtime, so that I'd have a daily photo to post here. I parked my car near the Antigua Boatsheds, a scenic spot much loved by calendar photographers. If you want to see such views, click the link. In winter it is another matter, of course. I thought there might still be a few tourists out paddling canoes, but there was nothing. And no brightly coloured canoes sitting on the deck in rows waiting for customers. So I photographed water running over the weir, and ducks on the bare wooden deck, and then I strolled closer and realised that the boat sheds were indeed open for business. The doors were open, and inside I could see the stacked paddles, and in one shed, wide flat punts. On the walls were hung the jackets and hats worn by the operators of the punts, to give a traditional English look (since Christchurch likes to pretend to be an English city, which it is not, of course).

So, my selection for "photo of the day" is this shot of straw boaters hanging just inside the door, taken from the opposite door. I think those are old glass lanterns on the shelf above.



(I did take some sky photos on the way home, too. But there's a limit to how many sky photos I want to post).

Three More Days' Worth

Here are the photos from Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I took some spectacular sunset photos on my walk home on Thursday, but I decided I liked the simplicity of this one:



On Friday I stopped on my way home to go into Cathedral Square which is the central base for the Christchurch Arts Festival. I wanted to take photos of the giant inflatable fantasy flowers. I may do a catch up post tomorrow, I have so many photos to choose from. But for no, I thought I'd share this piece of installation art. The artist is actually living in this house. His blog is wherearethefinethings and if you click on the link you can see photos taken by the artist of passersby peering in through the windows.



And today I have once more been immersed in genealogy files. But this afternoon I went out to photograph the daffodils I had seen blooming just along the road. I was very surprised to see them out so early, it still feels like winter. I did get some nice photos, but instead I am posting this one:



(It wasn't really that dark, just the camera being fooled by the very bright light of the low sun - the trees came out even darker till I adjusted the levels in Photoshop.)

Sunrise, Sunset

I've been keeping up with my plan of taking a photo a day, but I haven't been keeping up with posting them. (Really, a bunch of photos each day so that I have at least a chance of finding one among them that I like).

The days are beginning to get a little longer, but not long enough yet for there to be much daylight before and after work. This has its compensations - the light is actually more interesting in the early morning and close to sunset.

Here are the last three days' worth of photos:



The mountains are not as close as they look, as I zoomed the camera quite a bit. The Canterbury Plains are the largest area of flattish land in New Zealand, which is not saying a lot by world standards. The Southern Alps are about 100 kilometres away across the plains. That's the runway of Christchurch Airport in the foreground - I work very near here two and a half days a week.



On Tuesday morning I captured this peaceful river scene near my home on the way to work.



On my way home today I stopped in the city. The late afternoon sun was lighting up these two buildings, which were reflected in the river (there are two main rivers in Christchurch, this is the Avon and the one near my home is the Heathcote).

Surfacing Briefly....

Today I started checking my genealogy files, and taking notes so that I have all the information I need on hand on our trip to Scotland. (I'll put the files I want on P's laptop which always travels with him).

I'm rapidly remembering how addictive genealogy can be, and how it keeps me occupied for hours at a time. But I came across this titbit (not one of mine, it was just on the same page of an old newspaper), and I thought I would post it for the entertainment of my readers:

Marriages...
At Bodmin, on the 10th ult., Mr Edward Cocks, to Miss Maria Lord. during the day one of the gentlemen of the wedding party kissed the bride, an event which caused some unpleasantness and jealousy to the bridegroom. At length a quarrel ensued, and the bride, in the height of passion, took off her wedding ring, threw it at the bridegroom, and then left him; up to this time they have not met.

(Stirling Observer1 May 1856, p3

I wonder what happened in the end?

Just Relaxing at Home

After a busy week at work, it's good to have a day doing nothing much, once in a while. So, when my eye caught on the collection of objects on my windowsill, I decided to make that my photo for the day.



Among other things, there is a pile of chestnuts (I love them, in autumn I often carry one round in my pocket to feel its smoothness), a gum leaf, an empty crab shell, a smooth white stone, and jars full of pencils, brushes etc (it's been way too long since I used those).

The tall round object is a sort of Korean toy drum that my daughter gave me. There is also a shiny toy windmill that was a giveaway at the market day from Heritage Week a few weeks back. The light bulb is one I took from my lamp to replace it with a low energy bulb. I kept it, since it still works.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen...

I noticed on a container of drinking chocolate powder that it is "made in New Zealand, packaged in Australia". So, they ship it over there to pack it, and then they ship it back. What kind of sense is that?

And the brand of yoghurt we buy not only has a best by date, it now has an actual time. As in "best by 13 August 4.04 pm". I wonder what happens if you are half way through a spoonful when the clock ticks over?

On the Way to the Bookshop...

Once again my first chance to take photos was on the way home from work, and because it was grey and raining there wasn't much light around.

I had passed a bookshop a week ago and noticed they had 25% off the Rough Guide series of guidebooks. Unfortunately they didn't have the one I wanted (Scotland) in stock. But they were able to order it in and it was still 25% off, so I was on my way to collect it. After booking almost a year ahead, our big trip is fast approaching. I'm a little scared to get too excited about it yet, it still hardly seems real.

When I came out of the bookshop the streetlights were on, and I took a number of photos rather quickly, because it was drizzling and I didn't want the camera to get too wet. It was a bit of a hit and miss affair as I probably should have been using a tripod. I think this one is not quite sharp, but it was the one I liked the best. The old building in the picture is owned I think by the City Council and is mainly used as an exhibition centre (it was previously a tourist information centre). In the foreground is a street along the river which is lined with restaurants, they all have tables and umbrellas by the footpath, but no one was brave enough to be sitting out there tonight.

Poetry Thursday: Tennyson

When I was in high school, one of the poets we studied was Tennyson. There were a number of poems that we read as a class, and then we were given an assignment to find another poem and write an essay on it. I wanted to find a poem that no one else in the class would choose, so I went to the library and borrowed a very fat volume - the poet's complete works. I eventually settled on "Locksley Hall" which as I recall was a rather political poem about his vision of the future. But the one that really struck me was a poem that was written when he was about seventeen, "The Skipping Rope". Not because it was good, but because it was apallingly bad. Or so I thought then, and I still can't see anything in it that would make it worth publishing. Or that wouldn't embarrass the h* out of any seventeen year old boy today.

Actually, there is one thing that I think makes it worth publishing - the sheer comfort of knowing that even a great poet can write bad poetry. So, for this Poetry Thursday, I am reproducing it here, and if anyone can see any merit in it, I'd be delighted for you to leave a comment to that effect, and explain why (I could always use a little more education).

The Skipping-Rope

Sure never yet was antelope
Could skip so lightly by.
Stand off, or else my skipping-rope
Will hit you in the eye.
How lightly Whirls the skipping-rope !
How fairy-like you fly !
Go, get you gone, you muse and mope --
I hate that silly sigh.
Nay, dearest, teach me how to hope,
Or tell me how to die.
There, take it, take my skipping-rope,
And hang yourself thereby.

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

For some better poetry by Tennyson, you could try "Ulysses", "The Lady of Shalott", "The Eagle" for a start. A google search will reveal many others.

For more poetry posts, visit Poetry Thursday

And here is the photo for the day : "Winter Trees" (taken almost at dusk as I walked home from work)




Gingerbread

I'm really looking forward to longer evenings in the coming months. As it is, I feel rather limited in my plan to take and post a photo a day, given that it is getting dark when I leave work. And neither of my workplaces is located in an area where there is a great variety of photographic opportunities.

I went for my mammogram this morning, and thought I might find a good photo somewhere near the clinic - there is a river with attractive vegetation along the banks. But somehow more river shots, in the drizzle, just didn't do it for me. On the way home after work I eyed up various possibilities for interesting photos in a few weeks time, when it's not too dark. But for today, I am posting another photo that makes me smile - a quick shot in the bakery where I stopped on the way to work to buy some lunch. (If I'm going to continue to take a photo a day, I'm going to get used to people looking at me as if I'm slightly nuts).

Photo for the Day

Despite all my good resolutions, no photos were taken today. I did take my camera along when I went to work, but it was grey and drizzly on the walk there, and greyer and drizzlier on the walk home. I didn't want to risk moisture in the electronics (and I was hurrying to keep warm).

This is a shot I took on the way back to my car a couple of weekends ago, after I was at the market day at the beginning of heritage week. Christchurch prides itself on being a very English looking city, and one of the tourist ventures is punt rides on the river. I took this with lots of zoom. I think they are enjoying themselves. (I seem to be favouring cheerful photos lately. It must be the weather!)

Skipping

"Skipping" - statue at the Christchurch Arts Centre. The fine Victorian Gothic buildings in the background were once the home of the University of Canterbury, and now house various art studios and shops.

The artist Mackenzie Thorpe says "when someone asked me about the piece recently, I talked about children who may be living in war-torn areas, who have little in the way of material goods, but if you give them a stick, they will turn it into a car or airplane, for example. If they find a piece of rope or washing line, they have a skipping rope. In Skipping you can see the joy, it's just apparent.....I think Skipping is a hopeful piece, it makes me laugh and it gives me hope."

I'm hoping to add a photo a day to my blog, if possible it will be a fresh one each day but if I don't manage to take any I like, I have quite a few in my archives to draw on.

Hair

There's a small pile of hair clippings on our floor right now. My sons darkish brown in the middle, with my own....ummm....blonder locks in the middle.

Now that I'm growing grey, I rather like the shade of my hair. My eldest daughter stopped in this morning and we walked to church together. I commented to her that my hair seemed to me to be blonde rather than silvery grey - "or am I just deluding myself?" Children of course are no respecters of their parents' feelings. She was quite happy to assure me that I am deluding myself. Still, it's more of a golden grey than silvery grey, I'm sure. (You can always check my sidebar photo and see what you think).

P - my husband - has always cut our children's hair. I don't think either of my boys have had a paid haircut in their lives, and the girls have not had too many either. He does a pretty good job. But I've never let him loose on mine before. Now that I'm working full time though, it's hard to find time to get to the hairdresser, and besides, our budget is rather tight. It's a quick way of saving quite a lot of money in one go. He offered to use his number 5 comb, or maybe a number 1. I pointed out that the reason was to save money, and it would be rather expensive for me to buy a wig. So he stuck to doing what I asked, which was to trim off about two months worth of growth. It seems a bit less layered than before, but he did a fairly respectable job.

More musings on hair at Sunday Scribblings.

Into the Forest

Today my mood lifted considerably after I spent a few hours wandering around a pine forest. There's nothing like exercise and fresh air to lift the spirits. I just have to remember to deal with some of the underlying issues which are still there, even though I feel cheerier.

It was a beautiful frosty morning. As I drove through the countryside there were some very picturesque scenes, however I didn't ahve time to stop and take photos as I had chosen bed over leaving early, and unfortunately the best views were from the motorway where there was no stopping.

This is the forest I was walking around in:



and the closeup of blackberry leaves shows the frost:



This was the reason I was walking around the forest:



The girls were participating in the New Zealand Secondary School Orienteering Championships. My job was to patrol part of the course and make sure that random passers by didn't steal or damage the expensive electronic control boxes (the blue part on top of the stake by the orange flag). Unfortunately, the day before, idiots had taken eight of these along a pathway - they are of no use to anyone else, it just spoils the fun. Today though, there were no problems. And a good time was had by all.

Grumpy on Friday

Today I am feeling grumpy over something that is so trivial that I'm not going to share the details. Two things, actually. They make me feel lacking in social skills, probably because I am. (That's why we blog, I guess). I was thinking about those polls that ask if you could go back and change something in your life, would you? Well, I could answer that I want a different husband, or a nicer house, or more travel, or to have a better job, but would I be happier? Probably not.

There are people on earth with better lives, and there are others (the vast majority, no doubt) who are worse off. And what would really make my life better would be to learn how to inhabit the life I have with more grace and generosity.

In the meantime, to cheer myself, and the rest of you, up, here is a spot of sunny yellow. This odd little building is a vintage clothing store, whose window display caught my eye while I was driving to work. Fortunately, I carry my camera with me more and more often these days.

Photo Thursday: Weather

It's Photo Thursday over at Create a Connection. Katherine (with a K) has asked us to post a photo that reflects the weather in our neck of the woods.

To digress a little, there are things I love about my life at the moment. I am actually enjoying working full time for the first time in around thirty years. It's nice to go out, feel I'm doing a useful job, and come home knowing someone else is putting dinner on the table. They do say a change is as good as a holiday, after all.

On the other hand, I feel a little like I imagine my daughter D felt when she first started school. This wonderful self contained child who never before in her life uttered the words "I'm bored" would be saying them the minute she set her foot in the doorway. It has something to do with being told what to do all day, I suspect. It drives creative thoughts out of the brain. Although I could find fifteen minutes a day, at least, to write or for other creative pursuits, I seem to need a lot longer than that to shift gears. It's easier by far to spend the evenings doing laundry, ironing, tidying up or other mindless chores.

So I haven't written anything for a while (which is why I have nothing for Poetry Thursday). My main creative outlet at the moment is photography. Though my photos are rather quick snaps. Still, I like taking a few minutes, when something has caught my eye, to stop and take a photo. It reminds me to look at things with fresh eyes.

Now, back to the weather around here. Cold and wet. This poses a challenge as far as taking photos goes, because I don't think my digital camera would be too happy being out in the rain. However, on my way home from work yesterday, I had stopped off on an errand. When I got back in the car, it was dark and there was rain on the windscreen. So before I drove off I took photos of the streetlights. The rain seemed to do something strange to the lights in the camera - fortunately I wasn't seeing these effects with the naked eye, because it would have been difficult to drive!

One with the traffic lights green, and one where they had turned red:

Not as Cold as it Could Be

The forecast snow failed to eventuate. Though I think Chiefbiscuit has had some in her part of the country. The lack of snow doesn't mean warmth. I woke this morning to a bright sunny day, which means a hard frost. The water in this birdbath was still well frozen over at noon:



The sun doesn't reach the backyard in winter. There wasn't just frost, but a series of little waterdrops on the grass had frozen solid, like hailstones



and on this fern:



I am feeling lucky. My daughter and I went to see "Paris Je T'Aime" ( a series of "small neighbourhood romances" set in different areas of Paris) on Friday. I had free tickets which I had won by entering a giveaway on the website of the New Zealand Listener magazine. Buoyed up by my luck, I then went to the website of the Montana New Zealand book awards and cast my vote for reader's choice. This puts me in a draw to win $1000 worth of book vouchers. The next job on the list is to go through haiku I have written for one deep breath, and see which (if any) can be rewritten to a 5-7-5 pattern, for the haiku competition I previously mentioned - the prize for this one is a set of all the poetry book finalists for the book awards. (Those reviewed in my previous post, plus the three that are in contention for the best first book of poetry, which I actually preferred to the three in the main competition).

Poetry Thursday: A Clutch of Poetry Books

It's Thursday, and that means it's time for poetry. Or at least it does, after I spend the day at work, eat dinner, do the dishes and a pile of ironing. Thursdays are turning into a busy day. It wasn't helped by my adventures getting a cup of coffee when I got home. I put the coffee in the cup and held it under the cold tap (I make my coffee in the microwave). The water hit the coffee and shot me in the face. There was air in the pipes, because P had been working on the plumbing. After I cleaned up the coffee from my glasses, the bench, the walls, the floor, the ceiling ... then I made another cup and relaxed for a bit.

I have been reading the three books that are the finalists in this year's Montana book awards, in the poetry section. This is for books published in New Zealand in 2006. They are quite a diverse bunch. Firstly, The Goose Bath by Janet Frame. I have to confess I haven't got very far through this one. Unlike the others, it is a very fat hardback book. Janet Frame, who died three years ago, is one of New Zealand's finest fiction writers. However, although she wrote a great deal of poetry, she published very little of it in her lifetime. As the preface shows, she didn't really feel at ease with poetry, and didn't know how to edit it. She stored all her manuscripts in "the goose bath" which was the large concrete base of a fountain, previously used as a bath for geese. They were left, rather deliberately apparently, for others to edit after her death. The book will undoubtedly be the basis for a PhD thesis or two. However, the poems are often full of false starts, and seem rather raw. There are flashes of brilliant language - it would probably be a good book to dip into, but I have to return it to the library. It is possible that it will win, because of Janet's reputation, but I'm hoping it won't. Not least because there is money attached to the award, and it would be nice to see it go to a living writer.

The second book is One Shapely Thing by Dinah Hawken. This is a slimmer book and contains not only poems, but also two sections from her journals, written after 9/11 when her husband was working at the UN in New York, and in early 2002 when they were together in Geneva. I'm always a bit uneasy about published journals. I see journals as a rather private thing, where one is free to dump all sorts of things without censorship, and it seems to me that they become rather self conscious if edited (as surely they must be) for publication. The journals do however cast some light on her thought processes while she was writing the poems. That helped, because the poems didn't really grab me straight away. I thought they might, because they are often concerned with the natural world, and I usually like poets who write on those themes - Mary Oliver, for instance. Dinah's, though, seemed rather more obscure, and perhaps detached. There is a poem called "The Company of Stones" which was written to accompany an art exhibition, and published in the catalogue. I should like to have seen it there, as I think that my understanding would have been enhanced by seeing the art work that it was written for.

A number of poems were written while she occupied the Poets in Workplaces residency at the Wellington Botanic Gardens. One of my favourite poems from this section describes in its last section an oak which has fallen over and continued to grow, lying down:

We love your love of the horizontal.
We wish that we too
could fall down in a Garden,
stay fallen, and still thrive.

Perhaps with a little more time with this collection, I might grow to appreciate more of her work.

The final, and slimmest volume of the three, is The Year of the Bicycle by James Brown - so titled because it was written when he was Victoria University Writer in Residence - each weekday he cycled to work, and in the weekends he took to the hills. The blurb on the back describes them as "exuberant, intelligent poems". They certainly do not suffer from an excess of adjectives. I think I would describe them as masculine and active. They start on very matter of fact. I find myself starting a poem thinking "well, so what?". And then the poem draws me in with a witty turn at the end, adding a subtle twist to what seemed at first rather ordinary.

For instance, one poem starts:

The fact of the matter is
I was born at Palmerston North Public Hospital
at 12.40 a.m. on the first of April, 1966.

and continues through the history of the poet and the city until we read

Lots of famous people come from Palmerson North.
Alan Gregg, bass player with popular band the Mutton Birds,
was once asked if he had roots in jazz. He replied
that he had roots in Palmerston North.

I have often wanted to use that joke myself,
and last week I got the opportunity when someone asked me
where I thought I was coming from.

I come from Palmerston North. We are a modest people,
but we are fiercely proud of the bustling, go-ahead city
at the heart of the Manawatu Plains.

In sci-fi movies, people often go back in time in order to try to
change history. This is impossible. You cannot change the past.
And nobody from Palmerston North
would want to.

It was once said (if anyone can give me the source of the quote, I'd be grateful), that the word "bicycle" is not suitable ever to use in a poem. Poetry has changed since then, and there are plenty of bicycle poems in this book. Of the three, I think it is the one I'd most like to see win. I have to admit though, that I would like to see next year's batch of finalists - books published in 2007. I have several likely candidates in my collection, all better than this year's finalists - but then, this is probably about the first review I've ever been brave enough to write, and it's only one opinion. (If you click on the links given for the writers, you'll find other views.)

More poetry at Poetry Thursday

Snippets

1. The weather forecasters are warning us of a possible 20 cm (8 inches) of snow at sea level in the next few days. That must be why a certain clothes retailer has invited me to preview their new spring collection. I'd rather look at warm woollen jerseys. Which universe do these people live in?

2. I have been using library elf to remind me to return my library books on time. I can highly recommend it. Unfortunately today I picked up the wrong pile of books on my way out the door to work. The books due back today were left sitting on my desk at home. I figured it's cheaper to pay the fines for returning them two days late than to pay for petrol for a special trip to the library.

3. Our local newspaper is running a contest for Montana poetry day. It's for haiku on any topic. The prize is a complete set of all the nominated poetry books. I might enter. I just wish they wouldn't insist that the haiku have three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. See this article in Wikipedia which explains why.

Sea and Sky

As I said in my Thursday post, I'm obsessed with the sky lately. Here are a few photos from the last few days:


This is taken from an upstairs window in our house, looking west


and this one is looking southeast over the hills - the only hills for miles around, with the full moon rising behind cloud


Not long after sunrise this morning, looking northeast

Today I went orienteering at Leithfield Beach,and after I finished my course I went down to the littoral zone to take photos (no, littoral, not literal. I've been fascinated by that word since I discovered it. It means the area where sea meets land)


Looking south, you can see the dim outline of Banks Peninsula (Christchurch City is situated where the peninsula meets the plains) behind the "flung spray and the blown spume". (If you can identify that poem and its author, leave a comment to say so).


The first half of my course was in this pine forest on sand dunes. It's quite tricky, as there are all sorts of little bumps and hollows in the dunes, so it can be easy to miss the one where the control is hidden. The rest of the course was easier, with long runs across open paddocks (at least, the navigation was easier, but since I'm not much of a runner, I was at more of a disadvantage than on the parts where the navigation is tricky).


This is the Pacific Ocean. The nearest land to the west, apart from an occasional island, is South America. A long, long way to the west. I think that sky is magnificent - always something new, it gets me every time.

Eight Things About Me

Chiefbiscuit has tagged me for this meme. The rules are:
First:
1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
2. Each participant posts eight random facts about themselves.
3. Tagees should write a blogpost of eight random facts about themselves.
4. At the end of the post, eight more bloggers are tagged (named and shamed).
5. Go to their blog, leave a comment telling them they're tagged (cut and run).

So, what can I tell you that is in the least bit interesting? (Other than things I have revealed before). I think I am going to be truly random here.

1. When hanging out laundry, I like to colour co-ordinate the pegs to the garments. I confessed this to a co-worker once, and she laughed at me.
2. I have a strangely shaped fingernail on the ring finger of my right hand. It happened when I squashed it in the cake cupboard door when I was three years old (no prizes for guessing what I was up to).
3. My masters thesis was called "The rearrangements of p-quinols." It's in our bookcase. My children spotted it one day and exclaimed "mummy wrote a book!" (I can't remember anything about the rearrangements of p-quinols. I guess I could always read it and find out).
4. I love quiz shows. When I was about thirteen I auditioned to be in a quiz team to compete against children in other countries. I just missed the team. They asked guy questions like sports and engineering. When the quiz went on air, I listened and found I knew more answers than the boy who made the team. They asked more literature questions and no sports.
5. I don't own a single pair of jeans.
6. I rarely wear make-up.
7. I'm hopelessly unathletic, but I love the outdoors, and I enjoy orienteering (okay, my regular readers knew that already).
8. I can touch my nose with the tip of my tongue.

Fact number nine: I know enough mathematics to figure that if this meme has been around for a bit, and the first person tagged eight people, who each tagged eight people, who each tagged eight people, and so on.. well, most of you have been tagged by now.
So I'm going to break the rules.
If you haven't been tagged, and you want to do it, leave a comment to let me know, and I will come and read your eight random facts.

Poetry Thursday: About Leaves and Clouds

Lately I find myself obsessed by skies. Skies that are purest blue, or thunderous grey. Pale grey skies with just a hint of sunlight breaking through like mother of pearl. Sunsets that are flame, or coral, or salmon. Skies that are tinged green where blue meets gold. Clouds like flaked fish, or in wave-like formations. Skies that are never the same from one day to the next.

I think it's the flatness of where I live that makes the sky look so vast. Not for nothing was an anthology of Canterbury poems named Big Sky

I try to photograph the sky, but the format isn't right. Sky photographs should be long and thin, and spread right across the room, instead of being confined to a 6 inch by 4 inch frame. And then, there always seem to be buildings and electricity wires in the way.

I look, and try to remember exactly what the sky looked like, but I never do, except in very general terms. We just don't have the memory for clouds in the same way as we do for faces. There are six billion faces on earth, and the human brain is equipped to distinguish each from the others. (Although I have trouble, myself, with twins). It's just as well that we can't do this except for faces. Our brains would be so huge that our necks couldn't hold our heads up. I'm visualising cartoon figures with tiny bodies and enormous heads. Not a pretty sight.

Thinking about clouds reminded me of how a couple of years back, I was pondering similar thoughts about the shapes of leaves, and wrote this poem:

The Shapes of Leaves

Oak I know, and maple,
three or four varieties.
Chestnut, poplar, willow,
the speckled ngaio, waxy taupata,
and kowhai delicate as raindrops.
A dozen or two altogether,
maybe more.

Think of faces – of the six billion
on earth, they say, most of us
can distinguish each one
and name hundreds

Consider how each tree
bears a cast of thousands - each leaf
as individual as a face,
the tip curved more or less,
a nick, a tear, the pattern of veins
as individual as a thumbprint.
Imagine knowing each one –
think of spring, not as the return
of the familiar, but a welcome
to characters entirely new
Imagine the grief each autumn -
the farewell to countless old friends,
the showers of golden tears

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More Poetry Thursday contributions here

Making a Difference #3 and Other Assorted Stuff

I loathe and despise polystyrene packing trays. It seems as if every butcher and supermarket in this city use polystyrene packaging trays for their meat. I can avoid them, though, if I take a little trouble. Monday is the day I work two jobs, changing over at lunch time. So, I stop off at the "Mad Butcher" where I inspect the weekly specials, and then I can place an order to be collected on the way home. My meat order includes the magic words "no polystyrene". He was a bit bewildered at first as to how I wanted it packed. Since I buy in bulk, I just get him to put each cut in a large plastic bag, and then at home I repack it for the freezer, in the plastic bags our bread comes in.

I've also discovered another butcher where the meat doesn't come prepacked at all, so you can purchase the amount you want without the cursed polystyrene. I'll probably continue to buy meat in the polystyrene trays sometimes, though, since I'm always looking out for specials. I have to balance saving the environment with saving my budget.

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I'm happy to know that we are past the shortest day of the year. The 22nd was, I believe, 1.3 seconds longer than the 21st. Now, several days later, we must be up to about ten seconds longer. I can't say that I've actually noticed a difference, yet, but it's comforting to know.

After a cold week, Sunday was surprisingly warm (winter warm, not summer warm). I love the golden light of the afternoon sun in winter. I don't know if it's really more golden than summer, or if it's psychological. I suspect it is because of the lower angle of the sun. Here's a photo from my Sunday walk:



By Monday it had turned cold again. I walked to work this morning and saw that there was snow on the hills I had been walking on.

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I think blogger has Alzheimer's. Even though I tick the box, "remember me on this computer", every so often blogger insists that I sign in again. It irritates me.

Heritage Week

Victoria Square was the original market square of Christchurch, so for the opening of Heritage Week a marekt was held there. The theme this year is "Pacific Pathways", highlighting the different ethnic groups who have made Christchurch their home, and their pathways to New Zealand.

There were stalls - mainly food stalls, but other goods as well - displays of photos of Unesco World Heritage Sites, performances on stage from various cultural groups, and a number of people dressed in Victorian costume, roving around and playing traditional games



such as skipping



The unicyclist was very competent



I thought the young African girl was beautiful



More photos to come