Day 3: Coventry and Warwick

We left the hotel the next morning which took a little longer than we planned, as we waited while the staff debated whether or not they would accept our travellers' cheques. Then it was on to Coventry where we stopped to look at the cathedral - or rather, two cathedrals.

Coventry was heavily bombed in World War II and the old cathedral reduced to a shell, but it still has many interesting details surviving. A Litany of Reconciliation is said every Friday in the ruins.





Alongside was built the new cathedral, which was designed by architect Sir Basil Spence, who also designed New Zealand's Parliament Buildings - though I have heard that he didn't so much design the latter, as make a sketch on the back of an envelope and say "How about something like that?" I'm not sure if that story is true or not.

There are many beautiful art works both in the ruins and in the new cathedral. We didn't take photographs in the new cathedral as purchase of a photography permit is required (though as we put money in the donation box, we might just as well have used it to purchase our permits).

This is part of the glass screen at the entrance to the new cathdral, depicting saints and angels



And the statue of which this is a portion is on the outside wall of the new cathedral near the entrance. It's by Sir Jacob Epstein The title is "Saint Michael and the Devil" and it represents the triumph of good over evil.



It was a short distance on to Warwick where the castle sits on the hill - or rather, on a slight rise (the highest ground for quite some miles around). I'm not sure if we would have paid the very high entry fee if it wasn't included on our heritage passes - but there was so much to see and do here that you could easily spend the whole day - since we didn't arrive till afternoon, we only had about three hours.



We watched a demonstration of the long bow, culminating in a show of speed - archers were required to shoot twelve arrows per minute.



We climbed up a very narrow staircase



to the castle ramparts



and visited the extensive wax works in the basement of the main portion of the castle.



I just found out that this type of window (wide on the inside and narrow on the outside, for shooting arrows through) is called a "loophole"



This is part of the surrounding village.



Apparently what distinguishes genuine Tudor houses from the fake modern ones is the crookedness of the beams.



I couldn't resist this shot of our rental car, complete with reflections of foliage in the car park.



We ate a very late lunch in the car park and then headed across to the motorway (the M40, for those with maps), and south to our friends in a wee village on the edge of Henley-on-Thames, near Reading. B & M left New Zealand more than 25 years ago, planning on staying in England for two years while M studied singing. They are still there! We had a very pleasant time catching up, and an added delight was the squirrels running across the patio and up and down the trees in front of their windows. They were way too nimble for me to capture them with the camera - but don't worry - plenty of squirrel pictures will be forthcoming from later in the trip.

Next... prehistoric sites in Wiltshire and Somerset, and a more recent ancestral village ....

Day 2: from Manchester to Nuneaton

(Where's that? - somewhere in England - all shall be revealed).

36 hours after getting up the previous morning we arrived in Manchester - but it was only 24 hours on the clock due to time differences. After all we had heard about congestion at Heathrow, we were glad to have chosen Manchester as it was surprisingly quick and easy to get through immigration. Especially since there was one queue for EU countries, and another for non-EU countries, which was far shorter. We went off to collect our rental car and found that the Hertz office didn't open till 7 a.m. Fortunately there wasn't long to wait. We were third in the queue. The office opened. We waited ... and waited...

There was one person on duty, he had a Spanish name which I won't mention but will say he seemed to be on permanent siesta. His actions were carried out as if moving through treacle. It took an hour to process three customers! Our travel agent had booked our car for 9 a.m. so it wasn't ready (he was supposed to have changed it, but hadn't). So even after being attended to, we had to wait further till the car arrived which was about 8.30.

Then we drove into Manchester where we needed to visit the information centre. At this stage I was beginning to really feel that we weren't in New Zealand any more, because the style of housing is so different. Manchester was a surprise - I had expected a grimy industrial city. In fact the centre of Manchester is remarkably clean with many wonderful buildings, including a huge Town Hall, mostly dating from the height of its prosperity in the 1800s when huge fortunes were being made in the cotton industry. (An English visitor in New Zealand once asked me why we call sheets, towels etc "manchester". It is of course, because that's where it all came from. Similar to denim being "de Nimes" - from Nimes - in France). Christchurch actually has similar Victorian Gothic buildings, since that's when the city was being established - but ours aren't nearly as grand as those in Manchester, and they are of a different coloured stone - more greyish.








Those last two aren't Singapore - Manchester has a Chinatown too, though it's rather small

We looked around for a while, still had quarter of an hour to spare and so we visited the art gallery. And then it was time to collect our Heritage Passes. I was beginning to wonder if there were any English people left in Britain, after encountering an Indian woman at the immigration desk and a Spaniard at the rental car company. And then, the phone booths have notices in Polish. But the young man at the information centre did indeed have an English accent. And he was very helpful. Except that ... P brought out his laptop to get the booking reference number, and was told they needed a printed copy. "If you e-mail it to me, I'll print it out for you". Which was great, except that meant we had to find wireless internet. The young man suggested Starbucks, so off we went and stood outside Starbucks while P tried to find an open wireless network. Not much luck so eventually I went in, ordered a mango-passionfruit frappacino (delicious) and asked "Do you have free wi-fi?"

"We have wi-fi, but it's not free". And then in a conspiratorial whisper: "I shouldn't be telling you this, but the restaurant over the road has free wi-fi". So P went to stand outside the restaurant over the road to e-mail the booking confirmation, while I enjoyed the frappacino. Mission accomplished, we headed back to the information centre, picked up our passes, and headed out of Manchester.

Our plan was to reach the area around Coventry/Warwick/Stratford on Avon but P wanted to make a slight detour to a friend's place to talk to him about internet access. So we plotted an interesting-looking route and headed out towards the Peak District National Park, which would have been very scenic if it hadn't been raining. I noticed several differences to New Zealand:
1. The trees are all deciduous species, though it's summer so they are still green. In New Zealand the native trees are mostly evergreen broadleafed species, and we also have a lot of plantation conifers.
2. There are no barbed wire fences, only drystone walls which we find very picturesque.
3. It takes me a while to put my finger on it - it is late summer and the fields are still green. Around Canterbury where we live they would be brown at this season of year.
4. England is flat. You would think that "Peak District" would mean - well, peaks. Not a bit. There are rolling hills. Every so often we come across a sign warning of a steep descent, and we would wonder for a while when it was coming, then the road would flatten out and we would say "oh, was that it?"

Eventually mid-afternoon we reached Buxton and as we hadn't had lunch, we stopped at the supermarket only to find the car park was "pay and display". We have never seen a pay carpark at a supermarket in New Zealand (though you may get wheel clamped if you try and park at one all day). We decide not to pay, figuring that we can always claim we have only just arrived in the country and don't have any coins for the machine (almost true, except for the change from Starbucks).

The supermarket was expensive, and all the fruit was organic and fair trade. In the checkout queue a conversation was going on: "He's going as a day pupil, he's only seven, and he's spent so many years in France he needs to get settled". My mind was quickly tagging this as a wealthy area! We ate lunch in the car park in the rain, and then headed on. Just north of the town of Matlock we hit another "first in England" - first roadworks! The road had been reduced to a single lane with northbound traffic and southbound traffic alternating, controlled by traffic lights. Southbound traffic had backed up for several miles and it took us an hour to go five miles. Eventually though, we got through, headed for the motorway and skirted round the south of Nottingham and across to our friend's house near Melton Mowbray.

By the time we set off again it was nearly dark. We navigated around Leicester and along the M69 which we left at Hinckley in an attempt to find somewhere to stay. The first b &b was full, the second was dark and not responding to the doorbell. At a small town called Nuneaton (just north of Coventry) we spotted a sign on a pub advertising room rates, and we were able to get a room for the night for £38.50 - quite reasonable - and to get a meal at the restarant even though it was almost ten o'clock. By this time I felt as if I was about to fall over, and the floor seemed to be sloping (though I'm sure it wasn't), so it was a quick meal before falling into bed.

Next.... Coventry Cathedral and Warwick Castle..

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.