We put our Christmas tree up today. I like it :)

Being pregnant brings with it an insatiable desire for good food....
Russell; cook extraordinaire. My hero :) 

Hawke's Bay

We've been in New Zealand for almost a year now, and in Wellington for pretty much all of that time. This week Elsje and I decided that we'd had enough of Wellington, so we decided to take a break and go for a drive.

Elsje searched online and checked out a place called Hawke's Bay. We liked the look of the area and she managed to find a beautiful little bed and breakfast called Tom's Cottage in a small town called Havelock North. So yesterday morning, early, we went for a drive and four hours later we arrived at Tom's Cottage, at the foot of Te Mata Peak.

The B&B is situated on the western ridge of the Tuki Tuki valley and is tucked away amongst the region's wine-lands. It actually reminded us a bit Franschhoek in the Western Cape. To be honest the area took us both by surprise; it was beautiful, warm and incredibly tranquil. It was as if the New Zealand we had anticipated seeing when we first arrived here a year ago were suddenly before us. It was also the first time that it has truly felt like summer, I mean in the proper, African sense, i.e. it was hot!

Since we only had one night, we just explored the town a bit, went to the coast and walked around the valley beside the river. We managed to find some boerewors in town and we cooked it and had it with some homemade bread our hosts had baked for us, overlooking the undulating foothills of the Te Mata range.

It was a short and simple trip, a little breather from the city and a chance to recharge a bit - something both of us have been neglecting this year.

The view from the deck of the B&B

Te Mata Peak

The view from Te Mata Peak, looking roughly north-east. On the right edge of the middle ground is the Tuki Tuki river and in the distance is a view of Hawkes Bay.

The rather unimaginatively named, Ocean Beach

This morning we went to Napier, the most touristy town in Hawke's Bay. It is known as the art deco capital, and it doesn't disappoint.

Note: NZ is nothing if not odd and this little town is no exception. It's called Dannevirke (meaning 'Danish creation') and is a small service town on the way to Hawke's Bay. The town was founded in the 1870s by people of Scandinavian extraction, a fact the residents seem to be especially proud of:

I Love Karl Pilkington

This is Karl Pilkington. He's known the world over as a man with a head like an orange. His is a unique brand of genius, of the comedic variety. He is, like the man who made him famous, Ricky Gervais, an acquired taste. He gained popularity on the Ricky Gervais show and most recently has appeared on a TV series called 'An Idiot Abroad.' Karl is not an idiot, he just has a unique perspective on the world, an ill-informed one to be sure, but one that is no less valid because of it. Embrace Karl Pilkington, invite him into your life and be happier for it. Thank you.

Ode to an Orbital

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.



 -- Sir John Betjemen, 'Slough'

Wellington

Wellington is a small city. More than that it is a city of smallness. By that I mean it is a city of nooks and crannies, winding one-way streets and networks of maze-like walkways tucked behind, beneath and around the undulating topography of the southern tip of the North Island. It stands in stark contrast to what Elsje and I, coming from Southern Africa, are accustomed to, that is, vast expanses of land, crossed with dead straight ribbons of tar which stretch out the gaze to dissolve on the shimmering horizon. Such a way of viewing the land and the cities upon which it is built informs the way you look at a new place. In the states we felt very much at home - vastness, check; shiny black ribbons, check; been driving for 24 hours in Texas and still in Texas, check. If you drive for twelve hours either north or south of Wellington you end up in the drink, east or west a fraction of that time. And so a city, a place, of smallness. Its nature, its appeal, is hidden to our far-reaching gaze and for the better part of this year we've missed most of what Wellington has to offer. The suburbs are so small you can drive for five minutes and pass through three without realising it. But therein lies the challenge of the place; it takes unpacking, like a jade miniature, the more you look the more you see. It's convoluted, always folding back upon itself, seeming to hide its treasures until one adjusts one's gaze. Today was a day of adjustment and we found a little jewel of a place called Breaker Bay.

A rather odd (and somewhat sinister I feel) memorial to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the first leader of the Republic of Turkey. There is also mention of the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) troops which fought and died at Gallipoli in Turkey in 1915. 

mmm

There was an insect skeleton caught up in a spider web on this tree. The wind was making the leaves play games with the light and every time the sun would shine on this insect skeleton, because it was hollow, it would glow and seem to give off this halo of light.

Not quite what I meant...

By M&C Saatchi

I like myths. I like all aspects of storytelling in fact, but myths are my favourite because they are the most functional, pliable and compelling of all fictions. They can also be stunningly psychologically complex, while at the same time being rooted in the simplest of narratives. They permeate all aspects of culture of every human nation on earth and are often expressed in symbols and archetypal forms; there’s something so deliciously primal about a myth, something that stirs the blood, urges the gut. I have long been a somewhat haphazard student of mythology and of the structure and power of the mythic form as well as of its more recent expression and application, the silky science of marketing. That is not what this piece is about; this piece is primarily about perception and the stories we tell ourselves - those cute little personal myths - but living in a world where we are constantly bombarded with images, symbols and slogans, it is difficult to write about myths without giving marketing its due regarding our perceptions of the world, our relation to it and thus our ideas about ourselves.

Funny though, I’m writing this piece in response to an interesting phenomenon I’ve encountered living in New Zealand for the past eleven months. The phenomenon I am referring to may not truly exist, but I’ve been getting the feeling that it does and for the sake of this piece I’m going to pretend that it is real. To state it simply, New Zealand is a dream. I’m not exactly sure whose dream it is, but I know that it’s not mine. My reasons for stating this are not clear, even to me, but it is a distinct impression I’ve been getting ever since I got here. It is as if the perceptions the people here have about their country are not real, not to me anyway. It’s difficult to explain, as I said, it’s more an impression than something I can point to. The reason I wanted to write about this phenomenon is that I came across a few websites written by disgruntled immigrants to New Zealand, most of whom have since left or moved on. What I found on these sites was both intriguing and slightly disturbing. On the one hand I almost dismissed these sites at first glance because they focus almost exclusively on the negative aspects of New Zealand, from the tentative job market to the regularly occurring earthquakes to the crime. But on the other hand upon reading some of the posts submitted by contributors to the forum, I found honest and balanced perspectives and a modicum of shared experience, the most important aspect of which – and from which I would say many of the aspects of living here which we did not expect originate - was the impression that New Zealand is not what it appears to be. There is a seeming dishonesty in the way that New Zealand is marketed – and it is marketed, which I find a bit odd – to potential immigrants and visitors. There is a shiny veneer of ‘spin’ which coats the way New Zealand is apprehended. If you look at websites about New Zealand, even websites which do not overtly promote New Zealand, there seems to be a sense of relentless, almost nervous optimism about the place, an optimism which I don’t think it necessarily deserves. Many of the contributors on the anti-NZ website commented on the fact that they felt ‘duped’ by the impressions they got about NZ when doing research about living here. To be honest, I did too; when I first arrived I had the distinct impression that I had somehow been conned. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I definitely had expectations, when after I’d spent some time here I felt were not being met. I have since got over these feelings and I am happy to be here, but there is still a sense of dishonesty, a dream-like sense of unreality to daily life which I cannot seem to shake off. I think that that may be the very thing that unnerves me, the dishonesty.

In South Africa things are very corrupt, there’s a lot of poverty, inequality, and subsequently a lot of crime – and everybody knows it. We can't hide our past or the difficulties of the present, but everyone just gets on doing their thing, it’s a bit broken, a bit rickety, but life goes on. It’s very much a case of what-you-see-is-what-you-get, and I appreciate that. In the USA the bubble has burst, the American dream has pretty much shattered and America’s former position in the world has been compromised. I think it’s safe to say that the dream has in many ways come to an end for many people – and everybody knows it, acknowledges it and gets on with their lives – I respect that and I like that spirit. Pretty much every country in the world is in the poo and knows it; there is not a single country in the world that doesn’t have crime or corruption or inequality or poverty to some degree. The thing with New Zealand is that there seems on some level to be a very strong urge not to acknowledge this fact, especially publicly and specifically internationally. I don’t mean to focus on the negative, I just think that it’s a sign of good mental health to acknowledge that things are broken and not as they should be instead of pretending that everything’s ok by trying to deflect attention off home-grown issues by focusing on the social ills of other countries. There’s a sense of insecurity and a level of overcompensation about the way that many Kiwis speak about their country; always comparing themselves to Australia, always emphasizing the natural beauty over their relative vulnerability politically and economically. But this is the thing: these are not real Kiwis, these are ‘Kiwis,’ normal New Zealand-born people who have bought into the ‘dream’ - that is to say the marketing campaign, the myth - of New Zealand, citizens seemingly co-opted unawares into believing things about their country, their economic situation, their government, their position in the world that simply aren’t true. It’s ok to be provincial, it’s ok to be weird and quirky, even to a fault – I mean what else would you expect from a small island in the middle of the South Pacific thousands of miles from anywhere? As the Viennese philosopher Karl Popper said of New Zealand when he came here in 1937 to evade his increasingly volatile neighbours, ‘[New Zealand] is not quite the moon, but after the moon it is the farthest place in the world.’ I say be proud of that fact, acknowledge the limitations - and to be honest, many Kiwis do - of an isolated island with a small population, but don’t try to pretend it away, or worse, lie about it. It really is ok; all I’m saying is, be honest about it. Like this:

 - Note: This isn't the piece I intended to write, this just came out. I actually wanted to write about something more subtle, something which this piece has shown me is not yet ready to be born. There is a  second tier to the dream, a sub-veneer if you like, which I want to explore. Soon though...  

Thanks Uncle John

"What he finds himself doing is what people like him should have been doing ever since 1652, namely, his own dirty work. In fact, once he forgets about the time he is giving up, the work begins to take on its own pleasure. There is such a thing as a well-laid slab whose well-laidness is plain for all to see. The slabs he is laying will outlast his tenancy of the house, may even outlast his spell on earth; in which case he will in a certain sense have cheated death. One might spend the rest of one's life laying slabs, and fall each night into the profoundest sleep, tired with the ache of honest toil.
    How many of the ragged workingmen who pass him in the street are secret authors of works that will outlast them: roads, walls, pylons? Immortality of a kind, a limited immortality, is not so hard to achieve after all. Why then does he persist in inscribing marks on paper, in the faint hope that people not yet born will take the trouble to decipher them?"

- J.M. Coetzee, 'Summertime'

Concert!

Today Orpheus choir did a free concert at the Te Papa Museum's Marai. It was great fun; (very informal as you can tell from the kiddies in the background!)
Russ managed to get three  of the songs on the camera. He asked me to apologise in advance for the camera work, he was trying to watch and record at the same time. :)
Hope you enjoy!

Oh, I am hidden away somewhere, try and spot the blue Alice band!

Queen of Angels...and Consorts

"...The world was full of marvelous correspondences,  subtle resemblances; the only way to penetrate them - and to be penetrated by them - was through dreams, oracles, magic, which allows us to act on nature and her forces, moving like with like. Knowledge is elusive and volatile; it escapes measurement. That's why the conquering god of that era was Hermes, inventor of all trickery, god of crossroads and thieves.  He was also the creator of writing, which is the art of evasion and dissimulation and a navigation that carries us to the to the end of all boundaries, where everything dissolves into the horizon, where cranes lift stones from the ground and weapons transform life into death, and water pumps make heavy matter float, and philosophy deludes  and deceives...
And do you know where Hermes is today? Right here. You passed him when you came through the door. They call him Exu, messenger of the gods, go-between, trader, who is ignorant of the difference between good and evil."

-- Umberto Eco, 'Foucault's Pendulum'

Not to bring the tone down...

I am a good writer, but when it comes to writing, I am a bit pretentious (and lazy). The market wants ‘clear, flawless copy,’ that kind of terse, almost severe style of writing with which business reports and marketing proposals are drafted, or if not that then something equally repellent, referred to incomprehensibly as ‘quirky.’ I developed my writing style crafting academic essays on art and literature, where pretence is almost expected,  where flamboyance overrules brevity, where excessive sentence length is a virtue and a whimsical use of grammar – ‘em’ dash parentheses are my favourite, like surreptitious hat-tips to the world of typography  –  denotes a casual disdain for ‘the rules,’ grammatical or otherwise. This has made my foray into the world of professional writing rather tentative and so instead of subjecting my excessively feathery quill to the quotidian drone of the newspaper article or the utilitarian goosestep of the business report, I have applied my knowledge of ‘the rules,’ grammatical and otherwise, to others’ work as that unsung hero of the field (almost tragically) named ‘communications’: The Editor. As such I trawl through the shambles of poor sentence construction, cliché, painful repetition, appalling use of grammar and a general ignorance of correct spelling. And to my relative dismay I’m rather good at it. This has led me to the knowledge that I must certainly be a masochist of some kind, because to be honest, I really do enjoy such work. Setting the world of words to rights has a stabilising effect on my mind and a soothing effect on my soul; I feel as if I am, in some small way, helping to stave off the rising tide of mental deterioration that accompanies the Orwellian nightmare that is text-speak.

  –– Editor’s note:  One day I’ll learn to write properly and let some other poor sod edit the accumulated detritus that erodes off my mind in the constant tectonic struggle to become: The Artist. Thank you.