IN CASE YOU ARE WONDERING

I have been reading


ULYSSES by James Joyce and it's a great book; that is a great book for sending me to sleep at night. Conor Kostick at the Irish Writers' Centre told me to read it for the humour, well I have not found it all that funny. But in spite of knowing the locations Joyce talks about, I find myself yawning. Oh dear, I am evidently a lowbrow in spite of all my efforts. and I shall whisper this very quietly

I ENJOY A GOOD MILLS and BOONE MORE.

The editorial snoop on this site has just tole me AMPERSANDS are not allowed. Yah Boo!
The weather is still cold and wet!

And for the three people who have read my other blog (or maybe one person three times? there is another 'editor regrets' on Waiata's Witterings. It's about small town New Zealand, written years ago after spending a weekend in Pleasant Point and thinking, 'What would this place be like if it was by the sea?'

FROGS vs ALL BLACKS BUGGEUR!

LONDON 1999
I stood all the way from Peterborough to Waterloo. Everywhere there were hoardings showing Taine Randall leading the haka. No doubt about it, the All Blacks were going to bring the Rugby World Cup home.

Four years before we had watched the unthinkable happen as they had staggered about losing to South Africa. This time would be different.

Youngest son Ivor met me at Waterloo. He hopped on and off the escalator with the ease of a seasoned Londoner. I clung to the rail, white knuckled. At Waterloo East Ivor's cell phone rang.

"Hello, Ivor Davies. What? Nah, you've got it wrong." He disconnected with the look that Australians term 'stunned mullet.' and looked at me.
"The All Blacks lost."
"No! You must have heard it wrong."
"I'm telling you. The Bloody Frogs beat us."

We stared uncomprehending at London gearing up for the twenty first century; the highest ferris wheel ever built, the OXO tower, Londoners riding the train, reading their papers, unconcerned.

Up until then English newspapers had been full of the awful things those perfidious French did. The fed their cows and pigs on unmentionable fodder made from sewage. They blocked imports of healthy British products. Overnight British perceptions changed, they became Europeans. Girls from Cockfosters to Cambridge were seen wearing French Rugby shirts.

I wasn't that concerned about Australia winning the cup. After all one of my grandfathers was born in Echuca.

A DAY FOR DUCKS AND DAIRY FARMERS

A Southerly squall has spent last night and to-day racing up from Antarctica and making a nuisance of itself here. Even the cows across the road look cold and miserable.

But one event has turned my day to sunshine. A friend sent an e mail.

SHE READ MY OTHER BLOG

SHE LIKED THE SHORT STORY I POSTED THERE

WAS I GOING TO POST ANY MORE?

My grand daughter in Canberra disapproves of shouting on blogs, but this is an occasion .

Somebody has read my other blog!!! So for you, Ruth, I have posted another 'editors regret' a short story I wrote twenty years ago. And I hope you enjoy it.

If anyone else likes outrageous tales my other blog is WAIATA'S WITTERINGS.

I am going to sit by the fire and do some knitting. That's a nice, calming occupation for a cold day.

COMING TO A CINEMA NEAR YOU

RUGBY WORLD CUP? Forget it.
If you want colour, spectacle, drama and music go to the opera. Last year I seriously thought of cancelling my trip overseas and enduring a Waitaki Winter, because if I took off to Crete I would miss the final three productions of the 2011 Metropolitan Opera Season, and one of them was Das Valkyrie, second in Wagner's Ring Cycle.

In Oamaru? Exactly! The Met films its operas so skilfully that I believe we get a better view of everything that the actual audience at the Met does.

When I returned to my crib after four months overseas I found the booklet for the 2011-2012 season on my table.(Thank you Glennys) This season will show eleven operas, most of them classics like Mozart's 'Don Giovanni';Verdi's 'La Traviata'; Wagner's final two from the Ring Cycle, Siegried and Gotterdammerung; but also new opera like Glass's Satyagraha, it's about Ghandi.

So this year, every three weeks or so, I shall be at MOVIE WORLD 3 in Oamaru. If enough people book seat I shall be watching grand opera on a huge screen and listening through a magnificent sound system. Otherwise I shall be in a comfortable arm chair in their drawing room cinema watching a smaller screen, but still worth while.

ree programme booklets are available from participating cinemas. I have already alerted sons in Petone, Paraparaumu and Sumner. The operas will be shown in small towns, like Arrowtown, Geraldine and Martinborough.

Maybe one day somebody will make a grand opera out of the Rugby World Cup, before Jonas Kaufman gets too old to sing Richie Macaw.

LEARNING SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY

I have been having fun reading
WRITING MAGAZINEwww.writers.online.co.uk particularly interviews with
JOHN LOCKE and STEPHEN LEATHER about e books.

JOHN lOCKE sells novels on KINDLE for 99cents per download

He is selling them by the million.

And he kindly shares his business format with readers of Writing Magazine.

So I did some research on e books in the wonderful
WRITERS AND ARTISTS YEAR BOOK
published by A&C Black,

and as often happens I ended up reading widely on all sorts of other things, in particular an article on WRITING A BLOG

If you want to have a look at he result go to my other blog
WAIATA'S WITTERINGS
I have re formulated the short story I put on there with

LOTS OF CAPITALS
LOTS OF BLACK
AND
lots of white space throughout,

AND I WILL BE VERY GRATEFUL IF ANYONE COMMENTS ON THE FORMAT.

WHAT BECOMES OF THE VULNERABLE?

Allow me to introduce Rosemary and Audrey, two women I met at the Citihostel in Dublin. Audrey is Irish born, but lived in Canada long enough to develop an accent. She told me her daughter is studying for a masters degree in music performance at Trinity College and Audrey is concerned, to the point of obsession, because her daughter is diabetic, needs special diet, and Audrey feels she is not getting the guidance with her studies she should be. Her field is the concertino, a lively little folk instrument which I remember from childhood. No matter what topic began a conversation Audrey would always work it around until we reached her daughter's problems. She has a kind heart though, After I left Citihostel, following the episode of horizontal P.E. mentioned in an earlier blog, Audrey trekked across Dublin to bring me a book she had found in a charity shop, written by an English woman who had cycled from England to India in the 1960's. It made fascinating reading.
Rosemary was approaching forty and had recently split up from a relationship. She had no job and was hoping to train as a volunteer in a charity shop. Evidently this is the first step in Ireland for getting back into work.The first time I met her she was mid epileptic seizure in the hostel kitchen. She later told me that as a child she had been given the wrong medication and it had left her epileptic and without short term memory. She was a pleasant girl until she found hair in the bathroom basin. That was her fixation. The hair was not always there but if she thought there was that would set off a tirade.
But what concerned Audrey and me was seeing her each evening scanning the pages of the newspaper and ringing 'businessmen' who promised to find work for her. And almost every week end she would iron her blouses and set off to meet a 'business man.'
Here was a forty year old woman with the naivete of a fourteen year old.
Talking about it to friends in Liverpool later I was told that people like Rosemary were often dumped in hostels by welfare agencies because there was nowhere else for them to go. Sad, isn't it?

SERENDIPITY STRIKES AGAIN

Last Saturday I arrived home from four months of peregrinations. Son Terry drove me down in his cute little company car, cheeky and bright red. In my carport was a silver grey Mitsubishi Gallant which my neighbour Don had located for me, reasonable mileage at a reasonable price. On Sunday I rearranged four months of dust cleaned the windows and got rid of the mountain of mail waiting on my table.

ON monday I set off to Oamaru to put the price of the car into Don's bank account, renew my A.A. membership and buy things I could not possibly do without for one more day, like Vogels Bread, lambs fry, real Marmite (The Irish version is revolting). Then I realised I was now driving a car which did fewer k's to the litre than my former car, a little Ford Festiva, so I began thinking tactically. If I called at the AA office on my way in to town I would not have to cross all the traffic lanes in Thames Street, no waiting at lights, engine idling and drinking gas. So I stopped at the A.A. office, renewed my membership and returned to a dead Mitsubishi. The A.A. mechanic arrived in seconds and diagnosed a flat battery. One hundred and twenty nine dollars later I was on my way, did all my errands in town and called at the B.P.station to fill up. Ouch! of course the Mitsubishi is bigger than my
ford Festiva but $89.00 was a shock. I shall not be dashing in to Oamaru to pick up a paper, or to explore the bookshops in town in future. Trips to town will be carefully monitored. It's all about saving the planet.

HOME AT LAST

No picture. I have been busy dusting, vacuuming and clearing a mountain of mail off my table. Son Terry drove me from Christchurch to home. I found a Mitsubishi Gallant in my carport, so I am mobile once more, thanks to neighbour Don. Also, thanks to Don my back yard looks much more like a garden than it did before I went away. Lettuces, silver beet, radishes, and all sorts of things growing in orderly rows, my precious Loganberry vine taking possession of a frame, and a walkway cut from pieces of discarded plastic laid to keep my boots out of the mud.
Terry brought in armfuls of firewood. It is still cold here. So now I am removing four months' dust from everything while I listen to a wonderful Jazz DVD called 'Greenwich Village' which was waiting with the post. It features Dave Amram & Friends performing live at the Cornelia Street Cafe and it begins with 'Take the A Train', continues through improvisations of 'Splendour in the Grass' then a Collaboration titled 'Pull My Daisy' featuring Amram improvising to readings of Kerouac, Ginsberg and Cassidy. There are jazz tracks by musicians I am unfamiliar with, (but Frank nodded knowledgably when I read them out to him.} and it finished with twelve minutes of 'Meanderin' in Mandarin' A wonderful home coming surprise.

WESTONBIRT ARBORETUM

A century and a half ago, in the 1850s wealthy Victorians planted trees. They collected trees from all parts of the world and made huge gardens. Did they know they would not live long enough to see their efforts reach maturity? One of these efforts is the Westonbirt Arboretum, about twenty miles from Bath.
The oldest tree is a 2,000 year old lime. There are collections of oaks, maples, cherries, English native trees all now managed by the Forestry commission www.forestry.gov.uk/westonbirt. The commission has a well publicised programme of events i.e. walks and talks like 'The Healing Power of Trees', Autumn Fruits and Berries'; Family events like a reindeer trail at Christmas and workshops like 'Advanced Digital Photography'and Çhair Making'.

Lesley and Stuart took me there for a Sunday stroll. Mid September was a perfect time to see the trees turning from green to gold and red and yellow. We walked about five kilometres around the original planting of that Victorian, had tea at the out door cafe, listened to birds and came away feeling rested and refreshed. But I knew I had seen less than half of that wonderful place.It would be a perfect place to bring a young family for a day.






































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