79. Blog Viewers in Sixty Countries.

Today I found a viewer of my blog in Macau making sixty countries in which I have an audience record. (There may be others that I have so far missed). For the full list of countries and a revised list of the top twenty blogs to date see the updated version of blog 62. Ten Thousand Page Views and Jack Blandiver is Still Kicking His Heels (5th August 2013).

78. Vignettes of Family Life in New Zealand; (2) Summer 1979/80 (includes Mt Erebus disaster)

"Sugar Mountain"

22nd October 1979

42 Point View Drive, Papatoetoe R.D.1

    Dear Mum and Dad,

    Many thanks for your letter of October 7th. We are now beginning to get organised at Sugar Mountain and feel more relaxed after all the hassles of building and moving. We had a house warming party this last weekend - a sort of open day for anyone who wanted to pop in - and so the home has now been properly christened. It certainly has a lovely feel to it and everyone was very impressed. Brian, our architect friend who designed it, was very happy that all our choices of wallpapers and carpets etc complemented his ideas and really enjoyed hearing all the nice things said about the house... We still have to finish wallpapering the hall, the bedrooms and a toilet, and to get some doors for the garage and there are lots of little bits and pieces needing doing (plus all the garden) but summer is now nearly here and we can take our time and enjoy the place too. The children have stayed during the last two weekends and helped with various jobs. They think it is a very 'flash' house - it couldn't be a greater contrast with the flat in Otahuhu, so much space and air. This morning we had our first 'tragedy' of country life when during breakfast two birds flew smack into one of our windows and killed themselves, one with a broken neck and one with a broken back. They were NZ birds rather like yellowhammers but I don't know their proper name. We will have to hang some silver paper from the eaves - there is so much glass it must look like fresh air right through our lounge.

    Our academic year has almost finished here and final exams are in full swing. What with the house finished and the freezing works study completed it's good to have time to spend doing the things that have been put off for too long. I expect to spend much of the summer trying to get in control of the outside of the house. We are going to get a goat to help keep the grass down since the slope is too steep for mowing and that will mean building a goat house from all the bits and pieces of timber that the builders have left behind - the rest of it will eventually burn in our pot belly stove or on the open fireplace. The nights are still quite cold and with almost no curtains yet to help insulate the house we have had the fires going quite often. There's certainly something special about sitting by a log fire and looking out over the lights of Auckland city below us. Mary's sister, Anita, gave us some binoculars as a present so we can now sit up on the hill and watch what is going on over half of South Auckland - reminds me of your mother Henderson at Greenbank peering out from behind the net curtains at all the comings and goings. Only we have baby lambs (black and white) in the field next door and bobby calves down the hill instead of the trams going up and down and 'Mrs --- off to do the messages.'

    Lots of love to you both,

    John and Mary

1st December 1979

    Dear Mum and Dad,

    Thank you for your letter of November 20th and also an earlier one which crossed with my last. As you can imagine there is a collective horror throughout New Zealand at the DC10 crash in the Antarctic earlier this week. This is a small country and virtually everyone you meet knows someone who was on the trip, especially around Auckland where most of the passengers came from. A couple we knew who lived at Waiwera, where the hot pools are, were killed as were a number of Air New Zealand staff who were involved recently in the charity fund-raising effort to send a planeload of handicapped children to Disneyland (for their Year of the Child effort) - Mary did the hairdos for a gala day they ran at Ellerslie during the winter. The wife of an ex-chancellor of Auckland University was also killed. This was the 14th jaunt to the Antarctic that Air New Zealand had run in the last 2 or 3 years; know one knows yet what caused the crash but it seems likely it was a misjudgement on the part of the aircrew. There must be great pressure on a tourist flight like this to get a bit lower and a bit nearer than is really safe so that everyone can get their photographs and their money's worth. People from previous flights recount tales of flying up glaciers with mountains on both sides, down around the 1500' height when they are not supposed to be below 6000'. Anyway it is all very sad and I expect you have read about it in your newspapers.

    The University term has now ended and all the examinations are marked so I am able to spend quite a bit of time now at Sugar Mountain. We have almost completed all the wallpapering now with just the upstairs toilet and the insides of a number of cupboards to do. We have also got some curtains up and finished off plastering and painting the open fireplace in the living room. The garage now has some doors although there is so much junk in it that there is no room for the car. I have cleared a bit of ground to start a vegetable patch and put in some tomato plants, some sweet peas and some rhubarb. We also have some rock melon seeds sprouting up and they will soon be ready to transplant. It's all very experimental at present to see what will survive without too much attention - there are opossums in the bush who like to come up for a feed at night - some boys from along the road are hoping to catch them with some box traps which they have put in the bush.
    This afternoon we went next door to a neighbour's place to watch their sheep being sheared. We haven't got a goat yet, just plenty of long grass...
    Summer is here now and we are beginning to get suntanned, lovely warm days and long still evenings. With Christmas coming up there is quite a bit of social activity going on. Next Saturday we are going on a trip to the vineyards in West Auckland organised by a German hair products company. Last Friday we had the fifteen Maori pre-apprentice hairdressers from the Tech here for their end of year lunch. They loved the place and sang us songs they had got together as part of their cultural group activities during the year. There is a lot of unemployment here at present particularly among school-leavers so it is good to know that most of them have got jobs. We have two Maori girl apprentices in the salon at Otahuhu from last year's course. Mostly they are country girls who are selected by the Maori Affairs Department to come to Auckland for pre-apprentice training. The Department runs a hostel for them in Remuera.
    I hope this arrives in time to wish you all the best for Christmas. We will have the children here for Christmas lunch and then take them back to Rothesay Bay for their tea. We will be thinking of you then, with love from us both, John and Mary.

6th January 1980
    We had the three children here for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day until teatime. They got a big surprise, and so did we, when there was a knock on the door at 7am on Christmas morning and a very jolly Father Christmas was there going Ho Ho Ho. We thought at first it was a neighbourhood tradition but it turned out to be a distant relative of Mary's doing the rounds of all the family. Sacha stayed with us for a spell both before and after Christmas while Stuart was away staying with some friends at Snells Beach north of Auckland. The boys like to spend their time with their friends at Rothesay Bay fishing and swimming. Sacha on the other hand likes to go to the salon and get her hair done by the girls there - she is much more 'sociable' than Stuart and Lewis who would rather be out playing than sitting around talking or listening to adults. They have all had a good year at school and Sacha and Stuart go on to secondary school, Rangitoto College, this year.
    Mary has been busy in the salon up until this weekend and I have managed to do quite a bit in the garden including some of the rotten jobs like digging a drain behind our water tanks and then filling it all in with scoria. We have had a very wet week since Christmas and that has been good for our water supply and also for our newly established vege garden. At the moment we have tomatoes, sweet corn, rock melons, rhubarb, some herbs and a lemon balm shrub growing. The lemon balm was given to us by a friend and it seems you can make tea from its leaves, although we haven't tried that yet. The flax and the red hot pokers are flowering (as are the hydrangeas) and the tuis come 2 or 3 times a day to suck the nectar. We have neighbours away at present so I am also feeding their chooks and cats each day. One of the chooks is broody and sitting on a peacock's egg so I hope it doesn't hatch before they get back as I wouldn't know what to do with a baby peacock. It's all very different from Otahuhu. Lots of love to you both, John and Mary xxxx

17th February 1980
    Dear Mum and Dad,
    First of all many thanks for the tape - it was great to hear your voices as well as all the news of your Christmas activities. Mary thought that you, mother, sounded very Scottish and that Dad sounded like Derek Nimmo! We will get a tape together in due course to return to you but, as you said, it does take a bit of time and so far we don't seem to have recorded very much. We were going to record the summer noises but the crickets and cicadas make such a racket that they come up quite deafening on the tape. I expect it was similar in Nigeria in the summer - you don't realise how much noise there is until you stop and listen.
    Summer holidays are all over now and the children are back at school and Mary and I are back at work. Stuart and Sacha are settling in OK at Rangitoto College and Lewis is in his last year at Browns Bay Primary. Both Stuart and Lewis spent quite a chunk of the holiday away with friends. Sacha stayed with us for a bit interspersed with trips to Long Bay when the weather was fine. Most of my spare time has been spent working around the house on different bits of the garden. All the work we did two years ago clearing gorse and scrub was a complete waste of time since we didn't plant anything over the areas we cleared so now the gorse and scrub is twice the height! So the latest strategy is to clear a little bit then plant it out before going on to the next piece. So far I have put some bark garden around the water tanks and some retaining logs on the slopes below the house.
    Our other main concern at the moment is Mary's mother who has deteriorated very rapidly, both mentally and physically, since Christmas. We had her here to stay for about a week but she wouldn't settle; her memory has just about gone and she thought we were a rest home! Mary's Dad finds her increasingly difficult to manage and, although she has had all the home services - district nurse and housekeeper - it looks as though she may have to have constant care so Mary is looking to see what is available. I remember all your patience with Granny Deeks - it's a difficult period and hard to know what is best.
    Lots of love to you both,
    John and Mary.

  

77. The Archaeology of a Box: (3) My Grandparents' Victorian Greeting Cards

Archaeologists expect to uncover layers of history as they excavate, dating artefacts as they go. On some sites, however, there is conflict over which history is to take priority. At the Palace of Knossos in Crete, for example, the bulk of the ruins on display are of the Minoan period but the sites there also include Roman, Greek and Mycenaean remains. Minoan Knossos was largely destroyed by natural disaster around 1700 BCE, then rebuilt by the Minoans only to be destroyed by a Mycenaean invasion around 1500 BCE. When the Mycenaeans left it became a Greek city subsequently occupied by the Romans until around 400 CE.

My box of treasures was originally constructed largely on the same natural principle of earlier artifacts and mementoes being at the bottom and more recent ones added layer by layer on top. Since that time, however, it has been packed and repacked so often that things are all over the place chronologically. So now it is as though some archaeologist dug down at Knossos to the Minoan level pulling out pieces of Greek, Roman and Mycenaean history and culture along the way and then jumbled them all up and packed them back into the ground to leave others to puzzle as to what came when from where.

For next from my box is a box within the box - a thin flat box falling apart at the edges. In this box are more greeting cards, these dating from the late nineteenth century. Only one has a date on it - 1898.

 

 

These are cards exchanged by my grandfather and grandmother on my mother's side, keepsakes from their courtship and marriage, and passed on to me by my mother. A few are reproduced above.

My mother’s family were from Edinburgh. Her mother Kate, my Grannie Henderson, had eight children only three of whom lived, my Aunt Lena (b.1906), my Uncle Peter (b.1907) and my mother Catherine (always known as Cathy; b.1910).

 

Before her marriage my Grannie Henderson (nee Thomson) had been in service as a table maid. My grandfather, Peter Henderson, owned two family grocery shops in Edinburgh but he died in 1944 so I scarcely knew him.

76. Gestures from the Heart: A Poem*

there are times
soul-bleeding times
for simple healing
gestures from the heart

the innocence of a child
the smile of a loved one
unexpected gifts of friendship

Sophie's Fan
shyly given to the Honourable Mr John

a home-made Valentine's card
"Just so you know you're appreciated in this life"

a piece of pumice from Lake Taupo's shore
"When Taupo and Tauhara are no more then let my love die"

two rocks











one, wrapped in tissue,

a piece of rose quartz
sprinkled with gold and silver stars
a keepsake for the years
and a message inscribed:
Rose Quartz
gentle and soothing
good for fears
aches and pains
and healing broken hearts
(Failing that, it is a pretty slab of rock to stick on your desk)

the other









New Zealand Alpine schist
brought from the Mackinnon Pass
a track beyond my capability
reminder of what might have been
in old friendships rekindled








Lake Taupo pumice beach with Mount Tauhara in the background



Near the top of the Mackinnon Pass on the Milford Track, Fiordland, New Zealand

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

*This and two other recent poems have been added to blog 53. Adrift on Poetry (24 September 2012). Other poems are in The Joys and Tears of Love and Passion, blogs 22, 40 and 51 (1st February, 15th March and 3th June 2012 respectively) and blog 54. Dr. Gachet's Blue Eyes (5th November 2012).

75. Brother and Sister, Worlds Apart: (1) Dead Ducklings, War Canoes, Steel Works and a Leper Settlement

 

Auckland University from Princes Street Gardens

In September 1972 I moved with my young family from London to take up a position at Auckland University in New Zealand where I was employed until my retirement thirty years later. At that time my older sister Elizabeth was in Nigeria where she spent most of her working life with the Church Missionary Society. Both of us wrote regular letters home to my parents in Malvern Link, Worcestershire.

As I indicated in an earlier blog (30. "Love, Death and Letters from My Mother's Hut"), my mother kept our letters. Two siblings could hardly make more diverse career choices and these letters provide, to my mind, an interesting contrast between a thoroughly secular and a thoroughly religious life. So Elizabeth and I have agreed to try and paste together a blog giving some indication of the different things we were writing home about at specific times. I am sure we will find some strange juxtapositions.

We both recognise that we self-censored our letters home as we hid some of the real emotional dramas in our lives. In this 'presentation of selves for parental eyes' we sought both to maintain some of our personal privacy and to protect our parents from too much concern over matters outside their control.

This blog is experimental to see what a mix of extracts from our letters reads like before proceeding with more. We have chosen letters that refer to September and October 1972.The protocol that we have followed in editing these letters is to set mine out in the present typeface (Times) and Elizabeth's letters in Courier. Where we have felt compelled to add a present glossary on the events reported, or some reflection on the memories that they trigger, we have done so by shifting to italics.

Elizabeth wrote home more frequently than I, usually every Sunday, so we will start with excerpts from her letter of September 10th 1972. This was her first term at the Vining Centre in Akure.

E: These letters give an idea of what life in Vining College was like in the time of Cornelius Olowomeye who was the Principal then. There is not much about any teaching but rather taking people to the hospital. That seemed to be my most important role - I was in charge of the College Dispensary which met each morning after chapel (Morning Prayer) which began at 7 am.


September 10th '72

Dear Ma and Daddy,

My ducklings have hatched  at last, but I am not sure if I couldn't have done something to help more of them to have hatched out. There were 12 eggs and 6 of them hatched. One of those died. But it seemed to me that there were babies inside the other eggs but the mother didn't continue sitting on them after the first lot had hatched. Now I have 5 small ducklings to keep an eye on. They never taught us at Foxbury (CMS Training Centre) how to look
after ducks!...

This compound is really like a farmyard. I keep having to go outside to shout at the goats or sheep who will come and eat up all my bushes. Then yesterday I saw that a pair of pigs that often come visiting from the town have had piglets and there are 7 little ones! Just now there are some chickens scratching around under the trees. I haven’t yet done anything much about my garden. I have started a few pots on the veranda and I think I shall concentrate on them. There is a lot of Pride of Barbados all around the house. I think that when Ethel has gone I shall have some of them dug out, because there is not much room for anything else.
With much love,
Elzabeth.

October 1st
We have started the new term this weekend – so all the students are back (or sick and therefore late!) We just have one new woman so far, although we were expecting 3. We nearly didn’t start at all because there was no money. All the Diocese have failed to pay us their grants – but we have managed to loan from Akure District Church Council, enough to buy our food supplies. The Government ought to be paying the cocoa farmers soon and then money will start to circulate again.

Sad news about my ducklings - ALL have died!! Like 10 little nigger boys - 2 drowned, one disappeared in the bush, others I think got pneumonia. So I must start again.


J:

Deepacre Motel, Takapuna, 1st October 1972

Dear Mum and Dad,

Well here we all are in Auckland. The flights went off smoothly and on schedule. The TWA jumbo from Heathrow was half empty so we had plenty of space. It’s an incredible plane with lounges and film shows and the children thoroughly enjoyed it, even though the journey to Los Angeles was eleven hours. We saw quite a lot from the plane – Iceland, icebergs on the sea, the edge of the Arctic, the Canadian Rockies and then the hills and coastline around L.A. It seemed extraordinary to be in the Arctic Circle on a direct journey to New Zealand!

We arrived in Los Angeles at 4pm (their time) and left again in the dark at 9pm. The stop gave us a chance to have a wash and for the children to run around. We then boarded the Air New Zealand DC8 for Auckland. The children were very tired by this time and the plane was full and cramped so we all slept fitfully. After five hours we arrived in Honolulu at midnight Hawaiian time, and stopped for an hour and had a walk. It was stifling hot – it’s on the Tropic of Cancer – with great tall palm trees and ornamental fishponds around the airport.

The last leg of the journey was a further eight hours leaving Honolulu at around 1am and arriving in Auckland at 7.40am NZ time – all very confusing. We were met at the airport by Peter Tillott (my boss) and his two children and taken to their home for breakfast. It was a beautiful sunny morning and the first sight we had of New Zealand as the plane flew in over the islands and beaches around Auckland and over the top of Rangitoto, the volcanic island in the gulf of Hauraki near Auckland, was the most impressive sight we saw on the whole journey.

We reached our motel about 11am but our room wasn’t ready so we went for a walk on Takapuna beach. The children kept going remarkably well considering how little sleep they had – Stuart only about four hours since Tuesday night in England. About 5pm we all went to bed and slept for thirteen hours or so. We have all adjusted to the time change but Pat and I still feel we are on an aeroplane! Since we arrived we have been taking it easy, exploring some of the beaches and generally getting our bearings.

I am sorry it was such a rush at Heathrow but we were very glad to have you all there even for so short a time.

Love from us all, Pat, John, Stuart, Sacha and Lewis.

I have always been the kind of traveller who likes to know in advance the topography of anywhere I am going so had studied maps of Auckland in some detail. As our flight  approached I recognised the layout of the city but the early morning sunlight throwing light and shadow over the islands of the gulf, and the sparkle of the calm sea below, made my introduction to New Zealand a magically exciting one. One that in retrospect I rate triple A+. [A+ for anticipation; A+ for the actual experience; A+ for the pleasure of recall ages later.] With travel, as with romance, work, dining out and many other things, you can have three bites of the cherry. But as you age triple A+ experiences, like triple A+ banks these days, are harder to find, so I keep a good store of them in my long term memory bank.

4^th October

We are still in our motel but will be moving shortly to a house we have rented for the next few months. Our address will be 168B Seaview Road, Milford, Auckland. We started looking for somewhere on Tuesday and were fortunate to find the one we did. There are plenty of properties available for buying but few for renting.

The house is at the top of a hill overlooking the beach and sea at Milford and is about seven miles from the city centre on what is called “The North Shore”. The beach is about five minutes walk downhill (over a rickety bridge, subsequently demolished) and about ten minutes coming up! As soon as we found the house we went to the local school – Campbells Bay Primary – to see the Headmaster. Stuart and Sacha started yesterday and are settling in.

Shortly after we had agreed to rent the house in Seaview Road an ex-LSE staff member who is now at Auckland University phoned to ask how we were getting on. He and his wife are New Zealanders but they have worked abroad for the last ten years and came back here last January. It transpired that their house was in the same area as Seaview Road and that their two children, a boy aged 6 and a girl aged 5, went to Campbell's Bay School! So yesterday when we picked our two up at  the school we went back to their house and the children all got introduced. Schools here start at 8.45am and the five year olds finish at 2.30pm, the rest at 3.00pm. This means there is a lot of time after school for going to the beach or playing and the older children all seem to play tennis after school. It’s hardly rained since we came and has been pleasantly warm, but we are assured it’s not always so dry.

I have been in to the university on and off but will really start on Monday next when the children will be at school and we shall be settled in the rented house.


E:
October 8th
It was good to get your letter earlier in the week telling of John and Pat's departure to N.Z. It seems that our family get-togethers are often at Heathrow airport! I am sorry that I wasn't there to complete the gathering.

We have started the new term. I was exhausted by Friday! The teaching timetable is not very heavy - although since all the lessons are 'new' there is a good deal of preparation. But things like 'needlework' take up a bit of time, because the women are both helpless and also demanding attention. The first week is the worst - getting them all started on new things - deciding what they want to make and getting them cut out. I gave 5 of them 5 yards of material to cut into 5 pieces to make tablecloths with. It was like a market in minutes. The last piece was only 35" long and no-one would take it!!!
 

...Then one small girl cut her head open on a stone - not a big cut - but a lot of blood and a hysterical mother. Last night one baby woudn't sleep but cried ... so I was woken at 3.15am to diagnose ... probably worms or eaten too much. I gave 1/4 Aspirin in water and the baby slept off!! But I can't say that I did - at least not properly.

October 15th.

Most of the women seem to be pregnant this term - or to have children under a year. We are hoping to have a session on Family Planning this term - but it is a bit late as far as most of them are concerned.

 

J:

Milford, 18^th October

Thank you both for your letters with all the news of your busy Harvest Festival. We still aren’t used to the idea that it’s spring here and that in two months the children will break up for the summer holiday. Teaching has already finished at the University and the students are now busily engaged with exams. I am fairly well settled in to my job now and am gradually getting round meeting people in the University and in the business community in Auckland. I am the first person appointed at the University to a post in Business Studies so most people are rather intrigued as to what I am going to do. At the same time it means that there is plenty of opportunity for new ideas. In due course the University is setting up a Department of Business Studies but so far has not been able to fill the vacant Chair.

We are slowly beginning to sort out the various areas where we might like to live permanently and to drive around to look at some of the houses available. The main thing is to be reasonably near to the primary school and, if possible, to a beach and yet not too far from the University. Most people here think that 1/2 an hour’s commuting is a long way! It’s a nice change from driving an hour each way to High Wycombe and back. Where we are now takes about 20 minutes from door to door.

The first week we were here the weather was marvellous but last week was very wet and when it rains it rains. So on Saturday we took the children to a museum in Auckland that had a lot of Maori and Polynesian articles in it. These included a Maori war canoe 82 feet long, many Maori woodcarvings and replicas of the traditional buildings in their villages, as well as actual fishing boats of different kinds from all over the South Pacific – Melanesia, the New Hebrides, Rarotonga, the Sandwich Islands and places I had never heard of before. There were also headdresses and cloaks worn by chiefs on special occasions (like war!) including some made of birds’ feathers.

We’ve hardly been out of Auckland so far although last week I went to the NZ Steel Co about 30 miles south of Auckland – right out in the country – and saw steel being poured – very spectacular, like a firework display.

E:
October 22nd

One student delivered a baby boy this week - on Thursday. It was unexpected as far as I was concerned because I hadn't realised that that student was due so soon. And neither she nor her husband had prepared a thing for the new baby!! So suddenly we had to go shopping. They hadn't even got S.T.'s, olive oil, nappies or a razor blade - as required by the hospital. Part of the trouble was that they had no money to buy them - but partly I felt it was just thoughtlessness for they have 2 other children and they had left all the old nappies and baby clothes at home.
 

I had a letter from John. They seem to be settling in very quickly. I should think that New Zealand is a nice place.

What a pity that May Panter didn't enjoy the guitar music. I doubt if she would approve of our lyrics with drumming and dancing and even clapping that go with it in our Chapel! In fact I can think of quite a lot of things she wouldn't approve of in this place! Babies puddles in the classroom... even on the table..!! How you get over the importance of basic cleanliness to Yoruba women I don't know.

October 29th.

I discovered that the one week old baby was very jaundiced and had a large 'haematoma' on the head - so we took it to the hospital for a check-up. They saw a doctor who precribed phenobarb and an injection of paraldyhyde. Mrs Treadgold and I went into town and looked round part of the Oba's palace and she bought some writing paper etc. She is a very 'lively' person - and very nice indeed - but much nicer when she relaxes and doesn't talk too loudly.

We went to Idaure in the afternoon on Sat and visited the Vicar there and his wife. Then we came back for the evening service and I was called out to take the same baby again to the hospital. It was admitted. Then we went on to Ann's for supper.

After the morning communion service the father came to say that the baby had died in the night. I don't really know what was the matter unless it was chronically anaemic, or had some infection. Very sad. The parents were very controlled, but weeping. The students made a box and they buried the baby in St. David's churchyard.

We went to the Leper Settlement this morning and greeted the folk there. Mrs T. had never seen anything like our Leper Settlement - and it is pretty ghastly. One poor man is very sick there - with tetanus I think .... but they won't admit a leper into the hospital and it seems they don't get any medicine except for their leprosy pills. I fear he will die soon - but I will go and tell them in the Health Office in the morning tomorrow.

... This evening we had a session of plays in the hall in honour of our guest. It was great fun and went off very happily with men dressed as women in the men's play and vice versa in the women's play. All a great laugh.

Lots of love,

Elizabeth.

 

74. The Archaeology of A Box: (2) Self-Portrait

undated

73. The Archaeology of a Box: (1) Children's Drawings, Paintings and Cards.

[For introduction see blog 71]

I opened the box. At the top was a scroll of children’s drawings and paintings. The largest of these was Kate and Harriet's ‘Welcome Home’ poster of Winnie-the-Pooh characters to mark my return from six months in London in 1985.


Welcome Home - Kate and Harriet

Also in the scroll was Harriet's colourful five-in-the-bed, painted when she was four and her mother and I had been living together for nearly a year. Harriet never explained why there were five in the bed so we assumed her Dad and I were both cuddled in there with her mother, sister Kate and her.


Five in the Bed - Harriet 

And then more of Kate and Harriet's drawings:

Self Portrait - Kate

 

unattributed

Christopher Robin - Harriet

In the next layer were home-made Father’s Day, birthday cards and Christmas cards with childish drawings and cute messages from Stuart, Sacha and Lewis:

So much life in such a little box and I have scarcely started.

72. Vignettes of Family Life in New Zealand: (1) Summer 1973/4

Lewis, Sacha and Stuart in the garden at Sunnybrae Road, Takapuna



[For the origin of the letters drawn upon here see blog 30. Love, Death and Letters from My Mother's Hut (4th February 2012); see also blog 26. This Day in 1973 (20th January 2012)]

Takapuna, Auckland, 15th November 1973
Dear Mum and Dad,
    Thank you for your letter of October 30th. You all sound very busy. We have started to repeat last year's activities - we took the children to a local fireworks display (Lewis hated it and hid away from all the bangs and announced when we got home that next year he wasn't going to go!) and on the same afternoon we saw a number of special children's entertainments - authentic Punch and Judy with Lancashire accents, a Maori song and dance group, a Scottish pipe band all in Black Watch Tartan, and drum majorettes a la U.S.A. - it's nothing if not multicultural here. Stuart had a ride on a miniature Japanese motor bike and was very thrilled. Sacha has also now learnt to ride her two wheeler bicycle so the three of them go riding off round the neighbourhood with Lewis on his trike.

Whananaki South, Northland, 16th December 1973
    ...it's a pity you can't be here! For the last three weeks the weather has been really warm and sunny. On Saturday we drove up from Auckland to Whananaki. It may not be on your maps but is about fifteen miles north of Whangarei on the east coast, between Tutukaka and Whangaruru Harbour. It is a lovely quiet spot on an estuary. One of my colleagues at the University has a bach (or beach house) here and has lent it to us for a week. There is also a caravan on the site and Stuart and Lewis are sleeping in it. The bach can only be reached at low tide since part of the road is on the bank of the estuary so you can imagine how isolated it is. When the tide is in the water comes right up to the bank just outside our window and there is also a lovely sandy beach a short walk away over the sand dunes.

The dairy (groceries etc) is opposite but although there is a footbridge it is quite a long walk round. This morning, therefore, we rowed across the estuary to get the milk. The wind was blowing so it was quite hard work - in fact where it was shallow it was quicker to get out and pull the boat instead of rowing. Stuart has been learning to swim in the calmer waters of the estuary because the ocean beach has a lot of surf. There are also quite a lot of birds, especially fantails, sand pipers and larks as well as seagulls...
    The two railway engine books for Lewis' birthday arrived safely thank you very much. He had a little party for about half a dozen of his friends and he enjoyed himself very much...
    Hope you are wintering well - all we hear of the British news is full of gloom - prices continuing to rise, little petrol, a rail go-slow, trouble in the coal mines etc etc. There is no petrol rationing here yet but everyone is expecting it after the Christmas holidays. Happy Christmas and New Year to you all, Lots of Love, Pat, John, Stuart, Sacha and Lewis.

9th January 1974
    The oil shortage has had little impact here so far. There is no problem in buying petrol and the price has not gone up - still about 50c a gallon for 'super'. There is an overall speed limit now of 50 mph in order to conserve fuel and it has made driving much more pleasant and, apparently, reduced the number of road accidents.
    Thank you for the Percy Thrower gardening book, it will be very useful. This week we have just eaten our first cabbage and beetroot from Pat's vegetable patch and very good they were. Our tomatoes are also coming along well and we also have a few potatoes and cucumbers in and some rhubarb. The fruit trees are still very small and won't produce much this year - just a few apples and peaches.
    On the Thursday after Christmas we went off again, this time to Hamilton where we stayed for a week. It was a good centre for tripping around in the car. We went, as you guessed, to the Waitomo Caves, had a day at Rotorua which was very impressive, went to Te Aroha and up to the top of Mount Te Aroha on a rickety old bus, spent a day at the seaside at Raglan... Hamilton itself had some lovely parks as well as the Waikato River running through - we went on a river trip too. The highlights for the children seemed to be riding on the model railway at Victoria Park, Hamilton and watching the tele at the house we rented!
    Sacha and Stuart are writing separately to thank you for their Christmas presents. Lewis was very pleased with his book. He can't read yet but he sits down with it and either makes up his own story on the basis of the pictures or repeats in his own words whatever he can remember of stories that have been read to him.

7th February 1974
    Yesterday was a public holiday here - Waitangi Day, now for the first time New Zealand Day, commemorating the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. After breakfast we all went off to Waitangi in the Bay of Islands (about 150 miles north) along with thousands of others to see or hear the celebrations. We sat up on the treaty house grounds and watched Britannia come up into the harbour past Russell. A large Maori war canoe, paddled by 80 or so warriors, went out from Waitangi to the side of Britannia and then escorted the Queen's launch back to the wharf. Then there was a pageant and a concert and speeches from the Queen and Mr Kirk*. Unfortunately, although we could hear, we couldn't see very much since there was a very big crowd and very little organisation - one of those occasions where you see more if you stay home and watch it on the tele! Nevertheless it was fun to be there and the children, Sacha and Stuart, got a glimpse of all the Royals. Lewis wasn't very interested, got tired, didn't like the guns that kept popping off from the New Zealand frigates, but thought the Rolls Royce car was smashing.
    Holidays are over now and the children back at school... Both Stuart and Sacha have learned to swim as a result of their ten lessons in the school swimming pool. Stuart swims really well and can do a width without trouble either on his front or back. Sacha gets along but very frantically and has to stand up and take a breath at regular intervals. We are very pleased that they have made such quick progress as there is so much you can do here once you have confidence in the water. Even Lewis is ducking his head under to see what it is like and trying out a little surfing when we go to the beach. He's so brown that Sacha says he looks like a Maori!
    Our two little peach trees have produced one large peach between them so we will probably pick it this weekend and have 1/5th each! Our citrus trees, in spite of the very hot weather, have lots of little lemons and oranges coming along so we should be well provided for the winter with fresh fruit.
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* Norman Kirk, Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1972 to his sudden death, aged 51, in August 1974.

71. The Archaeology of a Box: Introduction

Writing about the blue monkeys of Akrotiri (blog 70) reminded me again how fraught it is to interpret the past through the ideas of the present and the surviving artefacts of another age, time and place.

As I have moved during the course of my life from place to place, country to country, relationship to relationship, I have accumulated many mementoes of happy times. When I moved to live on my own in Milford in 2000 I packed all these mementoes away in a heavy-duty carton that I had kept for many years. It once contained Royal Doulton china and was stamped with that company’s trade marks and the Royal Appointment logo 1978.

One day, in a nostalgic frame of mind, I lifted the box down from the top shelf of the study cupboard where it was stored. It was heavier than I remembered - and I was older and feebler. I had to rest it on my shoulder, then carry it across the room to sit on the stool beside my desk.

I will delve down into the archaeology of this box in a number of future blogs and show you some of my treasure trove of mementos. When I opened it in Milford all those ten or so years ago I started to pile everything onto my desk. At the top were cards, drawings, tapes, photographs (some chucked in higgledy piggledy upside down still in their display frames) - a cornucopia of bits and pieces.

Below this layer were letters collected in bundles and stuffed into large brown envelopes addressed to me in Hawaii and London. Unfortunately these fat packages, which I hastily pulled out but didn’t open, slid from the top of the pile of memorabilia mounting up on my desktop and pushed a vase, top heavy with pens and pencils and letter openers, onto the steel base of the stool. The vase smashed. I looked at the pieces lying on the floor and berated myself for my aging clumsiness. It was a souvenir bought in Hollywood.

I stooped down, gathered up the fragments and pieced together the inscription. It was a Snoopy vase made in Japan*, decorated with Peanuts characters blowing kisses to each other in the shape of red hearts and a message, also in red, “Love is what it’s all about!” I put the pieces in a plastic bag and back into the box in the meantime, but I knew I would never bother to repair it. When I’m dead one of the children going through my things can discover the china shards, play at archaeologist and wonder what story they might tell.

 *Japan not China; that tells you something of its age.

70. The Blue Monkeys of Akrotiri

Detail from Blue Monkey Dance Party (2007)



The 2007 watercolour painting from which these monkeys are taken is titled Blue Monkey Dance Party and is one of two inspired by a visit in 1998 to the excavations at the prehistoric settlement of Akrotiri on the Mediterranean island of Thera (the classical name) - now better known officially as Thira or Santorini.

 

The ruins of Akrotiri that have been excavated include the Minoan city of c.1650 to 1500 BC though the site was continually inhabited from around 4500 BC. A massive volcanic eruption in the 17th century BC obliterated every trace of human activity on Thera for hundreds of years and created the astonishing volcanic cliff tops on which the Santorini towns of Fira and Oia now so dramatically sit.

 

The paintings found on the walls of Minoan houses excavated in Akrotiri are among the earliest examples of large-scale decorative art work in Europe. I was particularly taken with the lively energetic frescoes with blue monkeys in them.

 

Fresco of Blue Monkeys (Thera c.1500 BC)

There has been some speculation among historians of the ancient world as to the social and cultural significance of these monkeys. The monkeys were indigenous to Egypt and may have been taken to Thera as gifts or as pets. Alex III, in a Historum discussion forum, points out that some historians have placed these monkeys 'in a purely religious or cultural context, with the monkeys acting as a sort of mystical intermediary between the real world and the divine.' He traces the different strands of these arguments but concludes that, in his opinion 'art for the sake of art' is as good an explanation as any.

It was the art work that took my interest rather than any mystical baggage that might be associated with it. I particularly liked the idea of taking a drawing made by some unknown Minoan artist over three and a half thousand years ago and breathing new life into it. The Akrotiri fresco monkeys danced for me so I gave them a dance party to enjoy and then extended the idea by changing their colouring to red for a ragtime number.

For the original artist to imagine that his (or her?) frescoed monkeys might resurface millennia later in a part of the world he/she would never have known existed would be like me imagining that, in some future millennium, my paintings would be excavated by visitors from an inconceivable planet.