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| Sailing on Lake Pupuke |
Dear Mum and Dad,
Thank you for your letter with all the news of Elizabeth's departure for Nigeria - it was good to hear she had enjoyed her leave so much and was in such good form.
Our principle news for this last month has been Sacha's breaking of her right arm. She did it a couple of weeks ago one morning at playtime when she fell awkwardly from a rope she was trying to walk across in the school playground - she only fell a couple of feet but it was enough to break the bone in the forearm. Fortunately both Pat and I were at home that morning so we took her to the casualty department at the North Shore Hospital which is less than a mile from here. Sacha was very good and so were the hospital staff; she had to have the bone re-set under a local anaesthetic and then plastered. The anaesthetic made her see double for a time and very chirpy and not know quite where she was - first she wanted to stay at the hospital and then she wanted to go back to school straightaway to tell them all she had broken her arm. We had her home again from the hospital by lunchtime so had spent about three hours there which was not too bad. The North Shore casualty department is only open in the mornings and at other times you have to go to the central Auckland hospital about 7 miles away where you can apparently wait anything up to 8 or 9 hours to get a bone set.
At first Sacha was very proud of her broken arm and her plaster and the envy of all her friends, then for a couple of days she got irritated by it, and since then you would think she had nothing wrong as she plays all her usual games and can still write with her right hand. Strangely enough within the week Hayden Oswin who is Sacha's age and lives in the house at the bottom of our garden also broke his arm falling from the garden seesaw and so he is in plaster too. It is very funny to see the two of them together - they spend a lot of time playing knucklebones which seems to be the latest craze. Sacha should be getting her plaster off within the next ten days or so.
Otherwise we are all well and Lewis has his usual ration of cuts and bruises from zooming around as batman with his friend Mark Petersen, who lives at the top of our drive, as the boy Robin. Examinations are underway at the University so I have some papers to mark and only two weeks more of classes for this year. Pat has not had much relief teaching to do so far this term but starting on November 10th she has a solid block of four weeks at Glenfield College as relief for one of the teachers who is standing as Labour candidate for East Coast Bays in the general election that is coming up on November 29th. I am hoping to spend as much time at home as possible during that period both to do some work of my own and to be around when the children come out of school at 3pm. Pat usually gets home about 3.45. She is busy at the moment preparing material on China and India - the school have provided her with kitsets for teaching that include tapes, slides and books.
Election campaigns here are relatively short but the next three weeks are going to be full of party politicals on the telly etc. At the moment the opinion polls are suggesting that the National Party and Mr Muldoon are likely to win which will be a big turnaround given the large majority that the Labour Party won in 1972. The party with the most interesting policies is the Values Party* but they will probably get less than 5% of the vote. Both Pat and I are eligible to vote this time.
Lots of love to you both and all the 'visitors'. Pat, John and family.
15th December 1975
Dear Mum and Dad,
Thank you for your various letters and cards received over the last couple of weeks including your Christmas letter. We are in the middle of a spell of lovely sunny weather and it is difficult to think of Christmas coming up or to raise the energy to go shopping in Auckland where it us usually five degrees hotter than here on the North Shore. Pat has just finished a full month of teaching at Glenfield Collage - she was standing in for one of the teachers who was Labour Party candidate for the local East Coast Bays electorate - he lost which was not surprising given the very large swing against the government. Prices have been rising very rapidly here in the last 18 months and most people's incomes have not kept pace. Although the government had managed to keep unemployment down to remarkably low levels by world standards (less than 1/2 of one per cent of the labour force) they lost out to a general feeling that the economy was not being well managed and inflation was too high, though nothing like it has been in Britain from what we hear. Pat and I both voted for one of the minor parties, called the Values Party, which has an interesting set of policies aimed at curbing unnecessary economic growth, stabilising population, using the country's natural resources more carefully, conserving the environment, rejecting the development of nuclear power stations (there are none in NZ at present) and giving greater aid to the third world nations. Much of their thinking is along the lines of John Taylor's 'Enough is Enough' which you sent me earlier this year and the Club of Rome's 'Limits to Growth'. They attracted 5% of the total vote which was not bad for a party that is only 3 years old but was not as good as they had hoped. Anyway now we have a National Party government with a large majority headed by Mr. Muldoon who is a very acerbic controversial figure popularly known as "Piggy". Now that the Australians have also thrown out their Labour Party government very decisively the political spectrum of this part of the world looks very different.
The gifts you sent by air have arrived as have the postal orders for the children - they did so on a day when both Pat and I were at work and the children picked up the post on their way home from school, so they duly opened their presents! and were delighted by them. We have sent you a subscription for the National Geographic for next year and hope you are not already receiving it. We too have been somewhat tardy in sorting out presents this year but hopefully we can bring some things with us when we come on leave. There have been a lot of changes in the permissible stop-over arrangements due to new regulations the government and Air New Zealand introduced recently so we may not spend any time in the U.S.A. or Canada as we had hoped. Also our fares have gone up 50% in the last two years and are about to go up again shortly so that will affect us too. Anyway we should arrive in late May or early June but have nothing definitely fixed as yet. The children's main concern seems to be that they should get to Disneyland either on the way over or the way back! We are more concerned that they should not be too disrupted since they are very settled here with their school and their local friends. Last weekend we all went to Albany to visit some friends who breed and train ponies so they all had a ride, bareback, and are looking forward to going again in the school holidays.
Hope you have a lovely Christmas with Stuart and Jutka*. Our thoughts will be with you all.
Love from Pat, John, Stuart, Sacha and Lewis.
[*My younger brother and his wife.]
5th January 1976
Dear Mum and Dad,
A Happy New Year to you both. From what we see on our TV screens it hasn't started too well what with the devastating gales. Hope you have not had any trouble with falling chimneys, or garden sheds blowing away.
We had a quiet Christmas here with just an English couple with their baby - one year old on Christmas Day - visiting us in the afternoon. The weather over the Christmas period was fairly wet but improved after New Year and we have been out and about to various activities with the children, to a film 'The Return of the Pink Panther' and to the theatre to see the Basil Brush Show. We also went out in an old launch called Molly that we have a 1/4 share in - the first time we have been out in it and quite an adventure it was, the main problem being transferring from launch to dinghy to get ashore on Motutapu Island - Dad fell in much to everyone's amusement! I rounded the day off when we got back by being stung by a bee. On the Saturday we all went to Pukekohe, about 35 miles south of here, to watch the NZ Grand Prix motor racing which was good fun and fortunately not too hot. Other trips have been to the beach. We are also able to use the school swimming pool just over the road so that is very convenient. Lewis had some flippers, a snorkel and a mask for Christmas so we all get a lot of fun out of using those. One of my presents was a barbecue so we are going to try it out this evening with some sausages.
New Zealand is shut at this time of year - virtually everything grinds to a halt in the three weeks after Christmas as people take their holidays. I have been trying to do a bit of work in the mornings and then taking the afternoons off - but the weather is sometimes a bit too tempting and we go to the beach instead - my nose is already peeling for the third time this summer in spite of hats and suncreams. The garden is looking good - bougainvilleas, hydrangeas and a jacaranda in flower and the fruit is coming on; we have had some of our own strawberries + the figs, apples and grapes should be better this year, also a few plums. Pat has been looking after a vegetable patch so we have grown all our own potatoes + caulis + radishes + cabbages; tomatoes should be ready soon + also some corn on the cob. I planted some kumaras (sweet potatoes Maori style, look a bit like yams) but I don't know exactly when they will be ready, also a rock melon and some Chinese gooseberries so am keeping my fingers crossed for them. Some of the trees we planted a couple of years ago are already over 12' high so we get some shade and more privacy than before. We have also built a new tree hut over the Christmas period so it is pleasant enough just to stay home and potter around. Love from us all, Pat, John and the children.
[*See blog 83 for more on the Values Party.]
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