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

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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.
_____________________________________________________
* 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.

69. October 25th 1854: 'Into the Valley of Death...' NZ Connection to the Charge of the Light Brigade

'Stormed at with shot and shell, White horse and hero fell.'  [From 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.]

They turned out at 4am and, as the sun rose, dissolving the mist in the valley ahead, James realised that the trap would be sprung that day. He retraced mentally the steps followed, the directions agreed upon, wanting to spot the mistakes, to know what might be, should be, learned from their collective madness. If not for himself and those with him – it was patently too late for that - then for others who might follow. For others would follow, that he knew. Perhaps for generations to come. Even if only for the sake of the historical record. They would want to pick over the entrails and know how he, of all people, had contributed to such a disaster, remembering him, not by his many victories but by this one cataclysmic defeat. Jealous rivals for preferment, journalists with bloodhound noses for bad news, political nobodies seeking electoral advantage, emotional voyeurs who, like uninvited funeral guests, took vicarious delight in the misfortunes and distress of others, all would give their verdicts. Reconstructing that day. Inventing stories. Grand stories of hubris and folly, and vignettes of cowardice and bravery in the face of death. Second-guessing motivation. Allocating blame. Wise after the event.

If it was to be defeat, James thought saddling up, then let it be one last glorious defeat that would be immortalised in history and poetry for generations to come. How would he be remembered, he wondered? Would only his mother mourn? Would he provide the lead his troop of dragoons expected? Disappointed that Joshua, his favourite charger, was lame and had to be left in the camp, and fearing his own cowardice, he reluctantly mounted Boadicea, his tetchy white mare, and led A troop to their allotted place at the right of the line. A mile away at the end of the valley the Cossack battery was waiting. When the order was given they advanced at a trot but within a few hundred yards came under fire and broke into a gallop.

His mother was never to know that it was that tetchy white mare Boadicea who made James a hero that day. Frightened by the shells bursting around her, she bolted. Straight at the Russian guns.

---

Captain J.A. Oldham was the first of the Light Brigade to get among the Russian guns at Balaclava on October 25^th 1854. He was last seen wounded and bleeding in the smoke that hung in clouds over the battlefield, standing by a legless Boadicea, ‘his sword in one hand and his pistol in the other… His dead body was never found, and his grave is therefore unknown.’ After the battle a Russian officer came to the British camp under a flag of truce to arrange for the burial of the dead. “Who was the brave officer who rode a white horse and led the charge?” he asked.

The story of Captain Oldham’s horse is told in the 1911 regimental history of the 13^th Hussars in these words: ‘This white mare was notoriously a brute, and on the occasion of the charge bolted – luckily, straight at the Russian guns.’ I particularly like the ‘luckily’! I invented the names of the horses but that is all. Captain Oldham’s brother was killed in New Zealand in an attack on a Maori pa. Wounded, he pressed on ‘in spite of all suggestions that his wound should be attended to; a few minutes later a second shot killed him.’ Who would be a mother?
 

 

67b. Memories (supplementary post).

See comments on blog 67 for origin of these photos and piece of text.

“5^th January 1982. We’ve left Malvern on our way to High Wycombe and we’re going to Oxford. Just waiting on the weather forecast which I think’s real worth recording.

We’ve driven through Oxford and seen all the marvellous colleges and buildings of the university - it’s a huge place – some very old, some very new. I don’t know where we are now, we’re driving through a little town (yawn). People scurrying everywhere. The skies are about to burst open again with lots of flood and pestilence and snow. They are forecasting snow all over England again tonight.”



Wednesday 6^th January
“Well, wrong wrong. It’s a beautiful day. It’s Wednesday the 6^th of January and it’s taken quite a while for us to get organised to get out. Got two carloads and we’re off to High Wycombe and Maidenhead and then we’re going to Windsor, I believe Queen Elizabeth is expecting us for luncheon...

We’re now in the grounds of Windsor Castle looking at St. George’s Chapel. It’s a lovely fine day but it’s freezing in the air. It’s taken us about an hour to have lunch in a cosy little pub called The Mad Englishman. Took about ten minutes to get a cup of tea there but it was nice when we got it. Had my photograph taken a couple of times already with the bearskin people."