Adventures with Thermal Girl

Last week a friend (let’s call her Thermal Girl) came to visit from England via Sydney, and we had five fantastic days of fun and catching up. We even did some tourist stuff. Here are the highlights:
 

Monday – At passport control Thermal Girl had filled in a form to say where she staying during her visit to New Zealand. She didn’t know our address but wrote down our email. The bloke interviewing her couldn’t read her handwriting so she spelt it out for him. ‘Oh, I know them!’ he said. She thought he was joking – as you would – until he gave his name and said for her to say hello to us from him. Welcome to New Zealand, where the cliché about two degrees of separation is actually true.

This was Thermal Girl’s first visit to our beautiful country. It was a fine day; she looked around at the blue sky, white mountains, and green rivers. ‘Wow’ she said. And then she said, ‘wow’ again. It’s always nice to be reminded of what a scenic location we inhabit, just to ward off complacency.

I took her back to our place and fed her wine and crackers. When Him Outdoors came home he made us chilli. She likes our house. She likes the fire most of all, and didn’t move from in front of it all night.

Tuesday – Thermal Girl has packed several layers of thermals. She put them all on for a trip to Queenstown where she went to visitor information places, booked skiing packages, and examined bus timetables.

We met for lunch at Pier 19 and lingered over coffees, switching tables to stay in the sunshine – I thought she was very brave to sit outside; those layers were clearly doing their job.


In the evening we took her to the local PTA Quiz at Fox’s Bar in Arrowtown. Our friend, Heart of the District, made up our foursome and we looked to him to answer any questions relating to rugby or Kiwi sport in general. At one point Thermal Girl asked, ‘Is this the sort of quiz where it’s frowned upon to look up the answers on your i-phone?’ Is there a sort of quiz where it isn’t?

We learned that Lake Baikal is the deepest freshwater lake in the world. Apparently it contains approximately 20% of all the liquid freshwater reserves on earth. A haboob is a sandstorm, P&O – as in cruises – stands for Peninsular and Oriental (not Pacific and Oriental), and in the expression mind your ‘p’s and ‘q’s; the letters stand for pints and quarts. Thermal Girl can’t say that she hasn’t received a dose of culture on her tour down under.

Wednesday – Today’s activity was skiing. A bus took Thermal Girl up the mountain where she sashayed down the slopes and re-fuelled with hot chocolates and toasted sandwiches. She says her eyesight isn’t that great and she struggles to tell the difference between the blue and the black runs – she finds out which is which when she is halfway down, which could be interesting!

She says it is all very efficient and she is very impressed with the lack of children on the slopes and the waiting time in queues. She does, however, wonder why the toilets are down a flight of stairs rather than all on the same level.

We called round to a friend’s place in the evening where we drank wine, talked nonsense and ate pizza. Thermal Girl wanted to know why Kiwi houses don’t have radiators – a good question and one I still can’t answer after living here for 14 years – and why they put bananas on pizzas. I can’t answer that one either.

Thursday – After another full day’s skiing, Thermal Girl came to my book club with me. She finds it curious that we don’t really talk about books, and certainly not the same one as each other. The eating and drinking met with her approval, however. She reviewed One Day by David Nicholls which sounds pretty good, although it is being made into a film ‘starring’ Anne Hathaway (because clearly there are no English actresses available), so that should ruin that, then.

Friday – We had a voucher for a trip to Milford Sound incorporating a nature trip on a boat, so we gave that to Thermal Girl. She said she wanted to do something touristy and sight-seeing-ish so we thought this would be appropriate. She agreed, particularly enjoying the views, the penguins and the dolphins, although she was less enamoured with Te Anau – ‘does anything actually ever happen there?’

On the return trip it was dark outside so the bus passengers were ‘treated’ to a couple of Kiwi classic films. She found Whale Rider ‘interesting in a naff sort of way’. It had subtitles for the hearing impaired and every now and then it would say ‘mystical music’ across the bottom of the screen. Thermal Girl said some of the ‘hideous wailing’ made her wish she were hearing impaired herself.

The World’s Fastest Indian met with a little more approval despite Anthony Hopkins having ‘an extremely odd accent’ – that’s Invercargill for you. She exited the bus before the final destination (I picked her up from Frankton Bus Station) so she missed the end of the film. When she mentioned this later in the pub, she was told succinctly, ‘he gets the record and then he dies.’ That’s also Invercargill for you.

In said pub Thermal Girl apologised profusely but she doesn’t really drink beer. It seems a shame when the Arrow Brewing Company makes such fine ales, but when she couldn’t finish her sauvignon blanc, there were no takers; in our entirely non-scientific experiment, people from Invercargill, Newcastle, Burnley and Essex prefer beer. We went next door to Mantra for a fine Indian meal – it’s just wonderful to have everything so handily placed to each other!

Saturday – Provisions was our first port of call for breakfast and coffee. I’m still not sure what is the best time to avoid the young family brigade; the ones who take over an entire room with their toys and papers – each parent and child monopolizing a different table while shouting to each other across the cafe. I really like the place, but would like it a lot more if it resembled a disorganised crèche a little less.

Thermal Girl had packed away most of her layers and we took her to Brennan for a final wine-tasting. She decided she liked the pinot grigio very much but couldn’t have too much as she was about to get on a plane. Tracey talked us through all the nuances and subtleties of the wine; its origin; flavours and history. She was knowledgeable, chatty and very friendly. We bought a 2008 Gewürztraminer and a 2007 Pinot Noir to take home and put in our riddling rack.

I think we packed in quite a lot to entertain our guest in the past five days and I was very sad to see her off at the airport, but I thoroughly enjoyed her visit and hope she did too.

National Poetry Day

Today is National Poetry Day so I thought I would share with you one of my lyrical creations from yester-year. One weekend as some friends and I were camping out at Bob's Cove we decided to entertain ourselves at dinner (hand-caught and barbecued fish) by inventing poems based around celebrities - yes kids; that's how we used to amuse ourselves before we all plugged in to i-phones!

I don't think I'm boasting when I say that my poem is the one that is still remembered by the group several years later. In fact, of everything I've ever written, this is the only thing that anyone ever quotes at me. I'm not sure what sticks most in the memory: the deceptively simple but subtly complex structure; the mesmerisingly eloquent rhythm or the deeply insightful persipience. I'll allow to you make up your own mind.

Russell Crowe

Russell Crowe

Wants to know

Where to go

In the snow.

Could you show

Russell Crowe

Where to go

In the snow?

No.

Books read in January 2010

Below are short reviews of the books that I read in January 2010. The numbers in the brackets are the marks I have given them out of five.

Sixty Lights – Gail Jones (4.1)
In 1860 Lucy Strange and her brother Thomas are orphaned and sent from Australia to live with an uncle in London. As she grows up she gets a job making photographic paper from albumen. The egg-whites are smelly, “but it had about it the pre-industrial gratification of completion, of an entire art of manufacture.” She leaves London for India, where she is meant to marry, but she has a liaison on the boat on the way over with a married man and she arrives pregnant. That description may sound perfunctory, but the style of this novel is far more important than the substance.

Lucy sees her life as a series of random reflections, like a selection of photos in an album, and she does in fact become a photographer. She feels overwhelmed by the responsibility of narration and the traditional novel is not a form that appeals to her because she cannot see the ‘story’ of her life. This is often a complaint of debut novelists who have the characters, descriptions and incidents, but can’t find a flowing form. Instead, she abandons the structures of storytelling simply presenting images, and Lucy records events as Special Things Seen.

Gail Jones’ method seems a little contrived, like a creative writing class exercise. Some of the vignettes are completely irrelevant, although the poeticism makes them almost forgivable. Presenting memories as images also allows Jones to telescope time and highlight certain episodes above each other.

Their uncle reads Great Expectations to Lucy and Thomas – this seems to be the standard text to read to colonials (Sixty Lights was written two years before Lloyd Jones’ Mr Pip). The children are seduced by its suggestions of escape and improvement, and these themes run throughout the book. Lucy is a medium; a device to capture meaning, like the camera which distils an image, living her life like a negative – the space around her holds more significance than she can herself.

Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee (4.5)
The novel that won the 1999 Booker Prize 1999 is a slim volume with a bleak outlook. Life in South Africa has a constant undercurrent of casual violence and a complete lack of easy answers. David Lurie is dismissed from his position at a university in Cape Town due to an affair with a student for which he refuses to apologise. He takes refuge with his daughter Lucy on her farm, hoping to benefit from the natural rural rhythms, but he is forced to question his assumptions after a brutal attack on the farm by three black men leaves him assaulted and Lucy raped.

The story itself is easy to follow, although there are many depths and questions raised. The old guard is deposed, the new wave instated, and there must be sacrifices. The old generation is replaced by the new and there follows the ritual slaying of the old king. David, as a teacher of romantic literature, is more than aware of the mythical elements.

This introduces the premise of survival of the fittest as science takes its place alongside literature. Lucy is a kennel-keeper for dogs and David comes to care for them, even as he helps a neighbour euthanize the ones that cannot be saved. He sees this as a mercy killing – the only thing left that can be done for them – but who makes these rules?

The fact that David is her father brings an added dimension to his horror of Lucy’s rape – he could do nothing to stop the attack and can now do nothing to affect the outcome. When he was accused of abuse and harassment, it was handled very differently in an academic urban setting to how it is in the country. Coetzee breaks the man down until he is stripped of all his illusions. He is even challenged over what it means to be a father as Lucy admonishes him for thinking of her only as a minor character in his life. “I am not minor. I have a life of my own, just as important to me as yours is to you, and in my life I am the one who makes the decisions.”

He can’t even take refuge in language as he discovers it is insufficient to cover the scope of this particular narrative. “More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa. Like a dinosaur expiring and settling in the mud, the language has stiffened.”

The novel may be slight but its content is weighty. This is a powerful and deserving award-winner that demands to be read.

Killing My Own Snakes – Anne Leslie (4.2) Subtitled, ‘The extraordinary life of a Daily Mail and Fleet Street legend’ this memoir records the struggles Ann Leslie faced as a female journalist and foreign correspondent. From a fairly sheltered existence she was sent to cover stories of war, poverty and unspeakable cruelty, but was also able to be present at some of the greatest moments in twentieth century history, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the release of Nelson Mandela.

Leslie describes the state of journalism when she began writing in the Fifties for the Express – dominated by machismo and alcohol. She negates the idea of the Swinging Sixties as a media construct coined with hindsight. She claims, “Of course, the Sixties didn’t swing in Hull or Gravesend. In reality, outside a small geographical section of London, Britain as a whole remained as purse-mouthed, frugal and dyed-in-the-wool conservative as ever.”

Through her years in journalism Leslie saw changes in gender politics but also in class obsession, when regional accents, rather than Received Pronunciation, became de rigueur. Don’t imagine however, that Leslie feels protective towards the sisterhood. She shows a lack of support for other women: she not only wants to be one of the lads, but the only woman in a masculine environs. She refers to women as “frizzy-haired” and picks on their appearance when it has no relevance, taking sideswipes at Guardian readers and other females. Her attitude towards sexual abuse is outmoded and shocking in its lack of compassion. She can be sympathetic to women as long as they are not Western or possible competitors, demonstrating an interest in the rates of literacy among Arab women, but only inasmuch as it effects the economy.

Of course, she has strong opinions, many of which I don’t agree with, and she records some of her writings simply because she is proud of the rhetoric. They sound alarmingly like screaming Daily Mail oratory. Her piece on the release of Mandela tells us more about her than him, and she has a sneering way of writing about people of whom she doesn’t approve. When confronted with something she doesn’t understand, she turns to typical right-wing hard-line criticism and disparagement.

She can be cringe-worthily cocksure, and her attitude on war is fairly simplistic with clear-cut terms of right and wrong (left). I may not agree with her political leanings, and some of her caustic comments display an unpleasant bitterness, but there are some mitigating sections of great descriptive writing. This is generally an interesting examination of journalism through the past few decades, with particular interest in her early years of sexual and class oppression; perhaps as a lighter counterpoint to Kate Adie’s The Kindness of Strangers.

A matter of life and death

I don’t know why I read the newspapers sometimes – they just wind me up.
 
Last weekend I read about the moronic behaviour of boy racers in Christchurch. While trying to evade the police, some lowlife hit a power pole and killed his front-seat passenger. He himself suffered serious head and chest injuries and underwent intensive surgery.

A mother in Invercargill resorted to crushing the car in which her 19-year-old son and his two 16-year-old passengers died instantly to prevent his ‘friends’ taking parts as keepsakes. She was understandably upset as she admitted her son was responsible for the deaths – he was drunk, speeding, and driving an unsafe vehicle.

On the next page, there is a story about an Auckland teen fundraising to buy a $217,000 microscope that Middlemore Hospital can’t afford. He needs it for his treatment after he received an electric shock seven years ago that blew his left hand off and ruined his right arm, knee and liver. The 15 year old has had over 40 surgical procedures and multiple skin grafts.

People injured in car ‘accidents’ of their own making are taken to hospital where they face lengthy operations that cost thousands and occupy doctors and nurses for hours – that’s their job; their Hippocratic Oath prevents them from picking whom they care for. They don’t choose who deserves treatment and who should be left on the gurney. I haven’t taken such an oath – I know what my decision would be. I’m just saying...

End of the World (Cup) as we know it

So the World Cup is over for another year. I will miss it. I won’t miss the vuvuzelas, but I will miss the World Cup. Football begins again soon, though – Liverpool’s first real game is in less than a fortnight as they kick off their Europa campaign.

People have said that the World Cup wasn’t very exciting this year. That is because they are rugby supporters. This year seemed to be all about defence, and I used to play right back, so I am happy enough with that. It was all very well to display your silky skills up front, but if you were leaking goals at the back then you weren’t going to get through to the next round.

Spain may not have scored the most goals, but they conceded the fewest and that’s why they lifted that amazing 18 carat gold trophy. New Zealand have the distinction of being the only unbeaten side in the 2010 World Cup – that will be a pub quiz question for many years to come, in this country at least.

The media here is paranoid that football is edging out rugby in the popularity stakes. Actually, they call it ‘soccer’ (although the New Zealand Football association officially calls it football, along with every other country, apart from America), and refuse to give it the correct status as the beautiful game; more watched globally than any other sport.

The media make a lot of money out of rugby, so they don’t want to admit that more people are interested in football. New Zealand are top of the IRB World Rankings – there are apparently 95 countries that play rugby, approximately 20 of them competitively (Namibia and Romania are included in the top 20). 207 countries play football – a quarter of the way down that list we find New Zealand at 54, after gaining 24 places from their strong World Cup performance.

Glamour attaches itself to the All Blacks – there is a myth in this country that real men are hard and stoic (think monosyllabic and unresponsive – like your stereotypical Yorkshireman). They are afraid of emotion as it might demonstrate weakness (i.e. personality), so despise the fact that footballers hug each other in delight after scoring. A true New Zealander merely does a war dance and sticks his tongue out at the opposition – much more mature.

More children play football – just look at the sports fields of any city in the country on any weekend, but then they are lured away to the oval ball. Just in case this might not happen, they are reminded that they must worship the scrum. When the FIFA World Cup was on the television and graced the front cover of the SKY magazine – it is after all the most watched event in the world – the Kiwi press wrapped a picture of an All Black around it. They weren’t even playing any games that month. Running scared? I’d say so.

Private Lives; Public Heroes

During a text ‘conversation’ about football with my friend in England, he wrote, ‘Did you hear Gerrard rumour?’ My insides turned to ice as I replied, ‘I have heard several – what’s the latest?’ He answered, ‘Getting his wife’s sister pregnant, or brother’s wife. I can’t remember which. That was why Terry was so whingey in South Africa’, to which I shot back, ‘That’s okay then. I thought you were going to say something awful like he’s going to Man Utd.’

Don’t get me wrong – adultery is nothing to be flippant about – but what has it got to do with his football? I care very much about where Stevie chooses to play his football (and I hope he will stay with the not-currently-very-mighty-reds) but his private relationships (extra-marital or otherwise) are none of my business. It seems that many people think it is theirs. I found this from the Talk FC web-forum, where clearly Vicky Pollard is masquerading as ‘redmadmundo’:

“The part of the story is that nonsense is its Ronnie Whelan’s daughter, a lad I know actually knows the girl and there’s no way, the other one about his sister in law was even worse, when a lad in work got a text, I spoke to the fella sitting next to me who lives down the road where her mum lives and he said there wasn’t a sister!”

Since when did we expect sporting figures to be role models? We watch programmes like Footballer’s Wives and then pretend to be outraged if someone has an affair in real life. Steven Gerrard, John Terry, Tiger Woods – they’ve all suffered in recent months from our phony mealy-mouthed morality. We strip them of their endorsements, contracts and captaincy because they don’t set a good example. Basically, it’s mere envy because they are earning thousands of pounds a week, but they’re not earning them for saintly morality; they’re earning them for hitting a ball – and they still do that very well, if we let them.

If I had children I might want them to play football like Stevie G, sing like Dusty Springfield, and build businesses like Richard Branson and bridges like Isambard Kingdom Brunel. But would I trust their emotional judgement? How would I know? I don’t know who these people really are. There is an old joke that people mock David Beckham for not being very bright, but no one criticises Steven Hawkin for being crap at football. There used to be a school of thought that you should stick to what you’re good at – now we seem to expect our ‘stars’ to be paragons of virtue as well, and I don’t know why.

We were supposedly horrified when Gordon Ramsay cheated on his wife. Why? This is the man who routinely swears at and belittles people on public television, and yet he was voted ‘celebrity father of the year’ – clearly demonstrating that bullying is admirable. Serena Williams has the most smashing forehand in women’s tennis, but I wouldn’t take fashion tips from her.
 
In New Zealand Colin ‘Pinetree’ Meads is revered as the greatest lock forward ever – he has an MBE and was named the NZRU Player of the Century in 1999. He endorsed Provincial Finance with the immortal, emotive (and typically Kiwi) line, “solid as, I’d say.” When the finance company went under in 2006 and 14,000 investors lost their money, they seemed somehow surprised, having put their trust in the man rather than company. Again I ask, why? How does sticking your head between other men’s thighs qualify you as a financial advisor? Probably best not to answer that.

There are some public figures who are known to be lovely – Joanna Lumley; Michael Palin and David Attenborough spring to mind. Others less so. I don’t agree with many of Jeremy Clarkson’s opinions and would probably find him insufferably smug and arrogant if I ever met him, but his journalistic style is sublime. Similarly, Tom Cruise’s scientology and sofa bouncing antics may be completely bonkers, but he has made a number of good films (Top Gun; Rain Man; Born on the Fourth of July; A Few Good Men; Interview with the Vampire; Mission: Impossible; Jerry Maguire; Minority Report; Collateral; Valkyrie).

Some people (though God only knows who) might think Angelina Jolie has talent in her chosen field of pouting – oops, I mean acting – but does the fact that she has a bizarre necessity to recreate the united colours of Benetton adverts lessen her attributes? Are Roman Polanski’s films of less merit because of his controversial personal life? The Americans in a wonderful display of duplicity awarded him the Best Director Oscar in 2002 for The Pianist but refused to allow him into the country to accept it. Many singers, authors, musicians, artists have dodgy political viewpoints and personal lives: Michael Jackson may be a child molester of very limited mental faculties, but Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough is still one of the greatest disco sounds of the ‘70s.

I wouldn’t take political pointers from Sean Connery, as he is a rampant right-wing misogynist, but he’s a good actor. Conversely, does the fact that Bill Clinton chose to play hide-the-cigar with his intern have any relevance for anyone other than his wife? It was disgraceful that he lied under oath – and for that alone he should have been removed from office; no one should be above the legal system – but he shouldn’t have been in the dock for it in the first place. We should be ashamed of ourselves for being so enthralled by the salacious gossip. The ‘stars’ are only giving us what we want.

We used to have godparents who were supposed to be our role models and protectors. We respected our parents, teachers, religious leaders, and perhaps scout and guide leaders. I remember being influenced by my parents, aunts, uncles, a couple of teachers and the local Red Cross leader. If we now look up to singers, actors, celebrity non-entities and footballers, what sort of a life are we admiring? Perhaps we actually get what we deserve after all. But Stevie, please don’t leave me.

My newest favourite thing: Provisions in Arrowtown

My friend the Green Goddess will be gutted for missing the opening of Provisions Cafe in Arrowtown today. They were giving their ‘obscenely good’ sticky buns free to all punters. The Green Goddess loves these sticky buns and used to make trips through the gorge to Cromwell to sample them. When she returns from her sojourn in France (so she probably isn’t that gutted, as she will have been revelling in flaky French pastry for the last couple of months) she will no longer have to drive 60-odd kilometres to indulge her sticky bun passion. They will be baked right here (almost) on her doorstep.

It’s wonderful to see the old historic cottage being used for a practical purpose – these are immensely picturesque buildings but unless they are used they can easily fall into disrepair, and it’s quite a treat for the public to enter the cosy, low-ceilinged rooms. This was the opening day and the wee place was bustling. There is a courtyard where you can sit out on a sunny day – although maybe not in the middle of winter. A friendly black Labrador was greeting all-comers; did he get his complimentary sticky bun, I wonder?

There are all manner of sumptuous supplies for sale and for tasting. You are encouraged to try the fruit-bread and sample the range of mustards, jams and chutneys. Shelves display brightly coloured tins, tea-towels and cake-stands; organic muesli, lavender and thyme shortbread, and an array of fresh bread, buns and bagels. The flowers are a nice touch whether in pots, (hyacinths and cyclamens), fresh cut (orchids and lilies) or the big bunch on the counter bursting with vitality.

Today’s menu is written on a sheet of paper that will be torn from the roll and a new one written tomorrow. I like this concept – it gives you confidence that the specials really are, and when it says fresh, it means it.

The cheery staff were pleasant and efficient, allowing me to take photos and delivering our food and drink promptly to our table. I heard many people call out to Jane to praise her for an excellent launch, so I guess that was Jane Shaw wreathed in smiles behind the counter. And rightly so. The cabinet was packed with tempting baking including potato, leek and blue cheese quiche; bacon and egg pie; Cornish pasties and chocolate roulade. Even the lamingtons looked good (and I dislike this sickly confectionary – I’m sure it’s one of the foods you’ve got to be a natural-born-Kiwi to appreciate – along with feijoas, tamarillos and chocolate fish).

I was pleased to see that they offer the exquisitely refreshing Lake Sylvan rhubarb and gooseberry drinks, but I chose one of Michele Casson’s Stir Teas. The Blood Orange fruit blend was delivered to the table with a miniature hour-glass timer so that I knew exactly how long to let it steep. The blend of rooibos and citrus was intensely refreshing and later, when I looked up the ingredients on the website, I found they come from South Africa (rooibos), the USA (orange peel; apple pieces), Chile (rosehips), China (safflower petals) and Burkina Faso (hibiscus), so I feel as though I had a truly global cuppa.

The sticky buns were indeed a treat. Plates on the walls are emblazoned with commendations about the cleanliness of the kitchen and the merits of the sticky buns. Endorsements come from foodies such as Rosemary McLeod, Kerre Woodham, Paul Mercurio, Fleur Sullivan, Peta Mathias, Annabel Langbein, and Matt Preston. I believe these come from the Cromwell location, but they are equally at home here.

We walked home with Him Outdoors clutching a focaccia bread in a brown paper bag, studded with sea-salt and still warm from the oven. I think I may have found my newest favourite cafe in Arrowtown. There are so many things to sample – I’ll have to make frequent return visits to taste them all!