Isn’t it wonderful when a friend or relative visits and thus gives you permission to do the tour guide thing?
I’m in that lucky position right now, with my second cousin visiting from the UK. When I collected Kirsty from the Interisland Ferry on Sunday, she was my excuse to have coffee at an Oriental Bay cafe, drive to the top of Mount Victoria, cruise through central Wellington and to visit my own personal food Mecca, La Bella Italia, in Petone.
Today my sister joined us to ride the Rimutaka Incline bike trail. We were a bit dubious about (a) hangovers and (b) the wind (which was blowing rather fiercely) but the whole thing was an inspired choice for a New Year’s day excursion. The wind provided very useful assistance in blowing us up the hill (so glad it was behind us), and for dispersing the cobwebs and tiredness. We had a wonderful time!
Richard met us on the other side, and we later took in views of Wairarapa from the Mt Dick Lookout before heading home.
When I was a child one of the things that told me Christmas was coming was the steady arrival of parcels from Britain and Canada. I remember the British parcels in particular, because they were wrapped in a special sort of brown paper we don’t get in New Zealand – it’s almost striped, with a subtle tone-on-tone pattern, and a more rusty brown colour than ours. There were stamps – lots and lots of them – some with the Queen’s profile, others with a Christmas theme. I also remember the careful writing of my Aunts – Madge’s small tidy script and Sandra’s bolder, rounded hand, and my Dad’s sister Elaine’s untidy scrawl. The Canadian parcels didn’t have any string, but my Mum’s sisters clearly had a lower opinion of postal workers and had meters (yards, in those days!) of string and a multiplicity of knots to ensure the parcel would survive intact to its destination.
In the absence of parcels, nowadays my countdown begins with making the Christmas Cake. True to tradition, I aim to make it on ‘stir-up Sunday’, the Sunday-next-before-Advent. It is so called because the Collect (prayer) for the day in the old 1662 Anglican Prayer Book begins “Stir up, O Lord, the hearts of thy people…” – and was taken as a useful reminder by the women of the congregation to get on with the job of making the traditional fruit cake. I was on time this year – and our cake will have a chance to improve not only with keeping, but also with a weekly brushing with brandy!
Today I performed another part of the Christmas countdown, and wrote and posted off the overseas cards. This year I’ve managed to make them all – nothing too fancy as I needed 16 cards and so I made a few each of several designs – none of which took longer than a few minutes to make. There are two really important parts of the process for me. The first is constructing a newsletter that rounds up the events of the year for each of us, and I love doing this. Looking back on the year gone by is a chance to reflect and enjoy again the highlights we have experienced. The second important part of writing the overseas cards is to write some words in each card that are chosen for that recipient. A little story, a wish or a shared memory – I like to add a little something special along with holiday greetings.
What do you remember from your childhood countdown to Christmas? Is this still in your life, or has something else replaced it?
Yesterday I was a stallholder at the New Rags Market in Greytown. Business was slow, so Jannelle of Heartfelt and I moved our tables outside under the trees to make it more obvious that there was a market going on inside the Town Centre.
From my position I had a great view of the traffic on Main Street, and no sooner had I put the camera away after taking this shot, I saw one of the first signs of Christmas. A car with a tree in a trailer.
For me, putting up the tree on 1 December seems a bit early – but I’m not sure when the ‘right time’ is. I do know that I left it a bit late last year (it was Christmas week!), so this year I’m aiming for a happy medium. We have a live tree in a pot, and it will come inside next weekend, on 9 December.
Do you put up a tree? What’s the right time for you?
The last weekend saw the 8th Greytown Arts Festival come to life after many months of planning. In my workplace – the library – we have been involved in a small way in helping the Festival with ticket sales, information and resources; it’s been quite a ride. There was so much going on it wasn’t possible to see everything, so this is quick summary of the events we managed to catch:
We started off the weekend by going to see these lovely ladies on Friday night:
The Beat Girls! They began their performance with swing tunes from the 30’s and 40’s and then morphed into these:
for songs from the swinging 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Loads of fun!
The hall of the library building was home to the major art exhibition – around the theme “The Last Piece”. Some stunning work, and a busy hub of activity for those contributing to the Community Art Project – you can see it beginning to take shape on the far wall. This photo was taken on Saturday morning, and there was a constant flow of people looking at the works.
On Sunday I had a stall as part of the Cobblestones Open Day. There were lots of locals enjoying the chance to print their own cards using the old presses, watch the blacksmith hammering out horseshoes, try their hand at wood turning with a foot-powered lathe – and of course to buy locally made products like ours!
The highlight of the Festival for me was the marionette play The Kitchen at the End of the World which was written by a local (William Connor) and produced by Stefan Kreft (who also spearheaded the organising committee for the whole Festival). It was an amazing, touching, beautifully crafted piece that I wish I could have watched two or three more times, as there was so much to see and think about.
The team of puppeteers were amazing! They made it look simple and easy – an indication of the talent and hard work it must have taken. The characters in the play knew they were marionettes – and so could use this to create humour (“I need a string treatment and a stiff drink”) and to raise philosophical issues (“Do you think we’re being controlled?”). It was well worth seeing and if you ever get the chance to do so don’t miss it!
On Monday we went to see the mural constructed over the previous two days by a team of “tape artists” on the wall of the new supermarket. I loved the level of detail in the figures, and especially that the dragon is blowing bubbles, not fire!
This is the square I created for the Community Art Project – made up of the “last pieces” of several quilting fabrics that I had in my bag. If you look hard enough (and know where to look) you might be able to spot it in the finished work. (Hint – it’s in the far left-hand strip).
Isn’t the finished piece spectacular! When we first saw it on Monday we were quite blown away.
Now that the Festival is over it has been fun to be in the library and to see people walk in and then turn to examine the work. Most people spend several minutes looking – some are probably trying to spot their own square, or the ones their children have made, but many are just having fun looking at the variety of techniques, media, colours, textures and shapes. I do hope we get to keep it to hang on the large blank library walls above the issue desk!
I work as a library assistant at the Greytown Library. We are lucky to be housed in the Town Centre, a recently-renovated heritage building where there is lots of light, an excellent heating system and a desk where library staff can serve the public while seated (a rarity in libraries).
One of the best aspects of the job is the discussions with customers about books. One of the reasons I thought the job would suit me was because it involves lots of people contact and lots of books. And the job does suit me very well. I had no preconceptions about other readers and how many of them would like to discuss the books they read and/or the books they wanted to read. In all my experience as a library customer – in the nine or ten different public libraries where I was “a regular” at various times – I had never been approached by a librarian with an offer of help, while I was browsing the shelves. However now that I am on the staff side of the equation, offering that help has led me to some of the most enjoyable conversations I have ever had.
Take today as an example. A young woman, in her early years at high school, asked me if I could recommend any books. Together we scanned the shelves of our Young Adult collection and I talked with her about the titles I had read, as she shared the ones she had read. The customer was currently working her way through Robert Muchamore’s Cherub series, after her brother recommended them to her. She had also read other series that I had not, and thought I might like the Pretty Little Liars books. We had both read the Twilight, and Tomorrow When the War Began series. I was happy to send her away with Garth Nix’s The Old Kingdom trilogy, the four Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants books by Ann Brashares, and the first of Kathy Reich’s YA books, Virals. We talked about dystopian novels and the enjoyment we had both had from The Hunger Games; we talked about the experiences to be garnered from reading – far more than we could ever fit into a lifetime; and we talked about the joy of reading a book that ‘sucks you in’ from the very first pages and how reading creates ‘a happy place’ for us to enjoy. It was a wonderful conversation and the highlight of my day.
