Gaylene Preston working class hero

I am currently reading Her Life's Work: Conversations with five New Zealand Women by Deborah Shepherd. It is a totally wonderful book and I am loving every page of it. Thank you Grey District Library. This morning I read the section on Gaylene Preston, a woman who before I only knew a little bit about. I loved her film on Hone Tuwhare and her War Stories. I have lots more of her to see yet.

Anyway Gaylene comes from Greymouth. She is born in the same year as my mother and took a different path. She is in many ways like other women who strode out in that era whose lives inspired me as a young feminist. What I took as inspiration when I chose very willingly to stay home almost all the time with my kids is another matter. Back to Gaylene.

Hard to choose which bits to quote. You really should read the book. All of it. All of you. Here's one bit:

By 1947, when I'm born, this little country was beginning to fast track a
middle class, an educated middle class, and the standard of living is
rising. I was put into a primary school system that was forward
thinking. It was a child-based system designed by the progressive Dr
Clarence Beeby (1902-1998) who was our director of education from
1940. Big paint brushes were thrust into our chubby fingers
and we were educated for free to the end of our university.

No wonder we had a generation gap. We were the luckiest generation
you could possibly imagine. My mother left school at 13, my father at
10. My mother walked from Blaketown to Cobden, which is a long way to go
in the cold if you've got bare feet, to help her mother clean Cobden
School. The work they did, the physical work, was never-ending and then
they educated their children way beyond their own capacity. And that's how
it was for an entire generation. p. 210-11

Walking from Blaketown to Cobden in bare feet. This is my town. The one I live in now anyway. I cried reading bits of this just from the emotion of seeing these stories in print and seeing what Gaylene Preston has done to get the stories of ordinary people on screen. I remember reading one of Maurice Gee's novels where he describes an area on the way to Richmond. It is actually a section of land which looks radically different now with the new motorway but which was once owned by my maternal forbears many generations back where they made cider so I presume they also grew apples. I had a similar very emotive response to seeing a small part of my world in a book and a really good book at that then.

Gaylene Preston has done about a million wonderful things and links in to some other heroes of mine like Sonja Davies with her film Bread and Roses. I need to get hold of that film - I certainly loved the book. The book Her Life's work is having the effect of me wanting to get out and read lots more by these women - I can't believe I haven't read any of Anne Salmond's work before and fingers crossed our local library has at least some of her books. Here's another quote from the Gaylene Preston interview. Deborah Shepard's question is the part in bold.

Do you think women are in a better place today? Is it a
better world for young women?

I actually feel that our young women have been rendered unconscious because
they haven't had to fight for equality. They haven't had to fight for
equal pay and equal opportunity. They didn't have to fight for the right
to be free of sexual role definition. They haven't had to struggle with
the narrow range of job options for women - the teaching, nursing and
secretarial jobs. The possibilities have been truly, radically
broadened. Young women today grow up knowing that 'women can do
anything;.

But they've been able to have it all without thinking and are living in a
world that is full of celebrity-focused media slush, their headds full of
romantic notions about lurve and shopping. This generation knows how
to shop. They've been born into an era that assumes the fight has been won
although it is actually only partly won. So it's much harder for them in
some ways.

Oh golly you wonderful woman Gaylene Preston, articulating all this for me. Because I have been feeling it, and frustrated by it, and watching the gains I saw in the staunchly feminist women who taught me at high school gliding around like an oil spill which is shortly to be eradicated when I look at the scene in our high schools, here and overseas.

I should go back to my physical world, where I can hear Brighid complaining and the others are fixing the plastic shelter for the poultry palace and I'm still in my pyjamas and the washing machine isn't on yet ... But I am so much the richer for reading this book, for the strength of what women can do with families and their passions rather than one excluding the other. It is the reminder of a world of possibilities that I needed right now. Not because life is bad, quite the contrary, but because sometimes I lose sight of the view beyond the fence and it it is good to open my eyes a little wider.

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Livingstone daisies

I love them. Just bought and planted another punnet's worth. Those psychedelic pink ones are particularly appealing. The very cool picture is, of course, not mine, but one I found on a google search. I am making progress on my camera layby though.

Also planted out what I think are marigolds from the Italian stall in the Wood (Nelson). I mounded my maori potatoes and weeded out lots of unwanted yams. Also planted out more lettuce from the garden shop plus repotted some of my own lettuces which I grew from seed. They are not quite ready for the big wide world of the open garden where the blackbirds and slugs love to feast, so they can get a little bigger in bigger pots first. I repotted six sungold tomatoes and planted out another cucurbit. Is that the correct generic name? I sowed zucchini, squash and pumpkin seeds in the same tray and now they are indistinguishable. I would like to be able to know the zucchinis from the pumpkins and next year I will do a little more careful labelling.

On kitchen strike. Until further notice.

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Beneficial neighbours

Councils live to regulate, or so it seems. But we've got something much better going with our neighbours. When we needed to rebuild our chook run, our neighbours offered that we could build it against our shared fence. This has resulted in a much tidier poultry palace and saved us money in terms of the far wall of the construction. Today our neighbours shared with us their laughter at one getting out and sitting atop the fence when we were on holiday (I seem to have identified and fixed that gap since) and also said that since the chooks have been against the fence, they no longer have any problems with slugs eating their delphiniums. They have been feeding the chooks sometimes through the fence and love the company of the clucking chooks when they are working in their (very beautiful) garden.

Communication and sharing between neighbours - much better than endless council regulations.

In other garden news, I've pulled the last of the seeding silverbeet out and gifted it to the chooks. I'm leaving the celery to go to seed but the borage can stay in its messy spot until the celery has flowers for the bees.

Earlier in the week I bought punnets of beetroot, lacinato kale and coriander. They are now in the ground and filling the gaps where I didn't sow seeds in sufficient time. We are eating salad greens from the garden almost every night now.

I've started to plant out my pumpkins and zucchinis - slowly, just one a day and tonight's one I put a cloche over the top of it. Mostly to protect it from the blackbirds but also any inclement weather. I found some Maori potatoes from last year and cooked and ate a few, then mounded up the remainder.

Hurray for tinned baked beans. Perfect for a Friday night when funds for fish and chips are too low. The eleventh commandment in my house is that Sandra shalt not cook on Friday night.

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hippie? hippie.

I've just convinced Favourite Handyman to do some dishes and sat myself down with a cracker topped with kefir and a cup of nettle tea. There is grey showing through my hair as I've given up dyeing it - carcinogens and feminism. I'm wearing home made pyjama bottoms made from thrifted fabric, a t-shirt from the Farmers closing down sale almost four years ago and a sleeveless fleece which I found at the Sallies earlier this month. On the floor beside me is my peggy square knitting, made of undyed brown wool and then bobbly green/red/yellow variegated wool from a cardigan which my daughter outgrew and I then unravelled to reuse. Further to the corner of the study await my next books: Three Ages of Women and The NZ Woolcraft Book.

This morning I planted out my Giant Russian sunflowers and repotted lots (but not all) of my tomatoes plus my biggest basil. Most of the tomatoes are staying inside for a fortnight more, but I put a couple out under the lean to. I had planned some more gardening but then the children came and found me.

I've just pulled three loaves of bread out of the oven. They are all white loaves bar the wholemeal in the sourdough starter. No doubt Fionn will be pleased but I prefer at least some wholemeal in my bread. I rang Terrace Farms tonight and ordered 20kg of organic flour but I will be on supermarket flour for the next fortnight until the order is milled and couriered to me.

I have managed to jimmy up the mechanism on my manual mincer. So it is back to the mortar and pestle as the food processor broke even before the mincer. I made a little bit of pesto (mixed leaves of parsley, rocket, coriander and basil which may be a mixed success) and then I had had enough. The hummous can wait until tomorrow.

This morning I made muffins - proper chocolate, the kind with brown the whole way through. Or that is what Fionn considers proper chocolate muffins. I put some mashed banana in but didn't manage to sneak brazil nuts in like I often do. Brazil nuts = selenium.

In the morning I will fashion lots of work and school lunch food out of today's kitchen projects, corral everyone into their allotted Tuesday morning places and then turn into a paid working woman. You would still be able to see the hippie hair but the nettle tea will be out of sight and my clothes will be black and purple.

And not pyjamas.

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family reunion

We headed off to Blenheim on Friday afternoon. Fish and chips and slides and swings at Murchison then we drove through the Wairau Valley as dusk fell. There were rain clouds ahead and then on top of us and the valley was beautiful in this half light framed by mountains. Usually we drive through in bleaching sunlight and the miles and miles of monoculture grapes, tanalised posts leaching toxins into the water table, sprays and other resource hungry inpouts all to put a product on the tables of the rich all get me furious.

By 9pm we were in Blenheim and I didn't much care where stayed so long as I could find my bed soon. We found a reasonably priced motel and the children slumbered. Up with the birds at 5.45am, they didn't find similarly excited parents.

After breakfast we had some spare time before visiting hours at the hospital. Fionn and I wandered through the car boot sale and I loved being in a more multicultural setting than our home town currently offers. The music from a group of Pacific Island (possibly Vanuatu) men was impressive, coming from singing, some guitars, a stick of wood and an instrument made of a string attached to a big box with a piece of wood. I think they are in Marlborough to work on the vineyards. My family variously sought out new lives in New Zealand from Ireland, Cornwall, Alton (Hampshire, England) and Scotland. Favourite Handyman and I loved loved loved our five years in London. I also love seeing other people out here learning and living in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Our world should be the oyster of all who are keen, not just the rich.

Up at the hospital, my parents were also visiting Grandma. I've got a little arthritis-like feeling in my hands at the moment, just in the place where Grandma's knuckles are huge and have been in pain for years. They are the least of her worries right now as she contends with fractures in her back and a (crushed I think) vertabrae. I sat on the floor where I could have my own kids in my lap when they wanted easily and looked up at the woman who I have been visiting since my earliest memories. This is the woman who until this current hospital stay drove the long trip to Nelson alone (she is 83) for specialist appointments without a second thought. She has raised five children, run a household and helped with farm work for more than six decades. The other awareness I came to sitting there, with Mum just behind me, was that I will be in hospital visiting my own mother one day, just as my Mum is now. I'm lucky to have so many people around me right now.

Once we found our cabin in Pelorus, then it was time to head to the big rellie session. Grandad, my parents, lots of uncles and aunts, cousins and my cousins' children. That was lovely, especially to see the children having so much fun together. The older children found sticks and went on pig hunts and my daughter found a plastic bike and careered down steep hills. Again and again and again. Grandad slipped away early on - he is also unwell and so missed the photo session.

This morning I left the children with FH and drove to Grandad's. I didn't want to go without saying goodbye. I am so glad I did. I grew up hanging around Grandad whenever I visited, watching him in his workshop, accompanying him on plumbing jobs, learning to milk the cows, feeding out hay and grubbing ragwort. Now I take the children with me and I never talk to Grandad on my own for more than a minute or two until today.

On the way back, I stopped at a roadside stall called Pelorus Peasants and bought a wee souvenir - a seedling of the pumpkin 'ironbark triamble'.

Through to Nelson and I stopped at my favourite tiny suburban stall in The Wood and bought marigold seedlings and some red peppers and an aubergine. We all checked out the Nelson Museum which is so wonderful and sophisticated.

A play at the flying fox playground at Wakefield and then we were off back to the Coast. Twice we had to change route just before home because of accidents and I am so grateful that we are all alive.

Back home there were some new arrivals:
1. first Flanders poppy out.
2. seedlings through in the windowsill of either pumpkins or zucchinis.
3. more purple irises.
4. more chrysanthemums, more nasturtiums, bigger lettuces, water down in the chook run, more germinated silverbeet and lettuce, the celery starting to run to seed. It was obviously good weather here.

I am going to let the celery run to seed and provide more food for the bees. Tomorrow I need to do a LOT of work in the garden. Besides all that weeding and wood stacking, I need to make MORE garden! I need more space for pumpkins, potatoes and zucchinis. Plus I need to repot heaps of tomato seedlings, mostly not for planting outside just yet but for some more food and to get bigger in the next 2-3 weeks. Oh and plant out sunflowers.

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weekend

I've had a superb weekend, best for a long time. Why? Because my brother came to visit us, all the way from Perth, Western Australia. The children and their uncle quickly formed a mutual adoration bond and there will be talk of Uncle Pete for a long time to come.

Quake in your slime slugs - Uncle Pete left heaps of DB export in the fridge and some of it is going to entice you to drown in it. Maybe the slugs will die drunk and happy but the main thing is that they die. We got the last of the whitebait from 2008 out of the freezer for Pete and it was lovely to have such a delicious food (500g whitebait mixed with one egg and quickly fried and then served with lemon and pepper - none of this padding it out with flour nonsense) served with our own eggs and home made bread.

Today I made something called country apple cake which the children asked for more of. Such a request baking-wise always counts as the pinnacle of success round here. Tonight I baked more sourdough bread. Andrew Whitley's cromarty cob recipe (which is on this or my old blog - Sandra in the garden - somewhere I'm sure) makes excellent sandwich bread. I use tins as you can fit more in the oven this way and get a better shape for school/work lunches.

Moved some sunflowers outside today. They will have to do well under the lean-to - there is no way I would remember to bring the plants in and out each morning and night for the proper hardening off technique. They are giant russians which I didn't get to seedling stage last year. Properly tall sunflowers - very exciting.

Gardening roundup:
Vegetables in the garden (some growing, some currently producing): some Maori potatoes, cabbage, broccoli, leeks, lettuces of various kinds, miners lettuce, various asian greens, rocket, beetroot, garlic, celery, globe artichokes, florence fennel, jerusalem artichokes, rhubarb, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, lemon.

Herbs in the garden: coriander, Italian giant parsley, chives, garlic chives, marjoram, oregano, English winter thyme, lemon thyme, French summer thyme, sage, curry plant, feverfew, comfrey, bay trees,

Flowers in the garden: roses (pink, red, white and yellow), gladioli, marigolds, livingstone daisies, red poppies, chysanthemums, dianthus, pansies, irises, bluebells, one tulip still going, fuchsias.

Seeds in a tray or pots in or outside the house: sunflowers, lettuce, silverbeet, basil, coriander, pumpkin, squash, zucchini, basil, coriander, beans, tomatoes (sungold and tigerella), chillies, celery.

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good and bad

Good:
1. Us knitters of Wetville are busily knitting peggy squares to turn into a blanket to send to Samoa for tsunami hit people who no longer have blankets. My lovely friend Nina has also organised a whip round of clothing and toiletries and linen and bedding and a local courier has gifted the delivery cost to get it to Lower Hutt to go on a container at the end of the month. I even knitted on the sideline of the boy's swimming lesson today.

Bad:
1. Nasty council. We have a wonderful swimming school here in Wetville where the leader tries to make lessons as affordable as possible and sets it up as pay as you go and you don't pay if you are away sick (or any other kind of away). But now the council are muscling in and today I discoverd I have to find a term's worth of fees all at once and suddenly attendance has dropped because lots of people can't find that kind of money all at once and next year the council are taking the whole thing over and want more revenue from it. In low income coastal town like ours, this spells an awful lot of children not learning to swim and upping their drowning risk.

Good:
2. We are going to get a piano. My very very kind parents are letting me have the family piano and Mum got a quote to get it over from their place to ours and offered that they would pay up front and I could repay over few months. I am super excited. Now I know why I got our daughter out of our bedroom - so that there is room to put the piano where the children's bunks were. Our lounge is a shade too small and probably too hot on winter evenings.

3. The clematis has flowers. I also have marigold flowers and for dinner had a home grown salad of tatsoi, another nameless asian green, pak choi and various kinds of lettuce. Yesterday I repotted some tomatoes and sewed seeds of pumpkin, squash and zucchini, plus one echincea seed, some beans and lots of coriander. I used these peat circles which you soak and then they grow into a cylinder and you put the seed in the top. Then you put the whole thing in the ground later on. An unnecessarily expensive way of growing things but Fionn was keen and sometimes I indulge my offspring. Sometimes an icecream, sometimes a special kind of gardening pot.

4. I have been sewing, but not much since I started knitting for Samoa. My party skirt is over half made.

5. The solo parenting stint while Fh was off tramping went well. Even better, it is now over.

6. Not a lot of experimentation in the kitchen lately. I've got a cromarty cob mixture in the hot water cupboard as I type, making the production sourdough part. I'm going to alter the rise times and method to hopefully get it ready for baking in the morning. Following the instructions has worked very well in the past with this recipe and now is time to see how flexible it can be. I do hope and plan on it being more successful than the chocolate cake which Fionn and I made earlier in the week. Altering three ingredients plus the method of mixing the ingredients together is a little too much altering.

7. I had some gorgeous rhubarb cake at coffee group today and Ruth kindly gave me the recipe to take home. It is from a playcentre recipe book, though I don't remember better details than that.

8. Writers' group was a great evening on Wednesday with another new and talented writer joining us and last month's new person sharing some wonderful writing and enticing stories with us also. I'm still writing far too much stuff on bad motherhood. I live it, I write it, I guess. Some time I hope to grow out of bad motherhood. But since Wednesday I have started writing some of my cousin Mary's stories down and I want to get a photographs to go with it. Family but not mothering. Progress perhaps?

8. BEST OF ALL, my brother is coming all the way from Perth, Western Australia to stay with us tomorrow night. He has never even seen Brighid, who is now 2 years 8 months.

Bad:
2. This government. People who I have encountered too often including today who think that poor people are bad and deserve only to pay taxes, not to receive services.

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