Letters from Wetville

Today we wept.  We wept for Lesili Langi, 15 years old, and his mother Lavinia Manui Langi, 43 years old, who died in a car accident earlier this week.  In a beautiful service at the local high school hall, hundreds of people from our small wet town honoured two short and beautiful lives. I wept for the challenges of their lives.  I wept to hear of Lesili selling his fish so he could buy a loaf of bread so his little siblings could have lunches for school.  I wept at the honouring of Manui's efforts to have the seven children looking beautiful for church.  Her dear friend Atu spoke with grace and power of Manui's secret - she went to the Salvation Army and then she took home the clothes and washed and ironed them so the children had nice clothes for church. Frankly, I felt profligate with my takeways and fancy foods and the material wealth of my children's lives.  Afterwards, Brighid and I went home and chose some pretty dresses and also black clothes f...

Today is 120 year since women gained the vote in New Zealand.  Twenty years ago I was an enthusiastic history student at a conference celebrating the centenary of women's suffrage in Wellington.  My strongest memory is not of the conference itself (though I remember enjoying that) but of the function at Government House where the first female governor general, Cath Tizard presided.  I was unsure of what I would do after I finished my honours year, just weeks away at the time, and made jokes about growing sheep to make wool and knit jerseys when very kind and well meaning people asked me. Tonight I didn't make it to the function celebrating 120 years of female suffrage in Kumara, fabulous though it sounded.  After a day at work, my two lovely children and I ended up stepping off the whirl of activities which usually settles on kung fu on a Thursday night.  I made them endless toast for their post-dinner hungry tummies and then we read Whacky Wednesday and The L...

They are for absolutely anyone who fancies one.  Or two.  I finished this last weekend.  Yesterday, thinking that I might look in the posh shop with the 50% off sale at black skirts as my usual funeral skirt has a torn (beyond repair) hem.  I can't find a picture online, but it's a David Pond black skirt with red side panels and some lovely detailing back and front, and I bought it. I also juggled work and two sick children successfully this week and made all the commitments I had at work and got the children better and got to a funeral of the father of a good friend today and tonight I have made the most enormous shepherd's pie for Fionn to take on his hockey tournament trip to Blenheim and I think that a) medals are in order, though some for my bereaved friend long before me of course. b) my lovely childminder R is the most wonderful and special and helpful person and I'm so lucky that our respective part time work commitments dovetailed so well yesterday and...

They call it the school gala.  As a title, it seems to encompass a one day event.  In practise, the runup is akin to Lent.  Give something up every week and send it to school.  Read the list of what everyone has volunteered for and notice the gaps remaining.  Every week.  So far, I've not remembered to send corn chips, or butter, or sugar, or condensed milk.  I have volunteered to bake, and to help on the candy floss stall and serving the lunches.  I said that if they were short on the lunches, I would do the candy floss in the lead up the night before and on the morning, and then do lunches during the event.  My eyes were open as well as briefly noble.  They never have enough people for the lunches until the verrrrrrrry last minute. Today, when one child was dressed in uniform and I was realising that my laundry strike this week meant the other had no clean school top, some bright relative remembered it was mufti.  Bottle-O Mufti...

Carrie Rudzinski.  Performing here .  I got to hear her perform her poetry tonight in Hokitika and she was utterly wonderful.  I think I'm a bit in love with her actually. So you're saved.  I was on the verge of blogging about buying bedlinen and my odd feelings about respectability.  I was even on the verge of confessing my interest, dating back to my childhood, in British Royalty, and what a weird and frankly sinful socialist that makes me.  Some people watch reality tv, or Shortland Street.  I can tell you that Kate the pregnant royal who spawned a thousand brown updos and probably caused sales of peroxide to plummet, wore a pink Harvey McQueen to a prestigious horse/birthday show the other day.  The linen is a worse story - best you are spared it. But it's okay.  I went out and got myself some seriously wonderful culture, learnt what poetry slam is, discovered codes for such a thing, discovered that I can drive, sort out offspring squ...

So I've now read The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck.  I don't know what the 'S' stood or stands for, but obviously Mrs Buck thought it was important.  I can't call her "Pearl" because really she is an author of stature and old and dead to boot, and I keep thinking of the song "Pearl's a Singer " which isn't quite seemly. I liked the cadences of the prose.  Really, I did have such a pretentious thought.  I like how it has a fable-like quality which I have decided is because of all the Bible saturation which Pearl S Buck, daughter of a missionary, experienced.  I quote: "Men labored all day at the baking of breads and cakes for feasts for the rich and children labored from dawn to midnight and slept all greasy and grimed as they were on rough pallets on the floor and staggered to the ovens the next day, and there was not money enough given them to buy a piece of the rich breads they made for others." (p.113) It reads like the Bi...

This is what the trees look like in paradise.  First I spent the day reading and finishing Claire Tomalin's Mrs Jordan's Profession .  I loved it.  I found myself thinking about the biographer easily as much as Mrs Jordan.  Mrs Jordan was the mistress of William IV, and bore him ten children, living as his de facto partner for many years before he rudely got rid of her in response to the advice of his royal advisors.  She was also a superb and very famous actress, both before, during and after her relationship with William (the Duke of Clarence while they were living together).  She was born in 1761 and was on the stage from the age of 14.    She worked through all of her pregnancies (13 live children and still more miscarriages) and was back on the stage within a month of giving birth.  Tomalin, herself a very interesting woman, often draws explicit links between modern day parenting and Jordan's effective parenting and caring skills....

I was all set to buy a bag off Felt.co.nz until I remembered about the mechanic's bill. So I found the inspiration and time to make a bag I've been contemplating for a long time.  The outer is red wool tweed which my sister gave to me after a trip to Wales. I boil-washed and dried it to get the strength I wanted. The inner fabric and the lace are from the wonderful collection my father in law gave me after my mother in law died. The inner fabric, red and blue hats on calico, was probably meant for dresses for my twin sisters in law more than four decades ago (I have the same version with green and blue hats as well). The beautiful lace is from my parents in law's travelling shopping trip through the traditional lacemaking towns of England. Even the toggle and the thread are from either my mother in law or grandmother in law's collection.  The pattern is from Tiny Happy .  Thanks Melissa for making this available online for us all to use - I've made...

The polka dot circle skirt reveal.  These photos are taken at the end of a long day, full of fun, playing, cooking, socialising, and doing copious amounts of laundry.  It is made of cotton with a little stretch in it (not much, and not needed for this pattern).  I can see (we have no full length mirror at home, but the camera can do full length) that the polka dot socks are a little overkill with the skirt, but mostly I wear it with plain black long socks. The pattern is Pavlova by Cake Patterns and I love it.  I have cut the top out in black merino.  Last week I bought some red and black checked fabric for another skirt, but I'm making myself do the top first.  I really like the top, I'm just in need of careful concentration for the sewing of a new style of top. I love school holidays.  Love love them.  Especially days like today when the sun shines and the kids play with their friends and I get to make cake and have lunch wi...

Some parents take their children to church.  We take ours on marches. I love my garden.  I've been out in it, even just tiny bits of wedding and caterpillar squashing, almost every day this past fortnight.  I planted out seedlings of crimson kale. green kale and celery last weekend, and have packets of coriander and rocket ready to scatter this weekend. In The Rushing Woman Syndrome , Libby Weaver talks about exposing ourselves to seratonin through daylight as soon as we get up.  This is supposed to have the effect of helping us start the day bright and full of energy.  I think it is helping.  We have blackout lining on our curtains (I like proper dark to sleep in and also it blocks the street lighting), so it's good to go outside as soon as I get up.  Even when it is raining, I can stand under the lean-to by the old shed and look at the chooks and my garden and greet the day. Although I haven't dared ask my loved ones for accurate feedback, I ...

We had a great time at the community fun day to celebrate the refurbishment and re-opening of the Theatre Royal Hotel in Kumara today.  I forgot to take the camera, but there is a youtube video of the opening here .  The weather was great, the stalls were good, the kids loved the sack races and the tug of war and then we retired to the playground (I retired to sitting with the newspaper; the children were rather more vigorous) for a while.  Back home, we had our first barbecue of the year where it was warm enough to eat outside.  The kids got out the hose, the water gun and the little paddling pool.  Since Favourite Handyman had kindly mowed the lawn while we were out gallivanting in Kumara, the kids got to fill the pool with water AND grass clippings and other ingredients for a magic witch's potion. A great day, all the better for sharing it with our lovely friends.  And the total joy at attending an opening of a business in our part of New Zealand, in...

Was yesterday special?  Kind of.  We observed a minute's silence for the second anniversary of the 29 men dead at Pike River.  But I think of those men most days.  I never knew any of them personally, but I know members of their families, and no narrative of West Coast early 21st century struggle makes sense without acknowledging these men. That is why when I mourn the loss of the last butchery on the West Coast (closing this Christmas), of the Smelting House Cafe in Greymouth (great coffee I'm told, superb lunch food I know from experience), buildings evacuated overnight due to earthquake risk and the latest is AMI moving out of our small wet town, it is sad but people are all alive. The old timers on the Coast give me the greatest sense of looking forward.  'It's happened before', they tell me.  'The Coast will recover.'  'That's the nature of a mining town, boom and bust,' another tells me. So we stay.  We farewell our friends and wi...

 On Thursday just gone, it was the West Coast Schools' kapa haka festival.  I rearranged my work hours, took my girl out of school, and we headed south for the day to watch Fionn perform.  It was totally fantastic.  Fionn's school group put on a top notch performance which we were all very proud of. Afterwards, while the students had their hangi lunch and played special games and the judges deliberated, Brighid and I had lunch together in the metropolis and walked along the beach, pictured above and below. Beautiful huh? Today was the Anglican Church Fair.  It's an important event on our calendar.  Six years ago, when we'd just moved into our first home and there was no lounge furniture and no money to buy anything flash, we went to our this fair.  We still have the couch and chairs from that fair, at a combined cost of less than $50.  These days, we buy some sausages, a couple of bowls, sometimes some books or clothes.  Today I boug...

In a devastating turn of events, The Spring Fling 80s night fundraiser has been cancelled because not enough people bought tickets.  Lots of people claimed to be planning to go, but they didn't front up with cold hard cash in time to give the incredibly hard working volunteers faith that it was worth their blood, sweat and sausage rolls. There are a few things against me offering my home so we can all desperately seek Susan, get into the groove and implore our papas not to preach this Saturday night.  One is a desire to stay married to Favourite Handyman.  He isn't sharing my enthusiasm at all.  The second is that Fionn comes home from another camp, this time cubs, that day.  I'm pretty nerdy about my kids getting sufficient sleep after they stay up all night yakking in tents (they do yak endlessly; it's in their genes.).  The third is the state of the house.  It's currently marginal to get inside a room without standing on something.  The state...

This year I put blue irises in the punga raised bed, and now that they are out, I love the look of them against the red fence. Back in the term time groove, I think I'm doing okay on the extra-curricular front, an aspect of parenting which I try to support, but frequently do so only with poor grace.  Yesterday both kids went to kung fu with FH, and today we started back on swimming lessons.  Ballet is going okay now I can leave Brighid there and not get told off for talking to other parents during the lesson.  Tomorrow is supposed to be a trial run at cubs.  There were tears at the dinner table tonight.  Fionn's best buddy moves to Auckland at the end of the school year.  I felt for my boy, and didn't say out loud that there might be several more.  Spring Creek indirectly paid a lot of school fees where my children go to school. I need inspiration for meal planning.  I used to be better than I currently am.  I think this is for two re...

Tonight I was reading Steph C of 3 Hours Past the Edge of the World's post on the purpose of sewing for her and her response to greenie interrogation . The response I wrote in her comments section was so long and also threw in some things I'd been intending to share on my blog, that I've pasted a copy of my response here: "I used to be more focused on living 'greenly'.  I haven't decided that it no longer matters at all.  But I have returned to the paid workforce and now have school aged children and the choices I make are different to the ones I made when they were tiny and I was at home a much bigger proportion of each day.  I see that time I put in when the children were younger as a positive legacy rather than bemoaning that I'm no longer making my own bread and raising all of my plants from seed.  I learnt a lot in the kitchen, in the garden and craft-wise.  We wouldn't have time to build a chook run from scratch now, but we do have the endur...

How dare this government?  The government which was happy for Don Elder to be paid a salary of $1.3 million and an increasingly top heavy, highly paid arsenal of non-mining bureacrats to suck up profits.  The government which presided over a mine safety regime which was so grossly unsafe that TWENTY NINE men died and are still underground.  A safety and management regime at Pike River which was so inept that endless lies were peddled as they scrabbled to have any idea what to do when Pike exploded. I've met Trevor Bolderson a few times and I have enormous respect for him.  I've heard him talk about his experiences in the 1984 miners' strike in England.  He is an astute, intelligent and hugely hard working man.  It was Trevor who presented the proposal from the workers for Spring Creek to Tony Ryall today.  Tonight at 5pm on the National Radio news, I learnt that Tony Ryall openly admitted he didn't bother to look at the miners' proposal.  No...

The sun shone brightly and the world was a lovely place.  I spent the morning in bed reading Lynda Hallinan's Back to the Land: A Year of Country Gardening , rising only once I'd devoured the entire book.  Great book.  Marking a truly spring day, I donned my floral curtain Colette Crepe dress for the first time.  I asked my daughter to take some pictures.  It's not quite summer, so I teamed my dress with black leggings, a black long sleeved t shirt, odd socks and gumboots.  In keeping with my usual Saturday style, I neither brushed my hair nor washed my face before heading out to the garden.    I had fun in the garden.  The iceland poppies are flowering in front of the gone-to-seed rocket and beside the garlic.  I planted out lots of pansies and polyanthus and I even had a go at upgrading the falling down, overgrown and neglected piece of sort-of garden out the very front.  Mostly what this photo shows is the falling d...

So I left 19C Cornwall for a week, and participated in 21C Wetville a little more.  League has finished for the year and the freedom we had in the weekend because of that was beautiful.    We went to Shantytown and hung out in the rain, and the next day we went to the swimming pool.  We bought a new toy which prompted some housework. What toy does that , you ask? The old vaccum cleaner had lost its suck.  I'd kept it going for an extra two years beyond when I first thought it needed replacing by lots of cleaning of the brushes and making do (and, it could easily be argued, by not using it very often).  I thought I'd shift from my Dyson, but when I researched my options, Dyson came out on top by a million miles. So the house is quite a bit cleaner than usual which is lovely.  Long may the interest in using the new toy last. I'm making quite good progress with my Miette cardigan.  I'm knitting the pattern as per the size 42" instructio...

There's a rally in our town tomorrow .  A rally to save Spring Creek, a rally to save our town.  A rally where already I see our young people discovering something worth fighting for.  The older people in this town already know it is worth fighting for. Maybe, if you've known me a long time, or read my blog in earlier years, you wonder where my greenie principles have gone. Like many women, I honed my greenie interests and passion as a new mother, thinking at home instead of being out at work, looking for a better future for my children and grandchildren by treasuring the natural resources in our world.  I used cloth nappies, grew vegetables, made food from scratch as much as possible, experimented with home made lotions and potions and campaigned for better recycling facilities. Tomorrow's rally is also about creating a better world for our children, for the young and old, those single and those in families, in Greymouth.  I do realise that coal is vilifi...