In December 2005 and May 2015, Mum and I enjoyed house sitting in London. We became enamoured with McVitie’s Hobnobs – plain oat biscuits. We liked to listen to BBC Radio 4: The Woman’s Hour and The Archers – along with a cup of tea and a Hobnob or two.
I was delighted to find them on the shelf in a supermarket here last weekend. They were the chocolate-coated version, but lovely all the same. Then I spotted them in my local supermarket and bought a packet – only to find I’d mistakenly bought digestives, not Hobnobs.
It’s nice to re-visit the past, but perhaps I won’t go on a hunt for more. After all, they’re imported from the UK and, as Mum pointed out, our homemade Anzac biscuits (also made with oats) are our favourites just now. It was a nice bit of nostalgia though, and has been before when, in May 2021, I took a photo of this delightful Sharon Murdoch Munro (the cat) cartoon in The Press.
The leaves are falling off the grape vine, revealing many bunches of grapes some of which are beginning to rot. There are too many for the birds it seems, and certainly too many for us, although it’s lovely to pick a bowlful to eat and to share.
The grapes seem to have survived the -6.3C frost overnight. Perhaps they don’t mind being chilled. The water in the bucket – with grape leaves – is frozen solid. The kale and broad beans looked rather limp two hours ago, as did the daisies in the front garden. They are recovering quickly in the sun.
Fortunately I’d thrown frost cloths over the late tomatoes. The plants are bent by the weight of fruit, but they seem to have survived the frost. Perhaps it’s time to pick and ripen inside.
This shoot was outside the frost cloth. It’s too late in the year for the flowers to produce fruit, sadly.
At 7pm last night I realised I had nothing planned for dinner. Oops! It was too stormy to go out for fish and chips, so we had scrambled eggs – with vegetables though – and then an apple and lemon pudding.
Tonight, I am connected to the mains, so to speak, and a ‘proper’ dinner is underway!
A two-hour course at Tūranga today helped me discover who has lived in my house since it was built around 1935. We looked at historical aerial photos, investigated street names to see if there was a change (there was: my street was High Street until 1904), delved into Wise’s and Stone’s street directories (wearing orange gloves to turn the frail pages), looked at online street directories, electoral rolls and Papers Past.
I already had the Certificate of Title as a useful reference. It lists the owners but I found more names of people who lived here who I’m guessing were boarders or tenants.
I love the language – and the mysterious measurements used then. My house is my perch!
The initial sale was of the section only or, as the title says, “a parcel of land”. I presume that the house was built by the Frederick and Hinemoa Andrews who bought the section from Laura Gregg. I noticed in the street directories that Laura Gregg lived further up the street. The Andrews owned it until 1972 when Hinemoa died aged 78 (Frederick having died in 1949 aged 61) but many other people appear to have lived in the house at least from the 1960s. In 1972 it passed to Hinemoa’s daughter (as I discovered from the Papers Past death notices).
There’s just the land here – no house. Doesn’t the typing lack the character of the hand writing?
Other glimpses I have had previously of former inhabitants include “I hate Mum” scratched into the back of a bedroom door, and the very brief and unremarkable diary of a young boy which I found behind the tongue and groove match lining in the old wash house.
Today, the most interesting details were found in Papers Past by entering my address.
1947 – Lost and Found: one red and one grey blanket strapped together near Otira. Urgent. (Perhaps they came loose from the roof of the Andrews’ car when they were on the West Coast.)
1957 – Art Union Draw: £5 won by George Weller of this address.
1961 – Car for Sale: 1954 Morris Minor
1961 – Engagements: Barbara Blair to Anthony Weller, son of Mr and Mrs George Weller
1980 – Cats, Dogs, Pets: 2 male tabby cats
1982 – Lost and Found: Two-tone jacket near ice skating rink in Cashmere. Please call Megan or Susan at (my phone number, minus the 3 added later), plus this address.
1988 – Garage Sale:Hold it, I thought. I bought the house in 1987 and don’t remember having a garage sale, particularly one which included alabaster lamps! Then I recalled that my flatmate had a garage sale. She was an alabaster lamp sort of person. Whatever they are.
Somehow this phrase popped into my head as I cleaned the bathroom basin yesterday – thinking of something else entirely, probably. But there it was, this phrase, sticking in my head for the rest of the day and recurring today much to my amusement. “You’re a domestic powerhouse.” I had walked to the nearby shops for milk and vegetables, and done the usual morning routine of hand washing Mum’s things, getting breakfast, giving Mum her calcium injection and put out two loads of her washing. I went on to make Anzac biscuits before I headed off to play Rummikub with friends after lunch (homemade minestrone). Then came home to bring in the washing, sweep the driveway, pick up cabbage tree leaves, get the fire going, give Mum her cheese and crackers and do the ironing before getting dinner.
Today, I decided, would be just for reading – apart from the usual routines of morning, lunch and evening. There was only one thing on my list:
Now, at the end of the day, I have read only a couple of chapters of my book. I made bread, cleaned the bathroom, washed the shower curtains and bathmat, washed the floor and the front porch and steps. Before long, it was time to set the fire and fetch in kindling and wood. Is ‘retirement’ a misnomer?
I began to make a list in my head of the things I do about the house each day. I thought how weird it is that I tend to think about what I haven’t done (washed the inside of the windows, sanded and polyurethaned the window sills, cut back perennials…) rather than what I have achieved. I imagine this is typical. It reminded me of Flip Grater’s recent column in The Press where she wrote that the unpaid work of women in caring for family, children, the elderly, the disabled, and general voluntary work, is what supports our economic system, namely capitalism. And what about the women who do all that and still do paid work? Marilyn Waring has long since argued that unpaid work should be factored into our Gross Domestic Product. I agree.
The sight of multiple Minis meeting in a car park in New Brighton caused us to pull in and marvel at the diverse assembly of the little cars. They were about to embark on a ‘meander’. The drivers on the right are listening to their instructions before motoring off on the trail.
Here are some marvellous Minis which caught my eye:
A member of the road runner clubBritish racing greenUseful on a dark night?Older models with racing stripes‘Genevieve’ with colourful crocheted rugThere are a dog with purple harness, a smurf, a woollen rug and two cheerful children in this one
It’s been what Mum calls a ‘no day’: no sun, no wind, no rain. The washing hung limp and damp on the line all day and I empathised. My room needed cheering up so I did some online research – finishing just as my mouse ran out of charge – then, rustling up some energy of my own, headed to Northlands mall. The assistants were helpful, worked out measurements, went up a ladder to fetch my selections from a high shelf, helped me mull over what was best, shared cat photos, and I made my final choice. Here it is:
BeforeAfter
I got some bunny pyjamas at the same shop and everything was 25% off. The result is a cheerful room and a more cheerful me.
When he isn’t dragging a blackbird along the deck while you run to lock the cat door, or up a tree with a glint in his eye, or waking you at 3am by trashing the bedroom, or stealing your chair the second you leave it, or tearing up the carpet outside the bathroom door, he looks very sweet basking in a sunny spot.
I made a loose resolution to notice details of things this year. Reading Louise Erdrich’s book The Night Watchman yesterday as I sat in the sun reminded me of this. It’s a book I’m reading with my heart in my mouth, vicariously experiencing the vulnerability and danger in the lives of the Native American characters. Then there are descriptions of the landscape.
The road to her house ran alongside water, and the cool air smelled of rain drying off the yellow leaves. The cattails on the sloughs were soft brown clubs, the reeds still sharp and green. On the lake, wind was ruffling up blue-black waves so lacy that foam rimmed the beach. The sun beamed from between dark scudding clouds.
I looked up from the book and saw an interesting beetle on a leaf.
Then I remembered an interesting translucent stalactite-like formation I’d seen earlier on a pittosporum beside the garage. It is still there. It turns out to be a fungus, rather than sap as I had supposed.
Noticing these details gave me a sense of wonder and a curiosity to know more – even if the bug and the fungus indicate danger and decay, just as Erdrich’s landscape has hints of menace.
I put both photos on the iNaturalist app. The bug was identified as a Southern Green Stink Bug, the stages of which are described in a link on Kath Irvine’s Edible Backyard site. I think my bug is in the fourth or fifth stage of the life cycle.
Research tells me the fungus is probably Crystal Brain Fungus. The presence of fungus can indicate your tree’s health is compromised – which I guess also applies to a huge bracket fungus on my cherry tree. This means that while I’m taking notice of fungus, it is giving me notice. One site had the amusing heading: When a tree falls in the forest, fungi hear it.
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