Wombat adventures

As I picked up my paper at my gate this morning, a woman walking her children to school came over to thank me for the books I’d given them a couple of weeks ago. She said her daughter particularly liked the one written by the same author who wrote the wombat books. “I’ve got those books,” I said. “So have we,” she replied.

The wombat books are by Jackie French, beautifully illustrated by Bruce Whatley, and are based on the true story of Mothball the wombat who takes up residence in a backyard. Imagine having a wombat battering down your back door demanding carrots! In the second book, the residents’ toddler befriends a baby wombat.

from Diary of a Wombat by Jackie French, illustrated by Bruce Whatley

I am pretty sure I bought the first wombat book in Australia. My trip to Adelaide and Melbourne was in September-October 2003. The book was published in 2002, so it is likely I did. I definitely bought the plush toy wombat there. It sits on the top of my computer screen.

I looked out my travel journal. I found myself immersed in it and read the whole thing.

I have a couple of shelves for my travel photos and journals. As you can see, I have bought plush toys from other countries as well. The homemade red and black albums on the top are of the 1981 OE (from South America to Europe to Canada), the yellow albums are of China Dec 87-Jan 88. The most recent journal is of Scandinavia, France and Portugal 2018 – the albums are digital; some are on this blog – in fact, that 2018 trip was why I started blogging, not intending to carry on afterward! Every now and again, I will get out a journal and relive the experience.

I sat reading in my egg chair today, watching the occasional plane flying high overhead and wondering why so many people choose to fly. The book I was reading was set in Sweden. Before I knew it, I was reading that journal…

Kind

A pile of library books is waiting to be read and more are knocking at the door, so to speak, as holds arrive at the library or on Libby. Today, I completed Kind by Stephanie Johnson, the title being a reference to Jacinda Ardern’s plea that we be kind to each other during the pandemic. I was reminded of Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood and Fiona Farrell’s The Deck – both also influenced by political events and by Covid. Kind didn’t fill me with the same sense of entrapment and dread as those books, I was relieved to find. The many flashbacks took you out of claustrophobic lockdown and into complex lives, and out into the countryside too, from Christchurch to Arthur’s Pass to the Bay of Islands to Australia – and even to China in flash back. I was also reminded of Kamila Shamsie’s Best of Friends, as the main part of the story is about the life-long friendship of two women growing in self-knowledge perhaps, or perhaps not.

The cover blurb describes the book as satirical, which it is in a way, but not so the characters become types (with exceptions) rather than credible. Some embody rumours and suspicions which abounded during covid about criminal activity, illegal migration, and Chinese interference or culpability. Many show various ways of being kind and how that can be aspirational but also misguided and possibly lead to choices which cause life-long regret.

In the Author’s Note at the end, the author thanks her husband for ‘a certain plot point’. Which one? There are so many twists and turns. I feared I would lose track of the story lines and characters but they all linked together in increasingly suspenseful ways and soon I was completely into it, reading in my egg chair into the warm evening when it began to rain lightly and got too dark to see. I finished the last couple of pages as I cooked dinner.

On to the next book! Something a little more sedate perhaps, to be kind to myself, before I tackle the brutal demands of more literary fiction.

Oaty Autumn fare

We’re back to New Zealand Standard Time today. It’s dark before you know it. Felix is still running to his own clock, asking for dinner at afternoon tea time. Not really surprising as he had his breakfast at 3am which was when Mum, strangely, got up to have her shower, thinking it was 7am. As the mornings will be lighter for a while, it will be easier for her to tell what time it is.

In the meantime, the garden is producing tomatoes, apples, rhubarb. We’ve begun to have soup again, and oaty puddings and biscuits seem right at this time of year.

Anzac biscuits and Apple and Rhubarb Crumble

Impressive Art

It’s the time of year when going to the movies – into a darkened room – is more appealing than during summer. I walked into town in brisk, windy weather after getting my flu injection this morning. During the 20 minute waiting time before I could leave the medical centre, I looked up what is on at the movies and found one perfectly timed after my singing class and just a block away at the Arts Centre. I am impressed by the art of Frances Hodgkins, have been to the European Journeys exhibition and read the book, and was delighted to see that the documentary Frances Hodgkins: Anything but a Still Life which first screened almost a year ago was making a return visit to the Lumiēre cinema. It proved to be wonderful and completely absorbing.

The cinema is pretty impressive too, making excellent use of a part of the Arts Centre overlooking the Botanic Gardens and decorated with style.

After taking this photo, I turned to take one of the gilt mirror with seashell motif opposite and, of course, found I was reflected in it. Not only that, but my lovely passed-on jacket almost matched the colour scheme. I sent the photo to the friend who passed on the jacket and she advised me not to sit on the sofa in case I became invisible!

I was tempted to go to the movie which was about to begin as I left (Wicked Little Letters) but decided to save it for another day and walked home, scuffing through leaves on Montreal Street, dodging scooter riders in Cranmer Square, and reliving the documentary I had just seen.

Post Script for Felix fans: Felix helped unpack the shopping (again) this afternoon.

Pining for the fjords

Since the day had decided to be overcast, I set off for The Colombo and Nordic Chill. I subscribe to the Moomin newsletter and had thought the merchandise was only available by ordering from overseas until I looked on the Nordic Chill website yesterday. I last visited the shop in 2018 before I went to Scandinavia. At that time I was immersing myself in things Scandinavian and discovered the Moomins – not a weird religion as you might imagine, but the creation of novelist and artist Tove Jansson. In Finland, I learned a little of Finnish psychology in Karoliina Korhonen’s ‘social guides’ to Finland which I brought home. The characterisations seem similar to those in the Moomin books.

The new shop design on the website made me even more nostalgic and keen to see it this morning. It features the classic Scandinavian house which you see dotted through the countryside and along the fjords and coast, often on islands. Usually painted red, these are summer retreats – although that word seems wrong as Scandinavians come out into the sunlight after the long northern winter. I put on my red house earrings from Finland and set out.

I found the shop is in two parts – one featuring a lot of Ikea furniture, and the other woollen clothing and throws, children’s toys, books and homewares. Little mice seem to be the latest thing. Not like the one Felix tormented to death yesterday, but ones that wear clothes, live in houses, go to the beach, and do the vacuuming (with a Nilfisk of course).

But it was Moomins I was most keen to see. And there they were.

There were books, a little Moomin house, placemats, toys, tins, key rings, caps, socks and comic strip magnets. I wonder what Tove Jansson would think of it all. She came to resent that the popularity of the Moomins left little time for what she considered her real art.

An article about Tove Jansson from The Simple Things magazine Nov. 2017 – with a book and plush toy from Copenhagen, mug from Helsinki, and a book from Telling Tales

I came home with a few things (having made room by decluttering recently…)

– including a backpack which by happy chance matches the very nice jacket passed on to me by a friend in the weekend.

This afternoon I watched a couple of episodes of MoominValley on TVNZ+ (voices of Matt Berry, Taron Egerton, Rosamund Pike, Jennifer Saunders, Richard Ayoade, Kate Winslet, Alison Steadman, Matt Lucas, Bel Powley…and more). Now, on the cusp of afternoon and evening, the sun is shining.

That time of year

That time of year thou mayst in me behold,

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73

A friend and fellow blogger wrote of how strange it is to celebrate Easter in Autumn as we do here in the Southern Hemisphere. It is a Spring festival. Halloween should be now instead. Easter, Halloween and Christmas have simply been transplanted according to the calendar year instead of by the seasons. It is great that we have our own Matariki at the right time of year, following the Māori lunar calendar. Still, I enjoy a summer Christmas, and hot cross buns seem right as the temperatures cool, and I love being able to get the full range of locally made Queen Anne chocolates – shallow as I am!

Cute tea towels can be irresistible too – not to mention the delicious new flavour from Whittakers

The leaves haven’t fallen yet, as they have in Shakespeare’s sonnet, but there are some lovely colours appearing. I saw a golden tree last week which lit up Norman’s Road, opposite St Andrew’s College.

I stepped outside this morning into the sunshine after two rather gloomy, overcast days. There was a mackerel sky in every direction. A friend, visiting over Easter, mentioned noticing a mackerel sky where she lives in the North Island.

And now the clouds have joined up into another overcast sky and I’m reaching for a warm jersey. That time of year.

Wetland Restoration

Cabbage trees (Tī Kōuka, cordyline australis) are fighters. You can cut them off and they will grow again. These ones may be struggling, but they show signs of new life. The dead branch in the foreground brings to mind the long-necked moa who once roamed the countryside.

These metal birds also suggest the dominance of bird life which once lived here. The work of many volunteers at Travis Wetlands is making a difference to restoring this habitat and attracting bird life.

Like tī kōuka, pūkeko are survivors. They are adaptable and here are enjoying water from a well head.

The bunny biscuits we enjoyed on our Easter weekend visit, although representing a pest not welcome in this habitat, posed a threat only to our waist lines.

The packaging goes to soft plastics recycling – I hope

Women as creators and artists

Ngaio Marsh Painting by Olivia Spencer Bower

The four session course Women as Creators and Artists at the WEA finished yesterday. I expected an academic approach. The handouts had that, but mostly we had an immersive experience, visiting the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū across the road and talking about women’s lived experiences.

The course featured the work of New Zealand women artists over time. We were taken into one of the stores behind the scenes of the Gallery to look at the work of various artists involved in the Canterbury Group. Two curators as well as our tutor contributed knowledge and anecdotes about the artists, how they worked together and influenced each other.

Representations of the Canterbury landscape

The last two sessions featured current artists. These were notable for their ethnic diversity as well as their approaches to their art. Some of these exhibitions were ones I would have passed by as ‘not my thing’ and I realise I’m a ‘grazer’ of art. The course helped me to look again. One installation featured cat’s cradle-inspired structures in luminous, almost neon, string. Subsequently, when sunlight lit up an intricate spider’s web running from my dressing table to a shelf I thought of that installation and marvelled at the spider’s skill. As soon as the sun moved, the web became invisible.

Yesterday, we looked at women’s contemporary art on the ground floor of the gallery, beginning with a large hooked carpet and seat which depict the Canterbury landscape. Spring is heart-break, a line from an Ursula Bethell (1874-1945) poem, was a theme which artists depicted in a variety of media. Often natural materials were used such as driftwood and kelp. I thought of the driftwood structures people have made on the beach and lakeside I visit.

I thought of Mahuika, keeper of fire, who produces fire from her fingernails in the manipulated photograph below. Here, she seems to be about to light her cigarette. Looking more closely, I observed the mis-match (haha) of images – the stiff curtain against a plush replica couch, on which is superimposed the woman with silvered hair and painted thick eyebrows fashionable with young women now, wearing a clumsily-made formal (bridesmaid’s?) 1980s dress. She has a calculating look on her face, and is she making a rude gesture? Revenge is one of the themes of the series of photos of which this is one. Ancient power defying modern expectations of femininity could be one interpretation.

The Breath of Uru-te-ngangana (atua of light) by Tia Ranginui (1976-)

A series of large paintings showed skewed perspectives, nightmarish characters and odd combinations which “signal a desire to create a new, messier world by turning our current one inside out” according to the accompanying notes. I didn’t know how to express that in my own words!

Our tutor encouraged us to volunteer as gallery guides which involves three months of training. She told us that you learn by teaching (as I know) and reminded me of the heading of our first handout: “Art, Looking at, Seeing, Understanding”. Probably, on my own, I would have passed the Priscilla Rose Howe paintings with a bit of a shudder. Now I feel braver to look, see and try to understand.

Our course finished with these statements, which our immersive experience has shown.

Art is a product of its time and place.

By the inclusion of women, art and society has changed dramatically in the last 100 years.

Art, especially for women, is useful.
Our tutor was Diane Swain

Trash or Treasure

I parked my bicycle in a bike stand made of pallets, impressed immediately by the creative recycling in action evident everywhere in the Richmond Community Garden.

Seedlings from the garden for sale and home-cooked food

Today was Gala Day. I joined friends to browse the art and vintage stalls in front of Avebury House. We had lunch from food stalls: Japanese dumpling and pancake and wrap, and found a shady spot to eat, entertained by the activity around us.

There was a wee playground for under-3s, face painting, harake/flax weaving, the library-on-the-go bus, a local Labour MP, lots of nature-themed information, a board announcing a tiny house village to come, a DJ booming out bass beats, Scottish dancing, and a huge area of car boot sales. There seemed to be a number of families clearing out unwanted books and toys – much like my clear-out this week. The one in the photo below caught my eye. Is that an R2-D2 suitcase on wheels? We have a complicated relationship with stuff, I thought as I saw children choosing how to spend their pocket money. In a place which exemplifies recycling and living sustainably.

Lottsa shiny stuff – and even a stack of tiles

I brought home a long-sleeved t-shirt which cost $5 (blue and white stripes, of course – and too big but, hey, I can roll up the sleeves) and two pairs of Little Goddess earrings (made by the young woman who sold them to me and told us about her work) and a pair of daisy-shaped earrings from a woman from the Netherlands.

How many earrings does a person need? I asked myself as I found a place to put them on my dressing table. Many of my earrings were gifts, and many were bought overseas. Small treasures made by innovative, creative people to make simpler people (me) feel better, and bought from museums, art galleries, local artisan shops and markets.

Each morning I choose a pair which suit my mood or the mood I would *like* to be in that day. Clearly, I have many moods!

Not the end of the book

The casual observer might not notice anything has changed, but I can see there is more breathing space in my book shelves. A flier arrived yesterday announcing a big annual book sale and today I set to work.

I have four bags of books – and a few CDs – to donate. I gave away most of another bag full of children’s books to children walking home from school with their parents outside my house. One little boy clutched the stories about dogs to his chest.

I have weeded out reference books, Shakespeare books, some poetry, novels, non-fiction, and a couple of cooking books.

I can imagine you thinking these photos were taken before I weeded the books. No. These are the after photos, and only some of the shelves. It’s by no means the end of the book in my house.

	Ruth on Garden centre
	anneinabsentia on The best thing …
	Ruth on The best thing …
	Ruth on Suddenly it’s autumn
	anneinabsentia on Aloe Vera flowers

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