Home, James, And Don't Spare The Horses.

Actually, we took our time.

I got back yesterday from Repton's and my womble up the North Island. Officially, we were off to have Christmas at my mother's house and attend Repton's cousins wedding in Auckland just before New Year's and we decided to be touristy and take our time getting there. Christmas was, well, anyone reading this will have read the earlier updates about Mum being in hospital, which rather damped any making merry activities. The last I talked to her, she was feeling a lot better, although not 100% well yet. We did do things like visiting her in hospital and singing her one carol very quietly, the one that starts "All praise to thee my God this night" which Mum says was always at Evensong when she was a wee young lass and meant a lot to her. Apart from that, Christmas Day was pretty quiet, with the big meal put off from luch to dinner but worked out OK for all of that.

The wedding itself was lovely. I've never been to a Catholic wedding before (excuse me, nuptial mass) so it was interesting seeing how things compare to the Anglican and secular affairs I've been to before. It was a lot more formal than the last wedding I attended (that was a Pirate Do, and at all the important moments everyone said "Arrgh!"), and while it was easy to work out when to stand and sit, there were an awful lot of responses that most of the attendees had pat that I was muttering along to and pretending that I knew what was going on. Also, meeting Repton's family turned out well - they're friendly and nice and easy to talk to, which is all good. I found it interesting, though. Repton is tall and a bloke, is very quiet in most conversations, and is the least visual person I know. Most of his siblings and cousins are tall, but conversely tend to be female, active conversationalists, and study art history and have hobbies like painting and photography. It's like someone set up the genes in the Fouhy family with a divider switch.

Touristy things we did in the meantime:
Shannon: Owlcatraz. If you can stand the awful puns (they just get worse when you go in) it's quite interesting. It started off as a privately owned reserve for studying morporks built by a farmer who had an interest. People started bouncing up asking for tours and it grew from there. Now, it has morporks, German owls (although our guide said that in Europe they're called Little Owls), weka, ostriches, and a selection of unusual livestock - small, large, interesting breeds, that kind of thing.
Taupo: The A. C. Baths. A. C. I found out, stands for Armed Constabulary, the military outpost that was the first Pakeha settlement in the area. There was no such thing as indoor plumbing or an electricity supply to heat bath water at the time, so the soldiers made alternative arrangements with a local hot spring.
Ernest Kemp. A replica of a steam ship that takes people out on the lake to see some interesting carvings in the stone. The carvings are the moko of one of (or the) earliest Maori chief in the region whose name I've forgotten. Alas, we didn't get to go on the Barbary, a sailing ship reportedly once owned by Errol Flynn.
Auckland: Takapuna Beach. A nice long, rather crowded beach where we went with ElvenAlchemist.
Castor Bay. A smaller beach with rocks, a climbing tree and a green sward where we caught up with Yvonne and family.
The Golden Compass. Well, I went to see it, anyway. Repton went for a walk up Mt Albert.
Starfire and Gryphon. Not touristy at all, but our very kind hosts. Although Gryphon started me watching the Sharpe series of movies, damn his eyes, and it's annoying because I've seen the first two and would like to see the rest, and can't, because his collection is still up in Auckland. Grr.
New Year's Eve. Again, not very touristy, we went along to a Hoarde party at which we played board games, chatted, and I was plyed with alcoholic beverages.
Waitomo: St Benedict's Cavern. We went caving of course. St Benedict's is one of the 'adventure' options available. The guides give you a quick lesson on abseiling, you lower yourself into a crevasse in the ground and go to. The worst part was the flies, which were attracted to the light in our helmets and liked to dive bomb our faces, the best bit was the flying fox near the end through St Benedict's Cathedral, the highest point in the cave and truly glorious. Also we stayed on a farm and I bought a very beautiful picture which is hanging on the wall as I speak.
Wanganui: I think Wanganui has to count as our 'nice place, we should spend more time here some other trip' stop. (We were getting tired.) We meant to go out on the river, but weren't very organised about arranging it, so after wandering around for a bit, we ended up in the centre of town where I went to the Sarjent Gallery and Repton explored the area. The exhibit I thought was coolest was an artist who'd decided to work in gorse wood. I expect it's a pig of a thing to work, but the result is a beautiful yellow colour with a dark grain running through it.

And then we came home.

Repton said something interesting on our second to last day: that we'd been travelling together for 10 days straight and hadn't had any arguments. When I think about it, actually there were rather a lot of stress attractors in the mix - driving, sitting in bad traffic, meeting each other's friends/family en masse, a Christmas Day full of worry and drama, and simply being in each other's company continuously for longer than we ever have before. I think we did pretty well, actually.

Happy New Year, all.

Auckland, Ho!

I'm now in Auckland, and will be for several days in case any of the residents would like to get in touch, catch up, or generally socialise. ;-)

Mum is out of hospital and was looking OK when I saw her, although she's on a restricted diet for a while.

Christmas Holiday Special

You know how in soap operas just before the Christmas shutdown they have lots of exciting (and usually bad) stuff happen to people so that the audience will be interested to find out what happens when the show restarts? I had a Christmas Holiday Special a few years ago - lots of people around me were having a lot of drama in their love lives, and from my safe seat of audience I was interested in a sympathetic kind of way. This time round, lots of people are being sick, ill, depressed, or otherwise miserable, and it's pretty sucky. Mum has been admitted to hospital for the second time in three days, and we're off to visit as soon as we know what ward she's going to.

To everybody else who's ill: Get Better. And Happy.
To the people who aren't ill: Merry Christmas.
Actually, to everybody: Merry Christmas.

ETA: Mum's still in hospital, but seemed relatively chirpy when we visited. To add some, she's ill, but as far as anyone's saying, not in danger, and expected home tomorrow. And there's nothing like walking through a hospital on Christmas Day to know that there's always someone with a worse story than yours. Merry Christmas, and to all a good night.

Missing, Presumed ???

I can't find the sugar jar. I saw it this morning, and now it's just ... gone. Did I accidentally tidy it away in the freezer? (I've already checked the fridge.) Did it head off hitchhiking to see the wide world? Did we have a very polite burglar who made sure to lock all the doors behind him?

ETA: In the cupboard with the tea cups. In hindsight, it's surprisingly obvious.

I Have the Sinus Infection That Never Ends...

Or rather, the bally thing just keeps on coming back. My latest visit to the doctor netted me antihistamine tablets, a different kind of nasal spray (which interestingly uses the same active ingredient as my asthma inhaler), a sinus wash and a script for a third round of antibiotics if the above doesn't help after a couple of weeks. I feel like a lily-livered hypochondriac never happier than when laden with pills, except I'm not imagining the symptoms. Bah humbug. Actually, sinus washes are fairly weird to use - they squirt salt water up your nose in a more controlled imitation of dunking your head in the sea, and although most of the liquid runs out just as soon as you squirt it in, I found it took a good five minutes for my nose to stop running.

And in a note of surrealism, here is a music video by a group of fresh-faced, probably mild-mannered, possibly inbred folks singing in praise of a god who, if he exists, strikes me as a deity to be hated, feared and resisted with all one's being. Kind of weird to see this stuff 2000 years after the lynchpin of Christianity stood up and said "Hey, why don't we all try being nice to each other for a change." Scarily, I don't think it's a parody.

La la la.

The dress of awesome pinkness is now finished, down to the last hem, hook, untwisted strap and hat with matching ribbon. And it looks pretty damn good, too. :-)

Windmills in the Mist

Wellington is not an easy city for a novice cyclist.

For firstly, the geography hates us: while there are some fun whizzy bits, you spend far more time trudging up a big hill than enjoying the freewheeling speed. And that's not even counting the days when the wind slams into you like a brick wall and swings you across to the other side of the road in the middle of traffic and makes the uphill bits even more of a misery. A pox on it, I say.

For secondly, the motor traffic is generally unsympathetic. There are far too many drivers of gaz-guzzling behemoths who are crippled by poor depth-perception and the conviction that one inch of clearance is all I really need as they pass me. Bastards. Just remember, you ecological lepers, that in a world with a finite oil reserve my actions keep your monsters on the road just that little bit longer.

For thirdly, there are all those other cyclists. The ones in the skintight sports clothes and the muscly bodies. The ones that glide past me effortlessly with a cheerful wave. The ones that don't have to explain to shopkeepers that they're not having heart attacks, they've just been cycling. I hate them, mostly because I wish I was just like them.

There are, however, a few compensations. Like yesterday, f'r'instance, when I cycled up into the clouds and felt like I was on an island floating away into space. There's this landmark, see, that is up on the horizon everytime I go into town. I've walked down from there a couple of times after Repton and I had walked around the bird sanctuary, but never cycled the distance before, and it's been lurking in my subconscious for a while - I can take you, I was thinking, I'm sure I can. And yes, it turned out that I can. Brooklyn Wind Turbine, you've been ticked off my list.

Statistics:
Maximum elevation: 299m
Minimum elevation: Dunno. My Google-fu is weak. Brooklyn shops or Kingston - I'm not sure which is higher.
Round trip distance: ~11.6km.
Trip time there: ~1 hour.
Trip time home: ~1/2 hour. (One of the attractions of the wind turbine, I confess, was knowing that the trip home would be easier than the trip there, a rare commodity when you live in Kingston.)
Hardest bits: Todman St just out from Brooklyn Shops and the beginning of the narrow road that's dedicated to the wind turbine. That was pedalling so hard the front wheel was jumping off the ground, that was.
Lunch afterwards: Toasted bacon sandwich. Yummy.

Evidence:

I Hate Christmas Shopping...

It makes my feet hurt, I get fed up with dodging people, and on days like today the humidity just makes me want to wilt. Fortunately, all the retail staff I talked with today fully understood my pain and were duly sympathetic - I suspect they'll be less so in two weeks time, however.

Also, it's frustrating when no item in particular leaps out and says "Me, Me, I'm perfect for So-And-So" and I'm fairly tempted to include in all my packages a friendly note instructing the giftees to pretend to like it lest I wail and gnash my teeth upon them. OK, I found some things that I think people will really like, everyone else can just do the pretending part. ;-)

Grinchingly yours,

Stephanie

A Christmas Carol

My sister has just asked me to translate a carol for her from her Medieval songbook. It's quite pretty so I'm passing it on.

Quem pastores laudavere
Quibus angeli dixere
Absit vobis jam timere
Natus est rex gloriae

Ad quem magi ambulabant
Aurum, thus, myrrham portabant
Immolabant, haec sincere
Nato regi gloriae

Christo regi, deo nato
Per Mariam nobis dato
Merito resonet vere
Laus, honor et gloria

The king, the king whom the shepherds praised,
The king with whom the angels spoke,
He is separated from you now, with awe,
The king of glory is born.

To he whom the wise men travelled,
To whom they carried gold, incense and myrhh;
They burned these things with sincerity
To the born king of glory.

To Christ the king, the born God,
Given to us through Mary,
He resounds truly with merit,
To Christ the king: Praise, Honour, Glory.

Translation notes: This poem is holding back the subject to the last line of each stanza as an intensifier. This works well in Latin syntax but less so in English, hence some of the repetitions of 'Christ the king' inserted where there were none before: they aid comprehension and I think add to the poetic effect. The third line of the first stanza I'm not terribly sure about, it doesn't quite seem to fit the rest of the verse and 'timere' could be a form of verb. I'm choosing to translate it as adverbial by comparison with the equivalent line in the other stanzas.

Pronunciation notes: (Cat asked how to pronounce it, with particular reference to 'c's.) Bah humbug. 'c' is the worst of the lot. In the Classical period it's believed to have sounded like a 'k' does now. In the Medieval period it could be like an 's' or like a 'ch' depending on where you live, and that's before you take into account the spelling confusions between 'c' and 't'. I refer you to someone with more knowledge on the subject and suggest you go with the Southern Continental / Church Latin instructions, hence pronouncing 'c' as 'ch' and 'g' as 'j' when coming before most vowel sounds.

Scansion notes: The poetically inclined will have noted that this poem is both rhythmical and rhyming, developments in Latin poetry which were pretty much concurrent with the rise of Christian poetry. Classical Latin poetry is quantitive, the music that comes out of recitation is based on patterns in the length of the vowel sounds, not in patterns of stressed syllables. Rhythmical techniques did exist in part, but were mostly reserved for rhetorical prose. I suspect that one of the drivers in the early days of rhythmical poetry in the Christian Church was its use in singalongs - rather than performance pieces that one speaker presents to a crowd, many of the early hymns were written as group pieces for use during services and to keep people's spirits up in the middle of a purge. Later on, of course, when Latin was only ever learnt as a second language, rhythmical poetry became a lot easier to write than quantitive, it's easier to hear stressed syllables than vowel quantities that you have to look up in a book because nobody pronounces them that way anymore. There were still people writing the latter, but I don't know of any really good pieces.

I Am Making A Dress Of Awesome Pinkness...

Although interestingly, my perception of the colours has changed from "Oh, those look nice" in the fabric shop, to "My word, that's rather intense" when I modelled the partially completed dress whilst wearing a white t-shirt, to "Oh hey, that does look nice" when modelling the more completed dress in bare skin. It's very summery.

Several people have been telling me over the past few months that I ought to watch a comedy series called Black Books. They were right, it totally rocks, although hearing the voice of a mad Irishman shouting in my head as I'm trying to go to sleep is rather worrying.

On Being An Unemployed Bum, Part Two.

Today I had an interview with a recruitment company, which I think went well, and the lady I spoke with said she'd be passing on my application to her client so fingers crossed and so forth.

I did have the slightly amusing experience of meeting ReptonInfinity for lunch afterwards, and having gotten to the cafe first I read a book while I waited. After a few minutes I looked up to find him looming next to me scanning the room, wondering where I was. He's never seen me in work clothes before. It showed.

ReptonInfinity however has now one-upped me in the "The Fire Alarm's Gone Off, And I'm Not Wearing Clothes Fit To Be Seen In" Dither. I'm callow enough to find this extremely amusing. (Sorry. I know that being in a cast sucks.)

EDIT: And apparently the client decided to put the vacancy on hold, just before my CV could be submitted to them. [Sighs]

I feel like I've had a borrowed weekend.

It's not just the cat. Yesterday, I meant to go to frisbee practice and didn't, I went to the library and did some fabric shopping instead. Today, ReptonInfinity meant to go to his training camp and didn't, so we biked around Oriental Parade and Frank Kitts Park and had ice cream instead. (Repton is not so slack as I, he's out due to an injury. :-()

It's been ... nice.

I am borrowing a cat.

His name is Sammy and he normally lives with my brother Edward, who is spending the weekend doing masochistic things involving running in the South Island. Sammy's doing pretty well in settling in, actually. He's graduated from lurking under the bed, through hanging out under the bed but letting people visit with him, to exploring the house, and in fact sat in the living room and watched TV with us this evening. He still wants a lot of reassurance, but seems fine.

Life as an unemployed bum is progressing. I'm sending out job applications and getting depressed about it, and so far there are a couple that I'd really like to get, so fingers crossed that I at least make the short list. I'm walking more than I used to, and it's a good time of year to do so, because there are a lot of flowers out right now. I particularly like the purple daisies, because they're everywhere and they're cheerfully refusing to blend in with anything. I'm also noticing birds more than I usually do. Does anyone know what kind of bird it is that looks mostly like a sparrow, but with a body that's a bit redder, and with a yellow head? I don't think I've ever seen one like that before.

Also, I have now watched Mr Smith Goes To Washington, a movie rather similar in plot to Mr Deeds Goes To Town, which uncoincidentally has the same director and leading lady. They both have lots of funny bits, and happy endings.

Yesterday, as I sat upon the bus...

A gentleman eyed the book I was reading and asked me if I had an English exam coming up. I said no, so he asked why I was reading the book (1) when I didn't have to, and I replied that I liked Jane Austen. Then he said that he'd always found Middle English and the Medieval period difficult to read. I said the book was written in the early 19th century. He said "Oh" and ceased to converse thereafter.


(1) Penguin Classics have this sober design of a period picture over a narrow white strip and a wide black strip, with very formal san serif fonts. It looks very dignified is all I'm saying.

On Being An Unemployed Bum...

This morning I had my last exam, which I think went well, although I was finding that I was pretty tired. (I didn't sleep well last night, for no particularly good reason.) On the other hand, I'm now free, free as a bird (or will be until I find my next job) and it's quite disorientating. I'm thoroughly used to the idea of holidays having set time limits and for there to always be somewhere something that I need to be doing, and someplace that I need to be. Right now, I don't. I haven't been in this position since the first half of the 90s, when I had long hot summer holidays and afternoons of hanging out after school. I'll let you all know how it turns out.

In other news, I hate the Student Health Service with a white hot passion, and will henceforth attempt to fill out the numerous forms that go into applying for aegrotat only if I think I'm dying. It involves lots of fluffing around talking to people who tell you different information and make you hang around their office for ages and come in for multiple appointments in which you say pretty much the same thing all over again, but you have to turn up for the sake of their precious damn forms. Bah! (I had a cold last week for my last exam and applied for an Impaired Performance Certificate. I suspect now that my exam would have gone better if I hadn't been stressed out by all the fluffing around.)

Dear Diary...

On the weekend I went to NAAMA, one of the biggest re-enactment camps in the country.

There was hanging about:





There was fighting:



There was a fort:


Which was fun to play in:


But then we burned it down:


Also, I visited my sister Catherine and met Spider the Zombie Cat, who is missing much fur on his rear half, but is slowly growing it back under Cat's care:


(He's on stress leave from his previous home which had two noisy children and a dog. I suspect sometimes that he's pulling a Blighty to avoid having to go back.)

(I have more photos on Facebook for those who can see them.)

Last Essay.

All done and handed in.

I somehow managed to pick the three hour period of today in which the weather was soaking wet to swim into town to hand it in. I feel that the Gods of Academia are punishing me for my lateness or something. :-(

I Love The Smell Of Clean Washing In The Evening...

Particularly when it's been line dried on a nice sunny day like today.

As a study break, this evening I watched a movie called Music & Lyrics, which is light and silly and fun. It has a spoof 80s pop music video in it, but I feel they let the side down on that one. They just didn't get the hair big enough.

The Last Class

Today I had my last class as a BA undergraduate. It was oddly anti-climactic, actually, probably because I have some exams to get through before I cease to be a student altogether. Also, I have to work on my Last Essay, which is going to be about Janus, God of the Gates, which epithet I find aesthetically appealing given the timing.

Also today, I finally finished the dreadful Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence. It's very highly thought of, and I hate it bitterly. I only kept reading out of bloody-mindedness, and I feel that any book which requires you to read the first three chapters twice, the Introduction and look it up on Wikipedia before you have an idea of what's going on has some essential problems. That, and every now and then I felt like I was reading what the Eye of Argon could have been if Jim Theis had been able to spell. F'r'instance:

Gudrun was as if numbed in her mind by the sense of indomitable soft weight of the man, bearing down into the living body of the horse: the strong, indomitable thighs of the blond man clenching the palpitating body of the mare into pure control; a sort of soft white magnetic domination from the loins and thighs and calves, enclosing and encompassing the mare heavily into unutterable subordination, soft blood-subordination, terrible.
D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2000), p113.

Note the use of the word 'loins.' It's Lawrence's favourite word, and I mean favourite, and I'll grant that many men have nice bottoms to look at, but if it's eye candy he's interested in, he could stand to give us a slightly broader view of men's other nice features also. Bah humbug.

On Frisbee

A number of people I know are off this weekend playing in the Ultimate Frisbee Indoor Nationals. I just head from ReptonInfinity. He says his team won three out of four games and he's going to have an ice bath. I think that means he's having fun.

In other news, I've been fairly depressed lately but life seems to be looking up. Sorry for being a wet blanket and all.