Heading South

The rain is cascading down – even Rosanna and I succumbed to the bus this morning. It’s a sorting things out day, as I won’t be back here until the last day of term next Thursday. That means I won’t see my Drama class again, who have been performing their assessed devised drama pieces this week, very successfully. I’ll see the two English classes today, then again on the last day, so things are clearly drawing to a close. The English Department is going out for a meal this evening to celebrate my leaving – take that any way you want to! They’ve chosen one of my favourite restaurants, and it will be a gathering of about 15 people, once partners are counted in. I’m afraid the children will be at home with a few dry crusts, and perhaps a glass of water.

On Friday, I get to go to one of Louis’ assemblies at last. I’ve heard a lot about them, and he often repeats the ritual for us on a Friday evening, so it will be good to see one live! It was his parent/teacher meeting last night, where we heard all the right things from his very cheerful and helpful teacher. The other job for Friday is to clear the house, as on Saturday morning, at 5am (ooooh, not looking forward to that) we leave for the airport to make a flying visit to the South Island. It’s hideously expensive for such a short trip, but it seemed plain daft to bring the family all this way and miss the South Island. So we are flying down to Queenstown, quite a long way south, and spending a few days there, including a cruise on Doubtful Sound, one of the more remote fiords accessible only by road, boat and road again.

I don’t know whether there will be opportunities to blog from down there, so it may be that you all have to wait a week for the next bumper instalment. I’ll take the laptop just in case; failing that, there may be an internet café.

Let’s wait and see!

In the meantime, very sadly, it’s goodbye to 66 Shelly Beach Road, which has been a great home for the last three months. We’ve become quite fond of it; it has seen some good times, and it has felt like home whenever we have returned from one of our hectic touring weekends.

It’s not quite goodbye to Shelly Beach Road itself, though, as we have booked into a motel further up the road for our return from the South Island, so that last day of term will see us all conduct our familiar walks and bus journeys to school.

A Shopper’s Guide to New Zealand, by Rosanna

I’m sure that, if any of you blog-readers visit New Zealand, a shopping guide will come in handy, especially if you have a teenage girl in tow…

One of the first shops that I went in was a souvenir shop in Whangarei, next to the café where we ate ice-creams on our journey to the Bay of Islands. It was a good souvenir shop, quite cheap and free of the tat found in some other souvenir shops. Daddy bought me a lovely pair of paua earrings, but persuaded me out of buying some little dolphin shaped drawers, “because you will find things like that everywhere”. Well, we did see the same drawers in another shop, but they were far more expensive!

In the Bay of Islands we stayed in Paihia. We did stroll along the shops in the town but there wasn’t a great selection, although there was a nice bakery where we bought some delicious bread. We also bought some postcards and stamps in a small bookshop but we weren’t tempted to venture into any further shops.

Whilst we were staying in the Bay of Islands, we travelled to Kerikeri, where we found a better assortment of shops. There was a good shoe shop where Conrad purchased some ‘Vans’ and we wandered round a few other shops. We had a leaflet about arts and crafts in Kerikeri, so we decided to visit a couple of the places mentioned. One that I would highly recommend would be Artifishell – a great little shop with a variety of crafts. The products seemed to be well priced so we bought a bird figure for our garden. Another place that we visited from the leaflet was a small chocolate factory. We could see the workers making some confectionery, and although the shop was rather overpriced, we did get some yummy free samples!

On the way back from the Bay of Islands, we travelled across to the west coast so that we could see the kauri trees, and we also visited the Kauri Museum. The museum shop was varied; there were some really nice things, some tacky things, some cheap things and some expensive things. Louis bought a rucksack for his teddy and Conrad bought a mini rugby ball. The museum itself was very interesting.

Further on in the journey, we stopped at a beach and bought some fish and chips. Although the shop didn’t look very appealing, the fish and chips were extremely good, and the beach provided a lovely backdrop.

When we were back in Auckland, Mummy took us to the Westfield Downtown Shopping Centre. In the Great New Zealand Shop there are some cool souvenirs, but it is rather expensive, although I did splash out on a $2 pen! Also in the shopping centre is The Warehouse, ‘where everyone gets a bargain’. It is similar to Wilkinson’s but with a bigger range and not quite so cheap. On our first visit I got some trainers for PE, and since then I have also acquired a sun hat and a Red Hot Chilli Peppers CD.

On our way back from the shopping centre that day, we went to explore Victoria Park Market, a permanent market by Victoria Park open ever day of the year except for Christmas day! There are some great bargains to be found, amongst the overpriced things. Mummy bought me a sarong and I bought I bracelet.

Another outing that Mummy took us on was to the Auckland War Memorial Museum. The shop was fairly expensive but it had some groovy things in it and I bought three New Zealand plant fairies. The museum was varied and very interesting. After exploring the museum we walked into Parnell itself, but, to my disappointment, we didn’t go in many shops because the boys were too tired. We did go into a shop that Daddy had recommended: the Elephant House. It was full of wonderful crafty products and I bought a lovely handmade angel.

On the day before I started school we went to the Sky Tower, which was a fascinating experience, and so all the children bought posters from the gift shop, which were not very expensive, for such a popular tourist destination.

One weekend, we caught the ferry to Devonport and when we arrived at the ferry terminal, there was a sort of farmers’ market going on. We bought some olives, cookies and some sweetie kebabs for our picnic! We walked past the shops of Devonport, but to my annoyance, we didn’t go in any, so I can’t comment on them.

We took the opportunity of a long weekend to visit Rotorua and we visited Wai-o-tapu Thermal Wonderland, where Daddy bought me a New Zealand t-shirt in the gift shop. The thermal pools and geysers were fascinating.

Next, we travelled to Whakatane, where we did quite a bit of shopping. I bought a Converse bag for a reasonable price and Mummy bought a pretty skirt in the ‘Mr Thankyou’ shop. The high street was full of life when we were shopping, but when we came back at 7pm to find dinner, it was like a ghost town; there wasn’t a soul to be seen! We walked the length of the main road and finally found a fish and chip shop that was open, but even that closed at 8pm!

As we travelled back to Auckland, we stopped at Mount Maunganui and at the base of the hill was a great ice cream shop. I had hokey-pokey flavour, but there were many more, and they had homemade waffle cones!

On a day off, I went shopping in Auckland CBD with Mummy. In Whitcoulls (like WH Smiths but a lot better) I bought three flower fairies books for only $3 each in the bargain books section. In Pat Menzies Shoes I bought a pair of Converse All Stars. It was quite an expensive shoe shop, but they had a good sale on. Then we had a muffin in Muffin Break, which was very tasty! On the way back home, we popped into Victoria Park Market again and I got a beautiful tiara in a great little jewellery shop.

We have also been to Titirangi, but I wouldn’t recommend going there to shop because, although it is a very nice village, there isn’t much except a small dairy where we got cheap ice creams.

We are living near ‘fashionable Ponsonby’ and Mummy took me and the boys shopping there and I bought some stickers – 5 for $2! – in a dairy and a plaque with an R on it in the fairy shop! Also, Mummy has bought me some Birkenstock sandals from the Future Feet shoe shop.

With my friends I have been shopping in the city centre and I have bought a Dickies T-shirt from Smith + Caughey’s which is a rather posh and expensive department store (the t-shirt was in the sale!) I have also bought a Paul Frank purse from the Aotea Square market, which is on every Friday and Saturday. I have bought a book of New Zealand landscapes form Borders, which is a bookshop with a disappointing selection, but good offers.

I hope that if you ever come to New Zealand you will find my guide helpful, but be warned, if you do have a teenage girl with you, you will need quite a bit of money, as there are many temptations!

Kiwi Pinter

David Johnson will remember the shocked look on the face of a member of staff at the Sherlock Holmes Hotel in London, on coming into the room and finding the pair of us weeping with laughter as we part-read one of the nastiest passages from Pinter’s The Homecoming in preparation for an examiners’ meeting. It was with that memory in mind that I accompanied staff and students from the English Department to see a production of the play which is being staged as part of the Auckland Festival.

In the Herald Theatre, a small studio with a dizzyingly raked auditorium, the grimy, seedy faded grandeur of the house had been dispensed with in favour of a minimalist set. Sound reasoning, but not entirely convincing, with a suspended tractor tyre for Joey’s boxing and a cable reel for a table, but they did give crucial primacy to Max’s chair. The script was played unchanged, which created a few evident anachronisms with the dialogue referring to the ‘Humber Super Snipe’, for example, while characters wore Calvin Klein underwear, a Tom Jones t-shirt and snake skin trousers, while the music came from a portable Sony CD player.

On the whole, the accents were pretty good, though when pushed, Max turned Scottish and Joey never quite got the hang of it, betraying himself repeatedly with ‘Yis!’ However, those caveats aside, it was a successful production, played strongly for the comedy and creating that audience discomfort in finding so funny a dialogue and stage action which are so repulsive. Lenny and Max were particularly strong and gave the whole piece its energy and its edge.

It has to be said that the students left pretty bewildered. Some of them are studying it next year, so they will certainly have been advantaged by seeing it.

Coromandel

Friday was my last appointment at King’s. I have rather enjoyed my fortnightly visits. This time they had organised a different programme, so that I ran my usual AS crash course with the last AS group, then covered a poem with them. After that I did a text session with one of the other AS groups, then an A level session using a couple of the students’ own essays as guinea pigs to look at essay style and assessment. After lunch I had a couple of staff sessions covering assessment and procedure, then I left, consultancy complete, not only at King’s, but for the trip. There is only one term time Friday left, and I need to keep that clear so that we can clear the house, as our tenancy concludes next weekend.

Originally the landlady said that we would have longer, and that the new owner would probably let us stay on for the remaining few days, but both these hopes were snuffed out. In recompense, she kindly offered us a weekend at her beach house on the Coromandel Peninsula. So after dinner, and judging the time that it would take for the Friday night motorway jam south out of Auckland to subside, we set off for Pauanui, on the east coast of the peninsula. The days are now noticeably shorter, and daylight saving ended last weekend, putting clocks back an hour (so we are now just 12 hours ahead of the UK rather than 13), so most of the trip took place in the pitch dark. That wasn’t too bad until the steep winding road across the Coromandel mountains, which demanded care and nerve. Deborah had volunteered to drive, and came to regret it. However, she got us there safely, though on arrival at the right road in Pauanui we had great difficulty in locating the right house and then the key in the blackness. Conrad and I spent a good few minutes poking around the garden, steps and front door of the wrong house before we located the right one. Good job no-one was in!

We eventually found ourselves in a rather swish open-plan house in an elevated position on the hillside, large sliding glass doors opening onto a deck around two sides. All very comfortable, very stylish. Under the star-washed sky, a few lights below indicated other houses, but all else was black. We could hear the roar of the beach somewhere out there, but we had no means of locating ourselves.

It wasn’t until the morning that we were able fully to appreciate our position, the house sitting amongst the hillside bush, looking down on the residential stretch of Pauanui, and almost directly up the beach, where the surf was rolling in. There were some important discoveries in the garage. The first was a bike, which allowed my to sit on a saddle and get pedals under my feet for the first time in months, and I enjoyed a quick ride up the bay along the grassy front, looking at some of the spectacular houses there. The other discovery was body boards, which gave the children hours of fun down at the beach (OK, I admit it; the odd few minutes for adults too), riding the crashing surf. In the afternoon we followed tracks for a short walk around the coast, and spent some time exploring the rock pools, looking at the fish, hermit crabs, starfish, sea urchins and shrimps while searching for paua shells.

The morning had started gloomy, and there was the odd shower during the day, but the coast itself was largely sunny, which made a striking contrast with the mountains to the west, which were moodily shrouded in cloud for much of the day, making a stark and dramatic backdrop.

On Sunday, the children were keen on furthering their surf skills, so wider exploration of the Coromandel was cancelled in favour of another relaxing day. I chose to take the bush track up Mt. Pauanui. One and a half hours, the sign said, for fit and experienced walkers only. The track was clear, but steeply zigzagging, so I called on all my Kilimanjaro ‘pole, pole’ (’slowly, slowly’) experience, but still reached the summit in a shade over half an hour. The signposting of walks is rather cautious, it seems. The odd nature of Pauanui was emphasised when viewed from above, its neat grid of streets, repeated cul-de-sacs of houses by the beach, houses by the airstrip where residents can park their plane, a similar arrangement in an artificial wharf, with a berth for every residence, with carefully tended bright green grass punctuated by trees. It’s all very attractive, but slightly unreal. From above, no movement was visible, and all was silent; most houses seem to be holiday homes, and there was hardly anyone about. It’s like a model for an alien experiment about humanity, or the set of The Truman Show without the people. Great for a leisurely weekend, but for life you would have to go elsewhere.

Back across the mountains to Auckland revealed what we had missed in the dark: steep gorges through the sandstone and massed tumbling native vegetation, that exotic combination of gnarled trees, spiky palms and tree ferns. Finally back home, for our last week of residence at 66.

Happy Birthday Tina!

Homage to Hone

A couple of years ago on one of my training courses, seeking advice from delegates about New Zealand literature, I was directed towards the work of Hone Tuwhare, a Maori poet who writes in English. I found some of his verse and was immediately struck by it. His were the first New Zealand poems I recommended for the Cambridge poetry anthology.

On Monday night, as part of the Auckland Festival, I attended Tuwhare, a musical celebration of his life and work. Rawiri Paratene (co-star of the film Whale Rider) narrated Tuwhare’s life, with quotations from reviews and from Tuwhare himself, interspersed with twelve poems each given a musical interpretation by a different key figure from the New Zealand music recording world. Hone Tuwhare himself was in attendance, at 84 a small, stooped slow figure, but with a cheerful grin and a bright eye. (The picture below shows him in his younger days). What was immediately impressive was the clear affectionate reverence in which he is held, first from the spontaneous ovation when he was guided to his seat in the stalls, then even louder and warmer, when he was formally introduced and stood to acknowledge the applause. It’s not what you would expect for a poet; I can’t imagine it even happening for Seamus Heaney at 84, but perhaps I’m wrong.

It was a fascinating evening, on the one hand because of the tale of his life from welder and boilermaker to literature doctorates, but also a view of New Zealand from a Maori perspective. The opening addresses were all in Maori, and welcomed the ‘home peoples’ first before getting their English translation. Interestingly, Hone was encouraged in English by his father and revelled in a formal elegance drawn from the King James Bible, to such an extent that he lost his fluency in Maori. As he got older, his work progressed, with an increasing political awareness and a change in the language and rhythms of his poetry, mixing the bar room with the biblical. His quoted thoughts on the creation and revision of poetry were interesting, saying that it can take him fifteen years to finish a poem, and never less than a fortnight. He likes to go back, to mull over, to try on different audiences, and have several different versions written on sheets around his work table. There is ‘no chemical formula’ for the ‘creative anarchic mind explosion’ that is a poem, he says. As he has gone on, he has included Maori references within his poems, but always with an explanation so that non-Maori readers are not excluded. A correspondence between him and The Listener was quoted, where he argued persuasively for the inclusion of his Maori glossary with his poems. His concern with Maori rights, particularly land rights, has also grown, and though his work is sometimes political, it is never tub-thumping. He dislikes, apparently, the grand political gesture.

The music varied. There were several pieces by Maori musicians, who had either adapted the poems to traditional Maori forms, or were part of the dreaded ‘fusion’ movement – Maori forms over synthesised dance beats. I’m afraid most of these, and the Maori badboy rap, left me cold, but others had a spine-tingling spiritual quality. There was a range of singer-songwriters who had set the poems, some of whom were very good, including Don McGlashan’s setting of the poem ‘Rain’ for voice, euphonium and piano. I had come across Don McGlashan before, as a staple of a number of Kiwi bands, and he also sang before the fireworks at the Festival opening ceremony. A Wellington guitarist/singer called Charlotte Yates, who actually wrote and produced the evening, was also very good. Festivities ended with a band I discovered on a CD case at the beach house at the weekend, being amused by the 70s throwback band photography and band name, Goldenhorse. Clearly they were the hottest act there, receiving a rapturous ovation and given the top slot, and they were pretty good as a band. I can’t comment on their treatment of the poem, though, as I couldn’t hear a word of it.

However, it was the end of the evening which created the key moment. With all the stars onstage, Charlotte Yates spoke about the process of creating the piece and thanked Hone Tuwhare for his agreement that they could use the words of his poems. As she was speaking, she was interrupted by one of the female Maori singers, who began, very gently, a traditional song, which was soon picked up by the other Maori singers on stage. Absolute silence fell on the auditorium, in one of those real lump-in-the-throat moments. The emotional significance of the song was captured immediately by the audience. I learned later that it was a waiata, a traditional song sung in response to a speech made about you, so the Maori singers were actually responding impromptu on Tuwhare’s behalf to what Charlotte Yates had been saying. It left her in tears and virtually unable to complete her thanks to the performers, and had created one of those key memorable performance moments, spontaneous and unbidden.

And while we are here, apologies to Tim – it was entirely my fault that he was omitted from the birthday roll the other week, and we hope that Deborah’s Mum is feeling better.

Blackwater, Whitewater, Rainwater

Though shopping was dutifully done, and the Waikato Museum visited by the rest of the family while I was engaged with the English Department at Hamilton Boys’ High School, the consensus was that Hamilton is not the most thrilling place to visit. One colleague told me that when Hamilton was recently engaged in a rebranding exercise, the popular option for a new slogan for the town was ‘Between Here and There’. Surprisingly, it was not adopted.

The Boys’ School, though, is certainly keen on being recognised and making its mark. Its website says that it aims to be recognised as one of the best schools in New Zealand, and walking into its spacious reception lobby certainly gives the impression of aspiration and achievement. Wood-panelled, with Maori carvings around the door frames, the walls were also adorned with cabinets loaded with silverware. The sporting tradition is very strong. Here I already knew two of the three staff who teach A level English Literature, and I did a half day session with them on various aspects of raising aspiration and attainment.

From Hamilton we drove out to Raglan on the west coast, famous as a surfers’ paradise. Approached on a long, winding road, it is well outside any urban influence. After passing through stretches of farmland bounded by hills, you reach the coastal area of native bush, and Raglan is nestled in here, on a long sea inlet. The tide was out at Lorenzen Bay when we arrived and explorers on the muddy sand soon found that they were up to their mid-shins and came back wearing pairs of muddy wellingtons. When the tide came in later in the evening, there was no beach at all, the lapping water coming right up to the road edge and wall.

On Saturday we drove to the Waitomo Caves, which look quite close on the map, but once you’ve found an appropriate route, it’s about 70 miles. For large parts of the drive along the winding rural roads it felt uncannily like Scotland, particularly with the squalls of drizzle and the misty clouds wrapped round the mountaintops.

Deborah, Conrad and Louis opted to take the pedestrian and boat tours of Ruakuri Cave and the Glowworm Cave. Here I hand over to Louis:

“When we first went in, we came to a really dark bit. Then our guide turned some lights on. The first set of lights were curving round and then the second lot came on and then the third. It looked cool. Then we went down the winding bit and came to a door at the bottom. Behind us was a big stone that had water pouring onto it. The water went on all the way from the top to the big stone. Through the door was the cave starting bit… The cave was cool! There were some glowworms there. They looked really shiny. It was a sort of green light. The glowworms built some really cool thin things that looked like one piece of a spiderweb to catch insects. The ceiling had spiky things stuck to it. The walls were cool because some of the curvy bits looked like some crisps, some looked like a flake and some looked like a cauliflower. We could hear an underground waterfall, but we could not see it. We could see the blackwater rafters from one little bit.

After lunch we went to the glowworm cave, which was a bit shorter. Our guide showed us a cave elephant, a cave family and a bungy-jumping kiwi. The guide made a joke. There was a hole in the wall that led out all the way outside which he called an emergency exit. He said, “Don’t touch the walls” which meant it was hard to get to it because it was really high up. Then we went on a boat trip and we saw loads and loads of glowworms. It was a very pleasant trip.”

Rosanna and I decided it was time to do one of those typically Kiwi things, and went blackwater rafting, which is a tour of the cave system in the water rather than by path. The ‘raft’ itself is an inflatable tube, in which you sit and float, wearing a wetsuit and caving helmet. One of the best bits was the ‘eel’, where we all linked together, feet up on the tube in front, clutching each other’s boots, and let the current drift us through a long narrow passage, lights off, gazing up at the glowworm constellations adorning the roof. The most exciting was leaping backwards off a waterfall into the dark pool somewhere beneath; the shock of plummeting into the cold water was quite disorientating. And perhaps the most fun was having to navigate out of the system at the end on our own in the pitch darkness, paddling along and judging the depth and the current, and suddenly finding your helmet striking overhanging rocks. Eventually outlines were discernible, then there was a faint glow, then daylight, and we came out with the stream into a bush clearing. We were restored back at base with hot showers, hot soup and toasted bagels.

While the others were floating through the Glowworm Cave in their boat, Rosanna and I did the Ruakuri bushwalk, a half hour trek through the bush, taking in the river and a number of crevices and caverns, some of them enormous.

We drove back to Raglan and down to the village itself, and had planned to do a leisurely exploration. A sudden shift to strong wind and rain caused the abandonment of that plan, and the same thing happened on Sunday morning. Just as we decided to drive out to see the surfing at Whale Bay, the heavens opened and steady unrelenting rain began. Just our luck to find an opportunity to spend a weekend in a beach house on the first wet weekend for three months! We did drive down to get some lunch, after which, in a dryish spell, we went south to Whale Bay, driving along a spectacular road, exotic bush on one side, a drop to the sea on the other. In hostile conditions, the wind whipped a light rain inland over the top of mountainous waves, heaving and crashing as they headed for shore. There was just one surfer foolhardy enough to be out there, and we watched him do one ride before the wind and rain picked up again and drove us back into the car.

The drive back to Auckland alternated between driving rain and blinding sun, conditions improving as we got further north. The signs were, when we arrived home, that it hadn’t rained very much here at all.

Festival Freedom

Deborah and I braved the wilds of Auckland’s weather depression in order to have a rare evening to ourselves. We had booked to see the opening night of The Four Seasons, a work by French-based contemporary dance company Ballet Preljocaj, one of the events of the Auckland Festival.

In the foyer of the ASB Theatre, though, was Blow, an art installation, accompanied by the usual kind of write-up: “an interdisciplinary showcase exploring the scenographic processes of innovative New Zealand practitioners of theatre and performance media…” What we had was an area of rubbery textured floor, and giant illuminated vase shapes made out of material, adorned with artefacts, writing, drawings and photographs, while cut-outs gave access to miniature videos and an ear to the walls revealed voices and music. A curtain swished around and through, and you could clamber inside one of the vases. Some of it was funny, some was intriguing, some of it was a bit daft, but it certainly made the wait for the doors to open more interesting.

The ballet’s spiel questioned, “Can this piece of music – so well known, so conventional, so gone astray – can it indeed deliver more surprises, more grey tones, more secrets? Can we erase the tainted image of this music?” When the first dancers appeared wearing inflated transparent plastic teddy bear suits, we feared the worst. However, it turned out to be an exhilarating performance, spectacularly physical, often beautiful and often very funny. Some of it was clearly representational of elements of the seasons – you’ve never seen a hedgehog’s spines so sensual – but most of the work was capturing the mood of the seasons and the music rather than performing elements of spring, summer, etc. Summer was full of colour and energy, and those incredibly rapid spiralling downward passages were interpreted as a woman having a sequence of fits, being calmed and reassured by her companion between each one. In another scene, mock seductions were played out balancing on rocking steps. There were so many imaginative moments, and feats of strength and agility and grace. I have pinched a couple of photos from the company’s website, www.preljocaj.org

Since the rain had lulled when we emerged from the theatre, we wandered down to see another art installation, Sky, which is a projection of the daytime sky over one of the narrow lanes during the hours of darkness. However, the suspended material sheet onto which the film was projected was so small, about 1.5m x 3m, it had very little effect, and I think you could have walked underneath it without noticing if you hadn’t been looking for it. A number of premises on the shopping streets have devoted window spaces to artists for the duration of the Festival, and they work in the windows at different times during the day, and leave their work in progress in situ. The one in Whitcoulls in Queen Street was very bland – perhaps very much in progress – while another we spotted on Lorne Street mingled stuffed animals with red buttons and beads in a particularly disturbing way. It’s amazing just how like spilling entrails buttons and beads can look. You get the picture.

I’ve got a booking at Hamilton Boys’ School on Friday, so we are all going down and spending the weekend at Raglan, where the Principal has kindly lent us her beach house. More about that when we get back.

A Change in the Weather

Since the weekend, the weather has been pretty murky, but last night we had a real demonstration of the possibilities of Auckland weather. The wind gusts quite literally made the house shake, and the lashing of the rain and hail on the corrugated metal roof made a ferocious bombardment. Though there was just one lightning flash and one crash of thunder, the view from the front windows looked like a film of an American hurricane: the swirling rain and hail, the trees bent double, the road signs swaying like frantic drunken revellers, wheelie bins making their own flapping progress down the road while the odd car hesitantly crawled up it, all lit by the orange glow of the sodium lamps. The force of the wind was such that not only were the bushes in the garden temporarily reduced in height to a buffeted half, but the rain was driven between the two French doors in the kitchen, leaving a wet streak across the floor. At least the roof stayed on.

It was surprising to go out this morning and find pretty well everything still in its place. The only immediately visible casualty on Shelly Beach Road was a large real estate hoarding advertising a $1.8m apartment, whose timber supports had been wrenched from their moorings, leaving it face down on the pavement. The ditch some contractors had just dug in the road is now a long, narrow, muddy swimming pool. Perhaps the most bizarre sight, though, was an office we pass each morning which makes liberal use of a sprinkler to keep its lawns artificially lush. Yes, as we passed, the sprinkler was going. Perhaps they actually want a marsh.

The sky this morning has that washed-out, clean, slightly apologetic look, but in some corners the clouds are gathering again.

Louis Downunder

Hello blog readers; welcome to a day in the life of Louis on a Ponsonby school day. There are traffic lights right outside my school and people from my school (who are year 6’s) stand at those traffic lights with orange flags and when the green man goes they move to the side and say, “Cross now!”

Our Principal is Miss Malcolm. She is nice. My teacher is very nice too and she is called Miss Mercer. I am in room 7. The room has lots of lanterns and the library in our classroom has a sofa. So far it’s been great! Because of the weather we have a swimming pool outside next to one of the playgrounds and every day we go swimming apart from Mondays and Wednesdays! There is a sandpit where I play sometimes with my friends. The playground is wonderful.

I have lots of friends, but my best friend is Sam. He is new to the school as well and he comes from a different country! He comes from Australia. He lives in Sydney. In the morning we have a break and this is called Morning Tea. We are let out into the playgrounds and we look in our packed lunches to get our fruit out. We eat that and then play. We don’t have to wear shoes; we can have bare feet if we want to.

We went on a school trip to a place called Arataki. It’s a place with lots of trees and plants. We (the family) have even been there before! But we went on a different walk. This walk was longer. At school we are learning about trees, so that is why we went there for a school trip. I saw some koru, which is the curl at the end of the fern plant. There are things on the ground, which are nice to feel.

I am really enjoying it here but I am missing my friends.

Louis

Mossies, Fireworks and Birds

The huge botox swellings have now gone down; for a day I had quite impressively-proportioned thighs and calves, but now I just have vivid red blotches and incredible irritation. Such is the ferocity of the Auckland mosquito. After another enjoyable day at King’s, we went to a colleague’s house in Mission Bay for evening drinks which turned into fish and chip supper. It was a lovely evening, which included meeting a lady who is an educational drama advisor. As our discussion continued, it became clear that we had, in fact, met before, at a drama education conference in York in about 1996, where she had given a presentation on cultural diversity in drama, and I had been one of the delegates. However, during that evening, with the guard lowered, the mossies clearly saw their chance. Seventeen of them made their mark, mainly on legs, but arms and even palms of the hands did not emerge unscathed.

On Saturday, I was required to do that favourite activity for all teachers: attend open day. At least we were treated to lunch, but trade was fairly slack. I did my duty, but also wandered through other departments, and listened to the head of Geography lament that his top Geography student would be leaving at the end of the term. When I got home I found that the others were at the beach. I joined them, but by then the tide was out, which means that you swim out for about a kilometre and still find your knees scraping the bottom. So a very quick swim, then back.

This Saturday marked the opening of the Auckland Festival, AK07, a fortnight of varied artistic events. We would like to book for quite a few, but it’s a matter of what we do with the children, which limits the options. So far, then, we have booked for just two events, but the opening celebration in the Auckland Domain, where the Museum is, was a family-focused event, culminating in a fireworks display. Although we had arranged to meet a colleague there, this proved impossible, even with quite precise directions, as an estimated 60,000 people attended the event.

The fireworks weren’t the traditional fireworks; this was a show by a French group of pyrotechnic showmen called Groupe F, who apparently did the London 2005 New Year celebration, among their credits. The whole show was synchronised with a modern jazz score, performed live, and was much more primal than the traditional fireworks, especially at the beginning, with choreographed gobbets of fire bursting from the ground. The other key difference was the performers within the fireworks, carrying fire down through the trees at one stage and creating human catherine wheels to spectacular effect. It was forty minutes of stunning showmanship, ending with cascades of gold sparkles, patterned rocket tracks in the sky and a deafening and eye-wincingly bright mid-air detonations. (Photographs of the event are courtesy of Louis).

Of course 60,000 people leaving such an event meant a fair degree of chaos at the end, but we were lucky enough to squeeze onto the first bus that came, then sit as it, with painstaking slowness, eased its way through the traffic back into the city centre.

On Sunday we headed out to east Auckland. Looking for something quieter, we headed for the Tahuna Torea nature reserve, on the banks of the Tamaki River. We had planned to drive up to St Heliers afterwards to have a swim at the beach, but discovering that the reserve had a very quiet beach of its own, we picnicked and swam there on arrival, while kite-powered surfers criss-crossed the bay, occasionally using the power of the wind to lift themselves right off the water and do a bit of flying.

The reserve has mixed shoreline, native bush and mangrove, so has a varied habitat, and it is also guarded by a number of possum traps we saw in the shrubbery. Louis spent a long time pukeko hunting – lots of these iconic large moorhen-like birds were stalking around asking to be photographed (below), and there was a wide range of ducks, divers and grebes, as well as white-faced herons and pied stilts at the water’s edge, while silvereyes, swallows, the odd kingfisher and tuis dominated the bush, watched by a harrier that kept circling and swooping.

These were the first tuis we have seen since the Bay of Islands, which illustrates why there is a big concern about the native New Zealand bird population. In our garden we see sparrows, blackbirds and mynas, which are all introduced species. One weekend we had a passing group of silvereyes, but it’s the raucous, rusty-voiced mynas which dominate. They are also at the edge of every roadside you drive along; they have clearly proliferated massively since their introduction. The result of this, though, is that the native population is being squeezed, and many birds are on the endangered species list.

Amazingly, it was rain that finally sent us away from the reserve, back into the car for the drive home, although by the time we got home, the sun was streaming again. It is, though, little by little, easing towards autumn. The odd leaf has descended. The clocks will go back soon. Summer is having its last blaze.