we live in hope

A few days after hearing of the death of Theodorakis.

I lived in Evia, Greece, for a short time, in a small basic house on top of another building. It was on the edge of a town made rich by the lignite factory on its outskirts.

While my little house was on the outskirts the other way, it was convenient for long walks and a semi rural outlook.

The view from my house

I arrived in Greece a few years after the end of the junta, about which I knew next to nothing. I was extraordinarily lucky to discover that the second floor of ‘my’ building was used by a woman who taught after school mathematics. In those days, and perhaps still, Greek children who attended school between 8.30 and 2.30 (I think) also attended frontisterio – private schools like the one I taught at and my new friend owned.

Through her and her husband I met several other locals of about my age, who also spoke some English. These and other generous people, like the wonderful older couple who lived near the school, and friends in Athens shared so much with me about Greece’s recent history. They also introduced me to the poets Ritsos, Seferis, Elytis and the music of Theodorakis.

Although I did not hear Theodorakis’ music everywhere I do recall hearing it on the island of Skyros when a young man loudly and repetitively played it on his tape recorder, and was delighted to hear a busker many years later, playing his music in San Telmo, Buenos Aires.

His music, I learned, was a catch cry for socialist Greeks and those who opposed the right. He aroused a passionate nationalism in the hearts of most Greeks I knew and a sense that odds could be overcome. That ‘we’ are all in this together. “Dark is the road of my journey” says the first line of his famous Strose o stroma sou, a song essentially about finding comfort in the arms of a stranger in dangerous times. A song usually partnered with the exuberant Zorba’s song. Epitaphios, a song using Ritsos poem says “One day you will see, Repeat after me, We will be free”.

While Theodorakis wrote classical operas and sonatas, it’s the songs of freedom and hope that echo through our lives. Try not to feel uplifted by Strose to stroma sou, or O kaimos. Or try not to dance with pure pleasure.

On my walks around the town I would see graffiti that said “The Polytechnic lives”. It was Polytechnic students in Athens who, locked in the radio station, broadcast to Greece to revolt against the junta. The revolt lead to the end of the dictatorship in 1974.

I did also learn that not every Greek was left wing, and that within the town there remained pockets of pro junta feeling. Fortunately my understanding of the language meant that I never knew who these people were and I was able to retain the romantic view that all Greeks were socialists, and that all loved Theodorakis and his music.

Like the other famous Greek, Kazantzakis, Theodorakis will be buried in Crete, not his birthplace but his family home.

Dog Tax War narrowly averted | NZHistory, New Zealand history online

War threatened sleepy Hokianga as government troops marched towards armed Māori ‘rebels’.
— Read on nzhistory.govt.nz/page/dog-tax-war

dylan’s dream

With hungry hearts through the heat and cold
We never much thought we could get very old
We thought we could sit forever in fun
And our chances really was a million to one

Bob Dylans Dream, 1963

I’ve been revisiting the 1970s in the last month or so: The Serpent (Netflix), Heaven and hell – The Centrepoint story (TVNZ) and Show me the picture: The story of Jim Marshall (Bailey Production Company).

The Serpent is the factionalised story of Charles Sobhraj, who in the mid 1970s was active in Thailand, Kathmandu and India (amongst many other places) killing travelling hippies for their travellers cheques and passports. Or just for fun. Or because they pissed him off. Or to gain hassle free travel. It’s an ugly story, made more so for me in that I was in all three places in 1977 (a year after his imprisonment in India). My grandmother had pleaded with my mother not to let me go to these places, being convinced that I’d be taken for a white slave (did these exist?).

The scenes of hippies in the movie are not pleasant. With some exceptions they are shown as innocent, naive freedom, pleasure seekers ignorant of their surroundings and their own naivety. Sobhraj, it appears, was/is totally psychopathic with no humanity.

Heaven and Hell is the story of a 1970s cult north of Auckland. The exploitative Bert Potter is portrayed as a heartless, mean-hearted manipulator although in one early segment we learn:

“Hansa’s first impression of Potter? “He struck me as…” The now white-haired swami pauses and looks into the middle distance, the years falling away. “Um, quite a fuckwit really.” (The Spinoff.)

It takes the local (and compromised) police a few years to bring him to justice for the sexual perversions imposed upon young children. There are interviews with some of those now adult children.

He was sentenced to 7 years’ jail in 1992.

You get the picture? Abuse and death in the name of free love. Naive young people falling into the arms of psychopaths and sociopaths.

So today I went to a late morning session of Show me the picture the story of Jim Marshall and his impressive images.

Although I had never heard of Jim Marshall before I have certainly seen some of his wonderful photos spanning the 1960s and 1970s (mostly).

Not that he too was not a flawed character with some alarming (although not evil) tendencies.

The show is revelatory and impressive. Hundreds of shots of artists from the 60s and 70s: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Joplin, Jagger, Greg Allman, Graham Nash, Hendrix. They are all there.

Stunningly beautiful memories of great music, heartfelt anti war sentiments and earnest, thoughtful people.

I left the cinema metaphorically punching the air and thinking what a f*****g great era it was after all.

with J T

It was a thrill (truly) to find myself during a recent trip to the South Island (Te Wai Pounamu) in Thomson’s Barnyard. J T Thomson was the surveyor who gave the Maniototo names relating to animals- Sowburn, Eweburn, Wedderburn, Lowburn and so on.

The Maniototo (Mānia o toto) country is stunningly beautiful with distant dark blue mountains you’d love to be able to paint or write about coherently, and vast dry windswept plains. It was freezingly cold while I was there but cleared enough one day to visit some local sites: Patearoa where we found a tiny, but famous library; Waipiata with a welcoming pub, Naseby with its small old houses and international varieties of huge conifers.

Gimmer-young ewe, Kye- cow and burn- of course -stream

Thomson, Ranfurly

There are at least three different stories about Thomson’s naming of the Maniototo area: as a surveyor in the 19th century he wished to name the country using Māori names but was quashed so used the barnyard names in a fit of pique; the Provincial Government staff were concerned that some Greek names were appearing (is Mt Ida the only remaining?) so wanted more prosaic names; there were no Māori in the area so he named many places after his homeland and the names of animals.

While Thomson may be remembered mostly for the idiosyncratic naming of the country he was also a painter and engineer – two of his bridges are still used. His surveying methods of triangulation and compass were admired.

Browse the collections at Otago Heritage to see some of his paintings, and read Mc Kinnon’s overview of names of Otago for some general information. Read about a public dispute with James Hector.

And because I believe that J T Thomson lived in Caversham, and my great grandmother owned a boarding house in Broughton Street, I walked along the road and took a photo from the old station road near the old Cavy Bush.

For details of Caversham’s history read Exploring Historic Caversham, in which I originally found the information about Thomson.

away ‘hame’

The spring weather continues and I walk less.

Recently a cousin’s request for any info I had about the relies, inspired me to have another go at sorting out what I knew. I did discover that one side of the family was thick with relations whose surnames I vaguely recognised.

But. Not so much the Scots.

And so.

My fascination has been how much I recognise names of families and places. Dunedin, in New Zealand, is known as a Scottish town – ‘hilly Edinburgh’ (I understand) and replete with streets George, Stuart, Princess, Leith, Hyde, Clyde, Forfar, Maryhill and so on and on. I was struck, however, by the emotional lurch I felt when I read names like Auchinleck, Mauchline, Tarbolton, Ardrossan, Alloway, Annbank, Kilmarnock – names of places I have never visited but which evoke a sense of nostalgia, falsely felt. It’s also the surnames I recognised of people who lived in my street, names that pepper the pages of ScotlandsPeople.

It’s made me realise how much I absorbed without knowing; how much longing and homesickness have played in the endless naming of places colonised by British (and probably other) people, and how difficult it must have been to leave a place knowing you would never see it again.

It’s made me realise what a bubble we lived in.

All those songs, the lonely pipers, the unseen lochs and the keening of the pipes.

And photos of now unknown people.

I did visit Ayr and Arran once, walked the streets, saw the bridge and pubs, wondered at the stone buildings and their similarity to some in Dunedin. Won a whisky drinking challenge. Cycled througb Arran. Felt at home. And a stranger.

a buildings detour

Caversham School Gymnasium (Former), Dunedin. 2014 Copyright Heritage New Zealand. https://www.heritage.org.nz/the-list/details/9714

Schools were crowded in the 1950s. This former gymnasium, built by John Sommerville who as architect for the Otago Education Board designed all schools in Dunedin between 1877 and 1901 became a classroom for 2 classes at College Street School. It towered over the school playground, forming a dark and forbidding shadow. We played in the sunny end and I went there only to deliver messages, as my classrooms were at the other end of the playground, in one of the long shaft-like buildings that contain a large long corridor with rooms off. Around the walls of the classrooms were our blackboards and we kept our dusters and milk towels in our desks. I liked that a nearby street was called Playfair Street.

Further north, past the shops with their wooden verandas and opposite the quaintly square brick Baptist church was Caversham School, a two-storied brick building on a seemingly huge area of land. Overcrowding of schools meant that I attended Caversham School in the ‘standards’. I don’t believe I ever went upstairs and the school was pulled down in 1960. Prefabs were built on part of the sports field and in standard 4 our classroom was through the hedge and part of the local nursing home.

Walking north again you’d come to the brick Parkside Hotel, built in 1863, now known as Carisbrook Hotel, and past the hotel the former swamp acreage of Carisbrook. The straight streets beside the grounds seemed long and boring and to the west was the grubby train bridge over the main road that led to the Glen.

Wikipedia tells me that Architect Edmund Anscombe who designed, amongst others, the beautiful Sarjeant Art Gallery in Whanganui lived in Caversham as did surveyor and architect John Turnbull Thomson, Chief Surveyor 1876-1879 who, interestingly, “explored and mapped large sections of the interior of the southern South Island. Many of the place names in this region reflect Thomson’s Northumbrian origins, with prosaic names in the form of a Northumbrian dialectic name for an animal”. I may be off on a detour of these place names soon…

walking cavy bush

Walking Raiha Walkway yesterday ‘took me back’, as they say, to walking the Cavy Bush.

The *Cavy Bush walk went from Forfar Street down towards the reserve and the railway station where hairy legged giants pushed their way off the train onto the bridge towards Kings High School. The path also led to Cavy Primary School.

L B, who had an older brother rendering her an almost only child, would meet me at my house and we’d add a few more girls to the group as we entered the Cavy Bush. Being an only child in the baby booming 50s was not always a joy, and I gravitated towards the company of other only (or near only) children. I can still hear the taunts of “mother’s bloody little bitch” and a teacher telling other girls at school not to play with me as I was “a spoilt brat”. Truly.

It was often at the entrance to the Cavy Bush beside the driveway to the tomato hothouse that I’d develop a sore stomach and turn back home.

Cavy Bush was, and perhaps still is, a short, steep path through native trees opening out onto a flat reserve where there may have been a few slides and swings. The bush was thick in places, and the paths became slippery in winter. There was moss near the stream and some parts were dark, making those frosty Dunedin mornings especially chilling.

The flat reserve became famous in the late 1950s when the threat of a tsunami prompted teachers at the school to lead us there, it being slightly higher ground. At the end of school I walked down to Cargill’s Corner where my mother had a small dressmaking business. Past lead/iron sands and flakes outside Hillside Workshops into the possible eye of the tsunami…..

I walked Cavy Bush alone once or twice and did not enjoy it. In groups we laughed and teased our way to school and on the way home L and I used the small islands in the stream to enact our stories of highway women, stranded survivalists and brave heroines. Occasionally boys would encroach on our territory and I developed an excellent satchel swing to ward them off.

There must have been a parental meeting as we younger children were warned to avoid one of the older boys and we were encouraged to walk the long way if we were alone.

The bush, however was a lovely space. Native trees and birds and steep winding paths. A place to play and talk. To let our imaginations run free.

Just a bit scary at times.

*Caversham

era end

Tomorrow marks 11 years since my mother’s death.  And the beginning of a year of death.  By the 23rd of November Hilary, Krysia,  Bella and Meg had died and I went into hospital for a double hip operation that er, wasn’t quite as successful as we had hoped.

The sciatic nerve in one leg was damaged, resulting in drop foot, and the screw in the other fell out,  lodging in my hip, thereby inciting many jokes about loose screws.

It was once of those years that cements friendship forever, and forever marks any year ending in 6-7.

It’s also this year,  the one in which I retired. Generally it’s been great and if I stopped worrying about money I’d be fine. (Who can live on $780 a fortnight?).

So all of that – the intervening years, the trips to Greece, Spain, Buenos Aires, London, the new adult whangai niece and nephew in my life, the fabulous friends, the great operas, movies, art  and music have been fantastic.

And so it seems it just might be an opportunity to retire this blog.

 

 

can this really be the end?

This is the start of my education, circa 1956. It’s odd to think that I end my working life in the education system.

I never meant to but some jobs I had made me feel I needed a little more of a challenge than stripping mould frills off soap (McLeods), straightening labels on coffee jars (Greggs), sorting fruit (St George Jam) and using the adding machine in friend Heather’s father’s business. There were others: rest home carer, telegraph girl in Queen Street, psychiatric nurse. The latter was not so bad but love and Fiji called. To be honest psychiatric hospitals in New Zealand in the 1970s were a bit difficult: shock treatment, ‘homosexual’ treatments and staff nurses who’d rather we fold towels than talk with patients.

There was work in London – waitressing at which I did not excel. Mind you, waitressing in Oxford Circus was not the best place for a kiwi with no love of being ordered about. Temping – bar staff, cleaning loos in Amsterdam and the wonder of wonders setting up trays for airlines at Schiphol Airport.

Some teaching – Greece, London (if you survive teaching in London you can survive anything) and Sydney. My first year teaching in Warkworth and some literacy teaching in Porirua. A term or two in Timaru where I learned the names of the All Blacks and biked by the sea with the seaward snow covered Kaikouras in the distance.

Bookshops and the Museum Shop in Wellington with trips to Canada and the U.S.A. and India. Art Galleries and Museums Association in the late 80s. Working at the Turnbull organising the tour of an exhibition on Te Tiriti (heaps of fun). More teaching and in 1999 becoming an instructional designer. Whatever that means.  Every job has been different but there were trips to Australia.

It’s all been fascinating. And it ends formally on 2nd June. That’s Queens Birthday weekend.

generosity of spirit and mind

In Spain I visited the Picasso museum.

When  I saw Picasso’s platters I was immediately struck by a sense of their relationship with hospitality and generosity. And I thought of my friends J and C.

I first met them when a rapist in Wellington was getting into women’s houses during the day and returning at night. Friend Jess (who knew them) said I should go and visit.  So I did.

I was immediately made welcome.

There followed many drunken Sunday evenings of good food, great wine and fantastic conversation. I love wine but in truth the conversation was best.

When I had appendicitis the family nurtured me. When I had excessive paranoia (due to a silly counsellor) they allowed me to be. J loves Greece and Italy so we talked at length about Greece and shared silly ideas about etymology. He took me out on his small yacht where I smelled the land from the sea as opposed to the sea from the land. He fed me the most amazing coffee – strong, fortifying and mind alarming.

All our  lives became intertwined.

Barbeques  at the bays on balmy Wellington evenings. Bike rides. Annual Boxing day walks to Duck Creek. Books. Art. Parties. Gardens. Houses. Politics. Travel stories.

When they shifted south I’d call in after mother visits (always a slightly stressful thing ) and be offered wine, food and companionship. One year we held an olive oil tasting event. I met their friends.

Most of all I love J’s erudite rambles around maps, history and language and his acceptance of people.  When I visited after a disastrous love affair and could only cry, J kept me empathetic company and offered coffee and wine while I sobbed.

On my last  visit we all had a wee dram and sat in the dark without speaking, watching the moon and the stars. Fabulous.

J’s erudition, love of ideas, language, exploration of thought and companionship have been a  boon to my life. When he had a drama with his eyesight while overseas he told me how much he appreciated Kandinsky. Colours were all he could see.

He has an enquiring mind. A philosophy and a world view that is positive, encompassing and generous.

His guffaw at the silliness of the world. His friendship (not to mention his coffee and wine- who else loves Retsina) are the things I will remember.

Thanks heaps.  You enhance my life.