Duo Jackson Concert

We are still coming down to earth after a magical concert last night. We have heard the Duo Jackson several times live, and play their CDs from time to time, but this was their best ever.

 

Miles Jackson plays a clean classical Spanish guitar in a clean, accurate, sensitive style. Margaret Jackson makes her violin sing in several languages, and occasionally swaps it for a viola.

 

The programme started with two Tom (“Girl from Ipanema”) Jobim numbers including the unforgettable “Desafinado” (Out of Tune), which warbles along just off the key until the resolution in the very last bar.

 

From there we were treated to a varied programme of Latin jazz, gypsy, and flamenco styles, plus straight classical, a piece written by the Jacksons themselves, and others such as Kreisler and Kern.

 

For my money, the pick of this bunch was a flawless rendition of Astor Piazolla’s “Café 1930” from his “History of the Tango” sequence.

 

An enthusiastic audience insisted on an encore: after the signature first three notes, we were floated away on the warm feelings of Joel Garner’s classic “Misty”.

 

The concert was held in the recently opened Fourth Wall Theatre, and its perfect acoustics, and the café-style accommodation for up to 100 people.

 

Next time the Duo Jackson comes within driving distance, you’ll need to be early to book your tickets.

 

Superb event management was by Dominique Blatti for the Taranaki Classical Guitar Society.  Watch for more concerts January 2014 in connection with the Taranaki Guitar Summer School at http://www.taranakisummerschool.com/.

More about my first home

When I was about six years old, we inherited an old sheepdog called Joe from an uncle of Dad’s, who had had a farmlet at Takanini. Joe was too old to work any longer, but he would come with me when I walked to music lessons at the home of my teacher, Josie Goodsir, about half a mile from our home, and sit patiently outside while my lesson went on, and then accompany me home again.

 

 

All that lost hair!

My Gaze grandparents lived in Bellevue Road in Mt Eden. I often stayed there, and got to know that area well too.

 

The house had been built in the 1890s and renovated in the thirties.  It is still almost exctly as they altered it then, at least on the outside.

Their house was in walking distance of the city, and close to Valley Road shopping centre. It had a park over the side street, so they had a view right over Auckland to the Waitakere ranges.

 

We would sit in the sunny window seat in their living-room and read from their stock of National Geographic magazines.

 

In the early morning you could hear the milkman coming with his horse and cart down Bellevue Road with the milk.

 

A few times we would visit the original Gaze home, half-way down Franklin Road in Freeman’s Bay. It was a standard late nineteenth century four-roomed cottage, with an old well in the back yard, one of the three original houses in the street, built in 1867, the year Grandpa was born. (It is still there, No 43, though much altered, and takes part in the famous lighting display each Christmas).

 

When I was a child it was used by two of my father’s unmarried aunts, both older sisters of Grandpa (Fred). Auntie Millie was a quiet old-fashioned lady who died in her eighties. Auntie Lizzie was much more lively and lived until 96. She visited us at Papatoetoe for a stay when she was not well around 1945, and I remember her telling me her favourite dessert was peaches and cream.

 

Lizzie had memories of walking up the Franklin Road hill to the Grey Lynn farm over Ponsonby Road to buy the family’s milk when she was a girl.

 

The Big Day Off

The Big Day Off, sponsored by a group of unions, was held at the PukeAriki Landing in central New Plymouth to celebrate Labour Day

See http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/9335477/Hundreds-get-together-for-Big-Day-Off-fun

Marie Ardern, Lorna Fawkner and Ruth Pfister selling toffee-apples, drinks, and muffins at the Labour Electorate Committee stall

EPMU stall beside the bouncy castle.

Andrew Little, MP

 

Bruce Hammonds chatting with me beside the LEC stall. You can read Bruce's blog at:http://leading-learning.blogspot.co.nz/2013/10/what-do-your-students-know-about.html

Even more early memories

Julia Gaze and me

It is school holidays, and we are staying, as we often do, with Granny and Grandpa Gaze at their Milford bach. Outside the window a tui is singing in a kowhai tree.  Grandpa is showing us where to look to catch sight of the big black bird with the white feathers at its throat.

At night we watch from the same window to see the Rangitoto lighthouse show its red light every fifteen seconds, and Grandpa teaches us to count:” higgeldy-piggeldy one, higgeldy-piggeldy two” and so on, and sure enough at “higgeldy-piggeldy fifteen” the light appears again.

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It is a special Sunday morning and we are going to church with Granny and Grandpa to their church, the Baptist Tabernacle in Queen Street.  The organ is playing and the choir singing.  We are all in our best clothes. The church is full, ground floor and gallery. The seats are not pews, but individual wooden chairs with woven cane seats you can stick your fingers through. Each seat has a wire loop for the communion glass.  We all stand and sing: “All hail the power of Jesu’s name!” and the music is deafening. I stand on the seat so I can see everything.

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Fred Gaze and me

It is my birthday and Granny and Grandpa Gaze have come for my party. I am five and have been at school now for a month or two. We are expecting Grandpa Bigelow to arrive on the tram any minute, so Dad decides to take Grandpa’s car to meet him at the tram stop.

We travel to the first stop towards town where we stop the tram and Grandpa gets off, carrying what seems to me to be a huge brown-paper covered parcel, all beautifully wrapped and neatly tied with string, as Grandpa always does. It takes a long time, because Grandpa has had his knee fused so walks only slowly and with a limp.

 

When we get grandpa and the parcel home, Grandpa Gaze guesses it must be a big box of chocolates.

 

At last, after an interminable wait, I am allowed to open the brown paper, and find a collection of boxes, each with an item of a Hornby train in it. Together we all assemble the clockwork train with its oval layout, together with two sets of points, and get the train going around the track, to everyone’s great delight.

 

My pleasure is dampened a little because my two grandfathers and my father are so keen to help I can’t get my hands on the train for myself!

 

However, after they have all gone home, and Daddy has gone to work, I can play with it myself. There are 16 curved rails and six straight ones, two sets of points, both right and left hand. There is an engine, coal-tender, three carriages and a guard’s van, and a green tunnel.

 

It is fun, but not as much fun as the electric train set at our friends’ house in Mt Roskill.  The friends are Geoff and Hal Coop. Their father has died and they only have a Mummy, who is a friend of my parents, who help her.

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It is the middle of the night and I am awake and frightened and confused. Sirens are sounding from the city and searchlights are playing on the low clouds. All of this is very clear, because my bed has been moved out tonight on to the open verandah, newly built at the end of my bedroom. I start to cry and my parents come and shift bed and bedding back into my room and shut the French doors to shut out the noise and the lights, so I can go back to sleep. Next day the new radio is playing, unusually, because Mummy wants to hear the news. She is worried. 

Pearl Harbour, 7 December 1941, less than a month after my eighth birthday.

Current reading

My wife, Margaret, and I regularly read books one after the other. This post looks at four we have recently read or are reading at present.

This book edited by Max Rashbrooke is a compilation of chapters by a panel of interesting people. The Taranaki Daily News today has a full-page description of it. You can read it at http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/9330215/All-things-being-unequal

The main thesis of the book is that the biggest problem facing our society at present is the widening disparity of incomes. And it is a problem because a lot of research has been done, which shows clearly that the whole society suffers from this inequality, not just those at the bottom end. But it does affect the poorer members especially, because it makes them feel powerless, and as if they have no real place in the society. Ultimately, this is the sort of attitude which leads to social unrest and revolutions.

It analyses the causes of this widening gap, and suggests paths to the reversal of the process.

We have both felt for some time that inequality of incomes is the No 1 issue facing our community and our leaders this year - this decade.

The best chapters in the book are by three people who clearly have fire in their bellies about the issue: Karlo Mila, with his chapter called "Only one deck"; Evan Te Ahu Poata-Smith, "Inequality and Maori"; and Paul Barber, "Reducing inequality".

I believe there are conditions which would help this process: a return to fairer and more universal/collective bargaining between employers and workers over wages and salaries - in other words, moves towards compulsory membership of unions and employer organisations. We are only going to solve our problems by talking with each other.

In many ways this is a similar book: it is edited by an old colleague, vivian Hutchinson. It is a compilation of contributions by a variety of people who can all be grouped under the general description of "social entrepreneur".

They range from vivian himself, through Campbell Roberts of the Salvation Army, Kim Workman on the Prison Fellowship, to Robin Allison of Ranui's Earthsong community.

In this case, the contributions have been worked into the total fabric of the book in a way that makes them more even in weight. So you get more of a sense of unity in what the book is driving at.

Just as well, because the concept is not as easy to define or describe as inequality!

This is a different type of book, much lighter, written by one author, and definitely fiction!

Kay is a friend of ours, who sets out to tell a story of how a group of women manipulate a man of their acquaintance.

We both enjoyed the idea of the book and the twist towards the end; and we could see real parallels with our shared experiences of working in a political party at the local level, as we have done with Kay.

We didn't recognise ourselves among the characters, but we did catch glimpses of people we thought we knew.

If you are looking for entertainment, this may just be your cup of tea.

Margaret hasn't caught the Bernard Cornwell bug yet, but I have. Whether it is about the Peninsular Campaign in the Napoleonic Wars (Sharpe series), eighteenth century India, the US Civil War, or historical battles like Agincourt, I am likely to bring the book back from the library.

Cornwell knows how to put a tale together, he knows how to write dialogue that convinces, and he can delineate credible characters, which add up to good writing of novels.

This one is from pre-history, set in Arthurian England. My only problem is making sure I can pronounce all the Welsh (or really British) names. 

In the past I also enjoyed Cornwell's series about King Alfred, and the years following his times when the Saxons were struggling with the Danish invaders for the control of large parts of England.

Writers who can produce many stories in the same series, such as Cornwell, are a great boon to readers, who know they will enjoy reading the next book to come out. I have found Patrick O'Brian (Master and Commander), Ken Follett, and Edward Rutherfurd belong to this group.

Now there are some suggestions for you!

Early memories: where were they set?

An early colour slide of Olly and me

My earliest memories are of events around my first home, at Ruarangi Road, Mt Albert. The House was built for my parents when they married in 1932, a gift from Fred and Julia. It perched on the side of the hill at Mt Albert, looking east over Mt Roskill and Three Kings, and north over Mt Eden to the city.

The right-of-way at the cul-de-sac end of Ruarangi Road, was a walkway down the hill to Mt Albert Rd to provide a short cut to the Owairaka tram terminus.

Lunch with the builders

The original house had two rooms in front, one the master bedroom and the other our “sitting-room”, which had a small sunporch on the front. Behind the sitting-room was the kitchen, with its modern electric stove and an alcove for meals looking out to the east. Behind this was the bathroom and wash-house. In the fourth corner was a second bedroom; the front door, porch and steps were between the two bedrooms.

When I was quite young, the house was extended with the building of a family room/lounge at the back.  I had lunch each day on the site with the builder’s gang. At the same time the back verandah was widened and enclosed to form another bedroom for me, when Olwyn grew old enough to need a room of her own.

Later still, an open verandah was built on the end of my room, with French doors opening on to it. There was no outside access to this verandah; it was half a storey off the ground.

There were several empty sections in our street, but over the road from us lived Reg Barker, one of Dad’s closest friends, and his wife and twin daughters, who were around Olwyn’s age. An area below the street, bounded on two sides by the right-of-way, was used as sites for early state houses.

There was an empty section to the west of us, and when the war came, my Dad dug a dugout and covered it with corrugated iron for an air-raid shelter. It became a favourite play area.

At a later time he put up a swing in the back yard, on which we had many happy hours of play.

No 248, a regular on our route (photo MOTAT)

I loved travelling to town on the tram; I would sit in the front side seat and watch the motorman through the glass doors. From there I could see the points change when it came to a junction. I studied the map and learned all the routes.

More Early Memories

We are in the sunporch. Mummy is sitting in the sun, with the baby (Olwyn) on her knee, feeding her. It is warm and pleasant. Mummy is singing popular songs to us. Ones like: “Tip-toe through the tulips” and “I’ve told every little star”.

Before her marriage, Mum and her sister, Win, had a collection of popular records (vinyls) to play on Grandpa’s wind-up gramophone.

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I am in bed with Mummy and Daddy; it is Saturday morning, the best time in the week. Daddy doesn’t have to go to work on Saturdays now (because the Government has passed a law making Saturday a full holiday). Daddy has his knees up and I slide down his legs. He turns me upside down.

Then he gets the paper from the gate, and shows me the comic strips at the bottom of the back page: Bringing up Father, and the Katzenjammer Kids.

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Mummy is teaching us a new song, and showing us how to do the actions. (It is an old version of what we would now call “the Hoky-Toky”). The words go like this:

Hi for Onomy-Conomy

Hi for Onony-Shoe

Hi for Onomy-Conomy

And all the children too.

Put your left leg in,

Put your left leg out,

Shake it a little, a little, a little,

And turn yourself about.

As I now understand it, this was a traditional song Mum had learned from her grandmother, Felicia Robinson, nee Tremain, whose original home was the village of Egloshayle, near Wadebridge in northern Cornwall.

Egloshayle, Cornwall, UK

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There is a feeling of tension in the air. Mummy and Daddy have moved their bed out of their bedroom, and brought the dining-table in there. This is so the doctor can use it. He is coming to take out Olwyn’s adenoids, which are stopping her breathing properly. He and a nurse will do the operation on the table; Mummy and Daddy will help him. I have to stay in the other room and keep very quiet so the doctor can do his work.

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We are at Sunday School at our church in Taumata Road, Sandringham.  We have just lit the candles to celebrate the birthday of one of the “primary” children, and now we are singing “Hear the pennies dropping” as the collection is taken up.

The teacher is my mother, with a couple of teenage girls helping her.

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Watch for these!

26 October (Saturday)

MONDAY, 28th, Labour Day celebrations at Puke Ariki Landing, New Plymouth

FRIDAY, 1 November, I am organising a collection point at our local supermarket for the Foundation of the Blind Appeal.

Also FRIDAY: we start volunteering at HURWORTH COTTAGE, Taranaki's only Historic Places Trust property, which is open for visits during the Taranaki Garden Festival.

We'll be reporting as they happen!

Background

Note: Posts in this style are to provide current background information for casual readers.

 This is the house we live in in New Plymouth, New Zealand.

It was designed by a locally famous architect, Frank messenger, about 1902, and built a year or two later (records were lost in a fire in the twenties).

Thirty years ago it was moved a few metres back on the land, repiled, reroofed, rewired, and the return verandah added.

The kauri frame, floorboards, some weatherboards, the front sash windows, front room ceilings, some internal doors and a few walls are still original, but much alteration has taken place.

Our location is close to the Central Business District of the city. Macdonalds is two minutes' walk, several supermarkets are within five minutes, banks, shopping, library, cinema, and other amenities are 10 or 15 minutes away.

What we pay in extra rates for living near the centre of town is more than made up by the reduction in petrol costs over a few months.

New Plymouth
is a rural city of around 50,000 people, with the only port on the west coast of New Zealand.

Major industries are dairying, oil and gas, forestry, engineering.

Photograph by Glen Coates, Kahu Publishing, www.kahupublishing.co.nz

The district takes its name from the prominent volcanic cone, Taranaki, around 2500 metres high.

Early Memories

At eye level, to my left, gold letters on a leather satchel, carried by my father, containing my things. I am holding his hand while he guides me over the rough overgrown ground of the sloping track that leads between high hedges, from our house in Ruarangi Road to Mt Albert Road, where we will catch the tram at the Owairaka shops on our way to stay with Granny and Grandpa and Auntie Dot. 

Early June 1936

Gaze grandparents with Olly and me.

At our front door, the silhouette of a lady dressed in black with a black hat, being greeted by Mummy. She is Mummy’s granny, come to talk to us. 

Anne Bigelow, nee Brown

It is early afternoon. I am standing in my cot, trying to bite the painted wooden rail at the top of the cot-side.  I have removed my dirty nappy and spread poohs all over the cot, the wall, and myself. I can taste the painted wood, feel its solidity, and smell the poohs still. 

Just at this point my mother brought a group of friends to see the toddler!

I am standing beside the kitchen cupboards below the bench and sink in our house on the slope of Mt Albert. I can see the edge of the bench above my head height to my right. Mummy and Daddy are doing the dishes and talking, unintelligibly to me, to each other. It is evening and the room is full of electric light. 

I can feel the rough velvet of the car seat on my legs and smell that musty odour of a car locked up all night. Through the front windscreen I can see a patch of sky, with red, white and blue flags stretched across it. Beside me, my father’s bulk, unusual on a weekday. 

Dominion Road on Coronation Day, 12 May 1937, in my grandparents’ car. Contrast with Anzac Day, a few days before, which they tell me happens every year. To see what else was going on that day, go to Papers Past and look up the Auckland Star for that afternoon!

It is a wet day.  From the window in the alcove in our kitchen, where we eat our meals, we can look down on the countryside from Mt Albert to Mt Roskill, and everywhere there are big ponds of water.

Public life

The most public event of my lifetime was the 9/11 attack on the twin towers in New York. Only the John Kennedy assassination or the dropping of the first atomic bomb came close.

A few days after that September morning, we attended a conference of the Sea of Faith, and one of the sessions was about liturgies, formal celebrations of religious belief, led by our friends Ian and Jill Harris.

A day or two later I wrote a poem called "After the Liturgy", which was intended to be public poetry, to be read in a loud declamatory voice, to a large crowd, in a public place. Here it is:

AFTER THE LITURGY

Mould a new sign in the metal

Keep the silver of the burning bush

Keep the chalice at the cathedral door

Keep the cross on the altar

On the minaret the crescent, and the trident on the temple

Keep over all a golden dome;

          Let it show

The steel form of a tall building

And the aluminium shadow of a plane.

Keep the aluminium from touching the steel

Corrosion will destroy them both

We will forget our future

No longer free to dream of our past.

Chisel a new sign in the wood

Not a hero of exploration

Or a warrior from the battle

Holding up his mere in victory

Even a sage koumatua openmouthed

Cannot find the korero for this occasion.

          Carve them all

Silent, still, amazed.

History is dumb to show us a parallel.

Did you feel the foundations move,

The lurch of the stricken world

Taking the breath from our lungs?

Weave a new sign in the flax

Set it up on the walls of the house

Between the posts burnt black

And below the smoke-singed backbone.

          Let it stand

In the heart of our ancestor

Bearing witness to the conflict

Between the patriarch and the young woman,

Between the high fortress and the open plain,

Between the Word and the music of love.

The map has not been drawn that can point the way.

Make a new moko in the flesh

Wear it where the tears

And worry furrows of the face

Mingle with the whakapapa.

My ancestor never knew

He did not foresee

A new line has begun

To enclose the genealogies

Of all the whanau of the earth.

          Let it show

The dream curling around my ear

Pointing straight to the centre of your tongue.

Write a new sign on the page

Set it on the stand for all to see

While they tune their voices of wire

While they adjust their instruments of brass

Before the baton rises and the overture begins

When the world is hushed before an existential moment.

          Let it show

An Iraqi child on a leaky boat south of Java

A Palestinian student caught in Bethlehem crossfire

The banner of a Belfast wall

The graffiti across the boulevard from Makati.

Crush it to a powder and post it to the militarists

In their five-sided towers

So that they catch the fever of peace.

Carve a new sign in the rock

Set it up on the edges of the world

Beyond the line of boundary markers

And the wall built by the emperor to

Keep out the barbarian hordes

Far from the fallen obelisks

And the debris of crumbling pyramids

The sphinxes and the triumphal arches

Oozing and weeping for their glories;

          Let it show

A woman twisting her broken body

Around the figure of a child.

                                                          --Sept 2001

Since then I have been jotting down memories of my earlier life, and some of them I will post in the next blog.

Till then, kia ora!

Introductory

Wednesday, 23 October 2013

Introductory

I am starting this blog as a project to celebrate my 80th birthday, which falls on 12 November 2013.

Eighty years was never in my future plans! but I am here and have to come to terms with it.

The plans for this blog include some scribbles I have made over the last decade, memories of my former years. I hope it will also include a selection of poetry I have written; and thoughts on a variety of subjects.  I also plan a large section on the family history, to which I invite my relatives to contribute. And perhaps along the way it will develop into more of a standard blog, commenting on current events in the life of the community I live in.

To encourage readers to check regularly, I will publish one of my poems each month, so watch this site!