An apology

 You will have noticed a big gap in this blog.

I really have no excuse, except that we have been busy with the run-up to Christmas.

But last week I had a minor stroke (TIA) and after 24 hours in hospital am recovering well. I am having to learn to walk again, as the main effect of the incident was a tendency to drag my left foot, probably because that hip is weak from arthritis. So please foregive my silence!

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At the Boxing Day sales I spotted a book I was keen to read at a ridiculously low price: Passchendaele, by Nigel Steel and Peter Hart. I lost no time in starting to read it.

I have read a few books on the wars, especially the First World War, in the last months, but this is really the one I have been looking for, because of the knowledge that Passchendaele was the greatest disaster in New Zealand history, in terms of numbers killed.

By quoting extensively from reports, letters and diaries, Steel and Hart manage to paint a vivid picture of the fighting in Flanders between July and November of 1917. They show clearly the strategic issues including the disagreements among the Field Marshals and between them and the disunited politicians in London.

They also give a clear blow by blow account of the tactical movements in the battles as they unfolded, and the developments in planning, training and operations as the fight dragged on. They also convey vividly the experience of the front line, infantry, artillery, signallers, officers, Padres, stretcher-bearers, flyers, and so on. Especially one gets a clear, overwhelming impression of the terrible conditions imposed by the exceptionally bad weather over all but one of those months.

I cannot imagine how anyone with any shred of humanity, or morality, or Christianity could issue the orders to cause a war like the one described here, or could dream of carrying out such a command.

And it beggars belief that the German nation, with its heritage of philosophy, ethics and religion, could allow, even encourage the Nazi leadership to do so again within 20 years. Or that many in the Allied nations could be again Gung- ho about the second war.

Those who claim to be Christian and demand war in defence of their side have not the faintest idea of either war or Christianity. One of the most telling comments from the book is from a soldier who found a German prayer book in the mud and discovered a picture of Christ with a dying soldier in it was exactly the same as in his own prayer book.

War corrupts all humanity,

morality and religion.  This book has certainly underlined my longstanding pacifist views.

Anniversary

Today (Tuesday 24th) is the anniversary of Judy's death.

It is 42 years since my elder daughter died three days before her fourteenth birthday.

I have now lived longer after her passing than I did before it.

Here she is a few months earlier in her school uniform and the wig she wore after her hair was shaved to facilitate the radiotherapy treatment.

She would have been 56 on 27 November.

I miss her every day.

But now, instead, I have a younger daughter who is energetic, conscientious, altruistic, empathetic, thoughtful, kind and loving like her sister.

And I have four beautiful granddaughters, each one very much in control of her own life, intelligent, enterprising, generous, encouraging, and affectionate in her own unique way.

Julia

Nina

Penny

Carys

Sophie

The problem of Auckland

Staying in Auckland for a few days this week has reminded me again of what a problem modern cities present.

If we are to survive as a race on this planet we will have to solve this problem.

I refer to the unsustainable way we devote space and resources to our daily activities.

Take roading for example. Huge amounts of space are invested in roading systems so that hundreds of thousands of people can travel, one person per car most of the time, one way in the morning and the other way in the late afternoon. Whereas if we could organise our society in flexible working hours, we could get by with much less space devoted to roading.

And half a century ago Ivan Illich worked out that if we totalled all the time spent on roads and vehicles and their fuel, and compared that with the total distance travelled by everyone, the resulting average would be walking speed. I have never seen anyone since who had an answer for that. Illich had a simple low-tech solution, similar to Gandhi's ideas; but no- one has ever been really interested. We're all too seduced by ideas of progress and technology.

But this is only one example. Schools, sports fields, and commercial buildings, which are only used a few hours a day, or a few days per week, are another example of poor investment planning.

In this world of strictly limited resources, especially space, areas left unused for any length of time represent poor management of the planet.

But there does not seem to be any interest in improving this situation: we keep building out into the countryside, when a better solution would be to concentrate population and preserve as much agricultural land as possible for growing food. In fact, housing should really be on otherwise waste space, like high altitudes, over shallow water, and so on.

What do others think?

Two interesting books

I have been reading two books this week, one fiction, one claiming to be non-fiction. There is a common theme to them.

The novel is Ernest Hemingway's The sun also rises, his first. I had read For whom the bell tolls, A call to arms, and The old man and the sea many years ago and enjoyed them, as much for their realistic reporting as for their novelistic qualities. 

The sun also rises is about a group of young affluent Americans living in Europe between the world wars. The title is a literal translation of a French phrase: Le soleil aussi se leve, with the implication that with each change in circumstances people go on making the same old mistakes, and the sun just keeps on rising exactly the same.

You keep hoping that Mike will sober up and make a decision about his planned marriage, that Cohn will stop following the heroine around like a puppy-dog, that she will not fall madly in love with the next handsome man she meets. But none of these things happen, and although the characters move out of Paris to Pamplona to see the running of the bulls, a new location doesn't mean new behaviours.

"Toujours ca change, toujours c'est la meme chose" is also a theme of the other book: Roland Perry's The queen, her lover and the most notorious spy in history. The main character is Queen Victoria, but the book is really a history of the private lives of the Royal Family from 1835 for about 100 years.

After Princess Victoria has an affair with a handsome young Guards Officer in her teens, she is married off by her family to Albert. After Albert's death, and the death of her lover, she meets John Brown and has a relationship like Lady Chatterley (remember the film, Mrs Brown, with Billy Connolly). Later still, after Brown dies, she falls for an Indian language teacher.

The Family seems to alternate between characters like Victoria who can't get enough sex but still make a positive contribution in other ways, (Edward VII, Edward VIII) and strait-laced people like Albert, (George V, George VI) who have a different set of positive qualities and weaknesses.

Victoria and her eldest daughter Vicky (mother of Kaiser Wilhelm II) maintained a massive correspondence for many years, building up an archive of thousands of letters, sometimes as many as four in a day. Vicky had them stored in her home in Germany, but wanted them returned to Britain because they were thought to be extremely dangerous if they became public knowledge.

This is where the spy comes in, being commissioned to retrieve the letters after World War II and enable them to be kept safe on British soil.

What Hemingway observed in his young compatriots in Paris in the twenties, Perry seems to find also recurring in the Royal Family over a century and more. A fascinating comparison!

Sketching this month

I have been staying with my sister while she recuperates from a spell in hospital. Some kind friend had sent these flowers to cheer her up, and they certainly did that. They were also an interesting subject for my acrylics.

Ten days ago our sketching group met at Marsland Hill in the centre of New Plymouth and sketched the city through the view shafts available. If you look carefully you can just make out the Len Lye Centre behind the town clock in this version.

Then again, here is the view of two features on the top of the hill: the carillon on the left, and a memorial from the Land Wars on the right.

Here is another acrylic, this time of cyclamen in flower, again from my sister's home.

And this is a view of the house we lived in in Westown. I had morning tea with the acquaintance who built it and developed the garden, and showed him the sketch and we discussed the house and the contribution each of us had made to its development.

Gallipoli

The book by Les Carlyon

If there is one thing I have learned from this book, it is this: War is an exceptional circumstance, and to pursue it successfully needs some exceptional people with exceptional training and exceptional equipment. In history these three seem to come together very rarely. I hope all political leaders know it as well! And that they realise exceptional people don't occur more than once in each generation.

I had heard the usual story that Gallipoli was a matter of brave and dogged Anzac troops being let down badly by bungling British Officers. After reading Carlyon's version I'm not sure who to blame: but it certainly isn't the rank and file soldier from any country including the Turks.

Certainly most of the generals were incompetent, or lazy, or ill, or shell-shocked, or too institutionalised to tell their superiors the truth. At least one was eccentric or insane; he certainly seems to have been away with the fairies most of the time, until he was finally sacked.

I had known about the landings at Anzac, where the Aussies and NZers got holed up by the Turkish guns on the ridge-tops. What I didn't know was that there were also landings further north at Suvla Bay and further south at the tip of the peninsula, and both involved Anzac troops, as well as Brits, Indians, French and so on. These other beachheads were just as much a failure as the Anzac one.

First because of poor planning, from Downing Street on down. When Plan A failed miserably, the commanders used it again the next day, and the third, losing hundreds each time.

Secondly because of lack of equipment, food, and medical facilities. One general cabled the War Office for more ammunition and was told in effect: this campaign was not planned on the basis that you sit tight and adopt a defensive position. Get up and start moving!

Thirdly because of impossible terrain, where units on the ground got hopelessly lost in broad daylight.

Fourthly because of the old ships the Navy was using in support off-shore, and the admirals' reluctance to take real risks to support army units even in dire situations.

But fundamentally the problems were that everyone was still scrambling to catch up with technological advances. Generals who had trained in the nineteenth century were unfamiliar with twentieth century equipment - and so on.

And it wasn't solved even then. Another book I am reading deals with the Cassino battles in World War II, and it is becoming increasingly clear that even by 1944 there was still a gap between what some modern weapons systems could do and what the humans trying to run the battles understood.

It all does nothing to convince me that war is worthwhile!

An interesting day

Parihaka Day, 2015

It has been a beautiful, cool, sunny day in Taranaki.

The Len Lye Centre is showing the film of The Children of Parihaka to celebrate Parihaka Day, which remembers the Parihaka Incident of 5 November 1881. So I walked along to the 11 am session.

The new little cinema at the Len Lye was only a third full, which was disappointing.

This film is an account of a tour by the Kura Kaupapa Maori from Parihaka of the sites where men who were arrested and imprisoned without trial in 1881 were kept locked up, some of them for 19 years, and all in a way we would regard as unconstitutional. Certainly there was no Habeas Corpus for them, inspite of the promise in the Treaty.

The children visited the prisons at Mt Cook in Wellington, Addington and Lyttelton Harbour in Christchurch, and Dunedin. They saw  roads, stone walls, causeways, stop-banks and harbour works that had been built by the Parihaka prisoners, and graves where they had been buried.

What was not included was the treatment of the Parihaka leaders, Tohu and Te Whiti, who were kept under house arrest in Nelson, far from their families and from any other prisoners in the South Island.

Every New Zealander should know this story thoroughly; this film is one way into it. I hope the apology from the Government planned next year will include some real action to make the apology meaningful, such as 5 November being declared Parihaka Day.

Garden Festival

This week is the Taranaki Garden Spectacular, so we visited two gardens in the afternoon. Both were in Waitara, along the road that leads to the school where our grandchildren go.

We had visited both before, with Ruby, so this time we took an old friend of 95, who coped with the walking and the getting in and out of the car as well as I did.

As we learned during our visits, this is the last year for both gardens. The first is a cottage garden with masses of colourful flowers backed by beautiful rhododendrons and roses and fully grown trees behind that. There are corners with hostas, and corners with ceramic art, a vegetable patch, several water features. One whole area around the swimming pool featured flowers and furniture in bright primary colours: yellow, blue and red.

The second garden was similar in size, and featured collected items of old farming equipment, fewer flowers and more greenery, again lots of mature trees, a maple studded Japanese garden, a red phone booth and letter-box, several old street signs, and a museum shed or two filled with more agricultural implements like scythes, seed-drills, horse-collars, cross-cut saws and so on.

The gardener was Pat Wood, a former colleague of mine at Friends Plus; they plan to stop the garden openings after this year.

Turkish cuisine

In the evening a friend visiting from England took us to dinner at a local Turkish restaurant for meze and iskanders, chicken and lamb. 

The food was superb and the conversation interesting and varied. Our friend has a son and daughter-in-law in Turkey, and has recently visited Oregon, so there was plenty to discuss.

What a variety of cultural experiences for one bright Spring day!

The Good, the Bad and the....?

I have been reading

As I said before, Killing Patton has been on my list. It is a fourth book by O'Neill and his co-writer Dugard with similar titles: Killing Kennedy, Killing Lincoln, Killing Jesus.

I found Killing Patton very unsatisfactory by the finish. There is no clear evidence one way or the other, and no attempt to draw any conclusion, just a series of suggestions and innuendoes.

On the way to the finish, there were interesting descriptions of the action in the last months of the European war in the sector Patton was responsible for, and a clear enough picture of the sort of man he was, together with some doubts cast on the contributions of some other leaders in the same fight.

But what I thought was going to be the presentation and elucidation of a mystery turned out to be a fizzer.

Which is more than could even be said for another story I endured this week.

Yesterday morning we went to morning tea at the local multiplex cinema, where we have joined the oldies cinema club. Then we watched "The Dressmaker" in a packed theatre. Four of us were men, and some of the ladies enjoyed the film immensely because of the wide variety of features it displayed.

Again I had expected an explanation of a mystery death: we got that. But there were several loose ends and no attempt to tie them up, even with a very long anticlimax, taking all of the second half of the film, about the dressmaker's skills and how she fought her way back towards the good graces of the tiny rural Australian community.

So the film really fell apart into two halves: the story of the death and the circumstances leading up to that, and the contemporary (early fifties) relationship between the heroine and the rest, which was at the level of farce.

The dialogue was ordinary, the acting apart from Kate Winslet was amateur, the story as I have said was incomplete. I admit to falling asleep a couple of times. 

The real value is in being able to compare a really faulty work of art with other better ones.

Now I'm reading Les Carlyon's book on Gallipoli; this time it's the message not the messenger that worries me. Watch this space!

Waterloo

I have been reading....

Bernard Cornwell's Waterloo, which is the third version of this great battle I have read in recent years.

The first was the intriguing story of Captain William Siborne. In 1830 he got approval to build a model of the battlefield, and did a vast amount of research in preparation. He wrote to the surviving officers and asked them to tell him where they and their units were late in the afternoon of that 18th June in 1815.

The archive of their letters, with the model Siborne constructed of the battle, constitute the best record of any similar historical event.

Siborne's research suggested that a couple of days before Wellington was hanging about in Brussels when he should have been on the move south to intercept Napoleon's army marching north to defeat him. By the time Siborne was building his model, Wellington was Prime Minister of the UK and so in a powerful position to protect his reputation.

Siborne's project was held up until 1838, when it went on display for 1 shilling a time. Siborne never recouped his expenses, and spent the rest of his life trying to get the army to reimburse him.

I cannot remember the title or author of the second version of the battle I read; it was good on detail but hopeless at giving me a clear overall picture.

There were good accounts of the smaller battles within the main fight: Hougoumount Farm, the French cavalry charge, and some of the skirmishing between Napoleon's troops and the Prussian army coming to help Wellington.

But it is only now that I have read the Cornwell version that I have understood that the battle consisted of three phases: the jockeying for position the day before; the effect of the wet weather which delayed Napoleon's attack until nearly midday; and the battle proper in the afternoon.

I was also glad to find Cornwell had included mention of the contribution of a person with a well-known name in New Zealand: Hussey Vivian. Wellingtonians know Vivian Street, and many New Plymouth residents drive along their own Vivian  Street every day. Vivian was a member of the boards of both the Plymouth Company and the New Zealand Company, being an MP representing the Cornwall and Devon region.

In 1815 he was a young general leading a light cavalry brigade, and their contribution was crucial at a late stage of the battle in swinging the tide more favourably to Wellington's side. In the 1830s he was Master of the Ordnance, ie Minister in charge of the department that ensured the supply of big guns for the army and employed the crew of surveyors who drew the maps as the "Ordnance Survey" of potential battlefields.

Vivian therefore knew about a young surveyor from his part of the country who had made a good job of surveying some of the industrial towns in the Midlands ready for the first democratic elections after the Reform Act of 1832: Frederic Carrington, who was eventually sent to New Zealand to select a site and do the original plan for the town of New Plymouth.

Now I'm reading.....

Killing Patton

but more about that later!

Safety for Toddlers

I note that Kidsafe is campaigning for us all to back out of our garages more carefully to bring down the numbers of accidents to toddlers in driveways.

There is another tactic which would be effective too: Back in, Drive out.

When you jump into your car to rush off, you are not focussing on the driving, but when you come home you are more likely to be concentrating.

Before backing into your drive or garage, you automatically see the way clear before you change direction.

To reinforce this change in everyone’s habits, councils and private park operators should repaint angle parking areas so the rule becomes BACK IN, DRIVE OUT everywhere, not just in parallel parks.

This simple change should reduce the accident rate by half at least. 

More charcoal

This week's sketches

Encouraged by one of the newer members of our sketching group at U3A, I have been working on my skills using charcoal pencil this week, and as my best critic (Margaret) says, the result is an immediate improvement in liveliness of the sketches.

Many of them come from photos in the newspaper, which do not depend on the weather.

On the left is one of Vladimir Putin.

Then there are three from photos in the paper another day, and below on the right a portrait of a South Taranaki resident who is turning 100.

Then there was a shot of this year's capping procession by the staff and students from the Western Institute of Technology here in New Plymouth.

And from the travel pages, a shot of a cottage on a remote island off the Irish coast.

But I have also kept up the watercolours as well.

This is based on a photo taken when we were in Europe a few years ago. 

This is the formal garden in a courtyard of the buildings known as Generalife at the Alhambra in Granada. This was the private part of the palaces, set aside for the Royal Family away from the ceremonial rooms for the administration of the kingdom.

A fascinating scene

Sketching this week 

has included another effort to depict that house on the Chatham Islands that I tried in pastels in a previous post.

This time I tried a watercolour version:

And then for good measure a simple pencil sketch:

This morning, with the sun shining and the wind dropped, I set out early. My drivers licence expires in a few weeks, as happens every two years at my age, and I was headed for the AA office in town to renew it. 

Fortunately the doctor had no qualms about Oking it last week so there was no problem.

A few metres from the AA building I stopped by a small reserve, named in honour of Sir Victor Davies, New Plymouth's leading horticulturalist of the last century, and sketched the view down the street. I was leaning on the brick wall and looking into the sunshine.

 On Friday we had the fortnightly meeting of our U3A Sketching Group. We met at the zoo, where we found some interesting sights to sketch.

Among the inhabitants is this Yellow-crested Cockatoo, which kept saying "Hullo Charlie" the whole time I was sitting nearby sketching the scene.

When I left he farewelled me with "Bye-bye Charlie".

A short way away was the children's playground and behind that a large aviary with lots of exotic birds flying about.

I took a few more photos, including one of some of my colleagues. You can see more of the playground. The other sketchers are disguised as flax bushes!

Here is one of my sketches of the scene. The corner of the aviary is in the corner of my sketch. Unfortunately I was too far away to catch the birds!

Next time our meeting is going to concentrate on drawing crowds of people, basing our work on a seminar from the recent Sketching Symposium held in Singapore and reported on the internet.

So we are all going to be practising sketching body shapes and portraits.

Here is one I tried a few days ago from a photo in the newspaper.

I must keep practising so as to be ready for our meeting!

A good movie

Yesterday we watched a good movie at the cinema complex here.

In the morning we joined the Memory Walk organised by the Alzheimers Society. It was cold and windy, and there had been rain recently, but lots of others braved the weather with us, including Richard Faull, New Zealand's leading brain researcher. He was educated first at Tikorangi School, where Carys and Spencer go.

Saturday evening we joined another crowd who listened spell-bound to his lecture in the Boys High School Hall. We heard about the latest research on the brain, including ideas like keeping our brains active to stave off dementia; if we slow the onset by five years we save 50% of the numbers suffering from dementia in a few years' time.

After all the excitement of the walk on Sunday morning we had lunch at the Art Cafe, run by our friend Sally Johnson. In the later afternoon we walked back to town to see the "Everest" movie.

This spectacular film tells the story of the disastrous 1996 climb managed by New Zealanders Rob Hall and Andy Harris, in which both of them and several others of the party lost their lives. At that time we were just getting friendly with Andy's parents, who had just come to live here.

A few years later we read Jon Krakauer's book, Into Thin Air, which tells his version of events. Krakauer was a reporter who was a member of the ill-fated expedition.

The impact of the film is due to the careful planning, photography and direction, which make the story pretty clear, and give us a good feel of the conditions on the mountain on the day of the ascent.

Teams shot the sequences in Nepal, Italy and the UK. The depiction of both the climbing and the camps is very realistic.We have not visited Nepal, but have been in nearby Indian districts and we felt right at home in Kathmandu, for instance.

The acting was all well done. As the Guardian's reviewer writes, "Emily Watson is terrific as the base camp controller trying to manage the unfolding chaos, and it’s her scenes that pack the greatest punch, her face and voice a pitch-perfect portrayal of alarmed restraint."

I would have liked a bit more of the actual climbing, to balance the emphasis on the human parts of the story, but that would have made the film far too long.

Do see it; we recommend it. We saw the 2D version, but the 3D is probably even more graphic.

Recent Sketches

By the Harbour

A fortnight ago our sketching group met at the Bach, a favourite watering-hole of New Plymouth folk because it is right by the harbour, with a good view of the sea and the little boats coming and going.

After their excellent morning tea we spread ourselves around the area and did some sketches. Here is a quick one I did of the building which houses the café.

This week we met at another popular cafe, the Tea House by the lake in Pukekura Park. Then, inspite of the cloudy weather, we found places around the park to work. I concentrated on distinguishing different types of trees in a variety of grades of pencils:

I'm not so sure I made a success this time, but at least I have managed to include the shadows rather than the leaves themselves, when drawing ponga trees.

I was sitting outside the cafe looking across the lake to a hillside with a lot of different varieties of trees.

Because the weather has been wintry some of the time, I have been forced to rely on photos for my subjects at other times.

The first is a thatch-roofed cottage in a village we stayed in in rural Hampshire (watercolour only):

Later on our European tour we visited Granada, and in this watercolour  we are looking out two of the decorative windows from the Alhambra Palace towards the Albaycin, the older, originally Muslim part of the city.

In the latest Life and Leisure magazine, which we get as a special deal with our newspaper subscription, is an article on this old chateau in France. This sketch is based on an early 20th century postcard.


















Finally a 150 year old cottage at the Chatham Islands, also featured in the Life and Leisure, this time in pastels.

Fathers' Day

Friday was Rowan's birthday. My older grandson is just coming to the end of his formal education. His little cousin, Spencer is just beginning his, having turned 5 a couple of months ago.

Both of them are focussed, bright boys, hard-working, handsome, with lots of friends. I am extremely proud of both of them and of what they have achieved. 

Rowan has been at the top of his classes and has worked at a part-time job all through university. Spencer practises hard at whatever he is doing and competes with boys twice his size on the football field.

But today I want specially to commend their fathers, Terry and Matt respectively. (And I want to include my son-in-law, Andrew, as well).

They are all in their own way exemplary fathers. Each has worked hard to provide a comfortable lifestyle, home, and education for their children, at considerable sacrifice and effort for themselves. All three are accomplished DIYers, in good Kiwi fashion. And all three have worked hard at their jobs, and still do.

But more importantly all three have put a lot of thought and effort into providing steady discipline and guidance for their children. And above all they are excellent role-models for their families and in particular for their sons. They play a full part in the household chores and by no means leave the care of their children to their wives.

This question of role-models is interesting. I used to find myself unconsciously imitating my father; more recently I have recognised some influences from my grandfathers! Now that I am older than all three of them I wonder if it is my great-grandfather I take after. He was the only ancestor I know of who lived longer!

I can think of several in our family tree who had good relationships with their sons, and many more in the wider family who do today. Long may it continue! 

Have a happy Fathers' Day.

The subsidy on sugar

Friday morning

The morning was beautiful and I was responsible for baby-sitting granddaughter Sophie (21 months). We set out on my walk to town (see a recent post) chatting about what we could see ("bus", "button", etc) or just drinking in the freshness of the almost windless day.

It was also Daffodil Day and Sophie was given a yellow balloon (she knows her colours, especially yellow) and we also found a toy bear for a small donation to the Cancer Society. So a good time was had by all.

After we met Granny and handed over Sophie, I walked on to a U3A meeting where we were swapping books, among other activities, and I picked up a copy of "New Scientist" which contained an article about sugar.

I was encouraged to do some investigation of my own, so when I called at the supermarket on my way home I looked at some packaged products which listed the percentages of protein, fat, sugars and fibre. I was puzzled to find that some products, like cheese, only cover 20% or less of the contents. So what is the other 80%?

Are we supposed to assume that all the rest is water? Does that make the truth that we are paying $20 per kg for a product, but $16 of that is for water?

On Sunday mornings we regularly Watch Q&A, and are impressed by the professionalism of the presenters such as Corin Dann, and of the panellists they recruit for the programme. This week Bernard Hickey was arguing that our dairy industry is being subsidised by the taxpayers of New Zealand, because in the absence of a tax on capital gain, most farmers are dependent on inflation of the land value for most of their income, as are most property-owners in Auckland.

In the same way it seems to me the irresponsible food processors who add sugar to their products are being subsidised by the taxpayers. The argument runs like this: the "New Scientist" article says our bodies need protein, fat and fibre to operate normally, but sugar is not needed, because we make sugar from other forms of carbohydrate, like bread or potato, for instance.

So the costs of health care for people who are suffering from life-threatening diseases of heart or liver or some types of diabetes--these costs are caused partly by unnecessary sugar in processed food and should really be borne by the food producers.

Since I had cancer 35 years ago, I have tried to eat less salt, because of its part in aggravating causes of cancer and other diseases. So I have made my porridge without any salt. But the porridge still tastes salty, even without extra salt, presumably because of the salt naturally in the other ingredients.
I guess the same would be true of sugar. Must try that anyway!

Mainly houses

Sketching Update

Most of my sketching from life the past few days has been of houses in the immediate neighbourhood, in the course of my daily walks.

The winter weather has been fine and pleasant for a stroll most days.

Continuing the theme of the lat post, here (right) is another view of Wharepapa. I was further down the end of Lemon Street, at the corner of Pukenui Street, looking back to Fort Niger.

Another day, heading along Pendarves Street towards Fort Niger Reserve, I stopped to sketch these two contrasting houses.

In the foreground is a brand-new spec house in a modern style.

Behind it, higher up the hill, is a much older building, also white, to contrast with it.

In Watson Street, just round the corner, is this older villa, late nineteenth century. It looks a bit tired these days, but when we shifted in to this house here in Lemon Street, the former owner of this Watson St house, a retired builder, came to our garage sale and spent a while chatting about our new home and its history.

Half-way from here to Pukenui Street and the view sketched at the top of this post is this older cottage. When we lived in this neighbourhood in the early eighties it was owned by a couple of acquaintances, but since then it has been badly neglected, as I hope my charcoal sketch shows.

On the odd days when the weather has not co-operated, I have worked in other media: this vase of daphne was on the table, so I took out my pastels and tried to get it on to the paper.

Another day I took out an old book about the Greek islands and did a water-colour version of a photo of one of the harbours in Crete (below).

We even had a second wet day, so I looked at our travel photos again: here is my watercolour of the youth hostel we stayed in near St Paul's Cathedral, with yours truly about to knock on the front door!