Trendy But Casual

New Zealand in Berlin

TM and I are just back from Berlin, where I was taking part in an event called the Berlin Sofa at the English Theatre. Peter Rider, the New Zealand ambassador to Germany, invited me to join him so we could present a short program on NZ lit, with lots of readings and chat.

We divided our presentation into four sections - The Edge of the Universe; This Sporting Life; Islanders; and Flying Kiwi.

The Edge of the Universe - our unique place in the world

‘New Zealand begins with sea and ends with sea. Understand this and you begin to comprehend New Zealand and the New Zealander.’ Maurice Shadbolt

 Poems by Bill Manhire (‘Milky Way Bar’); Allen Curnow (‘House and Land’), and Denis Glover ('Home Thoughts'); part of the story ‘The Doll’s House’ by Katherine Mansfield; the final page of Making Peoples by historian James Belich; and two novel excerpts: The Matriarch by Witi Ihimaera and Tu by Patricia Grace.

This Sporting Life - our national obsession

‘Apart from history, there are only two spheres in which New Zealand has been a world superpower. One is the export of protein. The other is sport.’ James Belich

 Excerpts from two novels - The Book of Fame by Lloyd Jones and Lovelock by James McNeish, and my father's favourite poem,  ‘Referee’ by Hinemoana Baker.

Islanders - voices from the edge

“In a country inhabited for a mere one thousand years, everyone is an immigrant or the descendent of an immigrant.” Michael King

An excerpt from the novel Going West by Maurice Gee, and poems by Selina Tusitala March (‘Guys Like Gauguin’); Sonja Yelich (‘talking to a brick wall’); Tusiata Avia (‘Aunty Lapo’a calls Nafanua and talks about her holiday’); Alison Wong (‘Chinese Settlement, Arrowtown’ and ‘One Hundred Pounds’); and Karlo Mila ('Sacred Pulu').

Flying Kiwi - writers (and books) that roam

“The islands are moving.” Dylan Horrocks

Excerpts from two novels - The Conductor by Sarah Quigley and Rangatira (by me) and from the essay ‘NZ Return’ by the late, great Nigel Cox.

In addition to the readings, we showed various clips, beginning with clip of the All Blacks' haka (there was method to this madness - believe me: we wanted to talk about oral traditions, and also about exploring NZ BEYOND the All Blacks), then a short film about our books and writers made when New Zealand was invited to be 2012 Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. At the end of the second section, just before the break - for a good deal of NZ wine - we showed an amazing clip of Jack Lovelock winning the 1500 metres and breaking the world record at the Berlin Olympics in 1936, with a commentary by Harold Abrahams. At the medal ceremony, by the way, the anthem played was God Save the King ...

During the 'pause' we played some footage from the Diversity Stage at Polyfest, so people could see the range of cultures and languages represented in Auckland high schools. You can see the 2012 performances here. At the very end of the programme, after we talked about possible futures for NZ lit, and emerging new voices. So of course we couldn't resist ending with a clip of Joshua Iosefo's 'Brown Brother' speech. You can see the original and the TV3 version on YouTube.

The event was quite a success, I think, with a good-sized audience of both native English- and German-speakers. Peter Rider was an excellent reader, and I hammed it up, as ever. Lots of audience members wanted to hang around and talk afterwards. We wanted to include more excerpts, but time was limited, of course. The audience especially liked the third section, even though there were numerous cultural references (and words from various languages) that were new to them. People were willing to make the imaginative leap, and to immerse themselves in the unexpected, the unfamiliar ... Unlike a certain profoundly ignorant Danish politician.

I loved being in Berlin. I like the way cities jolt me out of routine, the way they swarm over me with their new noises and sights and smells. (And tastes, too: let's not forget currywurst.) The picture above is us in the dome of the Reichstag. Below are a few more Berlin pictures - random, of course, as I can't seem to manage anything orderly these days.

 

RANGATIRA. launched

I'm in an LAX transit lounge, on my way back to the UK. There's coffee out of a machine and free wireless: what more could you want? TMiddy has emailed to tell me that DOWNTON ABBEY series 2 just ended, and He Knows Who Died. This is why internet access is so vital.

Last Monday, October 31st, the launch for RANGATIRA took place at Art + Object in Auckland. This is the contemporary art auction house run by my dear friend, Hamish Coney. (Later that week they held a record-breaking auction of rare NZ books and manuscripts). Lots of family and friends there, a big crowd from Penguin, other writers and literary people-about-town. Here are a few pictures. The first is of the podium with a blow-up of the book's beautiful cover.

 

 

Debra Miller of Penguin Books NZ welcomed everyone and said some very kind things about the novel; then Steve Braunias launched it (see a copy of his speech here); and then I stood up and burbled and cried, as I always do, while people laugh at me. (See my mother, seated, and father, standing - both brandishing walking sticks!)

 

 

I was very happy that my cousins drove down from Whangarei, and also that so many people made the long drive down from the Paratene Te Manu marae in Ngunguru, and from the Ngunguru School, which was founded by Paratene and his matua, Henare Te Moananui, in 1870. There was a mihi, a blessing, a waiata. I was very touched. Penguin were kind enough to let the marae take the cover blow-up with them back up North to Ngunguru.

 

The catering was in the capable hands of my nephew, Matthew Hill, and his gorgeous girlfriend Martha Carrillo. Martha is from Mexico and her Chilean friends, Jerson and Francisca, were also helping. (I wanted an all-Spanish-speaking team.)

 Jo from Unity Books was on hand to sell books - as she has been at all my book launches in New Zealand going back to QUEEN OF BEAUTY in 2002. Here I'm signing a copy for Jill Rawnsley, until recently the artistic director of the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival.

 This last photo I took this weekend at Unity Books in High Street in the city. They have a fantastic window display for the novel.

It was a brief visit home, congested with interviews and meetings, but I was really happy to be back for the launch of RANGATIRA. I'm proud of it. The novel is dedicated to my parents.

The Rugby World Cup: won, over.

It's Tuesday, so I must be in Auckland. I'm sitting at the desk in my niece's bedroom in Mt Albert, looking out the window at yellow flowers in a hanging basket, a blue sky, the tin roof of the house nextdoor, the top of a cabbage tree. My niece is in Germany right now. 'Don't mess up my room,' she ordered yesterday, via Skype, from her university hostel. Stuck on the wall behind her: a giant All Blacks/World Cup chart.

When the final was happening, I was on a flight over the Pacific, waiting for middle-of-the-night text updates from a member of the crew on our TV screens. My niece went to an Irish pub in Heidelberg to watch the final. After the game, she had an 'Irish breakfast' of bacon, eggs, sausages, toast and baked beans. I just tried, unsuccessfully, to go back to sleep.

Yesterday afternoon, when 100,000 crammed into Queen Street to watch the All Blacks parade by, I was asleep on my niece's bed in Mt Albert - like Goldilocks with dyed hair, jetlag, and too many SIM cards.

Apparently everything fun and festive to do with the World Cup has now closed or been trashed by drunken revellers, so I have nothing to distract me from the tasks at hand: promoting RANGATIRA. It's my fourth novel for Penguin NZ, and comes out next week. I have various interviews to do this week, and an article to write for a magazine, and arrangements for the launch to complete.

For those of you longing for dispatches from the Scudder Road Circus, TMiddy is off to St Louis while I'm away. He needs a break. The Rugby World Cup made him WAY too strung out.

He wore a different AB shirt for each game.

I'm off to my parents' place now. My father, who is about to turn 78, recently joined Facebook. This led to the following conversation between my mother and sister.

My mother: What is Facebook?

My sister: [gives long speech on how Facebook is a sort of noticeboard which allows you to post photographs, updates on your whereabouts, and information about what you're doing, all for your friends and family.]

My mother: What a good idea!

With my mother's endorsement, I believe that Facebook will now really start to take off.

 

Auckland Writers & Readers Festival 2011

I'm back in Auckland, my hometown, for the annual Writers & Readers Festival. I always really enjoy this festival, though I spend much of it in a blind panic racing between events, figuring out where I'm supposed to be, and cramming in last-minute prep for the sessions I'm chairing.

This year is my fifth (maybe?) and I think I'm breaking my own record for over-commitment. My full schedule is posted on my web site.

I'm in Auckland for a few weeks doing various writing-related things, and I can make the following five predictions:

1. It will rain almost every day.

2. My friends will wait until the last week I'm here to sort out social events, and complain that I'm leaving too soon.

3. My brother, my niece and I will go to Luxury Karaoke on Queen Street and 'sing' things like 'In Da Club' and 'Hot N Cold' and 'Single Ladies.'

4. People in other time zones will email me and get impatient when I don't reply right away.

5. A lot of biscuits will be eaten.

As you can see, it's a cultural visit.

Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow

We spent last New Year's Eve in New Zealand: the weather was good, and we crammed in a lot, as I recall - a trip up to Warkworth to have lunch with my cousin, Len; then dinner on Cheltenham Beach (the garden used in the old Telecom London/Auckand ad) with our friends Sarah and Hamish; then back to my sister's house, which was overrun with teenagers ("who the hell is that?" someone said when we walked in); then drinks at a friend's place down the road, followed by a scramble through the mean streets of Mt Albert to watch the fireworks over the Sky Tower. When we got back to my sister's house, the teenagers were eventually herded out (my sister: "how soon can we make them leave?") and we cleaned up.

This year we've spent the day in planes and airports - St Louis, where big thunderstorms were rolling in, to Denver, still snowy from yesterday's blizzard, to LA, where there are flowers in bloom and we walked to Terminal Two delighted to be outside without a coat. It's already 2011 in New Zealand, and in Britain, but we'll be celebrating tonight somewhere over the Pacific. By 'celebrating' I mean by taking Nyquil tablets and falling asleep during an episode of NEW ZEALAND'S NEXT TOP MODEL, which I hope will be available via in-flight entertainment. TM and I have been sick as dogs all week with flu, and I lost my voice some time on Tuesday night. (It's Friday now.) You'll know how sick we are when I say we've been sitting here in the Koru Club at LAX for the past four hours and all we've been drinking is hot soup and mint tea. (There's free wine in the Koru Club, as well as yesterday's NEW ZEALAND HERALD and today's DAILY MAIL - which TM is carrying home for my mother: I don't want to be seen with it.)

I'll blame the illness for my complete indolence today. Instead of getting work done, I've been watching episodes of 30 ROCK and COMMUNITY on my computer, and cheating on NYT crossword puzzles (I have a book). Considering I've worked on chapters of a novel in the Koru Club during previous visits, this is a poor show.

This past year, 2010, has been busy rather than serene. A novel written, as well as some stories, and numerous magazine columns. I spent most of May in New Zealand, which always makes me happy, and we had a brilliantly lazy holiday in Mexico in June. I took a course in script editing at the BBC in London in February, and got the chance to teach with (and learn from) Eric Overmyer in the spring. We worked at Jazz Fest for the fifth year running, and somehow I managed to miss Mardi Gras altogether. Big upheavals, obviously, with the move from New Orleans to Glasgow. We had to sell/give away a lot of things, and abandon Salon M, and say goodbye to a lot of friends, and drive ourselves crazy with stress. We're still not settled: we now have things in Kiwi Storage in Auckland and Kangaroo Storage (really) in Glasgow, as well as in the homes of my sister, my brother, TM's parents, TM's aunt and ... who else? Speak up if we're storing something with you. Please don't sell it or throw it away. (I'm talking to my brother here.) We'll round up all our belongings one day and maybe have some kind of home.

We just spent a great week in London, arriving by train and leaving by plane but managing to elude all the snow-related cancellations - saw Alan Ayckbourn's SEASON'S GREETINGS at the National Theatre, and the fantastic Gauguin show at Tate Modern; queued to buy macaroons at Laduree, and to attend the St Paul's Cathedral carol service; saw lovely friends, and had amazing (if unfortunately costly) meals at Ottolenghi and Moro. Here are some pictures. The first three are shop windows - Selfridges (with a tribute to my hero, Frank Sidebottom), a swanky shop on Jermyn Street, and Fortnum & Mason.

The next group are from our wanderings: Borough Market in Southwark, Leadenhall Market in the City, the window at Ottolenghi in Islington (we were staying just down the road), and the view from our seats in St Paul's.

I suspect this post may have the forced cheeriness of one of those Christmas round-robin letters that list only the triumphs of the year. Rest assured, my Schadenfreude friends: there have been some resounding low notes, and I'm staggering into the new year a little punch-drunk and unsure. Maybe it's just the Nyquil, or the prospect of our third plane journey of the day - this one twelve hours long. Maybe, as I've often claimed, uncertainty and insecurity are not entirely bad things.

No resolutions this year, aside from the usual - to become EVEN MORE glamorous. I do have some New Year's wishes, if they count:

1. That Cafe Baru on Magazine Street in New Orleans fixes its lighting issue in the back room, because it's one of my favorite places to go but that shrill lighting is a deal-breaker.

2. That instead of buying me gift cards for Aeropostale, a shop for 12-year-olds, my in-laws will buy me a gift card for SKY MALL, so I'm forced to buy e.g. a camouflage Slanket, or exact replicas of the earrings Hermione wore to the Yule Ball, or fake rocks to position around the garden I don't have.

3. That people will stop inserting the line "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough" into "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," when the original line is much, much better and almost always applicable.

Unlike resolutions, all of these things are totally achievable, I think, with a bit of good will and application.

I'm lying about the resolutions, of course. I have just one, and I was reminded of it by a slab of the Berlin Wall outside the Imperial War Museum.

Happy new year, everyone. If you're in Auckland this January, please get in touch. T. MIddy is available for mini-golf tournaments. I will be working a lot, but never during cocktail hour.

 

A Scudder Road Circus Christmas

I've had a really crummy week, so yesterday T.Middy and I decided that the Scudder Road Circus needed its first-ever Christmas lunch - "in the manner," TM observed, "of the British." So we went to the Bothy, a very cozy place off Byres Road, and (joined later by numerous office groups, all dressed to the nines) stuffed our faces with roast turkey and hot puddings.

Afterwards we slid as best we could along icy, hilly streets to go to an exhibition at the Hunterian of Whistler's drawings and paintings of the Thames - very useful for the novel I'm writing at the moment, as a lot were of Limehouse and the docks in the 1860s. (The Hunterian has a major Whistler collection.) It was also very distracting, as exhibitions always are. Now I want to start reading all I can on Whistler's lawsuit against John Ruskin, especially as it implicates my old friend Edward Burne-Jones.

We didn't have a Christmas tree this year, as we'll be away, and all our decorations are in our Tardis-like storage unit. We've made the best of it, I guess. These are taken in our kitchen, the easiest room to keep warm.

My story, "Red Christmas," will be broadcast on Radio New Zealand National this Tuesday (December 21) at 10.45 AM. Red Christmas is an Icelandic idea: it means a Christmas without snow. We have one of those in Auckland every year.

In a week's time we'll be in St Louis, where it will almost certainly be a white Christmas. But by early January we'll be in New Zealand, where we're hoping for summer, summer, summer.

 

Kashin

Kashin

Sad news from home today: Kashin the elephant died at Auckland Zoo yesterday. I know it’s ridiculous that I’m moved to public lament when this blog fails to commemorate the deaths of Bergman, Pinter, Antonioni et al, but I guess I’m sentimental. (And not alone.)

Kashin was one of only three elephants in New Zealand. There’s another Indian elephant, called Burma, at Auckland Zoo, and an African elephant down in Nelson, in a circus. My sister remembers Jamuna, who used to give rides at the zoo: Jamuna arrived in 1923 and died in 1965. My sister probably also remembers the chimpanzees who held tea parties: this was stopped before I was born. All I remember is the Punch and Judy shows, which involved no inconvenience to animals, apart from persistent cruelty to the puppet crocodile.

The funds for Kashin were raised by the ASB, which in those days stood for the Auckland Savings Bank. It now calls itself the ASB Bank, which seems ridiculous to me, but presumably makes sense to its new Australian owners. Kashin arrived at Auckland Zoo when she was four and I was seven, in December, 1972. A public competition came up with the elephant’s name, though it has a Hindi meaning as well, allegedly unrelated to money. My brother and I were very excited about the arrival of a baby elephant, though he would no doubt deny this now. (He has a very non-elephant-like memory.) Like almost every other child of our generation, we got plastic Kashin-the-elephant piggy banks from the ASB. We had several of them, as I recall. I’m sure that one, at least, is stashed away in my storage unit in Albany, along with all the other jumble of my childhood.

When we were children, the best thing to see in the Auckland Museum was the gigantic stuffed form of Rajah, a male elephant who lived at the zoo in the 30s until he became too violent and unruly and had to be put to death. (It was seen as the humane thing at the time, apparently, because the alternative was spending his life chained up.)  Australians are also implicated here: before he arrived in Auckland, Rajah was being terrorized by the public in Hobart, and this is now blamed for his anger-management issues. I think he’s still on display at the Museum, though the latest generation of curators despise him, no doubt, as a relic from a less enlightened age, and see the exhibit as capitulation to trashy public taste.

Today the Auckland zoo is all environments rather than enclosures; the old elephant house is rented out for parties and wedding receptions. It backs onto Old Mill Road, just where the road takes a steep climb. When we were children, we used to beg my father to drive this way at night – when we were going back and forth to my grandparents’ place in Ponsonby – so we could see the elephants. Just a glimpse of those massive dark backs, like upturned hulls, safe in their pens for the night.

The Auckland Zoo is closed today: they’re in mourning for Kashin. Here in New Orleans, it’s late afternoon, which means the McMain band is outside wailing and braying and trumpeting in the school yard, and our new next-door neighbor is practicing scales on her French horn. The sound of elephants, perhaps, but not quite the same thing.

 

Last day

Today was my last at the Sargeson flat; I'm now a Former Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellow, no longer living among the birds in Albert Park. It was a frantic day, like all my moving days, involving manic cleaning (by T. Middy) and the proliferation of sheafs of paper, from receipts to photocopies to MS pages, all of which apparently needed to be stuffed into our luggage and dragged back across the Pacific. 

After five months of living in my home town, I'm very sad to be leaving Auckland. And the flat has been a haven, of sorts, despite the best effort of various assailants (drunkards, hooligans, club bouncers looking for a dawn party location, ants, mould, etc). I've packed in as much reading and writing as possible: completing two manuscripts and editing an anthology, among other things. While I was there, my fourth book came out and I turned 43 - not at the same time, but both quite unthinkable just a few years ago. I traveled to Sydney once, Wellington three times, and the US ... what was it, three times? Four? I voted in two elections. Every day I listened to the tui singing in the park.

This was the building, and the upstairs window where I sat working every day:

Behind the building is the Sky Tower, the tallest building in the Southern hemisphere, according to T. Middy. Downstairs is the art gallery that only ever showed one or two things, like a pile of hand-made bricks, or a tall stick. This is the staircase to my front door, compared by my brother, with only slight exaggeration, to the famous stairs in 'Kidnapped'. This was my desk, early on in the residency, before it got messy and I bought a nicer mug.

I'm in my second home, the Koru Club, right now, waiting to fly out, having spent the last of my NZ cash-in-hand on reflexology. (This is why I don't own a house: I take the Jack-and-the-Beanstalk magic-beans approach to spending money.) 

Once I'm back in New Orleans, I have revisions to complete on one MS right away, to make the deadline, and some work to do to prepare for next semester. There are also c. 250 student references to write, all of which seem to be due tomorrow. And Christmas is waiting to pounce, of course. We need to get a tree, organize our party, get presents for the US contingent, mail cards, drive to St Louis, etc. Only then will we get to escape to Paris, where I've promised to Do No Work ... 

But this morning, at Pilates, I smelled the pine needles of the Christmas tree set up in the corner, and I thought: Christmas, to me, really takes place in the early summertime; it smells of pine, and fruit mincemeat, and the coldest thing on Christmas Day is the ice cream we eat with the Christmas pudding. Today my niece put on a Bing Crosby album, so we could determine exactly how many Christmas songs he recorded (answer: 75 plus), and we sang along. 

But white Christmases are over-rated, I think, however picturesque they promise to be. I'd much rather be home, curtains drawn to keep the glare of the sun off the TV. With my family, because however annoying your own family may be, they're still your own annoying family. I have lots more pictures to post of our adventures this year, and will post more frequently in the next few weeks. Maybe "The T. Middy 2008 Photo Album"? He is elusive, TM, but occasionally captured on film.

More new pictures

Yesterday a reporter and photographer from The Aucklander, a free community paper delivered every Thursday with the New Zealand Herald, came around to take my photo. They're doing a piece on the ongoing problem of drinking in city parks. We found a nice smashed sign (one of the Alcohol Ban in the CBD notices, naturally) and, tucked into a tree, an empty bottle of Jim Beam. Much later, ie during the middle of the night, I was woken by guys shouting outside my window, hurling bottles into one of the art gallery's trash cans. I guess I could have leaned out the window and reminded them that it was not a recycling bin ... but I did not. At least they didn't leave them lying around on the lane, like everyone else does.

A different picture of me appeared in the western edition of yesterday's Aucklander; it's a happier piece about how I'm hard at work here in the Sargeson flat, and the photo shows me in the window, semi-smiling. The window's quite low, so I had to kneel on the floor. Maybe that's why I was only semi-smiling, or maybe it was because I knew, intuitively, the article would refer to my first novel as "Beauty Queen" rather than Queen of Beauty.

Meanwhile, on another continent, T. Middy is showing troubling signs of having been left home alone too long. We've been talking online via Adium, the symbol for which is a wild-eyed green duck. Despite allegedly being busy at work, TM found time to download and print a picture of the duck, enlarge it, cut it out, and pose for a computer shot with his new friend, looking eerily similar in expression.

This is why I have to go back to New Orleans next weekend for a quick visit, to restore sanity.