Trendy But Casual

Season of mists, etc

For ages I've been telling myself: post those pictures of autumn in Switzerland! It was so beautiful and sunny and autumnal! It was just like being in New England again, except much, much more expensive (and singularly lacking in branches of Friendly's)!

But then time passes, things happen - we return to Glasgow; I resign from my job; snow starts falling, etc - and it seems too late to show off the Swiss autumn. Or is it?

Some of these were taken in or near Stein am Rhein, and some in Zofingen, where I was taking part in a festival.

But time marches on. Tomorrow on this blog: our Christmas party.

While You Were Sleeping

Or, perhaps, while I was not blogging here, I was blogging elsewhere.

Since I last posted, I've had some interesting and difficult times, and some of the more interesting (and least difficult) involved trips to Germany. Rangatira has been published in German, and I've been over there four times this northern summer - Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne. This week TMiddy and I head off to Frankfurt for the Book Fair and then, after a quick return to Glasgow so I can teach some classes, we fly to Switzerland for the Zofingen Festival. Unbelievably, because of the busy-ness of my schedule, I had to say no to readings in Zurich and Vienna. I've never been to Vienna, and desperately want to go - not just to eat Sachertorte, though obviously that's the chief draw - but the timing just didn't work out.

So it's off to Frankfurt now, and to a complicated schedule and (no doubt) to an overwhelming experience at the Book Fair. The theme of the NZ Guest of Honour programme at Frankfurt this year is While You Were Sleeping - coincidentally the title of my favourite Sandra Bullock movie - but I doubt we'll be getting much sleep there, especially if all all sixty New Zealand authors are staying at the same hotel. Will Fergus Barrowman lure us into evil-doing involving late nights at the hotel bar? Will I forget to change the time on my phone so I'm an hour late to every interview, as I was in Berlin? Most important of all, will there be time to go shopping at Kaufhof?

I've promised TMiddy that I'm going to write a Frankfurt diary for this blog, after the official opening of the New Zealand Pavilion, when I write my final blog post for the FBF site. That's where I've been posting for the past few months. The first was about how New Zealand is not Venezuela; the next was about the New Zealand Post Book Awards. Later in August I wrote about Maori novelists, and in September about taking part in the Long Night of Maori Stories at the Berlin Festival. My most recent post was about my reading in Cologne with Sarah Quigley.

Despite my recent travails - anxiety, depression - I'm looking forward to Frankfurt very much. As well as various readings and discussions, I'll be taking part - for or the first and possibly only time in my life - in the same interview series as a Nobel winner, Herta Mueller. Not at the same time, you understand, but still: we'll sit on the same blue sofa ...

 

 

 

NZ Post Book Awards, with extra bunting

I'm back from New Zealand, and in a fug of Olympics sports - particularly my new favourites, Rhythmic Gymnastics and Sychronized Swimming - plus the usual endless to-do list. I've managed to write a blog post for the Frankfurt Book Fair on the awards ceremony itself. This is what my family looked like on the evening:

 

For those of you not intimate with the Morris and Hill families, this is: my brother-in-law, Stephen Hill; my brother, Stephen Morris; me; my father, Kiri Morris; and my sister, Lynn-Elisabeth Hill, standing at the front. The photo was taken at my sister's house before we headed off to the Auckland Museum for the awards.

That last picture is of me with the very glamorous Annie Beattie, wife of the Bookman.

A number of people in the UK and the US are telling me they've ordered copies of RANGATIRA from Amazon. But the book isn't published in either of these markets, and the only version being sold on Amazon is the large-print edition, so if someone you know outside NZ wants to buy the book, please encourage them to buy online from a NZ seller (like Time Out, Unity, the Women's Bookshop, etc).

RANGATIRA has been abridged and recorded by Radio New Zealand, and instalments will be broadcast every week day over two weeks, starting on Monday, August 13th. It's read by George Henare, my mother's all-time favourite actor from the Mercury Theatre days. I think you can listen online at the RNZ site after broadcast.

Meanwhile, in more important news, TMiddy finally gave in and allowed me to buy bunting. TMiddy's life is one long struggle against my desire to decorate; mine is a struggle to keep Christmas lights up as long as possible, and to sneak small/strange items onto our shelves:

During a well-timed trip to John Lewis, TMiddy finally gave in to my constant badgering. It's Union Jack bunting (of course! We live in Team GB-land). And now it's in our window, fading in the searing Scottish sun.

And now: handball? Diving? Celebrating New Zealand's 13 medals?

London + Summer + 2012 = ?

Something is up in London this week, involving banners, flags, symbols, and a very dodgy security firm. What could it be? Here is some evidence, assiduously collected yesterday during a walk along the sun-drenched South Bank and environs. (Though the first few pics were taken around the West End the day before, when we first realized that SOMETHING IS UP IN LONDON.)

At St Pancras Station:

 

Near Jermyn Street in Piccadilly, where we visit Taylor's of Old Bond Street on a regular basis for TMiddy's Victorian-era shaving supplies (because only the best will do for Tikileaks operatives):

Around Covent Garden:

In case you want to see evidence of some of the £284 million spent on G4S Security, £65 million of which went on uniforms:

Along the South Bank, walking east (and please note that I can spot the NZ flag at 100 paces: should this be an Olympic sport of the future?):

 

Because it was sunny, and a Sunday, about 10 million people were walking along the river. So of course the "Have a Question?" booth was closed:

 

TMiddy felt artiness/Cubism descend upon him, which is why we had to stop soon after for an ice cream and a sit-down:

 

These flags are flying outside City Hall. There was a third flag next to them, but we didn't know what it meant, so TM cropped it out - just the way NBC cropped out the one non-American medal winner (Merlene Ottey) on a podium last time I was forced to watch their lame coverage of the athletics:

Switzerland in the house:

TMiddy, post-ice cream:

And me, wondering if I'm too old to qualify for the next Games, maybe in Archery or some other sport that doesn't involve running or jumping about:

So here is the evidence. Draw your own conclusions. I'm flying back to New Zealand today, so I can be vaguely awake by the time the New Zealand Post Book Awards comes around next week.

 

 

Glasgow, Summer

Or is it Paris, Summer? (That's where we spent much of last July. Whatever.) I'll post some pictures, and you try to work out which city, in all its summertime glory, is depicted below.

OK, I think the John Lewis sign might have given it away.

So we are having a bit of sun here in Scotland: this evening, for example, is beautiful. Out my study window I can see all the way to the wind farms encircling the city. (You see, it IS just like Paris.)

And TMiddy and I are still brimming with Jubilee spirit. We had some foreigners (German and English) over for dinner last Friday, and we used Jubilee-bunting paper napkins with the pre-dinner snacks. We even made a Jubilee pavlova.

Actually, it's a chocolate Jubilee pavlova, which means it's the same as a normal chocolate pavlova, except with a Union Jack of fruit. (This is TMiddy's work, and he was dissatisfied: apparently he needed "a larger canvas" to display the full extent of his artistry.)

Tomorrow we're off to London, scene of our Jubilee Flotilla torment. Hopefully the rain will have stopped by now.

 

Hamburg I

Last Monday I went to Hamburg for the first time, to talk to a group of journalists about New Zealand, NZ lit/writers, and numerous other topics, which may or may not have included the various international versions of NEXT TOP MODEL. (I wasn't the one who brought this up. Or was I?)

It was a warm and mostly sunny day, which was a relief after so many days/weeks of dire weather in the UK. It rains pretty much every day at the moment - not just in Glasgow, but everywhere. I flew out of Heathrow that morning in the drizzle and returned to a rain storm.

In Hamburg the lunch I was attending with the fabuous Tanea Heke took place at Au Quai down on the harbour. I only had a short time to wander around before lunch, so the pictures (below) are all taken just steps from the restaurant, or from the terrace of Au Quai. Sorry they give such an abbreviated view of the city.

I'm calling this post 'Hamburg I' because TMiddy and I had already planned a trip to Hamburg later this year, for his birthday at the end of November. Then we'll have more of a chance to explore its waterways and parks and museums, I hope, and all its Beatles-related history (TM), and all of its Weihnachtsmarkts (PM). The pieces of Hamburg I glimpsed on this trip were by turns impressive and beautiful and grand. And it wasn't raining.

 

 

This week we're back in Glasgow, and I realized that it's been c five months since I spent every day of an entire week in Glasgow, without bolting up to Stirling, or making one of my endless excursions further afield. In fact, it's Tuesday night now, and I haven't even left the house since Saturday. I keep waiting for the sun to come out, so I may be here for some time.

 

Frankfurt (I)

Earlier this week I was in Frankfurt to speak at a press conference about New Zealand's literary and cultural programme at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair (where NZ will be Guest of Honour). An impressive 120+ members of the media attended. Equally impressive: the Frankfurter Buchmesse building, a serene mix of old and new, with big windows and secret courtyards; everyone in the press conference putting up with English speeches, and asking questions in English; and us lazy English speakers getting a live translation whenever director Jurgen Boos spoke in German. (Less impressive: three people hired to dress as a Hobbit, an Elf and one other LOTR creature - not sure who insisted on their presence, but I'm sure it wasn't the Book Fair.)

Afterwards I did various interviews while everyone else enjoyed a barbeque in the sunshine. By the time I made it out into the courtyard everyone was eating these odd biscuits, which were masquerading as pavlovas:

I've been to Frankfurt a number of times in my life - at different phases of my life, I guess - and every time it seems like a completely new place to me, perhaps because I've rarely had the time to just wander around.

My first trip there was in the late 70s, with my parents and brother, when we were visiting family friends who live in nearby Offenbach. I don't remember much that was Frankfurt-specific from that trip, because we went to a number of places in Germany and my chief memories from those visits are a) placing everyone's orders at breakfast, lunch and dinner in my third-form German; b) buying gigantic grapes in a market (and eating them); and c) beginning my life-long love affair with German Christmas decorations and the shops that sell them. Did we go to the Goethehaus? I don't remember. At that point in my life I didn't realize that Goethe stayed absolutely everywhere, or that any inn that housed him for a night would nail up an historic plaque the next day. Really, you could be in Amarillo, Texas, and discover that Goethe had spent the night there once. Schiller might have popped by as well. They are the Muck and Brass of German lit.

I digress. When I was in my 20s, and a university student in England, I went back to Frankfurt with my brother and sister. (My sister was studying in Freiburg for a semester.) It was grey and cold - November or December, maybe. I have a photo of my brother standing outside Kaufhof and grinning. My sister was pregnant (with my nephew), and all she could keep down was a McDonald's filet o' fish. All WE wanted were the delicious sliced dumplings that Mrs Bauer made, remembered, with fond greediness, from our visit in 1978.

After that Frankfurt was reduced in my life to an airport I passed through while travelling on business, especially once I'd moved to the US. For a time I was working for a German company based in Munich, and as well as attending meetings there I had to go to a festival in Badenweiler in the Black Forest every year. Frankfurt was the place my bags went astray. In those days my first impression of Frankfurt airport was always the same: smoke. (You can't smoke in the airport anymore, though this didn't stop the Korean men in the immigration queue with me on Sunday buying and carrying vast quantities of duty-free cigarettes.)

When that phase of my life (happily) was over, I went back a few times to stay with my sister and her family, who were spending six months living and working there. In the summer we went to the Botanical Garden for my nephew's tenth birthday; in the winter, when my niece turned seven, we set off for Sleeping Beauty's Castle. In the weeks before Christmas we drank Gluhwein in the Weinachtsmarkt, where there were real-life miniature ponies in the carousel.

Frankfurt was my setting-off point for train trips to Prague in the summer and Italy in the winter, and the city I was delighted to see again after coming down with a nasty flu in Italy, getting stranded by a train strike, and being told, by an Italian travel agent, that I couldn't use a credit card to buy a plane ticket back.

Frankfurt was a place of calm and order after the chaos of that particular trip. I was so happy to see my brother-in-law and nephew waiting for me at the airport, and to go home to the cheery comfort of their one-bedroom, seventeenth-floor flat. My sister was conducting an experiment into how many visiting friends could be squeezed in for an overnight stay. I think the most at any one time was four adults and four children, with my poor nephew in the hallway behind the front door. Once when I was there, two people - New Zealanders, needless to say - were sleeping outside on the small terrace. When the landlady came around, we tried to pretend everyone had just dropped in for a cup of tea.

Back then TMiddy was a boyfriend rather than a husband (or indentured servant, as he would no doubt say), so he didn't come to Frankfurt with me. Whenever we got stuck playing 'Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego?' we would ring him, until he found out his phone bill was out of control and had to throw himself on the mercy of AT&T.

His first visit to Frankfurt was just last year: we flew there to meet my niece, who was studying in Heidelberg. Another birthday: this time, her 20th. (It felt like one minute since we were driving off to Sleeping Beauty's Castle in Sababurg for her seventh birthday: now we were driving to Zurich to visit friends, and she was more keen on a Zara gift voucher than Barbie's Vet Office.) TM's only interaction with a Frankfurter, aside from the guy at the rental car desk, was a typical encounter for us at the end of a trip when we're trying to return the car. Because we can never find a petrol station nearby, we end up driving too far into the airport; getting ensnared in its one-way system; finding ourselves snagged in traffic or trapped by barriers or herded into a carpark; and relying on the kindness of a stranger (usually uniformed) to point us in the right direction and let us off whatever fee we'd incurred by driving into some security zone. Frankfurt was no exception, but the difference was the perfect English of the uniformed stranger.

Visiting Frankfurt this week felt odd, in part because I stayed at a hotel rather than with family or friends, and in part because I was here for the first time as a writer, getting the chance to talk about my own books rather than coming to Germany to sell other people's creative work. Euro 2012 is going on right now, so the day I arrived, Diana (my minder - you can see her in the 'beer' picture below) and I wandered the streets, looking for a place to sit outside and watch that night's game. Every bar and restaurant had multiple TV screens, so we were just trying to secure a decent view. We found somewhere in the end - a place to sit in the street, cheer for Germany and eat currywurst. And, of course, to inhale vast amounts of smoke from everyone sitting around us. The airport may have banned them, but German smokers persevere.

The pictures below are Frankfurt, or a very small sliver of it, over two sunny days in June 2012, when Germany beat Denmark and all was well with the world. I'm looking forward to coming back in October for six days during the Book Fair, and for seeing and doing much more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More standing around in the street: the Olympic Torch in Glasgow

After last Sunday's seven-plus hour stretch in the rain, TM and I were prepared, physically and mentally, for a similar event - a Mardi Gras parade, or a military review, or a protest march, or even an invasion. Luckily, while wandering around central Glasgow today in search of essential supplies (i.e. lipstick, new travel toothbrush holders, and Wagamama salads), we realized the Olympic torch was coming to town tonight.

Conveniently, the route included Woodlands Road, which is just down the hill from our place. So off we trundled around 5:30 to lurk on the street and admire all the Glasgow police zooming around on their BMW motorbikes. We had about 40 minutes to wait, so there was plenty of time to scrutinize the Balti Club take-away party menu, posted in its window: next time we want to order four litres of fried rice,a 30-pack of vegetable pakora, or a party selection of pizza slices (32 slices for £25, three toppings max), we know where to come.

There were quite a few people out in the street, including a little girl near us clutching a small home-made Union Jack flag - preferable to the plastic Samsung flags thrown from the convoy of (over-sized) sponsor trucks. Lots of people were standing on the pedestrian overpass at the end of Woodlands Road, helicopter and seagulls hovering overhead, the rain managing to hold.

As well as obnxious sponsor trucks, the torch relay has its own bus, and a number of cyclists in official grey.

And then there was the torch itself - with apologies to the torchbearer, whose name I don't know. (The official web site that lists all the Glasgow torchbearers doesn't have pictures of everyone.)

Earlier today, we were walking home along Sauchiehall Street and passed one of the Indian restaurants on the south side. Outside, one of Glasgow's other torchbearers was posing for photos with his torch, people he knew, people who were just passing by but wanted to have their picture taken with an Olympic torch, and the guy who'd served us a couple of hours earlier at the Post Office. (He was easy to remember: he was wearing a striped shirt and polka-dot tie.)

Right now there's a big event going on in George Square. Olympic Fever has arrived in Glasgow. Time for a party-pack of pakora.

 

 

RANGATIRA at the NZ Post Book Awards

I've already mentioned this on my web site, but wanted to add word of it here as well: RANGATIRA is a finalist in this year's New Zealand Post Book Awards.

The other two fiction finalists are both excellent short-story collections: FROM UNDER THE OVERCOAT by Sue Orr, and Fiona Kidman's THE TROUBLE WITH FIRE. RANGATIRA, by the way, is one of several Maori/Polynesian books shortlisted in the awards this year.

I'm very excited to be a finalist in our national book awards, and will be going back to Auckland in late July in time for the awards ceremony on August 1st. Thanks to Penguin for bringing me home, and to everyone for their messages of support.

If you live in NZ and want to nominate RANGATIRA for the People's Choice Award, you can do that at the Booksellers.co.nz web site. The deadline is Friday July 6th.

When we were in New Zealand last month, we drove up to Omaha, a place Paratene Te Manu knew well - though he wouldn't recognise much about the world beyond the dunes now. It was a fine autumn day, and Hauturu/Little Barrier, one of his homes, looked close enough to touch.

 

Jubilee

Yesterday was the first Sunday in June, and we were back in the UK, so of course it was raining for most of the day and ABSOLUTELY FREEZING. But TMiddy and I are intrepid travellers, as ever: we arrived at the Thames around 10:30 in the morning, to join the rest of the million or so people waiting for the Jubilee Flotilla.

We were standing on the north bank, between Southwark and London Bridges. And we were standing there a long, long time: the first boats in the flotilla didn't appear on our stretch of the river until about ten to four that afternoon. The drizzle came and went, then the rain turned torrential around 5 PM. But spirits were high around us, and there was a certain commitment to red/white/blue accessories, as you can from these pre-flotilla snaps of the crowd in our zone.

 

 

 

Some people were drinking champagne or gin-and-tonic-in-a-can; more people were drinking tea and coffee, because (did I mention this?) it was ABSOLUTELY FREEZING. Some had brought deckchairs and tents and enough food for three days. Someone had unfortunately brought a kazoo. Bunting (TM's new favourite word) was strung along the Thames Path, and a group to our right managed to prop low-hanging branches from a tree up on the bunting line. This drew a 'three cheers' from the people standing further back, because they could get a glimpse of the river at last. We were about three back from the front, so could see the water, and the rain, and the fog descending on the Shard ...

And we could see the boats - hundreds and hundreds of them.

 

 

 

The next picture is of the royal barge, the Spirit of Chartwell. Camilla (my alter ego: please follow her on Twitter -  @camillaPOW) was a blob in cream; Kate was a streak of red. The Queen is the woman in white. It was hard to get a picture with all the wild flag-waving and general mania around us. We could hear the cheers and cries from the other side of the river. (Note all the people on rooftops and balconies as well as along the banks.)

 

There was also a 'three cheers' moment in our section of the river for the Dunkirk 'little ships', about forty of which were taking part.

 

 

Many people bailed as soon as they'd seen the Queen, and I could understand why. It was ABSOLUTELY FREEZING, the rain was getting worse, and eighty minutes after the royal barge passed boats of all varieties were still coming. For example:

 

 

Eventually, when the river was just a blur through the rain, we lumbered away as well. My legs felt frozen on the spot, and though we huddled under an umbrella for the final part of the flotilla, we were soaked through. Some people were in such a hurry to leave, they abandoned everything:

 

I didn't see/hear much of the anti-Jubilee protests going on, though at the end of the day, headed towards Borough Market, we did pass someone murmuring "Stuff the Jubilee, the Queen is an ********". (We had dinner at a NZ restaurant, GBK, near Borough Market, where every restaurant appeared to be under siege from hundreds of people who looked like they'd fallen in the river.) Walking to Waterloo Station to catch the tube, we spied a one-woman protest still going on.

 

What this picture doesn't reveal is the window above. While TM was taking this picture, I stood gazing up at the building. Some people in the floor above this one, sitting in the window and still clutching their Union Jack flags, seemed to think I was looking up at THEM. They all waved to me, and flapped their flags. I waved back. It was a great day out.