Nowhere so busy a man as he

The past week has been quite hectic here - one of those periods in which you start looking forward to an easy night indoors even. Like tonight!

On Tuesday last week it was pub quiz night out in Stoke Newington. It was film & music night, so I was really looking forward to it. The questions were rather challenging! For example, I knew that Harry Secombe played Mr Bumble in Oliver!, but having never seen it I had no chance of knowing four other key players. Luckily the chaps displayed an eidetic memory and pulled us through. Another stumper was the simple true or false question: during WWII the Academy awarded Oscar statuettes made of plastic - true or false? (Answer at the bottom of the post). In the end despite a distinct lack of knowledge of the works of Craig David we still managed third place, taking home a king's ransom of a fiver each. Thinking of turning pro soon.

On Wednesday I went to see Control, the Ian Curtis / Joy Division biopic with Felix & Gavin. As befits a film made by the legendary rock photographer Anton Corbijn (who photographed Joy Division in their heyday), every shot was artfully composed and the rich black and white film textures were sumptuous - everything looked like a shot from the best photo studio. The young actor playing Curtis, Sam Riley, looked the part and did a good job of conveying the difficult psychological arc of the character, and of course the music was tremendous - a real evocation of the raw directness of the Factory talent. But on the down side, the script felt a little join-the-dots in places (when they all pile into a Cortina to play their first gig in London and one of the band members is nervous, another character says, 'He's just nervous because we're playing our first gig in London'. Yeah, we get it. At times the strength of the music threatens to overwhelm the story and render the film a mere string of tastefully accurate Joy Division music videos. And while Samantha Morton is a top-notch actress and gives a good performance as Ian's wife Debbie Curtis, it just didn't feel 100% authentic - she was just a bit too old to play the character. Still, for fans of the band or the scene it's a must-see complement, particularly if you've already seen and enjoyed 24 Hour Party People.

It was turning into something of a movie week, because the next day after work I met Craig, Claire and Craig's mate Ivan in Shaftesbury Avenue to see the much-talked-about Coen Brothers film, No Country For Old Men. On the one hand I can see why it's been so popular and been nominated for eight Oscars. Javier Bardem is superb as the vicious psychopathic criminal, and all the other cast members give pitch-perfect performances - particularly Tommy Lee Jones' sheriff and Josh Brolin's rugged chancer taking on the unstoppable killer. And I did enjoy wee Scot Kelly Macdonald and her perfect Texan drawl as Carla Jean (well, it sounded great to me). And the broad Texan vistas were stunning on the wide screen too. But... I guess thrillers aren't really my cup of tea, and this one in particular was just too violent for my tastes - I preferred the old fashioned approach they used to take of keeping the grisly stuff off-camera to heighten the drama. Depicting the gore unflinchingly might win points for honesty but it also drags an intelligent film like this too close to the slasher genre that is rightly regarded as a B-movie genre. In any case, the movie got us all discussing its positives and negatives after we emerged, so we went to the nearby Cambridge pub on Charing Cross Road to carry on the debate.

The weekend turned out to be an absolute cracker in London - astonishing blue skies and balmy sunrays the whole time. On Saturday I went up to Hendon in north London to visit the excellent RAF Museum London to look at its selection of aircraft exhibits ranging from flimsy WWI fighters to modern jet fighters. I think my favourites would have to be these two - the sole remaining example of the graceful Supermarine Stranraer flying-boat and a rugged-looking Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer that saw active service designating targets for RAF Tornados and Jaguars in the first Gulf War.





At home that evening I watched an interesting BBC2 doco on the Dead Sea Scrolls. On Sunday I took advantage of the weather and went for a run along the Heath, went to Hammersmith for a haircut that turned out to be a tad shorter than I'd envisaged, and then headed into the West End. Town was heaving with people who had come in for the Chinese New Year parade that had finished half an hour before, and many of the streets were pedestrian only. I stopped in at the National Portrait Gallery to see the Photographic Portrait Prize 2007 exhibit, and then weaved through the crowds in Leicester Square to watch the fireworks display at 6pm. It was good fun and ear-pummellingly loud. (I took a couple of short videos to give you an idea: (clip 1) (clip 2), and here's a reasonable picture).

Then it was a short stroll to the Prince Charles to see my third film in recent days, the Wes Anderson India comedy travelogue The Darjeeling Limited. The three bickering brothers (Owen Wilson, Adrian Brody and Jason Schwartzman) are endearingly petty fractured souls searching for their mother who has rather advanced personal space issues. There are no profound stories at work here though - it's just a chance for some appealing comedy and a lot of stunning Indian scenery and local colour. Anderson is quite the internationalist, always highlighting exotic influences in his off-kilter films - the Portuguese-singing ship's crewman in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (Seu Jorge) being another example. Definitely a film worth watching, particularly if you liked Anderson's other works, and perhaps like me felt that Zissou (etc.) was a little bleak.

And finally on Monday night I met a few pals (Felix, Gavin, Craig, Claire and Helen) at the 5th View cafe at the top of the Waterstone's bookshop in Piccadilly for some wine and nibbles in commemoration of the first anniversary of my departure from New Zealand. The year's gone quickly! Roll on the next one; the first major occasion of which will be my trip to Andalucia, which begins on Saturday.

Before I go, I seem to have got into the habit of posting videos, but apart from the fireworks I've got none of my own this week. So instead I'll give you this clip of Irish comedian David O'Doherty performing his signature tune, 'FAQ for the DOD'. Al, Will and I saw his act in Wellington during a comedy festival a few years ago and he was great fun to watch - a laconic chap with a good line in self-deprecating humour and silly songs on his miniature keyboard.



Rockin'!

eT

Nowhere so busy a man as he than he, and yet he seemed busier than he was.

- Geoffrey Chaucer

(Pub quiz answer: True - the Oscars during WWII were made of plastic! I got that one SO wrong...)

The week that was

The week's been fairly quiet in London - not much in the way of gallivanting to report.

On Monday I watched a brief doco featuring Alex James, the former bassist from Blur. Now a cheese-making farmer living a life of rural; idyll, James famously spent many thousands of pounds on drugs and booze during the height of his music stardom. Having desisted from the hard stuff, he received an invitation from the government of Colombia, which offered to show him the coal-face issues at the heart of the drugs trade. So, quicker than you can say 'Devil's dandruff', the floppy-fringed James was meeting Senor El Presidente and talking about how the drug trade was a curse on Colombia. So far, so good.

But things got interesting when James and his hopefully well-insured camera crew went on a military coca-plant eradication mission in the Colombian jungle. Helicopters such as the one they flew in are often shot down, and the plantations they visit are sometimes laced with landmines to maim the anti-drugs forces. (The aircraft pilots were all Americans 'with a military bearing', by the way - but unsurprisingly no-one would answer questions about that!).

Having survived the jungle mission, and returned from visiting a poverty-stricken village where he learnt how growing and processing coca is the only way the villagers can feed their families, James headed back to the cities for some brushes with the business end of the drugs trade. He met a pixellated drug dealer and his coke-headed bodyguard, and in a chilling scene later on, interviewed a local mafia hitman, who startled the former popstar by whipping out a concealed Glock pistol. (Over the programme end credits, the producers added that the hitman was killed in January). James emerged from his visit to Colombia duly chastened and hopeful that his experiences might help convince British party-goers to stay away from cocaine. He might have a long way to go if this article about the evidence of cocaine traces on UK banknotes still holds true.

On Tuesday I received confirmation from the High Commission that my application in the ballot to attend the Royal Garden Party at Buckingham Palace in July had been successful. So I've got a few months to brush up on my small talk and find a morning suit to wear. I might need to go trawling through the Oxfam shops in the posher parts of London.

After work that night I met up with Kirstin's friend Fay and her pals at the Rose & Crown in Stoke Newington for its pub quiz. I'm not a regular attendee because the weekly quizzes finish at 10.30pm or later, which means I'm usually not home before midnight. I was able to help with the history and music questions here and there, and we were lucky to come 1st equal, winning a bit of petty cash. Next week the theme is film and music, so I'll definitely try to make it again! I'm also learning the ins and outs of the question-setter: one question asked the name of the planet in the solar system furthest from the sun, but it turned out she hadn't heard about the down-rating of Pluto to 'dwarf planet' status in 2006.

Wednesday was the quietest day of the week. On my morning walk down to the tube station I spoke to Bruce to wish him a happy birthday. Naturally I was careful to finish our conversation before boarding the tube, as that would've made me something of a hypocrite, given the regularity with which I think evil thoughts about people who carry on private telephone conversations on public transport. That evening I enjoyed watching an old Comic Strip episode: the slapdash spaghetti western 'A Fistful of Traveller's Cheques', which is still entertaining more than 20 years later (see this brief clip, if you can tolerate the poorly-spelt title).

On Thursday after work I spent an hour in the British Museum, shifting from room to room depending on the relative volume levels. It seemed that Spanish and Italian tourists had the loudest 'museum voices', i.e. talking non-stop as loud as possible, with predictable results in the long echo-prone galleries of the museum.

Afterwards I met Helen who had arranged tickets for a performance by Welsh stand-up comedian Mark Watson, having heard him on Radio 4. We were just settling into our seats and wondering when the show would start when a chap in the row in front of us leapt to his feet and started loudly addressing the audience. Turned out this was Watson; cue mild but ever-increasing sensation of disquiet caused by having a comedian standing right in front of you, because they always seem to like a bit of audience participation. Which is why I don't sit in the front row! But we were safe, as he explained he didn't really go in for embarrassing his audience members, and he soon restored himself to his proper place on the stage. Watson's a likeable chap with a good line in observational humour, such as his running commentary on everyday events including fat businessmen running to catch a train, or the contents of a fellow diner's lunch. And his momentary glimpses into the world of stardom (he's appeared on TV a few times) provide the opportunity for a bit of surrealist hypothesising about the creeping inevitability that seems to attach itself to the very worst ideas. For example, on 'Never Mind The Buzzcocks' he was on a team with pop star Jamelia and couldn't help wondering, "What would happen if I... killed Jamelia? Y'know, not because I want to, but just because I could". My guess is that he'd probably not be invited to appear on the programme again, at the very least.

Here's a couple of stand-up clips of Mark Watson. Some of the language is NSFW though - be careful.




Arriving home after the show at about 10.30pm I passed by a lively scene near my building. A parked van had been clamped by the authorities and the driver and a mate were attacking the triangular wheelclamp with a circular saw, sending a curtain of sparks jetting over the narrow street and making a real racket to boot. When I checked out the window a quarter of an hour later the van was gone. I suppose you could admire their 'can-do' spirit, but I wonder if it occurred to them that a vehicle's licence plate would always be recorded when it's clamped...

The end of the week loomed quickly, and while the work day felt quite slow, at least it was capped off with work drinks for a few of us at Pagliacci on Kingway. It's a lively bar on Fridays, but the volume levels are high from all the excited chattering and the bar is too small for the size of the premises: it takes ages to get served.

My Saturday was very low key - a tram trip out to the shops of Purley Way, and an evening spent watching Green Wing and playing Baldur's Gate II. Today I went further afield, taking a walk through the monied streets of Chelsea, including the historic Chelsea Physic Garden and the trendy King's Road. Here's a picture of the Physic Garden... or at least it's the wall outside. I'm not paying 7 quid to go in!


The main purpose of the visit was to explore the National Army Museum, an under-visited free attraction not far from the throngs of South Kensington. The Army exhibits were of a high quality, particularly the impressively life-like mannequins kitted out in period uniform and weaponry. (Mannequins are usually rubbish). Highlights aside from the expected collections of arms and equipment included Capt William Siborne’s massive 170-year-old scale model of the orders of battle at Waterloo (1815); the mounted skull of a regiment's mascot tiger, the animal having been brought back tame from Bengal; and the skeleton of Napoleon’s horse, Marengo. One major drawback of the museum was its ‘no photography’ policy – ‘no flash photography’ I could understand, but no pictures at all is just inhospitable.

On the way home I decided to be a real tourist: I took a video of the District Line train to Wimbledon arriving at the platform at Sloane Square. While this did naturally bring on an acute sensation of dorkiness, I reasoned that it would be nice for those poor unfortunates who are exiled from London and who miss the crotchety, somewhat unreliable and occasionally grotty Underground:



Plans for next week include attending a couple of movies and putting the finishing touches on my plans for Andalucia in mid-February.

Winter kept us warm

On Friday after work I met Raewyn and Mike in Southwark for a drink in a pub and dinner at the Young Vic. We chatted about Raewyn's new job in Dulwich, Mike's parents' new house in Whakatane and R & M's plans to return to New Zealand at some stage this year. I can recommend the Vic's Russian sausages - very tasty.

The next day the skies were sunny and cloudless, so I decided to venture out of town to take advantage of the good weekend weather. I took a bus to Clapham and boarded the express to Brighton to enjoy some bracing sea air. The train journey only takes an hour, and soon I was wandering down Queen's Road to the beachfront, noticing the lively mix of Brighton's Saturday shoppers, including plenty of studded and pierced students who flock to study here.

I enjoyed a stroll along the strand, watching council workers slowly clearing the stony beach of the hundreds of processed timber planks that floated ashore along the south coast after the cargo ship Ice Prince sank recently. Now the wood is stacked neatly like huge funeral pyres along the brownstone beach, and the work crews gradually cart more and more away to be sold. Here and there locals had used the planks to spell out their names in giant letters or to skid their skateboards along.


Wandering back through the town, I paid a visit to the town museum and gallery. Its collection includes a wooden 19th century Maori ancestor carving from a whare nui. Upstairs there were other curiosities, including an aged flybill for the Brighton to London horse-drawn coach service, a cast of the head and foot of the extinct dodo, and posters from the heyday of the Brighton Pier: 'Ronnie Corbett in The Corbett Follies! Dick Emery and the Barron Knights!'

Top flight entertainment on the Pier
Originally uploaded by eT le snap

I paused to take some photos of the splendidly elaborate onion-domes of the town's greatest architectural excess: Prince George's Royal Pavilion (1823) ... but I didn't go in again (I visited in 1997 during my tour of the south coast), because it costs ₤7.70 and they don't let you take pictures inside. Maybe next time. Instead I went to take some pictures of the West Pier, which collapsed in 2002 and now lies derelict, although there are plans - as yet unfunded - to build an impressive viewing tower nearby. Below is my favourite shot of the day - taken in Brighton station on the way back to London:


At home that evening I enjoyed watching 'QI' (Stephen Fry's clever panel show; it stands for Quite Interesting) and 'Green Wing'. Later BBC2 screened Woody Allen's Match Point with Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, so I gave that a go. While I can understand Allen wanting to work with Scarlett, the script of this film really wasn't sufficiently interesting: the stilted dialogue was unrealistic and the portrayals of the English aristocracy seemed superficial and cliched. When Rhys-Meyers' character - who is meant to be Irish - asks his secretary for 'two ahrspirins' I just about shouted at the telly in annoyance. No-one talks like that! Perhaps the chance to put Scarlett in two Allen-scripted movies at the same time (he also made Scoop in London with her) exhausted Woody's writing reservoirs.

Today was a low-key one, although it was another sunny winter's day. After a quick visit to the Fopp store in Shaftesbury Avenue to buy some cheap books and a comedy DVD ('Stella Street', the one with a load of impersonated celebs - Jagger, Caine, Nicholson, Bowie - all living in a suburban London street) I met Steve and Fiona for coffee at Sacred, where we discussed the possibility of meeting up on a tour of Russia this summer. Fingers crossed that it works out, because it would be a great opportunity to see St Petersburg and Moscow for the first time.

This past week proved to be a lively one for infrastructual reasons. On Tuesday the building I work in had its water supply disconnected, and the chief executive sent everyone home. But my team couldn't depart because we had an important paper to complete and distribute. Lucky the British Museum has excellent toilets only just around the corner! That night I got home to discover that our hot water cylinder had developed a fault, so we were without the central heating and hot water in the taps for two nights. The trusty hot water bottle was pressed into duty and staved off the chills, and fortunately the shower worked fine as it was electric rather than gas-heated.

And congratulations must go out to Bec & Hugh in Tawa, who are the proud parents of baby Isla Bernadette Foley. Well played, chaps!

eT

'Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers'
- T.S. Eliot

p.s. No snow here, but plenty of tubers... mmm, chips...

In praise of Once

After work on Wednesday this week I noticed that the Prince Charles was screening the Irish film Once, so I took the opportunity to see it a second time, having originally seen it with Craig and Claire in Shaftesbury Avenue a few months ago. On first look, the film is a tiny gem, a thoroughly enjoyable evocation of the simple beauty of great songs performed honestly with verve and passion. The second time around, Once impressed again - its two immensely appealing lead actors, Glen Hansard (of the Irish band The Frames) and young Marketa Irglova are both effortlessly talented and give likeable performances, there are ample opportunities to laugh at the film's low-key humour, and the songs they composed and delivered live to camera in the film are deft singer-songwriter material. Particular favourites include a swooping paean to lost love, Falling Slowly (see link below for a performance on Letterman: America has well and truly embraced Once) and the surging urgency of When Your Mind's Made Up, which we see being commited to tape in the recording studio. And life truly imitates art, because now Hansard and Irglova are a couple in real life. Aww.



This weekend I was fairly out-and-about, having resolved to be more proactive and to take advantage of as much as possible in this busy city. On Saturday I took in the open day at the Middle and Inner Temple, two of the ancient Inns of Court of London (Chaucer wrote of them in 1381). Normally closed to the general public, the Inns had cast open their doors as part of the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the royal charter granted by James I. Of most interest was the Temple Church with its stone effigies of knights rising from the stone floor, and the Middle Temple Hall, its dark wood panels decked with hundreds of family crests of former members, and a gigantic portrait of King James (from the school of van Dyk) holding pride of place at the head of the hall.

After the Temple I took the Tube south of the river to the Imperial War Museum to explore the war posters exhibition, Weapons of Mass Communication. Some were familiar - 'Daddy, what did YOU do during the Great War?' - while others were more contemporary and comical, like the Blair-baiting Make Tea, Not War.

Today after perusing the shops in Hammersmith and availing myself of a pastry from Marks & Spencers I went to Greenwich to have a quick look at the exhibits (mainly the artworks) in the National Maritime Museum. There was time afterwards for a quick visit to Steve and Fiona's apartment two stops down on the DLR before I headed home to prepare for the week ahead.

Before I go, I can report that I've now booked my next two trips to the Continent. On Friday night I booked my week off in February - I'll be heading to Andalucia in southern Spain to explore and take advantage of the (hopefully) warmer weather. A month or so later I'll be zipping down to Naples for Easter, to take in the marvels of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and maybe Capri and the Amalfi Coast if there's time.

eT

Creatures and curiosities

Last week I ventured up to Holloway in north London after work with Felix and Gavin to a small low-ceilinged theatre for a Radio 4 recording of a new series called The Museum of Curiosity. It was hosted by the gently whimsical John Lloyd – producer of the legendary Blackadder series and the current Stephen Fry panel show, QI – and the quizzical bearded multi-media phenomenon that is comedian-musician Bill Bailey. The premise of the show is that the presenters are curators of a notional radio-based museum devoted to odd and interesting ideas, and each week they invite intriguing guests with big brains along to spin some ideas and propose appealing new curiosities to add to the museum’s exhibits.

The guests in our recording, the first of the series, were lecturers drawn from the sciences: a chemist, a mathematician and a physician. All three were excellent story-tellers and inspiring thinkers, but of the three it was a particular treat to see Dr Jonathan Miller, who is an eminent medical doctor, but who also attained renown in a sideline as a comedian with the groundbreaking Beyond The Fringe comedy troupe in the late 50s and early 60s – the same troupe that spawned the huge comedy careers of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (and Alan Bennett too). Miller’s nominated exhibit for the museum was a set of 14th century alabaster sculptures, which he described in glowing tones as a pinnacle of religious artwork, purified and amplified in a way by the slow decay and disappearance of their original painted decorations, and now a pristine angelic white. The chemist (who was also a physicist in his spare time) nominated the 18th century hypothetical substance known as ‘phlogiston’, which scientists of the day believed was the all-pervasive substance responsible for combustion, until the theory of oxygen replaced it. And the mathematician came up with ‘the monster’, a grandiloquently named conceptual mega-dimensional structure with several hundred thousand dimensions (as opposed to our usual three). This latter proposition enabled Bill Bailey to wax lyrical on the topic of 25-dimensional greengrocers, which is probably a first for Radio 4.

On Saturday I took the train into town (taking a slight detour via Wimbledon to avail myself of a traditional weekend Cornish pasty repast) to meet up with Richard, Sam and Otene in Soho for an authentic New Zealand café experience at Sacred in Ganton Street. While I’m not really a coffee devotee, places like Sacred and its East Soho cousin, Flat White in Berwick Street, cater for the fussy Antipodeans who abhor London’s mass-production coffee barns. And it was nice to have a Lemon & Paeroa alongside my coffee too. We did a bit of catching up and later perused the shops in Carnaby Street while the winter sun lit up the clear blue skies.

The next morning I was due to meet up with Felix and Gavin again at South Kensington for a visit to the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum. I left home in plenty of time, but then my District Line train was mysteriously switched from the city line to the Edgware Road branch, and in order to reach the museum in time for the entry time printed on the tickets I had to throw caution to the wind and jump in a black cab to whisk me from High Street Kensington to the museum. It got me there in time but ended up costing as much as the exhibition ticket! The photos themselves were excellent, displayed on individual lightboxes to highlight the remarkable colours and the clarity of the images.

The most dramatic image was a Russian photographer’s shot at water level in a remote Kamchatka stream:

“I’d been so busy taking pictures of the salmon in the Ozernaya River in southern Kamchatka, east Russia, that I didn’t notice the bear until it was a metre away. It was a terrible shock. I kept calm enough to take the picture, and only later did I realise how serious the situation was” – Sergey Gorshkov

The photo is of the half-submerged adult brown bear staring down imperiously into the puny photographer’s lens, his jowl dripping with rivulets of river water. A truly remarkable picture. There was plenty more of that quality too:

• An Italian songbird was pictured perched atop a bending flower stem adorned with a dew-covered spiderweb, its beak open in early morning song, and above its little head the condensation from its breath formed perfect tiny smoke-rings in the air.
• An adult and baby meerkat in the Kalahari Reserve in South Africa are transfixed by the prospect of breakfast, as a hornet crosses between them.
• An aerial shot of a dozen male grey narwhals feeding in a hole in the sea ice near Baffin Island, displaying their huge unicorn-like tusks.

But my favourite was probably Ari Tervo's picture from snowy Finland, in which a pure white stoat was snapped trying to lug away a small slice of bread left by the patient photographer. The stoat’s determination to make off with its prize is palpable, but the winning touch to the photograph is the two dagger-sharp incisors peeking over the top of the slice: “this is my lunch and I’m not letting go!”



This excellent photography exhibition is just the sort of thing that sends you scurrying into the camera shops in your lunchbreak to look at expensive cameras and lovely lenses…

London's maritime heritage

In the spare days between arriving back from France and going back to work on the 2nd I decided to take advantage of my temporary house-sitting location to see some of the local attractions. On Saturday I took the DLR up to West India Quay in the heart of the Docklands to see the Museum in Docklands, which had free entry in the Christmas-New Year period. It focuses on the history of the Thames and its port from Roman Londinium through Saxon Lundenwic, medieval trade and the inhabited London Bridge to the present day. The highlights for me were the ship models, like these two - the first, a medieval river barge known as a 'shout', and the second, a Tudor cargo ship called the Susan Constant, which left Blackwall in 1606 as one of the three ships carrying the colonists who founded the Virginia colony in North America.





There were also a selection of photos from a Docklands shoot with the Beatles in Wapping, July 1968. The pictures were taken the day before they recorded 'Hey Jude'. Nice to see George at the front for once.



Yesterday I took a walk along the Thames in Greenwich to enjoy the architectural spectacle of the Old Royal Naval College and the Queen's House (1635). The twin neo-classical wings of the College are split by a grand promenade to allow the river views from the Queen's House, and they provide a beautiful setting for a stroll:



Inside the College's spectacular Painted Hall diners were surrounded by the most remarkable paintings on both the roof and walls, which took 19 years to complete. In 1806 the body of Horatio, Lord Nelson, lay in state here amidst this artistic splendour before his funeral in St Paul's Cathedral. The paintings are a joyous reminder of Britain's unparalleled maritime heritage.





Across the promenade in the College Chapel a choir trilled prettily. Near the door I noticed this memorial to events in faraway New Zealand, which resonated greatly for the residents of the Naval College - the February 1863 shipwreck of HMS Orpheus on the Manukau Bar in Auckland. The loss of 189 lives had a profound effect on the young colony, and was a big story when news reached London some five weeks later. Many of those who died were buried in the Onehunga Church cemetery that I used to wander through as a child.



Walking past a temporary icerink bedecked with skaters, and crossing Romney Road, I approached the entrance of the Queen's House. Nowadays it displays the art collection of the National Maritime Museum, with many excellent naval works. Here some of the works of Cook's expedition artist William Hodges depict some of the earliest European encounters with New Zealand, including the famous painting of four Maori at Cascade Cove, Dusky Bay, in 1775.

eT

p.s. I should mention that on an expedition to the massive Asda hypermarket at Crossharbour on Christmas Eve the in-store radio station announcer read an hourly news bulletin that included the 'and finally' story about the drunken Santas in Christchurch who disrupted a movie screening. Finally, lasting fame for our national achievements.