Sad news

This is the story of how a long time friend of my parents and our family met his maker last weekend.  Clouds of sadness gather around the people that knew John and although really sad, we are not surprised that this is how he left.  Robert, his son, is pretty amazing to say these words about his father.  http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4275183/Search-for-body-scaled-back

Blog Hibernation

What with the perishing winter weather and the insane speed of our computer I have been so unmotivated to spend time blogging this month.  Not that I have a lot of readers, but I do apologise for tardiness.  We have had some sun recently but it just seems not to be in the weekend, thus the requirement to sit inside by the fire.   Some weekends I have barely moved off the sofa.  Not great.  However, I have been doing some stuff like a lot of baking and making great meals out of my many dish and cuisine mags.  I have been to about three films, the art gallery with Nic's class, QEII for our first family swimming training session. And to top it off,  I went with Alex to see Ray Avery, New Zealander of the year, talk about his life and promote his book.  What an amazing man with a great story.  If you buy his book 'rebel with a cause' $16 goes towards his charity, which is a free one if you now what I mean?  No donated money goes towards running it.  Everyone gives their time for free.

Three interesting things I remember him saying - so far (I took notes)

• 'I have found my state of grace'
• 'Pure love [of his wife and child, especially child] has healed me'
• Inventors are observers.  Inventions seldom use elements that don't already exist, they are just used differently.  Inventors see a problem and go about fixing it.  They observe. 

And a very selfish note I have also read about 5 books that I haven't blogged either.  Let's hope this getting back on the bloggy horse will yield some more posts before the end of the month .

Bugger!

I know everyone dies but really, some people just shouldn't until they are really old because we need them and their giant brains to help us.  I am gob smacked at hearing the very untimely demise of the clever, charasmatic and very fun Paul Reynolds - IT commentator and believer in the public good and the rights of everyone to be literate in all forms of literature.  He loves libraries more than we do.  I know everyone knows him better than me but I remember sharing a great night out with him and his partner Helen Smith, John Truesdale, Sue Sutherland and Justine in a Mexican restaurant in Auckland and it was the most interesting, stimulating and fun night of talking and laughing.

                                                  Too sad to see a lovely person slip away.

When is a hunger strike not a hunger strike?

While drinking my coffee this morning I was flicking through 'The Press' using Press Display through the library website. I have mentioned this amazing service before....

Anyway, I came across this picture of Tinna Dockerty. I have had some interaction with Tinna 'the community activist' through my role at work but that is not why I am writing this post.

Tinna really believes in her community (Redwood) and is a real advocate. I also have personal connections to Redwood and know people in the photos. However, that is not why I am posting this....read on.

As you can see Tinna is really putting herself out there for this cause, again, admirable. Keith asked Tinna some questions about her hunger strike - I quote

KL: So, how long have you been on a hunger strike for
TD: 6 days

KL: So, are you eating anything at all?
TD: All I am having is vegetables and fruit juiced in a juicer and I am drinking that three or four times a day and I am taking extra vitamins, glucose drinks and energy drinks.

Well, this brings a lot of questions to my mind- a few of them are...
1. When is a hunger strike not a hunger strike? This might read like a diet to some people...although energy drinks are just nasty cans of chemicals and should not be considered food in anyones language.
2. Who decides what a 'hunger strike' actually is and is there a manual?
3. Energy drinks and hunger strike - not sure they should be used in the same sentence

I don't want to appear mean so I will stop now and let you ponder these thoughts. I think I might have a different interpretation of what a hunger strike might be. Perhaps I am a little harsh in this and I know I have little experience in food deprivation so am not really in a position to make any judgement. Interesting though isn't it?

David Bain - Not Guilty

Wow, what an intense time this has been. Having a friend on the jury and working so close to the court as well as the media and giant nature of this case has made today's decision like a watershed. I didn't have a view on what the outcome should be although I kind of knew what it would be but on the face of the evidence I knew 'reasonable doubt' would be the key to the case. I happened to be at the pub when he came out of court and started walking down the road so I took a photo on my phone. It is a very tragic photo but I was there and love being on the tippy edge of something big and interesting.
Actually, this is almost embaressingly bad but he is in there.

Kiwi Celebs

Phew, another busy weekend comes to an end. We are in the grip of the daylight saving change and are suffering from the weirdness of body and clocks being out of sync. Dark evenings suck!

The other day I was walking to a meeting and saw over my shoulder across the road a couple of short grey haired women. I did a double take and realised they were the Topp Twins (whom I love!) and thought how cool it was to see them and how small they looked. Then I saw a white haired old woman tap one on the shoulder and I thought 'how nice, she recognises them. Then realised she was asking them for directions, and as they don't live here and are famous I thought that was fantastic and pretty funny as they pointed in the direction of something. How cool they are. Real and grounded kiwis. I have witnessed the indifference of other famous people and have felt embarrassed at their behaviour. I understand that you need to put a shield up for protection or whatever, however, it is other people that allow you to be famous so get over it.

Yesterday I had the delight of watching my absolute favourite chef Ray McVinnie (see my tribute) at the 'Food Show'. He is not only a great cook but he is also a very friendly, self effacing and just a really nice open person. I had the opportunity to share a few words with him at one point and he was SOOOO nice. I couldn't bring myself to say 'i love you'. I just managed something inane and uninteresting but I was more than thrilled to share a square metre with one of my food hero heroes.

I cooked his recipes for dinner last night and totally swooned over the gorgeous things Erica and I had bought at the food show. Fresh olive oil, Galilee cheese, mint syrup, yoghurt to die for and chocolate. It was just lovely, hear me moan.

Oh yes, saw the very gorgeous Donna Hay as well on stage and she was also very cool. She sounded like my cousins (Sydneysiders) and was funny as well as being a great cook. I have her book 'No time to cook' home from the library at the moment. Worth a read. Nice recipes.So in the last week I have had the pleasure of seeing a few well known people in public and think how much I love living in a small country where people can be themselves and you can bump into famous people by accident and they are just great. Interestingly, New Zealanders tend to leave people alone and respect their privacy.

AFFIRM

Me and Aurelia setting up the stall. She is a great gal, another privilege to work withA few Saturdays ago I had the pleasure of attending the AFFIRM festival in Aranui representing our library. Every year I go to this event and always get a huge blast out of it. Aranui is the suburb in Christchurch that has the highest deprivation levels in the South Island. The people live hard lives and you feel you are not in Christchurch at all. This year we gave away boxes and boxes of books to families. One per person and they loved them. One 9 year old boy pointed to a book and said 'mum, they have this at the school library', I said, 'would you like to have and keep it?' He nodded and smiled quietly, absolutely overwhelmed and happy to own such a gorgeous book. I almost cried and felt privileged to be able to do this for a living.
This was a great performance by Wainoni school. The dances had a Maori and Samoan flavour and the kids had such fun, and so proud.

All our visitors were friendly and fun to talk to and this community is fantastic. We so want to build a library here and we know it would be a great asset to the community. Once you have spent a day with a community such as this you lose all judgement. You have to be able to walk in other peoples shoes to even half way understand the hardships some people face.
This little guy couldn't wait to start reading

George and Helen

I have had a busy week with lots of social activities and busy work stuff. I composed an excellent blog post while biking to work the other morning and for the life of me, have not been able to recall it since. This lead me to thinking about doing a post called 'Inappropriate thoughts' but thought it might get some very inappropriate porn hits. Anyway, the tenor of that post would have been the constant stream of thoughts popping up just when I don't need them. Example: thinking about what needs to be in my bag when I am about 100m away from home on the way to somewhere and having to go back and get forgotten things. Websites/houses for sale/phone calls I need to make, when I am on my bike and miles from any from of technology. Things I need to do in my lunch break at times that are nowhere near my lunch break and finally thinking about things I need to do at work at about 4am. What is that? When will my thoughts align with my physical location?


Now, about George...'The George' to be precise. I scored a free nights accommodation at said hotel and Jonty and I made the most of that last night. Very nice. About Helen. I had the pleasure of attending the opening of the Beca Heritage Week on Friday night. I took my friend Karen who was in town for the weekend and we got to hang out at the COCA gallery with a cross section of the architecture, local government and other heritage type people. Nice wine, nice food, GREAT music courtesy of the very talented and sweet Flip Grater (whose sister is a friend of Jasmine's).

While we were deliberating over Chardonnay v Sauvigon Blanc, there was a buzz and hustle behind us and in walked Helen Clark our Prime Minister. She looked tired, trim and toned, short and prettier than expected

She spoke for a long time, very knowledgably and in a very relaxed manner,

She had very cute security guys and was rushing to catch a plane so whipped out pretty quickly

Whether you like her or not and aside from the fact that it is election year, I was kind of tickled to see the PM up close.

Check out the events this Heritage Week and enjoy something interesting and different in your life. The theme is 'Retrospective' and here are a couple of pics representing some 70's Christchurch architecture