Vinyl Café and the Kindness of Strangers

Listening to Stuart MacLean's Vinyl Café from Canada by podcast recently, his reader's story of two young kayakers meeting kindness and generosity wherever they travelled transported me back to the myriad people who helped me a little or a lot as I travelled round Europe on a bike and a shoestring.

Monsieur and Madame Pavard, who welcomed me to their farm on the strength of friends they'd met on a NZ farming exchange, took one look at me and sent me to the bath and my clothes to their laundry, then spent next morning wandering the town market choosing the best salmon savouries and cheeses of the region to regale me with a fine meal, not to mention a night or two in a real bed with crisp white sheets.

And Harald and Tut, older Danish farmers, who plied my friend and I with traditional Christmas cookies and local beer on the train over the water from Hamburg to Copenhagen, then found us on their doorstep later that night as we took them at their word - "come to us if you have any trouble!" - we knew you usually didn't have to book youth hostels, and we weren't fussy - but we hadn't banked on them ALL being closed for the Christmas break, and we couldn't afford even the cheapest hotel. Over four days with the Hansens, they showed us round city and countryside, driving us to the Viking museum at Roskilde, complete with (very short) royal tombs - where I promptly fell into the sea through a coating of ice and snow and had to be dragged out and fed hot cocoa. We saw a changing of the guard similar to that of London, complete with Busbys (Busbies?), danced the night away at their young neighbour's New Year's party, and Harald even drove out on icy roads at 5am to deliver us to the railway station after the ride they had arranged for us - a nurse who had to be at work early - had crashed us into a power pole on the refrozen snow.

One man ran a hundred metres down the street in his white socks to correct some wrong directions he'd just given me on the map - one family fed me up despite my protests that I'd had breakfast - I hadn't, and I had a hundred kilometres to cycle before the next ATM and no money left. A friend had given me an ankh to wear as a necklace just before my departure solo with bike and pup tent through France, Italy and Greece at the end of my year's teaching in France, and it really seemed to attract good people and good luck. Like my mouth organ, also a gift from a friend, which was grabbed off me in a back street in my earliest days exploring France, I swear by a witch - she looked like the cat lady on the Simpsons - "C'est un harmonica?" she screeched, grinned, played it a little, spat in it, and handed it back, grinning. I'm sure she blessed it in some weird way. Too many to mention - some deserve a chapter each in the eventual book.

Like the Norman farming family who arrived in my life via a flat tyre before I had my own puncture repair kit - 16km away from town, bike shops shut and garages not able or willing to help (and probably no money on me or food - I would have just headed off into the countryside for half an hour or so on a sunny Sunday and got carried away ...).  I leaned over the farm gate and asked if anyone could help me - figured someone on a farm would have the requisite mechanical know-how and equipment - and was met with one of those linguistic oddities that you don't learn all at once in class, and then remember forever afterwards because of the circumstances involved - "Mademoiselle has died?"  That's what he said - I thought it must be metaphorical, something like "dying of heat" - thought he might be offering me a drink - so I tried to explain that no, it wasn't that, it was a flat tyre. Turned out "crevé" (died) wasn't quite the same as "crevé un pneu" (or "crevé" for short) - got a flat tyre. We sorted that out, and while he fixed it kindly for me his wife gave me cold drinks and spent literally about ten minutes finding out where I came from. My French was good so when I said I wasn't from near here she thought I must be from some far-off region of France, and when I said New Zealand she actually went off and came back with a map of France for me to show her where! I said no, no, it was overseas, and she came back with a map of Europe. Next to Australia! I said, and there she was with one that extended as far as Turkey! We got it straightened out eventually (reminding me of the young lass in a class I taught - about 12 years old - after I'd talked for about ten minutes about NZ and life there and the southern hemisphere and Australia, and a single NZ farmer having as many as 300 cows to milk before breakfast (except I said "breastfeed" them instead of milk them!), millions of sheep and so forth, she put her hand up: "Madame! Madame! Did you come on a boat or on a train?) Anyway, this lovely farming family invited me back the following week to their first grand-daughter's second birthday, picked me up, put me up for the night, and the meal was the most extravagant of my life! I swear, 7 or 8 courses, each with its own alcoholic drink, and the meal lasted (only the actual food-eating part of it, at table, en famille, 2-year-old and all) four hours, not counting pre-dinner nibblies or after-dinner coffee. Delicious, and great company, and with that I will have to end this very décousue pseudo-column as I fear the timer I set to circumscribe it was not set correctly and I have run over madly.

  Let's all hope the next one will be better written and closer to a week away than a year away!

And has everyone caught up with Stephen Fry's new documentary series on language called Planet Word? There are whole episodes on youtube, including one with Brian Blessed doing a lot of swearing. It's BBC2, I think they're up to Episode 3, so presumably it should be available by some sort of podcast if it disappears off Youtube.

Punctuation Coming

I obviously don't know how to add a hard line bread in blog form - I will do it asap - Lynette

Nuptial

1. Life is alive At Te Rawhiti: German poet meets Maori princess - A rapid swirl makes me gasp. I am eight And the Hare Krishna on Queen Street hold me entranced in a glory of music, movement, colour, cloth, spirit. Body-soul, Thymos, meets Spirit-soul, Youks: Together, what power they have. 'Eternity is in love with the productions of Time' (said Blake). The sea glisten, blue and cyan. 2. Goddess moment below Cape Reinga Spirits' Bay Chopin and belly dancing at your marriage and ours Kindred spirits celebrate life-breath. Youks breathes into Thymos and the dance is spirit. Thymos animates Youks, gives of its matter, and the spirit dances. 3. The sea glistens, blue and cyan at Te Rawhiti in the dance. copyright Lynette Wrigley-Brown 2011

Today, A Poem

Sunday 27th March, 2011 6pm No time for my great new weekly plan today, as the children are due back already, so suffice to say that on Wednesdays, and occasionally on Sundays, I will write that regular column, often in haste, and I will email the link to a select group that I think might be interested. Please let me know if you would like to be added to the list, and please add anyone you think would be interested. If I get really organised, I will also translate half an hour's worth of my PhD thesis and attach that each week too. Please let me know if you want to be removed from this list! If anyone knows how to get a blog read, other than selling out to random advertising, I'm open to advice. And I mean random as in "I have no control over what is being advertised on my site", not random as in my teenage son's favourite word. So - One of Me Pomes: NUPTIAL 1. Life is alive At Te Rawhiti. German poet meets Maori princess A rapid swirl makes me gasp. I am eight And the Hare Krishna on Queen Street hold me entranced in a glory of music, movement, colour, cloth, spirit. Body-soul, Thymos, meets Spirit-soul, Youks: Together, what power they have.

Rising Energy - and Crossed Fingers

Firstly, the crossed fingers: brother-in-law Mitchell Brown is in Japan heading the NZ USAR team, and we hear a group of the NZ USAR guys in a helicopter have been contaminated with radiation. Not sure yet if Mitchell was in that helicopter or not - hope not, and also hope for the guys that were, that it's not the most serious level of contamination and that they get the best care. And of course, hearts out to everyone in Japan, with such huge loss of life: nothing new I can say, but I'm sure most of the world's population is in sympathy with Japan at the moment. Re the rising energy: on a more personal note, a lovely relaxed summer in the sun, full of radiant health had me noticing that yes, a good dose of vitamin D really does seem to improve my asthma and mood; however, with the return to Term I, real work, Things to Be Done, and less sleeping in, I soon succumbed to another chest infection, more asthma, as well as a boil and a couple of mechanical injuries of the foot, knee and back. Gave in and saw the Dr for some nasty antibiotics and prednisone, and filling up the fake-energy pot with paracetamol with caffeine. My thinking is that the fake energy can keep me doing the things I need to in order to develop some real energy - exercise, cooking good meals with vegetables full of nutrients, keeping my mood high enough to keep moving instead of struggling through a torpor of treacle, while sick and even more so in the following week, when there's 150% of work to be done to catch up even to the previous level, and only 42% of even current "normal" levels of energy. Just got a text from Mitchell's wife to say one of their beloved animals has presented them with a newborn baby this morning! Some good news amongst the worry and strain.

Peu à signaler

Sunday 23rd January 2011 It's Sunday afternoon, the children are out, and this is my regular writing time - but I don't feel very interesting. Had a lovely time talking with friends last night, have been married 20 years and still want to be, have to pack for early-start family holiday tomorrow, just know I'm going to spend too much time doing this and playing the piano then have to rush everything else. Don't want to go to bed too late as has become our habit. Inspired by friend's wit to take up the virtual pen once more, but this is not going to be one of those scintillating ones. Still haven't written about remembering that we remember from Kaddish, could do a whole spiel on the musical life of my recently-deceased mother-in-law, the last of the Fox Trio, and her father, Harry C. A. Fox of Hawera Music, and the amazing time my aunt-in-law, as an elderly lady, ran into a man, on a train, in the north of England, who admired him so much that since his youth in the North-England colliery band run by him, had carried his (HCA Fox's) photo in his pocket. Without knowing who Auntie Margaret was, he was extolling the virtues of this band leader extraordinaire, and showed her the photo - to their mutual amazement. What kind of coincidence is that, after growing up in New Zealand? My husband, the grandson of HCA, had forgotten this story, and it makes me realise once again how important just talking to people is - who else in the family has either heard or remembered this? I think I'll send it to Stuart Maclean's CBS radio show, Vinyl Café - home of Dave - for their Story Exchange. Also the story about Auntie Enid's favourite shoes and the rats at the Rainmaker Hotel in Pagopago, along with the cancer of the ceiling, the nibbled toes, the ever-decreasing biology experiment (courtesy of the same rats - observation of mouldy bread over a week - the drawings changing shape every day to record actual size and shape of bread both dry and wet), the hotel employees sent to deal with rat problem more interested in chatting up my then 20-year-old, blonde, tall and slim cousin, the friend from school who just happened to be staying in the same hotel at the same time. And the homing book (Kipling's poems), belonging to my other grandfather-in-law, owned in Egypt for more than a decade, somehow making its way to the very second-hand-book table at the annual fête in the little English village I was bringing up baby in, some 60 years later - he never returned to England to live; he emigrated straight to NZ from Egypt after the War; we grew up in NZ and only spent a few years in England, but his book somehow found us. So, plenty I could be writing about, time to write, but I think that today I won't. Good-bye! Oh, and did anyone follow Trefusis in his treasure hunt? I began, and was devastated when the trail ended abruptly. I hope that young man of self-described excellent brain but lesser mind will find the time to trawl through some more of the esteemed professor's papers - or rather, dongle.