David in Pen and Pics

Wellington Maritime Museum. Worst moment – having to sit myself down in a remote corner of the shop because of much walking and clambering up stairs. Not Age! No, not age. Best moment. Watching the young women behind the counter doing little dances. They had forgotten I was there. Until I applauded. But definitely caused laughter and brightened up a those quiet Museum moments.

Worth a visit. And quite timely with that elephantine barge stranded across the Suez.

The visit was much enhanced with my superb spatial awareness, holding Mr Google’s GPS the wrong way, and losing an argument with the ‘usually correct’ gender over The Quickest Route.

I got lost on my way home – in Unity Books. I have shelves of unread books. And shelves. So after “Just looking thank you, I have a large number of books,” I figured I’d buy a book, ‘Numbers Don’t Lie’. Vaclav Smil.

Important things when travelling. Timetables, knowing where you are and the shower. Getting the temperature right is a science. Not squirting water out the door helps. I always forget to read the bottles on the shower shelf. I mostly grab the most interesting shape – which is only partly visible, and give my hair a good old squirt. That squeezy bottle could be industrial strength Draino. But they all work.

Sparkling clean I leave the apartment and dodge the drizzle in the hunt for the Dixon St Deli. It is a grey day. Another bearded fellow (showered?) Perches happily outside reading the progress on the unblocking of the Suez Canal.

Large flat white. Friendly staff and a cheery wave when I leave ~ is this a good or a bad sign?

The bounce and pageantry is winding down. Cuba Street is slipping down to is busy streets, jostling crowds and zany shop doorways. I step out of a cafe and

The final glow of the evening in an Italian cafe. “I remember you from some years back.” – the owner. Motorscooters, Italian of course discussed. The scooter has hatched into an Italian motorbike.

Next day, Monday, the serious surge of traffic. And Wellington drizzle.

An afternoon wander.

The bouquinerie is buried with the above, and more of the above, more ancient than modern. A bloke with his bestest anarchic clothes has been poured into a chair in the corner. He has that look of the bookshop ‘Do not disturb’. Maybe he never leaves that chair. Another, younger and more vital fellow eagerly gnaws his way into some sort of convenient pay and scamper delicacy.

Dark, firm, slightly shaky lettering grimly announces the hideous outcomes for those parchment pilferers who become engraved for evermore on The Security Camera. All the forces of Satan plus the Cuba Street Constabulary are watching, watching and waiting.

Books, side by side, neighbours for how long ~ are silent as I brightly thank the anarchist and I slip to the Wellington drizzle.

Actually it is an old stable, modernised and now an apartment.

Right in the middle of town. Alongside Cuba St.

You can still see the old gantry, upper left, that was used for hauling up hay, supplies and horsey bits.

The coffins in the courtyard contain the poor souls who have perished using the perishing stairs.

Correction. Currently streets are closed off and the locality is enjoying / suffering from the Cuba Dupa festival. Coffins are a part of that.

I came home last night, winkled my way from the biggest crowds I’ve been in for a long time and went to bed. I’m an oldie. The building was resonating to this techno music the young ones have. Music that could topple statues. I missed out on all of that. Happy after a good day I fell asleep.

And woke the next day to silent streets, made breakfast in the upstairs living room. Today there will be more dancing, music, crazy costumes. Ain’t life grand.

Booktown – booktown.org.nz. collections of books sit and wait. Mostly books I would have gathered and donated to the Sally Army. Often in a corner sits The Person In Charge. Busy. A lap top, or reading. Some look up and smile. Most simmer in their bookish world, not expecting anyone to buy a book.

A few cafes, some active with the younger set and who are often tethered to an amiable pooch. One early cafe busy with a gathering of elderly locals – Rotary? For the rest of the day the tables, cups and scones in repose.

The Royal Hotel provided a hearty ale brewed in nearby Martinborough. This was followed, in a common sense way, by a hot and filling pub lunch.

A town of just over 2,500 people. Before 1955 accessible via the wheezing and puffing of the Fell locomotives up the Remutaka range. Today passenger and trains, trains whoosh into the dark and whoosh out into sunlight from the rail tunnel.

A town of preloved antique shops, smiling in the morning sun. Grandma’s kitchen and living room are scattered amongst the dust on shelves, tables and window displays . Peaceful. Old world wooden buildings remain uncorrupted by the later generations ‘improving’ and smartening things up.

A child walks to school – sans SUV. A second child, with a backpack large enough to accommodate a lifetime’s learning and books, lost in rueful thought – a schoolboy with his beguiling mourning face.
A long established bowling green welcomes new members. An information board, ‘Sunday service, 10.30am’. St Andrews Church  silent, until the children’s playgroup arrives.

The temperature has warmed up to 11 degrees.

And fly non stop for a week and a half. Godwits. Unique to NZ and China. Somehow, and for how long? – these birds know the favourable winds to assist the migration to enjoy summer in both hemispheres. And breed chicks – who ‘get it’ to migrate and have chicks, for thousands and thousands of generations.

I use a GPS to locate family in small town NZ.

Miranda Shorebird Centre on the Firth of Thames was sunny, busy with ‘bird people’, the migration with flocks of these birds had started. Telescopes were set up by volunteers made it possible to intrude on their patch of mud.

Low tide is when the Godwits feed on the Bristle Worms – just a bit longer then your hand and the birds build up the fat reserves in their bodies – the fuel to fly to China.

Even the car looks relieved as it pulls into our drive and kids ooze, tumble out. Welcome hugs. A long drive after a committee decision, ‘Let’s visit Poppa’.
Committee decisions, no one is actually in charge, there is a moment of each looking at the other, ‘Now wot?’ followed by chatter, dawdling inside and clattering down the stairs.
Food.
No-one is in charge of lunch. No person has come out in spots deciding on a menu, facing the ‘I don’t like’, and propelling a trolley through Covid quivering crowds.
Fridge, larder, dining table fruit bowl, Poppa’s home made bread, oh – and the pizza and peanut brownies. Real peanut brownies. No brownies were harmed in following the Edmund’s recipe. Just as my Mum did.
Family news, small groups form, young ones talk of things that for me, a wrinkled Poppa, are now above my head.
A walk. An explore around the older parts of Thames. A&G Price, an enormous and old building where, when ‘Poppa was a boy’ real steam locomotives were manufactured. And today there is still evidence of railway lines. You know when I grow up I’m going to be a steam train driver.

Small boys excel in getting lost. Disappearing from . And the site. While some could become anxious hardened old tuskers like Poppas, small boy graduates, are relaxed. A chance to sit down. After all Thames, New Zealand, was discovered by big boys getting almost lost. And lost boys have an inborn GPS. A tummy. Time and hunger lures small boys homewards.
The boys emerge clutching trophies of interesting stones and unidentified discarded objects.
The kids stuffed into the car, we drive up to the monument and view of the Firth of Thames. Ponder, what did it look like in Capt. Cook’s day? We read how in those early ventures the noise of native birds in those uncut forests was almost too hard to bear.
A view of the rooftops of the businesses along the main street of Thames. The Thames cinema looks enormous. Deceptive from inside the four auditoriums. Sadly in a few weeks to be permanently closed. Cinema survived TV but at home streaming devices have turned the current.
Monuments are sacred places. Monuments are climbed by small boys. Yes a boy gets stuck. We wish him well. We promise, at home, to raise our plate of cake in memory of a climber who failed to unclimb.

Low speed, lots of corners and the road now is tar-sealed. The ratatat of corrugations and dust are yesterday.
Driving through shade and covered by ferns and native trees provide a break from all day sun. Almost at the destination and my phone sounds an alert. Nowhere to stop on this narrow road. I guess. Another Covid alert? More likely a third tsunami warning. Tsunamis are waves that come in waves. But we are safe. Locked in a valley, yes, but at an altitude now of at least 80 metres. I park the car. A solitary car under the trees the same as all the previous late summer visits. Holiday folk have gone.

• 

I check my phone – these days we can get reception in the valley. A tsunami alert. Somewhere a tsunami may have been and gone.
Simple back pack, a quickly scratched together picnic. Make-do picnics offer surprises. Cheese, rye biscuits, eggs, dried fruit – real fruit and baking. Bottle of water.
Summer crowds have left a well-worn track. Storms have left a well-torn beach, devoid of sand. Where once was sand, comfortable to sit on, are river boulders. A search for the ideal blend of bum and boulders, a wriggle and now seated, let the picnic commence.
There is light chatter of water from the river. The buzz of late summer cicadas. Welcome Swallows swoop in mysterious aerodynamics. All day, every day is picnic time for the Welcome Swallows skimming on the water surface for insects we don’t see.
No traffic, lawnmowers, leaf blowers, chain saws, or car alarms. The peace of regenerating native forest. A nearby cliff face an abstract artwork of colourful, embedded minerals. Grey, boulders, trees in shades of green, blue sky, always-changing white cloud. Let the picnic commence.

Picnic ate. Always more food than needed. Post prandial dawdle away from the tinkle of the river and a walk around the forest track. Shade, silence. A cry of alarm – a bird I can’t identify. Nearby freshwater stream, a good flow after recent rain and its course long stabilised with well established trees. A a rich green moss never seen in the sunlit areas, borders the track.
Silence. A tapestry of time as lichen inches its way up a tree trunk. Should that be ‘centimetering’ its way? Easy for us old fellows to get behind.

Silently, the stream flows. As it did yesterday, and tomorrow…