Tag: Christchurch

Goodbye Mr Pies

Nearly 16 years ago I got into an argument with my flatmate (housemate or roommate for non-Kiwi readers) about whether or not we should get a cat.

“Don’t be ridiculous!,” I said (in a rare moment of sensibleness). “We are going to go our separate ways in a year. Who is going to take the cat? Who is going to pay for the food and the vet bills? We are not getting a cat. End of story.”

It was not the end of the story.

Around midnight said flatmate woke me up to say she thought she had heard an injured cat in the back yard. I muttered something about her probably being high and turned to go back to sleep when I heard it too. A woeful yowling noise that could have woken the dead.

We woke another flatmate up and the three of us headed out to the back yard, armed with a cigarette lighter, because students didn’t have useful things like torches. We followed the noise into the bushes down the back of the property and when I thought we were close I grabbed the lighter. After burning my fingers several times (I didn’t smoke) I found the source of the caterwauling and tried to grab it before it could run away. Still thinking we were hunting for a wounded adult cat, I was shocked when my hands closed on a ball of fluff the size of a regular cat’s head. Where was the rest of the cat? How could it still be meowing? Once my eyes got used to the light I realised I had captured a tiny black kitten. I was amazed that something so small could have made so much noise.

The first thing we noticed when we got the poor thing inside was that it absolutely stank, like something had peed all over it. We gave it a bath in the sink, dried it off and popped it in a shoebox with a towel and a hot water bottle. A fourth flatmate woke up. “Is that thing staying?” he asked. We shrugged, if we couldn’t find an owner, then probably yes. We popped the shoebox in the bathroom, where we surmised there would be less damage if its occupant peed everywhere, and went back to bed. As soon as the lights went out the howling commenced in earnest. “Is that thing staying?” flatmate became “if someone doesn’t shut that thing up it’s going out the window” flatmate and Anna the sucker stepped in. I picked the kitten up and popped it on my pillow, where it promptly fell asleep. The choice was taken out of my hands, I was Mum from that night forth.

The next day we tried to deduce gender, but the kitten was so tiny it was almost impossible to tell. We couldn’t spot any boy bits so we declared our new friend a little girl and named ‘her’ Holly because we found her just before Christmas. A check up at the vet some time later told us a different story, our little fleabag was actually a little boy, and we might want to consider a name change. To keep things simple we just decided to drop the H and Holly became Ollie.

If Harry Potter was the boy who lived, then Ollie was the cat who lived. Right from the start we were told not to get attached to him because he probably wasn’t going to make it. He was only about three weeks old and we were told by various well-meaning cat people that if his mother had abandoned him, if he had been peed on, if we didn’t have a heatpad or fancy food then he was probably going to die. Nevertheless we purrsisted, feeding him kitten milk with an eyedropper and keeping him warm. Before long he was drinking milk from a dish by himself (give or take a bit of faceplanting) and using a litter box. Score one for the cat who wasn’t supposed to make it! Since then Ollie made it through a lot, getting hit by a car, a dicky thyroid, getting lost at new homes. He was the poster child for a cat’s nine lives.

I’m a big kid now! (blurry pre digital camera shot of Ollie graduating from bottle feeding. Note milk beard.)

Because he was so young when we found him, Ollie didn’t really know how to cat. This meant he was a terrible hunter. He knew he should chase things but he had no idea what to do with them if he accidentally caught them. Other than the 3am live mouse chases after having them proudly delivered to the foot of my bed, this was something I didn’t actually mind that much.

Because he wasn’t weaned properly Ollie also sucked his tail. It was kind of adorable when he was a kitten, curled up like a tiny doughnut, but not so cute when he was still doing it three years later. We tried to stop him, but if you pulled his tail out of his mouth he would just slurp it back in like a piece of spaghetti. It was really quite gross. His tail was crusted and pointy like a paint brush (in fact somewhere I have a tail painting where I gave in to temptation and dipped it in some water colours). At one point the tip of his tail became ginger. I kid you not. I have no idea what is in cat saliva but he actually managed to suck the colour out of his tail.

Students. I don’t actually have an explanation for this photo.

Then there were the wet patches. If you tuned out the weird slurping noises and let him stay in your lap for too long he would leave large drool spots in rather embarrassing places. He did it in the bed too, necessitating a few awkward conversations with new boyfriends.

Blep!

Our first real challenge came at Christmastime when we were all going to go our separate ways. Who would take the kitten? As predicted, it turned out to be me. I put him in what from memory was a bird cage and took him to my Mum and Dad’s, where we separated him from our adult cats Pirate and Topsey. He took it all in his stride, getting cuddles from my little sister and posing for a family photo. By then it had been unofficially decided that the fuzzball was mine.

Ollie’s first Christmas

Mum only just told me recently that when I turned up with Ollie she thought it would be a disaster. “Oh god, she’s got a cat. How is she going to cope with that while she’s flatting?” she said to Dad. After a few years of watching me with Ollie, she quickly changed her tune. Yes I saved him initially, but he saved me in so many ways. Those were her words, and they are so true. Through struggles with mental illness, messy breakups, living arrangements falling to bits, work and study stress, Ollie stuck to me like glue. I was never really on my own. He never judged and he was always there.

Renting with a cat isn’t easy (that’s a subject for a blog all of its own) but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Ollie and I have lived all round the country – several flats (and a brief stint in a friend’s Kombi van) throughout Christchurch, another few rentals down south in Timaru when he went with me to journalism school, a number of homes further south in Oamaru where I worked for the local newspaper and we lived on our own like grownups, and finally across the Strait to Wellington where we moved about a bit before buying our first house together (with the help of some bloke called Paddy).

It felt like Ollie and I against the world for such a long time but when we allowed Paddy into the mix, we became a funny little family.

Meeting Ollie was a pressure moment for Paddy. He knew that if the cat didn’t like him it would be a deal breaker. In fact I’m pretty sure I wore a black cat T shirt on our first proper date, just to hammer the point home. Luckily for Paddy Ollie was a bit of a hussy when it came to men and he let him cuddle him straight away. A couple of years later and they were best buddies. Ollie even came to stay on the boat a few times.

Bros

 

When Paddy first met Ollie he was a little rotund (Ollie not Paddy!). At one point the vet told me if he got to 7kgs we were going to have to talk. Unbeknownst to me Paddy had a history of renaming people’s cats and this time took to calling mine Mr Pies  (as in who ate all the…).

Annoyingly, the name stuck. Mr Pies, Pies, Pie-eater, Piesy, Pie pies, His Royal Pie-ness. Ollie started coming when called Pies, he knew that ‘pies’ equated to food and that ‘pie time’ was dinner time. In the end I was calling him Pies too, despite my concerted efforts to call him by his real name.

Sadly every story does have an end and Mr Pies’ was just over a week ago.  It wasn’t a shock, he wasn’t in pain and he let us know when it was time for him to move on. We knew our time with him was coming to an end, it just happened a little quicker than anticipated. Ollie’s 16 years made him quite an old man in cat terms and unfortunately his kidneys had just worn out. Right up until his last week with us he was just as playful as when he was a kitten. A miracle kitty arthritis drug had given him a new lease on life. He would hurtle up two flights of stairs and be squawking at me from the top to get up there and feed him in the time my creaky knees had got me a third of the way. When he started struggling with his favourite thing (eating) and started pooing in strange places though, we knew something was up. He was so thin too. From his fighting weight of nearly 7kgs he had dropped down to 3kgs.

The vet told us we might have a couple of weeks, but unfortunately we had just days. The morning I woke up and he was still in bed with me not demanding breakfast I knew things weren’t good. When I popped him down and he was wobbly on his feet I knew they were even worse. We’d read that with kidney issues they aren’t in pain, their bodies just aren’t processing toxins and it is a little bit like being very drunk. Sometimes they just naturally go to sleep. Paddy told me to stay at home with him that day and if things still weren’t good we would take him in to the vet. Ollie and I snuggled all day; He rested his paws on me and purred. When his breathing started to get shallower I told him it was okay, he didn’t have to stay, he could rest now – but if my boy was anything it was stubborn. He started hassling me like he wanted food (he was on a special diet for his thyroid but by that point we decided he could have whatever he liked. Raw eggs and bacon flavoured baby food were his favourites – thank you internet!) I carried him upstairs and we sat in the sun (it was a rare sunny Wellington winter day) and he had a good chow down. The little bugger kept wanting to wander off though and he kept falling over. His body wasn’t doing what he wanted it to do. He let out a yowl of frustration and I knew. It wasn’t fair, he was in distress. I called Paddy and he came home early. Ollie cuddled up to him and started purring, which he hadn’t done for a while. When I said to Paddy we should try to get an earlier vet appointment he started purring louder. I am so sure he was telling us yes.

I sat in the back of the car with him and we cranked up the tunes. Ollie was a bogan, he liked car rides but only if accompanied by loud music. Like his Dad he was a bit of a fan of Tom Petty, so that is what he got. He didn’t want to be in his carry cage and I figured this time he didn’t have to be, so he sat on my lap, peering out the window and watching the traffic go by. When we got to the vet it was amazing. Pretty much as soon as we put him on the table, he fell asleep. It was like he had waited until we were all together and decided ‘okay, it’s time for me to go now’. When the vet put him to sleep we didn’t even see him take his last breath, it was so quick and so peaceful, it was obvious he was ready to go.

I’m crying as I write this, but I am also grateful. I am grateful that we got to say goodbye as a family. I am grateful for all those wonderful years, for all the times he drove me insane, for all the times he made me smile. I’m grateful for the friends we made together and the adventures that we had. I’m grateful for all the times he was there for me when times were dark, when the responsibility for a little animal that loved and trusted me helped keep me going.

As my little sister said, I was literally with him from the beginning to the end – and all the highs and lows in between. As a kitten he used to eat my books. As a cat he is immortalised on the cover of my first published book – pride of place, exactly where he belongs.

Om nom nom!
Cover cat

I am a witch without a familiar. He was my best friend. I am bereft but also so glad he was a part of my life for so long.

We buried him in a grove in the forest out the back of our property where he liked to lurk. Eventually we will clear a path down there and put in a bench so we can hang out. He’s got his blankie and his mousies and a tonne of catnip to keep him company in kitty cat heaven.

When I broke the news on Facebook it was really lovely. People from so many different parts of my life who remembered him from different times got in touch. It made me sad, but it made me smile.

So goodbye Ollie, Mr Pies, Piesy, Wolliver, Woozle, Mow mow, Boop Kirtlan. I will miss your chattiness, your attitude, your cuddles, and your incredible ability to find the most noisy thing in the room at 3am. I will miss seeing you at the door when I come home from work, having you steal water from any unattended glass an typing my blogs from underneath your furry butt.

You were the handsomest, bravest, loyalest, craftiest, naughtiest, most loving cat in the world and I will love you forever.

I will end with a million photos of Ollie, because he deserves a million photos.

 

My Metal Guru

For Joel Flynn

One thing I have learned the hard way this past week is the importance of letting people who are special to you know they are special.
If someone is fucking wonderful tell them they are fucking wonderful, on a regular basis. If you admire the hell out of them, tell them – because you never know when the window to do so will close.

This weekend I said goodbye to a friend who touched my life, a friend who I have kept in touch with via Facebook for years but didn’t make the time to see enough of when I visited home.

I have so many friends like that.

When we met I was about 17 or 18 and I was utterly in awe of his style. He was a vision in glitter and black velvet – looking like a sort of man-pixie cross between John Lennon, Robert Plant and Marc Bolan.

I didn’t know who Marc Bolan was at the time but he sure taught me!

I pinched this from your Facebook page Joel. I hope that's okay. I adore it!
I pinched this from your Facebook page Joel. I hope that’s okay. I adore it!

Joel was a few years older than me and as far as I was concerned he was a music guru. He was responsible for my early Bowie education. I was in the throes of a fledgling Bowie obsession. My gateway drug was the Labyrinth soundtrack, I had pinched a Best Of CD from my Mum, loved Ziggy and Aladdin Sane, but that was where my knowledge floundered. Joel introduced me to Hunky Dory and The Man Who Sold the World and opened a whole new chapter.

Shades of Hunky Dory
Shades of Hunky Dory

He told me Width of A Circle (a 9 minute opus with lots of guitar noodling) was one of his favourites. I thought he was such a dude that I went home I got my copy of The Man Who Sold The World (a cassette tape at that point) and memorised all the lyrics to that song so I would be able to sing it if he played it. Sure enough, he cranked it up at a party at his house and I was able to jump around the lounge with him singing it word for word. I felt like the coolest person in the world.

Width of A Circle was the song I picked for his memorial.

It wasn’t just the music though. When you were in a room with Joel, even if there were 50 other people there, it was like you were the only one in it. We met through my boyfriend at the time who was a good friend of his and I went from a friend’s girlfriend to a special person in my own right within seconds. As another friend said “Every time I saw you it felt as if you’d been waiting just for me to arrive.”

Seconds after this shot was taken bad karaoke began
Seconds after this shot was taken bad karaoke began
Always the center of the party
Always the center of the party

I started visiting on my own, outside parties. When I was super excited by discovering Velvet Underground, when I just wanted a bit of advice.

I have a clear memory of dropping in to his place when I was going through a bit of a bad patch. I was a ball of insecurities and quite down on myself. He made me a coffee and we just talked. He ended up telling me he thought of me as the Yoko Ono of Christchurch. At first I was outraged. I hadn’t broken up any bands had I? But then he explained it was because he thought I had my own unique style, that I didn’t care what others thought and he admired that. Coming from someone who I saw as a sort of guru that meant so much. It was a massive confidence boost and exactly what I needed at the time. Years later I still think about that conversation. I never told him. I wish I had.

When Facebook happened and he got back in touch I was super excited to feel that connection again. I promised myself I would visit him when I came home, that I would make an effort to catch with all my friends from that part of my life. But every year I would come home for Christmas, be knackered from work and just want to chill out at Mum and Dad’s. Each year I would promise myself the next visit I would be organised and catch up with people and each year it didn’t happen.

It seemed okay though, we all spoke to each other most days on Facebook. We all had our own lives and our own issues, but we could peek in and see what each other were up to. We could like and comment and emoticon. We still ‘saw’ each other.

But just because you ‘talk’ to people every day through social media doesn’t mean you know what is going on in their lives. Most people project the best versions of themselves to the world. I know I do. It sort of lulls you into a false sense of connection. It’s great, but it’s not 100% real. You may connect most days but before you know it a decade has gone by since you have been in the same room together.

It had been more than decade since I had seen a lot of the people I caught up with on Friday night, but we picked up where we left off. It almost felt like we had never been apart.

We met at the Christchurch Botanical gardens where we spent a lot of time back in the day. We each picked a song that reminded us of Joel and played them through an ipod speaker. It went from the sublime to the ridiculous. From Led Zeppelin’s Friends to 10 CC’s Dreadlock Holiday. The latter made me smile because it was picked by an ex-boyfriend (the same one who introduced me to Joel). He says it was because he dropped in to visit one day and found Joel playing it, which resulted in an argument that included the phrase “Shit like this is why Punk had to happen!” I can clearly see this happening in my head, and now it makes me giggle every time I hear that song.

Everyone had a story behind their song and each song was perfect in its own way. We threw flowers from each other’s gardens in the river and watched them drift away. Then we polluted it a little by throwing glitter (sorry environmentalists, I’m sure the ducks will only have psychedelic poos for a couple of days!) The glitter was perfect, and very Joel. Another friend of his swore he coated his sofa with the stuff on purpose just to piss people off.

It was universally agreed that we needed to make sure it wasn’t something shit that brought us together again. We have a reunion in the works for next year. I am determined to get in touch when I go home for Christmas.

These days we are so connected but also so isolated. Finding and getting in touch with people is so much easier but you need to make time to make the next step. To really see each other. I’m not saying we have to live in each other’s pockets but just that we need to actually see each other every now and again. Drop in and visit, pick up the phone. If you don’t like the phone drop them an email. Tell people you are thinking of them when you think of them, otherwise they will never know.

So to all my friends and family I haven’t seen for a while. It may take a bit but I am going to do my best to get in touch with you in some form. I think of you all a lot – when I read an article, when I hear someone say something, when a song comes on.

You all have a place somewhere in my heart and you always will have.

I love you.

I’ll leave you all with a playlist and the promise of a cheerier blog next time.

(Just a note I have noticed videos aren’t coming through in the blog emails so if you want to watch any of these then click through to the blog site)

Remembering Joel:

Friends – Led Zeppelin

Trippin – Push Push

The Slider – T Rex

Telephone Line – Electric Light Orchestra

Silence – The Tea Party

Dreadlock Holiday – 10cc

Dirty Work- Steely Dan

Mercedes Benz – Janis Joplin

Shake that Devil – Antony and the Johnsons

The Show Must Go On – Queen

Love is Like Oxygen – Sweet

Width of a Circle – David Bowie

Reality and punk cabaret

The boaties among you will be wondering what on earth punk cabaret has to do with sailing, and those of you reading this because I posted it up on a punk cabaret forum will be wondering the exact opposite – but bear with me, the twain shall meet, honest!

So after spending the best part of last year sailing around the South Pacific, reality has come crashing in with a loud and rather inconsiderate thud. I am back home, back at work and back to the world as I once knew it.

It’s been great – it’s been wonderful to see the family and friends I have missed so much, to catch up with my workmates and to see my cat again, but it hasn’t been easy.

Once the novelty of not having to do laundry in a bucket or ration your showers wore off, I was faced with a stark reality – the world was the same, I was not. I’m a lot better now but when I first got back I was a complete insomniac. I’d gone from being out in the middle of nowhere with sporadic communication (other than radio and the odd burst of internet or celphone reception if you were lucky) to constant connectivity – celphones, blackberries, emails that can reach you wherever you are, television, radio, advertisements, planes, trains and automobiles. And when I went to bed I just didn’t know how to switch off anymore. I would lie there staring at the ceiling with stupid radio jingles, work emails, TV cop shows and what was trending on Twitter that day whirling around in my head. It was clearly a case of over-stimulation, I just didn’t know how to turn my brain off.

The other thing that is different about cruising is the way that you look at the world. The things that are important when you are sailing are much different from the things that are important in the ‘real world”. When you are sailing the decisions you make are simpler but the ramifications much bigger. When you are sailing the decisions often boil down to where and when you are going and how you are going to get there. They are simple decisions but ones that potentially, if you screw them up, can kill you or somebody else on the water. You don’t really have time for the nuances, it’s ‘pull this rope right bloody now before we lose a sail”, obey the collision avoidance rules or you could smash into somebody else’s boat, plan and look where you’re going or you could run smack into a reef – there isn’t really much time for interpretation. Interpersonal politics, other people’s agendas and whether or not you might have offended someone kind of takes a back seat.

For some of the people we met on the islands it was even more black and white – grow, catch and find food or you starve, look out for your family and your village or you won’t have a world. If you have books to read or pens to write with, you treasure them. It’s hard to go from that mindset to “he said this, she did that” and öh my god I missed my bus and I have to wait another 15 minutes for the next one!” A lot of the crap that I used to give myself an ulcer stressing over just doesn’t seem so important anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the details aren’t important. I know that the minutiae behind the decisions that are made can have massive “consequences. I know that the political arguments and intrigues are deeply important (nowhere is that more apparent than in places like mainland Fiji which is so politically screwed up it’s beyond words) – I just need to get my brain working back on that level again. I can do it if I concentrate, but it’s not natural like it used to be.

So where does the punk cabaret come in? Well I decided I needed something to bridge the gap, something creative (other than writing), that no-one was paying me to do, and something that wouldn’t be the end of the world if I screwed up.

So when I heard that ticket sales for punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls weren’t going so well in New Zealand and they were looking for street teams to poster and get the word out, I jumped at the opportunity.

Listening to the Dolls on my i-Pod helped heaps during my first few night-watches at sea. They are so punchy and anarchic and joyful that it’s almost impossible to be scared when  you are listening to them.

This song was a particular favourite:

The Dresden Dolls – Sing

Those of you who are masochistic enough to have been with me from the beginning may remember this blog I wrote before we left:

And I never lose my wallet

The Amanda Palmer who wrote that particular song is one half of the Dresden Dolls, so I figured it was worth a repost

They are not everyone’s cup of tea, and definitely not Paddy’s (he is more of a Tom Petty man – who I also think is awesome). But I figure if we can survive eight months at sea without killing each other then we can cope with having different tastes in music. Though when admitted he didn’t particularly like my one true obsession – David Bowie – it did nearly end in mutiny. It kind of put me in mind of a song by a lady called Eileen Quinn called “”If I killed the Captain” – A sample of the lyricS:

But if I killed the captain – really, who would know?

We’re two weeks out of port, we’ve got one more week to go,

And all that it would take,

Would be a timely little shove… whoops!”

For some reason this is a favourite song among many women cruisers! She’s a little bit country and not my normal style, but the lyrics are brilliant and I’ve developed rather a weakness!

So anyway, I’ve been spending my evenings going around Wellington putting up posters in strange places, playing with glitter pens and fraggles – and it has been damned therapeutic! It’s helping me find the other Anna again. She was always there, but she’d just taken a back seat for a bit. Punk Cabaret Therapy might not work for everyone, but it certainly has for me!

So the Wellington Gig is this Saturday at the Opera House and the details for that and the Christchurch and Auckland gigs are here:

Upcoming shows

If you want to come along I am pretty sure it will be awesome!

In a nutshell yeah, I’m a different person – I’ve done some things that scared the hell out of me, I’ve stuffed up some things but was lucky enough  to be able to learn from my mistakes. I found things about myself I didn’t really like very much and things that I am extremely proud of – and I am sure I will be able to find a way to channel that into my life back home.

In the meantime – thanks to punk cabaret, I am starting to appreciated the stimulation again – bring the noise!

Christmas at Sea

As you can probably tell by the title of this blog, we didn’t manage to make it home for Christmas day.  The original title was ‘Weather Forecasters are Lying Bastards Part 3’ – but after the lovely Christmas day we had on the water I decided that was far too negative.

When we were finally able to leave Auckland it looked as though our biggest problem would be not enough wind – and for the first couple of days that was pretty much true to form. When the wind did blow from the South (the direction we were trying to travel in) there was so little of it that it was inconsequential – which was why the 30 knot Southerlies we got in the middle of the Bay of Plenty came as such a rude shock.

We’ve been in stronger winds and much more uncomfortable conditions in Wildflower before and coped fine, but I think that must have been the last straw for me, because I kinda lost it. I was still able to do everything I needed to, including clambering up on deck in the howling wind (with a harness on Mummy!) to reef the mainsail and frantically pulling on ropes while the poor boat’s sails crashed and banged, but once all that was done I am ashamed to admit that I hunkered down on the floor of the cockpit and bawled like an angry kitten. I had had enough, I wanted off the boat, I wanted out of these shitty conditions and most of all – I just wanted to get home.  It felt like we had been trying to get down south forever. We had already planned to have a belated Christmas with my family in Christchurch, but I was really missing them and was just a teensy bit over it all.

Paddy handled it like a champ. He held my hand and let me rant and rave, which was exactly what I needed. In the end we tacked out to sea for most of the night to keep us clear of the land and tacked back in again in the morning so we could round East Cape. It meant we lost about a day going out of our way but by the time we got round East Cape (which has a reputation for being a little windy) conditions had settled down and it was pretty uneventful.

Unfortunately for Paddy my next attack of Neurotic Crew Syndrome came the following day when we finally got the chance to check our Winlink radio email. Paddy came up to the cockpit, gave me a hug and said “there’s been a couple more quakes in Christchurch, but everybody’s okay.” Dad had emailed us to let us know because he had assumed we would have heard something on the news and been worried, which was absolutely the right thing to do. Unfortunately we hadn’t had any traditional radio access for a while so I didn’t really know the extent of what had happened – though I had figured if Dad was able to email then things must have been alright. I replied straight away and then checked our email before I went on my first night watch. We hadn’t had a response (though it turned out Mum, Dad and little sis had all taken turns writing in an email but for some reason it hadn’t gone through then). This meant I had spent a large chunk of my first watch glaring at my celphone and waiting for some sort of reception and when I got it – at 1am – I immediately woke my poor parents up to make them tell me they were okay. After hearing their voices everything was so much better and when the email came through in the morning it really made me smile.

So when Christmas day dawned, I was in a much better headspace. It helped that it was a lovely, calm, sunny day. Sure, we had to burn some diesel because there wasn’t much wind, but at that point I was okay with that!

Neptune started giving us our Christmas presents at first light, when the fishing rod started going nuts. We caught three decent sized tuna in quick succession before I made Paddy put the fishing rod away (we hadn’t managed to get anything done that morning because we were constantly running to the fishing rod, and there’s no point in being greedy!) We had a couple of albatross fly around us for a bit after that and, no sooner had I started thinking ‘the only thing that would make this more perfect would be dolphins’, they started to turn up.

First it was just a little guy on his own who jumped out of the water a couple of times and then disappeared but he must have got some of his mates because the next thing we knew we had a couple of pods of them hanging out with us for the rest of the day. It was really lovely.

Paddy and I and the goodluck trolls pulled Christmas crackers, wore silly hats, told awful jokes and ate scorched almonds – so all in all it was a pretty awesome day.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful and we even got a bit of good sailing in and were able to give poor old Big Red the engine a bit of a rest. We got a classic Wellington welcome home this morning though, with a couple of knots of tide against us going up Cook Strait. It was reasonably comfortable though, just made the going a little slower. The wind pretty much dropped off completely until we hit the South coast of Wellington, which decided to remind us what city we were heading towards by cranking things up from about 2.5 to 35 knots in rather quick succession. There is a bit of a wind funnel effect there with the land but, because there is such little sea room between the land and you, there is very little swell. So you have a lot of wind but the boat isn’t bashing around. It is a little surreal.

Once we got into Wellington Harbour though everything had settled down and we were able to enjoy watching home appear over the horizon (in between the ferries and mad buggers kite surfing). Once we had managed to get the boat docked at Chaffers Marina we jumped off and hugged each other. We’d made it! Around the South Pacific and back all in one piece and without killing each other. It has been an incredible experience and one I will not forget in a hurry.

I also – despite the way I felt in the Bay of Plenty – definitely want to do it again. There is a line in an Irene Quinn song about a rotten sail in wretched weather that says ” it’s a good thing sailors have got short memories” and I think that’s pretty much it. The rubbish stuff feels like it is going on forever while it is happening, but it is only a tiny part of it. A chap we met in Opua before we left summed it up pretty well too, while climbing soaked out of a dinghy in rough weather, “sailing – the good stuff outweighs the bad stuff” he said, before shaking himself dry and heading towards the yacht club. And, having now experienced it, I couldn’t agree more!

We are headed to Christchurch (on a plane!!!) tomorrow to spend Christmas with the whanau and will be back in Welly early Jan when I will be forced to get used to being back in the real world again by starting back at work. I am actually really looking forward to catching up with my friends and workmates, so it should all be good.

I still have a couple of retrospective blogs to write when I get the chance – so don’t think this is the last you will be hearing from us! I am also working on converting this blog into a book (with lots of extras of course!) so I will keep you posted. If you love me, you will buy it 😉 xxx

In Limbo (and more dolphins!)

 “It’ll be great, we’ll get three summers in a row!” –  This was one of Paddy’s selling points when trying to lure me into running away to sea

After several days of listening to rain pounding on the roof and wind shrieking in the shrouds though – I have been given cause to doubt the wisdom of that particular statement. It seems we have been waiting on the weather in some form or another since we have been back in New Zealand.

It’s a strange kind of limbo – we’re home but we’re not really home. We still have quite a bit of sailing to do before we get back to Wellington.

The plan was to sail around the Bay of Islands for a bit before heading to the Hauraki Gulf where our friends Fergus and Diane would show us around their cruising ground. The one flaw in the plan however was the sodding weather.

We had some lovely days up North (in between the grungy ones) and we did manage to get out and about in the Bay of Islands for a bit – but our plans to head further South have pretty much been thwarted at every turn.

It got to the point that – should we have any chance of getting home for Christmas – we simply had to go as soon as we safely could. The day we left the Bay of Islands was grey and pouring with rain. The conditions weren’t dangerous, the wind wasn’t even blowing that hard – it was just cold and wet. (I did get the chance to wear the funky orange hat I picked up at the boatie swapmeet in Opua though, and it was brilliant!) It took us longer than expected to get out of the Bay of Islands because we did had the wind and swell against us a bit – but nothing compared to what we’ve had on previous trips.

For some reason though, I started getting jittery – which is strange because it was the first time I had felt that way sailing for ages. I think part of it was the fact that, other than puttering around the bay, we haven’t really been out for quite a while. The other part probably had something to do with the weather. Even when the conditions are fine, if it’s cold and grey everything just seems scarier.

So I tried to imagine that the sea and sky were a beautiful Pacific blue instead of grungy New Zealand grey – that helped a little. Then I started trying to think of things that made me happy and I hit upon the dolphins that came to play with us at Robertson Island. Just as I’d finished talking about them with Paddy, I saw a splash out of the corner of my eye and, sure enough, it was a dolphin – I couldn’t believe it! There was a wee pod of them – they were smaller than the last ones we saw (maybe bottlenose?) – and they played around in our bow wave, leaping over the top of each other, diving under the boat and popping up out the other side. There was one that particularly liked leaping out of the bigger waves and slapping them with its tail when it came down – they were just having a good old play. Of course that completely cheered me up – it’s hard to feel bad when you are surrounded by creatures that are having so much fun.

In the Hauraki Gulf they have a bylaw that states boats cannot be within so many metres of dolphins and that you should not disrupt their path. That’s kind of hard when they decide they want to play with you and start swimming around and under your boat (clever critters though – they know to stay away from the propeller). If we tried to stay out of their path we’d have been weaving all over the show, and they probably would have thought it was part of the game! I have a sneaking suspicion that the person who wrote the dolphin bylaw hadn’t actually spent much time on a boat around dolphins.

Once we were out of the Bay of Islands we decided to overnight in a little place called Whangaruru Harbour and leave first thing in the morning, that way we wouldn’t be trying to get to our original destination, Tutukaka, in the dark. The next day we headed for Great Barrier Island. We actually had a pretty good sail, with about 18 knots on the beam we managed to make about 70 miles in 12 hours. I felt much better about things too – I even managed to relax enough to have a wee snooze in the cockpit. I felt a bit silly about getting butterflies the day before, but I think I am just one of those people who have to keep doing things or they create all sorts of silly fears and blocks in their head. I guess it was just high time I got back on the horse.

The plan was to overnight in Great Barrier and then head for Auckland where we would wait out a forecast Southerly but, in keeping with the theme of our previous plans, the weather put paid to this too. The wind was forecast to get up pretty high for a day, which is why we headed for Great Barrier, but then it decided to stick around. We were lucky though because we were tucked up nice and sheltered while the rain and wind walloped the rest of the country. It is rather unusual to have the low pressure systems that are this aggressive at this time of year – but it just seems to be the theme of things at the moment. The spot we were in, Port Fitzroy, was lovely and I’m sure is even lovelier when Mother Nature isn’t throwing a tantrum.

I do admit I started to lose my sense of humour a little though (read had a minor meltdown). This feels like the longest, slowest limp home ever and it’s just frustrating to be so close to home but have it take so long to get there. I am used to a world where, if you need to be somewhere, you just jump on a plane and you are there in an hour. Technically we could do that from Auckland, but it wouldn’t solve any problems because we’d still have to get the boat back to Wellington. Leaving the boat in Auckland over Christmas isn’t really an option because its pretty much impossible to find a berth or a mooring at this time of year and those that are available will be hideously expensive. We could leave the boat at anchor, but that is dodgy in itself. If something happens – someone hits it, the weather packs up or the anchor drags and there isn’t anyone on board to do anything about it then the boat isn’t insured (not to mention we don’t want our baby getting hurt!)

The biggest issue for me is that I’m determined to be home at Mum and Dad’s in Christchurch for Christmas (we will be flying from Welly now, not sailing) and at this stage it looks like we will be cutting it pretty close. I got pretty upset about it initially but then Paddy got me to realise that getting upset at the weather wont change anything – the weather will do what the weather will do and I’ll just be upset. So we’ll wait for the Southerly to go through and then we’ll go from there. There is a big high lurking around the corner and if we can hook on to the back of that then we stand a reasonable chance of getting to Wellington on or around Christmas (though it’s hard to predict what the weather is going to do so many days in advance) – wish us luck!

 

 

A shout out to the journos

Just a quick note to all the reporters out there who are busting a gut to get information about the Christchurch quake out to the public – and particularly those in the city itself.

You are doing an amazing job – I can’t even begin to imagine what you guys are going through right now. 

Before I turned to the dark side and became a communications advisor I was a journalist for a daily newspaper, and it was the ambulance chasing that I struggled with the most. Jumping into a car and heading towards the sirens, not knowing what I was going to find.

I was really lucky. Nothing even remotely close to what is going on in Christchurch happened on my watch. The hardest interview I ever had to do was speaking to the mother of an 18 year old boy who died in a fire as a result of a very sad accident.  She was incredibly strong and just wanted to talk about her wonderful son – and in the end she was the one offering me a drink! At one point in the interview she made a very poignant comment and, almost without conscious thought, the first thing that popped into my head was “that’s my intro.” I felt revolting, like a vulture. After I left her house I pulled the car over, had a cry, then went back to the newsroom and wrote up the story – and that was only one death.

After the paper was published, the boy’s family called and thanked me for getting his story across and some of his school friends came into the office to buy extra copies of the paper. Those people will never know how much I needed that thank you.

So here’s my thank you. I have been glued to the internet/newspaper/television hungrily searching for information and trying to make sense of what is happening to my home town. Many of you will have friends, family and colleagues affected by this tragedy. You will be physically and emotionally exhausted, but you will keep going because that is what you need to do.

The fact the Press got an issue out after what happened to their building is nothing short of amazing.

There are so many people out there so desperate for information and you are doing an incredible job.

PS – You have probably already read this story, but if not, please do. It is written by Vicki Anderson from the Press who was in the building when the quake struck and it is the most beautifully written piece I have read on the quake so far: The day the earth roared

When disaster hits home (and the power of Twitter)

I was planning to blog on the huge amount of work required to get the boat up to Category 1 standard so we can leave the country. I was going to write about my insecurities about getting everything organised and my worries about the time that is so rapidly ticking by.

But yesterday threw all that sharply into perspective.

I am from Christchurch. My family and friends are in Christchurch – I lived and worked and partied in places that are now rubble.

I can’t stop staring at the television. I keep recognising places where friends and I lived, loved, ate and drank too much, listened to bands, op-shopped and held meetings that were going to save the world. Places where people I know still do these things.

I managed to contact my parents shortly after the quake happened and nearly cried with relief when I heard  Mum’s voice on the other end of the phone. They were shaken, but okay. Another big aftershock struck while I was talking to Dad – I could hear it through the phone. I heard Mum cry out in the background and then the phone went dead. The few seconds it took for me to reestablish contact after that felt like years. It was so scary. But they are okay. They are strong, amazing, wonderful people – and I know they will be fine (but it doesn’t stop me wanting to shovel them on to a plane and get their arses up to Wellington!)

I have also managed to track down a lot of my friends – mostly through twitter and facebook, and I have a whole new respect for social networking. I only begrudgingly set up a twitter account for work purposes, so I can keep an eye on what’s trending in the education sector. But I gradually started to find interesting people to follow and began to embrace it more. Yesterday however I saw it in a whole different light – not just because it was a fantastic way of finding out what was happening as it was happening, but because of the way it brought people together. I have already heard of several people who found out that loved ones were okay because a complete stranger tweeted the name of the person sitting next to them and that information was retweeted and retweeted until it reached the person it needed to. People have also been tweeting the locations of people they are concerned about and people in those areas have looked out for them – complete strangers helping people who were too far away to offer any practical assistance.

I’m not going to beatify Christchurch – it would be hypocritical. I have done my fair share of pissing and moaning about its clique-iness, how judgemental people could be, how the most important thing seemed to be what school you went to and woe betide you if you wanted to dress or act a little bit differently. But, just as they say you can’t pick your family, you can’t pick the town you are born in either and, despite its foibles, you  also can’t help  loving it. It’s home.

I’ve had some shitty times in Christchurch and I have had some great times and met some beautiful people – and it is those people that are coming to the fore in this crisis. People helping eachother out, looking after eachother.

I feel helpless here. I want to be down in ChCh pulling bricks out of buildings. I couldn’t even donate blood because the bloodbanks here have been inundated with offers (which is wonderful!)

All I can do is donate some money and offer my love and support – through, twitter, through facebook, through this blog – to all of those who have lost loved ones, to those who are still waiting to hear from people, to those who are picking up their lives and soldiering on. I wish I could do more.

For those of you wanting to donate to the people of Christchurch there are a number of ways to do it

The Salvation Army is running an appeal – you can donate online, through their Westpac account 03 0207 0617331 00 or call 0800 0207 0617331 00

You can donate to the Red Cross at www.redcross.org.nz/donate or send a cheque to: New Zealand Red Cross 2011 Earthquake Appeal, Freepost 232690, PO Box 12140, Thorndon, Wellington 6144or you can donate to their Kiwibank account 38-9009-0759479-00 or direct credit transfer to their special appeals banks account –  ASB 12-3192-0015998-02 at any branch of the PostShop Kiwibank, ASB and ANZ

You can also donate to the collections that I am sure are springing up all around the country. I am going to a quiz night tonight at the Mighty Mighty, by way of distraction – they will be collecting money there.

I will write the category 1 blog – but now is not the time. It’s tough and it’s tiring, but I know we will get through it, and there are so many others who need our thoughts and words right now.