Mountains of despair, I can see the pain (Mastodon)

I read an extremely interesting article on the Guardian website about Game of Thrones which has prompted an internal debate and also one with SWMBO about whether I/we should continue watching it.

The substance of the Guardian bog post is that the continued racism and sexism has got the better of this particular writer and she's decided to stop watching Season Four. 

She's certainly weathered quite a storm - incest, season long torture scenes, murders and deceit by people who aren't nice - but it appears that rape scenes in the last two episodes aired have been the final straw.

The comments to her post are also fascinating - I urge a gander. I particularly liked the Marge Simpson reference (her target - Itchy and Scratchy of course).

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/apr/29/game-of-thrones-racism-sexism-rape

The history

SWMBO and I started watching Season One while I was reading (and enjoying) the first book. Season two we watched as a Box Set (after I read the second volume in the series) and Season Three I taped off the Soho channel (didn't read volume 3 - couldn't get into it as much). Now Season Four is playing weekly on Soho.

The Trigan Empire had it all!

What do I like?

• Tyrion Lannaster - he's evolved into an erudite 'goodie'.
• Cersei Lannaster - an evil Lady MacBeth. She wants to be King you know.
• The Shakespearean treacheries and machinations.
• The medieval fantasy world of knights and swords reminds me of The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire comics I loved as a child.
• The Starks in general who have now been pretty much wiped out by treacherous evildoers.
• The suspension of disbelief is mostly achieved (those damned dragons!)

What don't I like?

• Dragons? Oh please.
• The rape scenes - Cersei's rape by her brother was stomach turning.
• The season long torture of the evil Theon Greyjoy by the even more evil Ramsey really tested our resolve.
• The lack of a payoff in the above and elsewhere - evil abounds.
• The gratuitous sex scenes of all description - incest, orgies of all descriptions.

Why we will probably not give up on it just yet

• The 'why we like it' column wins - 6 to 5.
• Habit
• I need that pay off - I need the white hats to win out along the way.
• Unlike Banshee, as well as the blood and guts, there are still all those Shakespearean plots to follow.

Love and peace - Wozza

It's like that and that's the way it is (Run DMC)

Been a little while since I got all nature on your nether regions so here's this morning's sunrise from our front door, with a token arty shot of it, and me, reflected in our front windows.

How's that serenity?

Love and peace - Wozza

The power to dream, to rule, to wrestle the world from fools (Patti Smith)

Okay - enough looking back. As a few whanau have commented - with the last few posts I was getting dangerously close to suffering a similar fate to Lot's wife.

Luckily it's a new month, so time to celebrate a new quote on my 2004 calendar. Oops - again with the backward glance? Sorry cannae help myself.

But that's quite an appropriate quote isn't it? This really spurred me on in 2004 to kick start travelling to England.

I have no idea who Grace Hansen was/is. A Google search didn't help and the various quotes repositories list three or four quotes by Grace but don't offer any biographical data so... she could be anyone. Maybe you're Grace Hansen? Get in touch!

The Humans Are Awesome series of videos on YouTube is similarly inspirational. Here's an example of daft/heroic things humans are capable of:




Love and peace - Wozza

Old friends, memory brushes the same years (Simon and Garfunkel)

Time it was, and what a time it was, it was...a time of innocence, a time of confidences.
Long ago...it must be...I have a photograph.
Preserve your memories; they're all that's left you.

More from 21st April 1984:

Patrick, SWMBO and Lyndsey

With Clay (best man), Margo
(MC) and Chris Loud

Patrick and Jacky's friends

The Knowles 2 sitting left with other friends

The Marbecks 2 standing back right

Love and peace - Wozza

Sail away with me honey, I put my heart in your hands (David Gray)

John Lennon got it right - all you need is love.

Except it's not that simple is it. That was a statement rather than a question.

It's a start and without it you can't build something that lasts but I'm not that naive. Okay - I am, but still...

I look at that picture on my last post and can't help thinking about those two characters who pledged their lives to each other (I take those vows VERY seriously). I look at that photo of my mum and dad on their wedding day April 18 1953 from the post before that and can't help thinking about them as well.

As George Costanza knows a good relationship needs a good meeting story. 

My father was a young gun pharmacist working at 171 Queen St (Eccles Pharmacy) and my mother was working at 192 Queen St (Lewis Eady's record department). He would visit the store looking for jazz records and bringing her some perfume of his own concoction to sweeten the deal. 

He got the brush off but he never gave up. They were so different, from different social backgrounds, with different interests.

My mother recognised this and tried hard to shake him off but he was persistent, my father, and, according to my mother, he gradually wore down her resistance. 

By a complete fluke of timing and location they had met and eventually one thing lead to another (wedding, children, life together, illness, death). As it does.

Me, Deedoo, Grandma, my brother Ross.

Prior to this my father came about because somehow my grandfather saw something in Christina Holden.

Unbelievable. There must have been something there that Harry found wondrous but I could never figure out my grandmother. She always seemed old (Harry - Deedoo, was never that) and unknowable. I only once saw her being compassionate and it seemed so out of context it lodged itself firmly into my memory.

Stop me if I've told you this before - we were having Christmas dinner at their place - Reimers Ave, Mt Eden and a women walked in the front door - she was clearly disoriented - turned out she had wandered out of a nearby nursing home. My grandmother was quick to be supportive and understanding. Shocked the hell out of me!

Ma, Ross and our mum - Dulcie Mary Purdy

My other grandma - Ma - was the complete opposite: gentle, always compassionate, loving - things she passed on to her daughter (my mum). How she ended up with her husband Henry is a life mystery too. 

He left her as soon as my mother was born (their fourth child) for another woman. We never met him. Why would we? He was only ever referred to by the grownups as a negative presence but...she had fallen for him. They had had three boys before Dulcie. They had had a life together in Taumaranui. After he ditched Lucy gathered up the Adsett family and moved to Auckland. Mum attended Cornwall Park School. My father had also moved around with his parents work but they also settled in Auckland where he attended Mt Albert Grammar.

Mum had a variety of jobs after leaving school and was happy at Lewis Eady's. Dad had become a pharmacist and was happy at Eccles Pharmacy. A fluke set of occurrences and then BAM!! I arrive on planet Earth.

All this got me thinking. What leads people to find each other and then stay together?

What is love? is the most popular search on Google (according to The Guardian). Here are some thoughts from different points of view:

Love is chemistry - in true love, or attachment and bonding, the brain can release a whole set of chemicals: pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin and vasopressin. However, from an evolutionary perspective, love can be viewed as a survival tool – a mechanism we have evolved to promote long-term relationships, mutual defence and parental support of children and to promote feelings of safety and security. 

Mature love develops over a long period of time between long-term couples and involves actively practising goodwill, commitment, compromise and understanding. I have no doubt that my parents were faithful to each during their thirty year marriage.  

At its best, however, all love is a kind a passionate commitment that we nurture and develop, even though it usually arrives in our lives unbidden. That's why it is more than just a powerful feeling. Without the commitment, it is mere infatuation. Without the passion, it is mere dedication. Without nurturing, even the best can wither and die. 

The paradox of love is that it is supremely free yet attaches us with bonds stronger than death. It cannot be bought or sold; there is nothing it cannot face; love is life's greatest blessing.

Me? I'm just out to find a better part of me. Being around SWMBO helps me on that pathway. I've put my heart in her hands.

Love and peace - Wozza

P.S. This post inspired by some questions Jade fired at me today and questions we fired at her about her new young man!

And everyday I am learning about you, the things that no one else sees (The XX)

Thirty years ago, on the 21st of April, about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, Jacqueline Frances Smith, age 22, never previously married, said, "oh go on then" to a humble secondary schoolteacher aged 26.

My memories from that time are pretty clear.

It was a cracker of a day in New Plymouth. A tad windy but fine. I know this because we had to have our photos taken indoors rather than beside the Waiwhakaiho River (or wherever it had been planned for). 

I watched bits of Singin' In The Rain in Margo and Clay's hotel room where I got changed for the big event and I remember smiling a lot during the day.

Mr and Mrs W N Purdy with Mr G N Purdy

As you can see, I looked 18 but I felt great. The day before we'd had a car crash outside the venue (we were rear ended just before turning into the place) but we were both fine - shock and a few superficial cuts only, however our car was a write off so Sallie kindly lent us her wheels to go on our honeymoon (south to Wanganui and Wellington).

Many or our friends and family had made it down or up or across to join in the festivities. In fact many of the present whanau you see on the bottom right column of this blog were there.

Fast forward 30 years - photo by Jade 21/04/14

Sadly a few people could not be at the wedding of the century: namely our mums - my mum had passed away the previous year and Jacky's mum couldn't make it up from the deep south.

Also sadly, a few people are no longer with us in 2014 to help us celebrate our 30 years together, but we feel their presence in our lives still.

So - be upstanding, raise your glass and drink to SWMBO and me and our pearler of a partnership over the last 30 years and here's to the next 30.

Love and peace - Wozza

Hold me and kiss me and tell me you're mine ever more (Toni Bennett 1953)

Jack Adsett and his sister Dulcie

The second HUGE wedding anniversary in April belongs to Graham and Dulcie Purdy. 

Without this wedding there would be no Wozza's World and without Wozza and SWMBO's wedding there would be no Sammy/ Jesse World. 

Crazy paving - it all links together into a crazy pathway. Hmmm - deep!

1953 and there are only 2 million people living in NZ. The National Party is in power under Sid Holland. 

Marilyn Monroe rules at the box office (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) and Frank Sinatra moves to Capitol Records.

This is also the year that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reach the summit of Mount Everest and put Nu Zild on the world stage.

April 18 1953 was a cracker of a day in Mt Eden, Auckland. St Barnabas church was the scene as Dulcie Mary Adsett was given away by her big brother Jack.

Off on their mystery ride 1953

In attendance were friends and relatives, notably the bride's mother - Lucy, and the groom's parents - Harry and Christina Purdy (pictured above bookending the new Mr and Mrs Purdy).

The reception was held at the Lewis Eady music store in Queen St., where Dulcie was an employee. I guess there was an upper floor where the wedding breakfast was laid out. 

The happy couple would honeymoon on the exotic Norfolk Island.

It was to be a rock solid marriage lasting 30 years; the two providing a loving home for two boys that only ended with Dulcie's passing in 1983.

God bless them both.


Love and peace - their eldest son

P.S. 1 Whanau member Mervyn Francis Hynes (third cab off the rank in the above photo) provides some great continuity. He's escorting fellow whanau member Nita Selman who would also have a large part to play in the Purdy family in the future.

P.S. 2 BTW in a nice touch - the bride's wedding band also links this event in 1953 to Samantha's in 2013 as she now wears that ring. Graham Nugent Purdy would approve!