"Come in", she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm" (Bob Dylan)

My grandfather (left), and my great grandfather (front).

Wie geht's?

Recently, I posted on social media the fact that the Saturday night of 26th February, 1983, in New Plymouth, was a big deal in my life, in that I met Jacky Smith at a fancy dress party. If you need the origin story again - here it is.

On my post I said, "It only changed everything". And it did. Young Asher is the latest present tense product of that late February, early eighties, meeting.

As for the past, that idea stretches back through the ages as my ancestors went about their lives and somehow, eventually, I happened along.

As Bill Bryson writes:

Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you.

Funny old life innit.

Love and peace - WNP

Trigger (Trigger) and he pulled the fastest milkcart in the west (Benny Hill)

Trigger looks big here, but he only comes up to my waist.

Wie geht's?

Covid-19 lockdowns have had one very positive spin-off for our family: the weekly family zooms that we started a year ago (thanks to Adam's suggestion) during our alert level 3 and 4 lockdowns have continued long after the alert levels returned to 2 and then 1. And they are still going strong.

So, each Sunday evening Jade and Asher (in Palmerston North), Samantha (in LA or SF with Jesse),  Keegan (in Shanghai) and Adam and Ashleigh (in Melbourne) have joined up with Jacky and me (in Takapau) for a weekly catch up.

It's been great, and has certainly brought our far-flung little band of Purdettes a lot closer together, figuratively speaking.

Hot topic this weekend was Trigger - the little pony that Jacky and I have bought for Asher, nearly 2, to ride.

Trigger naturally suffers from little man syndrome

He's certainly got personality!

See - I told you - comes up to my waist, just!

On the search for more apples!

The kids maintain this is another très subtle attempt to interest her children/grand-children in horses, but Jacky disputes this. Natch. 

Wherever the truth may lie, Jacky has plans to find a cart for Trigger to pull around so that he can pay his way while Asher and I pick up pine cones for Trigger to pull back to the barn.

That should be a hoot! I can't wait.

Love and peace - Wozza

I don't wanna belong to anyone (Fontaines DC)

Wie geht's?

After another Anne Tyler (Redhead By The Side Of The Road*) which I read in the weekend, it's time for something a little more challenging - in this case, another Dickens' novel.

* That title intrigued me for ages until I got to the bit where the main character doesn't wear his glasses jogging and so mistakes a red fire hydrant for a redhead every time he goes running. Every time. I can relate to that - I'm forever mis-seeing things without my glasses - usually it's tree branches or clouds that take on the shape of faces. It's great!

Anyway, Dickens.

Hard Times seems appropriate. It's been sitting in the pile for a while (there are too many enticing Anne Tyler novels in the pile). And the world is certainly experiencing hard times.

I would have started Martin Booth's The Industry of Souls that Julie lent me but I've struggled to get into it so far (too many Anne Tyler nov...)

So far so good with Hard Times. Although it doesn't ring as true as the other Dickens I've read. Maybe it's the fictitious Coketown where the story is set. Not sure.

But the characters are the usual fun grotesqueries. The women are generally not flatteringly portrayed - doormats for their obnoxious husbands for the most part. Maybe one of the female characters gains some gumption. I hope so.

Love and peace - Wozza

"That's typical of you," she said. "Not a serious thought in your head, ever." (The Swell Season)

Wie geht's?

A few weeks ago I was browsing the shelves at the Little Red Book Shop in Hastings when a title leapt out at me: The Swell Season.

That's the title of a folk/rock band I like, made up of Irish musician Glen Hansard and Czech singer and pianist Markéta Irglová. You'll remember them from the wonderful movie Once.

Turns out they got their name from this novel by Czech writer Josef Skvorecky.

Cool.

I've been using some passages from the novel on The Purdzilla Show blog - it's quite lyrical in places.

The setting is 1940's occupied Czechoslovakia and the basic plot centres around teenager Danny's failed amorous attempts with the girls in his village. Just when he thinks he's making progress, unforeseen circumstances always intervene.

Here's another bit for you, as he tries to get together with Marie after she's broken up with her boyfriend:

It was wonderful talking like this with Marie. An autumn fog was rolling off the river and a leaf dropped from a chestnut tree and landed on her shoulder. She brushed it off.

"It's autumn already." she said. "That's sad"

"What's sad about autumn?" I asked.

"Everything," she said.

Oh dear! He's doomed!

Love and peace - Wozza

Remember when you were a little kid, what were the qualifications? If someone's in front of my house NOW, That's my friend (Jerry Seinfeld)

Patrick, Randy, Jacky and Wozza hit Taupo

Wie geht's?

Jerry Seinfeld's bit about your real friends came to mind during the weekend as Jacky and I spent quality time with some old friends at Maple Grove and then Taupo (where that selfie was taken).

When you're in your thirties it's very hard to make a new friend. Whatever the group is that you've got now that's who you're going with. you're not interviewing, you're not looking at any new people, you're not interested in seeing any applications. They don't know the places. They don't know the food. They don't know the activities. If I meet a guy in a club or the gym or someplace I'm sure you're a very nice person you seem to have a lot of potential, but we're just not hiring right now.

To paraphrase writer Alex Williams - up to your 50s and 60s, plenty of new people enter your life, through work, your wife's friends, your children's friends/partners and their families and, of course, Facebook. But actual close friends — the kind you make at school, university and in your twenties, the kind you call in a crisis — those are in shorter supply. 

That's very true. Patrick and Randy - thanks for a great spontaneous weekend!

Love and peace - Wozza

I turned the key, I broke it off and I crossed the Rubicon (Bob Dylan)

Photo by Yiqun Tang on Unsplash

Wie geht's?

Third and final installment (for a while) of my poetry from long ago and far away:

3. The moving sky

Autumn leaves bunch up against my window while
I spend some harmless time watching leaves falling;
falling into themselves - this way and that way, falling down.

The sun hides behind the tall wall, sending out
a sharp outline. Viewed by many down the years,
the painted wall is roughly textured, off-blue, aged.

Clouds are fairly skudding across the milky blue sky
but the breeze down here is mild,
so I sit in shirt sleeves on this May morning.

The red leaves stand in relief against the evergreen,
trying to be last hold outs of a summer eeking away.
There are many trees outside this window, beyond the wall: palm trees, pines, silver birches.

It's good to watch them shimmy gracefully
against the moving sky, accentuating the positive.

 

Love and peace - Wozza