Travelling trust across the new day (Roy Harper)

One of the first things I do with my classes is introduce myself. A no brainer you say? 

Well yeah, but I take some time to show via photos who I am in terms of my family, my blogs, my teaching career and my interests.

I have no idea if it means anything to my students or not but I found myself doing it today in a slightly detached way which scared me a little.

A photo of four generations of my family is one I especially love - I've featured it a few times on this blog. I think I needed to preserve some space around the photo. I found myself telling my students that the only people still alive in the photo and my brother and me.

It felt like a vaguely awkward moment.

I scooted on quickly to the next photo because I'd maybe revealed too much.

How much is too much? Were they in fact a tad uncomfortable or was it just me? It was a kinda 'yes' but kinda 'no' too.

It was a weird moment. A moment of trust when you hold your breath and hope.

This post has two photos that my cousin Christine sent me recently that I'm sharing in the same spirit of trust and hope. 

I didn't remember anything about the one of me - I must have sent it to her when I was a teenager, while living at Ramelton Road in Auckland. 

[BTW - my T shirt is a Wozza original, a screen printed Apple with Ringo's The Beatles drum legend from my own design while listening to Bowie's Hunky Dory (it has dye on the label!) and I'm holding the cup for winning the 1976 MAGS badminton title.]

This other one of my paternal grandparents was taken on their sixties tour of England.

I love both photos for their surprise and their brilliant capturing of a unique moment.

Love and peace - Wozza

So I see it's me... and I'm still the child (Marillion)

Can you ever get back a piece of your childhood?

If you could - would you?

I got an email on the weekend from my comics guy in Wellington, telling me the 12 volume set of The Trigan Empire was in his store and could be mine if I wanted it!

I looked at the email for a few seconds and suddenly I got a glimpse of a parallel universe 'me', one whose mother had not disposed of the pile of Look and Learn magazines under 'my' bed when 'I' became a teenager!

Yes I've probably been watching way way too many Fringe episodes (we're up to the end of season four, one more season to go...)

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Brief back story: when I was growing up in Royal Oak, Auckland in the mid sixties, my paternal grandmother bought me Look and Learns every week. 

It was 1966 and I was 9 years old.

Look and Learn was a fantastic magazine for kids:

Look and Learn was a British weekly educational magazine for children published by Fleetway Publications Ltd from 1962 until 1982. It contained educational text articles that covered a wide variety of topics from volcanoes to the Loch Ness Monster; a long running science fiction comic strip, The Trigan Empire; adaptations of famous works of literature into comic-strip form, such as Lorna Doone; and serialized works of fiction such as The First Men in the Moon. The first major change to the contents of the magazine came in 1966 when it incorporated Ranger with issue 232 (25 June 1966). This amalgamation brought with it a number of comic strips including The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire, written by Mike Butterworth and drawn by Don Lawrence.

The magazine gave me a doorway into a world of history - Kings and Queens and literature and places that I could dream about. And it had comics - which somehow forever legitimised them in my young mind.

Along with Look and Learn she would also have a copy of Shoot waiting for me on a Saturday morning when we went to visit (yes - every Saturday morning mum and dad would load me and Ross into the family Purdmobile and we would drive from Royal Oak, through Sandringham to Mt Eden - Reimer's Ave by Eden Park to be exact. Ross and I would troop in and while we loved seeing Deedoo - Harry Purdy, my grandfather, we would never have the same bond with Grandma - no feelgood kids name for her - Christina Purdy was always 'Grandma'. She would give me the latest copy of Shoot (a British football magazine) and Look and Learn and that would be me for the duration of the visit!).

Back home at 18 Korma Ave., I'd go through that doorway and be lost in my fantasy world of, among other things, The Trigan Empire.

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Suddenly that email miraculously managed to take me back to my pre teen self. My thoughts turned to my mum and dad and, well, I got a little overcome actually.

Thinking that I could recapture a glimpse of that person and that time when I had both my parents was pretty overwhelming.

I wrote back a quick OMG - YES! message to the comic guy in Wellington and now I'm waiting for the courier to deliver a bit of my youth back to me.

Yes - you can (get a piece - just for a moment)!


Love and peace - Wozza

There's so much you have to go through (Cat Stevens)

September 21, 2009

Five years ago Graham Nugent Purdy passed away peacefully in the early hours. Five years??  I know I am incredulous every year but five years? Really?

Jade was around recently and had lots of questions one night about SWMBO's cousins. Although some of my cousins are part of the whanau, she also had questions about them too.

So I thought this post would include some archive material about Jade/Samantha/Adam/Keegan's great grandmother great grandfather (Deedoo), and grandmother - none of whom they ever met, as well as Graham Purdy natch.

I know I've used this photo before but all the Purdy players
and present. William, Graham, Christina, Wozza, Deedoo,
Dulcie Mary, and Ross.

Wozza, Deedoo, Grandma and Ross

Their passport photos for the trip to England to see Christine

Graham and his mum

Graham and his dad

Mum and dad with Ross and a photobomber

Graham and Dulcie - together again

Love and peace to you always - Warren

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!

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!