We are family, get up everybody and sing (Sister Sledge)

Star of the show: Irene Purdy

Wie geht's?

Nine years ago, in August 2011, Jacky and I took a trip from Al Ain to the UK for Irene Purdy's 90th birthday celebrations.

Yes, you're right - that means Irene's 100th is just around the corner! Covid permitting, we aim to be back to Bury for that one as well.

While there, we loved catching up with my northern hemisphere relatives and, afterwards, going on a road trip to the Lake District, and back to London via Yorkshire and Castle Howard. More to come of the road trip in the next few posts. 

In the bosom of the family

Jacky and Christine's Samantha

The Kirkham Three

 

Next post: that beautiful spot by Lake Grasmere where William Wordsworth lived with his sister, Dorothy.

Love and peace - WNP

The boy with the thousand yard stare (Big Country)

Very jelly of cousin Christine, who is back in blighty after her downunder trip to Nu Zild, as she reports on snow and football.

Some advice from Catherine Collautt comes to mind: if your patch is feeling dry or looking blanched to you: try some water.

Grass needs water to grow, to be vibrant and healthy and green. It simply will not amount to much on a diet of entitlement (“It should just be green and awesome”) and neglect (“What, water it again? But I did that last month”). Give it a respectable amount of TLC and you may still find that you don’t want your patch, that perhaps you want somebody else’s; but you will at least find it to be something prettier, greener, and more comfortable to sit on as you figure out how to make your way there.

James Whatley has an interesting alternative take on this: The grass is always greener...if you water it.

Keep that in mind when the opportunity to leap comes along. The best advice I was ever given was: move towards things, not away from things.

I like this!

Love and peace - WNP

Each day one needs to do what is beneficial (Hsing Yun)

We are family!

This year, Christmas and New Year in Nu Zild has been a series of visitations with the resulting succession of selfies on Whatsapp and Facebook pages. Good fun!

Tom and his mum

Recently, we said farewell to Tom and Christine Kirkham (but always a Purdy) as they went off to explore the rest of their first trip to NZ.

Reconnecting with my family roots leads me back to Rochdale and that's always bitter sweet - I miss England like crazy, and love the instant thrill of being on familiar ground with my cuz.

See you again soon Christine and Tom: Ka kite anō au i a kōrua.

Aroha nui rāua rangimārie - Wozza

Pushing the barriers, planting seeds (John Lennon)

The power and the glory (You may say I'm a dreamer - Chapter 4, part 2)

Hair update - the fringe years were over, although
the George Harrison 1968 fetish was alive and well.

Master of Arts (1980-81)
First I had to do battle to stay the course. The teaching studentship people argued against me enrolling in the master's programme - they wanted me at Teachers' College in 1980.

Politely, I declined to acquiese to their request. They blinked first.

At the start of 1982 I was capped MA (Hons) in front of my family, my friends, my peers. Finally, the dream had come true.

Film festival tickets 1981: good
times, good times!

The previous two, utterly self indulgent, academically stimulating years, had been amazing. 

Retrace the route with me as I take the bus along Dominion Road or drive to the gully car park in my mini, go to the movies, go to lectures and tutorials, browse the record and book shops, work for hours on my own in the library, meet friends at the coffee shop or in Albert Park, see plays with friends, and all the while totally engross myself in my studies: 2oth century drama, 15th century drama, Chaucer, 2oth century poetry, the novel, and language papers. 

Student life was very heaven.

The result - second class, first part honours was beyond what I had hoped for ten years before.

MA students perform - Wozza left, Margo second right.

Relationships were becoming more intense as well. Up to this point, girl friends had been just that - friends who were girls.

Coralie Bines was my first date back at MAGS. Mike Budd played middle man and introduced me to her. We went to the school ball and she was still on the scene when I had my 21st dinner party at the White Heron Lodge (Purdy's are pretty classy). Coralie was (and, I bet, still is) lovely but we were just friends.

Phylis Omand was a friend of Greg's and we went out a few times (me and Phyllis that is, not Greg; he was busy with Wendy I suspect). Again though, we were just friends. Soon enough she'd moved on to Anthony Harris.

Friends from my courses, who were girls, went with me to movies, the theatre and lunches but nothing serious was ever on the agenda.

When 1980 rolled around, I meet fellow MA student, Dallas Smith. She was a thing apart, a different prospect, and certainly didn't fit the model of my previous female friends. Intense, moody, artistic, she was a crazy mixed up kid if ever there was one. Fair warning - she told me she was trouble and she was right.

Dallas collage 1981

Of course, it didn't last. She deceived me and I was crushed. So it goes.

Christine and Chris kirkham 1981

Another relationship, began at the same time, has definitely endured. I would have loved an older sister in my house growing up. Christine was away in England getting on with married life to Chris Kirkham, and email was a way off yet. I loved her letters, cards and cassette tapes but she wasn't as easily accessible as she is now.

Margo Buchanan-Oliver was also a fellow master's student, but in a different league to the rest of us! A curious mix of English refinement, social rebel, academic genius, tough business woman, tender and loving feminist - Margo is one dynamic package. 

She'd been married and had gap years in business before deciding on further study, with first the masters degree, then her PhD. Quickly, she became a big sister.

Clay, Margo with Mr and Mrs Purdy

But wait, there's more: Clay Bodvin was and is Margo's partner: an American Vietnam vet, artist, painter, gentleman, visionary, big brother substitute.

What a perfect twofer package! As friends they became a huge part of my life. When I got married, Clay was my best man, Margo - director of ceremony.

In 1980, I was 24 and yes, gasp, still pretty naive. Still living at home, but growing, incrementally, more independent. Academically I was definitely hitting my peak. Through their adoption of me (and kindred spirit, Chris Loud), Margo and Clay helped introduce new worlds - arcane worlds of possibilities and intellectual argument. They can cut through bullshit in a nano second and I love them dearly. 

Chris Loud

It was the most stimulating time of my life. The windows were thrown open, the doors of perception were hinging off their hinges.

I was immersed in great literature: The Romance of the Rose; Chaucer; Robert Bly: Robert Creeley; Moby Dick; Huckleberry Finn; Wordsworth; Coleridge; Shelley; Allen Ginsberg; Ferlinghetti; the Wakefield pageants; medieval lyrics; Pynchon; Titus Groan; Easy Rider; Star Wars; Ionesco; Beckett...

Great people influenced my thinking: Wystan Curnow; Stephanie Hollis; Roger Horrocks. They turned me inside out. As I progressed through those five years I kept an eye out for their courses. I was there!

Wystan and Roger formed a dynamic duo on poetry, film, Americana and art. Thanks to them I was turned on to artists like John Coltrane, Patti Smith, Charlie Parker, Dylan. A previously untapped world of poetry and film as art and expression. It's a debt I can never repay.

Peter Dane made Wordsworth's words, images, and experiences from The Prelude come alive and breathe for me. I can still hear his voice when I read from it.

Stephanie opened my eyes to Chaucer. After one lecture one night, I walked through Albert Park in a heightened state of mindfulness - I saw leaves on trees, bark, the filtered light - everything, it seemed to me, for the very first time. I felt transformed!

By becoming so immersed in what they taught, these people provided models that I could learn from; they provided priceless experiences to sustain me for the rest of my life. Is there any greater gift?

Sadly, as 1983 dawned, the five self indulgent years devoted to study and a search for self had to eventually come to an end. It was time to move on. 

It was time to learn a trade.

Love and peace - Wozza 

Down at the end, round by the corner (Yes)

The fourth and final of the holiday slide shows: and the theme of this one is the end of family holidays!

Family holidays have a limited shelf life. By the late teenager years we become more independent and our horizons shift from the family to friends and new adventures. A pity - but natural and that makes our family holidays increasingly special as the years drift by.

Our last family holidays took place at the Taupo house (mum and dad's holiday house at Rainbow Point).

SWMBO and seasoned bush walk adventurers

One Tree Hill - with Wynton. Fanfa
concerned about my hair - even then

Not sure where this was taken

Taupo - a rare bush walk for the lion hearted

We'll always have Paris

The girls in Leigh-on-sea

Jade and the snake

Northern holiday to the Kirkhams

Tourist central!

The much loved Taupo house

The Fantastic Four sign off on family hols

Love and peace - Wozza