My recent excursion to Tongariro National Park contained a flash of déjà vu. We finished our traverse with the Year 12 Woodford House warriors and emerged from the gloom by the Chateau Tongariro's car park. The scene there of parked cars immediately took me back roughly 50 years to this photograph of our car (one in the middle) when we stayed at the Chateau as a family.
The other photos below from the Purdzilla archives are from various Tongariro adventures with my mum and dad and brother. Snazzy cap I'm wearing! Always setting cool as trends - even way back then!
The return of nature watch: Rochdene has started showing the first tentative signs of spring: daffodils have started to appear at the front gate and blossom is just beginning to poke out from bare branches. I checked online for the first dates of Spring and it appears we're still some way off. The actual date is in mid September and that month is generally regarded as the time Spring begins. Until then you'll all have to put up with the snowy scene I've used as a border to these posts to indicate winter (be patient Jade). We finished lambing a while ago - you'll remember my story of Judy and Jean - both are VERY noisy youngsters now - about six weeks old and about to be weaned off the twice daily hand feeding. Given they regard me and SWMBO as mum and dad they haven't shown any indication of buddying up with the other lambs just yet. They seem to regard Bazil as a big brother and the sheep as outrageous Visigoth interlopers on Rochdene rather than their own kin. That's the predictable outcome of hand bottle feeding them for six weeks I guess. The most obvious sign of spring though? SWMBO is threatening to use the lawn mower for the first time since we moved in. Jeepers! Love and peace - Wozza
Being away on Year 12 camp is one of the year's highlights, what with all that back to nature stuff, testing oneself against the elements stuff, and seeing how people react to adversity stuff going on. Okay, so here we go:
Adam posted a very poignant message on his Facebook page:
One year ago today I said BYEBYE to Japan. Every day I think about all the cool stuff I did there and all the people I met and all the horribly awkward and anxiety producing situations I dealt with inside and outside of work. I'm pretty sure Ive thought about my two years there every morning when I wake up and feel lucky that I was able to do it! Sounds tragic but part of my soul feels left behind there.
He's a deep thinker is our Adam. I know how he feels. All of the photos of Adam when he's in Japan (like the one above) tell a story: one of happiness, fulfillingness, rightness...joy. I feel exactly the same as he does about when I lived in England. I felt, for the first time in my life, that I belonged somewhere. That sounds like crazy talk. I was born in Auckland New Zealand, lived there until we moved to England in 2004 when I was all grown up. But I've always felt a disconnect with other Kiwis and with NZ. I often think about that first visit to England and specifically Rochdale in 2003. That overpowering feeling of being comfortable, belonging, being home. It overwhelmed me then and my soul (like Adam's to Japan) connected to the place. When we settled in Essex that feeling stayed with me until we left at the start of 2007. I noticed someone on Adam's Facebook message wrote something along the lines of - go back there! But life is not always that easy, is it. For one thing there are other people to consider and for another there are financial considerations (pesky things called 'jobs'). Still... Love and peace - Adam Lennon Purdy's dad
Rochdene has been a hive of activity since we moved in a mere three weeks ago. Builders, plumbers, electricians, painters have been in to build Abbey Road Three (ART) which I started moving into a couple of days ago. First record on the turntable? Abbey Road of course! Track one, side one: Come Together.
Apart from all that I've been concreting a floor for SWMBO's tack rooms and building a couple of horse yards (with SWMBO's help). The family heirloom emerged from the layers of protective tarpaulins on Saturday and fifty of so wheelbarrow loads of concrete later was cleaned up and put away, ready for the next project (a lean to for the horse float). Sunday was the horse yards' turn. For that I needed SWMBO's help. No easy task. Helping me. I'm not a fun person to work with when I'm in building mode. You see - I need to work things out in my head and think about what I'm doing. Building requires certain strategic thinking - about five moves ahead, and when my concentration goes I get grouchy. My default setting in that situation is not something I'm proud of. When I was a kid I'd help my grandfather, Harry Purdy (Deedoo) and father in their building projects. I was pretty quiet and I watched and tried to predict their needs (a level, hammer, spade...) but mostly I was quiet. Especially with my dad. Deedoo was a skilled craftsman who knew exactly what he was doing by instinct and long established routine. My dad, however, was a pharmacist so everything was precise and he needed to concentrate his powers on the task. I'm much more like my dad. Jacky knows this. And helps out anyway. Bless her. Love and peace - Warren bin Graham
Keegan surprised me with a lovely gift recently - a Vandelay Industries T shirt.
On quite a few levels - that is so cool! That someone somewhere decided to actually make one and that Keegan would know about it somehow and that he would get one for me. All very cool!
Chalk and cheese. The earliest citation of the phrase is in John Gower's Middle English textConfessio Amantis, 1390:
Lo, how they feignen chalk for chese
It's a phrase used to indicate the differences between things.
Unbroken and American Sniper are two movies SWMBO, Jade (visiting for a few days) and I watched over the last few nights: both American made movies about the effects of war on people (in Unbroken - set during WW2 - just on men) and the motivation on men to do what they do (in post 9/11 American Sniper - multifaceted and complex). Angelina Jolie and Clint Eastwood - chalk and cheese. Jolie goes for the BIG MESSAGE (um - the title gives it away) while Clint's a much more nuanced series of messages.
There is a ring of authenticity around Clint's movie (and his other movies) that other directors struggle to have. American Sniper feels gritty, real. Steven Spielberg is a great director but he couldn't have pulled off American Sniper (like Clint couldn't do ET). Man's gotta know his limitations. I bought Unbroken for potential use with my Year 11 class (ditched that idea after seeing it), but American Sniper I bought for us to watch. Can't say I actually enjoyed either one and pretty sure I never need to watch Unbroken ever again. American Sniper will join Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker and Apocalypse Now in the Wozza DVD library under 'War'. Love and peace - Wozza
