It's such a feeling, my love I can't hide (The Beatles)

After a shitty week, being at school for 12 days in a row didn't help (last week + Saturday swimming sports + Sunday chapel + this week), I came home after school on freaky Friday and decided to play some loud music and do a workout.

Music (in this case a live Coldplay CD) and hard exercise usually does the trick. 

I had a shower and turned on the TV and it was Sochi Olympics figure skating. I reached for the remote but then stood in amazement, watching a Russian figure skater - 17 year old Adelina Sotnikova - do her stuff.

It was breath taking - literally, and EXACTLY what I needed after purging the week via Coldplay and the cross trainer.

She was amazing. Free. Sassy. Effortless. Carefree. A thing of beauty.

I also loved her emotional moment of release after her performance. She gave it her all. She never gave up, never surrendered. That's inspirational people!

I notice today the usual suspects are on social media (and American news shows) saying the Russians fixed the result, that the silver medalist (Kim Yuna - also amazing) was robbed. 

I know nothing about judging figure skating but I still figure I have the right to say, I'm sorry, but, "Fiddlesticks!!!!"

Have a look at this (not her Gold medal performance at Sochi but the next best thing on youtube) and tell me she's not a glorious freak of nature.




Love and peace - Wozza

Motion (Lee Konitz)

Boy on a bicycle

I am thinking of one of those photographs you see: a pan shot, a boy on a bicycle. The world is a brush stroke movement, a set rolled by to indicate the speed of another who passes on wheels. It is time passing on paper. The boy, although the viewer knows his feet are furious with motion, is absolutely stilled. He is in a moment of intense relaxation. It reads like grace. And this grace bleeds ‘now’ with ‘before’ and ‘after’; denies the isolation of the moment, insists on continuity.

You can no longer make the separation between stillness and movement in the boy. Understand that motion is this grace, this point of eternal departure that is the boy.

So much knowledge is required to move those wheels, those limbs. Yet it is all granted to the boy. It is inside his body. This small movement is precipitated by this body of knowledge. And death entrances through this knowledge-motion, this boy. And there are no stops no freeze frames in death. Death itself is precipitation.

Love and peace - Wozza (brother to the boy and btw - he's on my bicycle and I took the photo with my Kodak Instamatic)

Ketchup, pretty name for a girl (Jerry Seinfeld)

Sadly Waffles has not returned home. It's been over two weeks since we last saw him. We have no clue what has happened to him but clearly something bad has. 

We're searched Red Phoenix farm and all the roads around us, contacted all the neighbours to check if they've had any locked buildings, reported his disappearance to the SPCA and nothing.

Being somewhat resigned to the inevitable, SWMBO and I decided to rescue another cat with the open plan idea that if the Waf returns we'll have two cats from the Waipukurau SPCA to look after and so... please welcome Seven to the whanau.

Seven is very like the cat we had before Wafi - a smokey grey and white female - which we called Soda.

Why Seven? Simple - watch the following clip from Seinfeld.



In the same episode Soda emerges as George's second favourite name so given the similarity in the cats' colours - Seven seemed like a perfect choice. 

Watch out for Ketchup (or Mug) next time!

In life, as in football. you won't go far unless you know where the goalposts are [Arnold H Glasgow (sic)]

It's February and that means a couple of things, first, a new page and quote from my 2004 calendar.

This month it's the one in the post title. It kind of makes sense but it's not phrased brilliantly. I don't like that phrase about moving the goalpost and. I guess, it must be aligned to Glasgow's quote.

Sidebar: Who was Arnold H Glasgow anyway? No one seems to know much.

Turns out his name may be misspelled on my calendar. According to Wiki answers it should be Glasow without the 'g'. 

Here's the sum total of web information on him (and I'm not sure how reliable it is): 

Arnold Henry Glasow was born in Fond-du-lac, Wisconsin, USA, in 1905, and died in Freeport, Illinois in 1998 age 93. He graduated from Ripon College, and started his own business when he moved to Freeport just after the Great Depression. His business was a humour magazine that he marketed to firms nationally, which firms would turn into their own "House Organ" to send to their own customers. He ran this business for over sixty years but didn't publish his first book until aged 92. The book was titled "Glasow's Gloombusters", one of the many titles he put to his work during his career. He was cited frequently in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Chicago Tribune and many other major publications. He was a regular contributor to the humour sections of Reader's Digest. Sixty years of productive work. Many accolades. A real American thinker, self-effacing and generous of spirit, he shunned the national spotlight.

Anyway I didn't really want to get into the actual quote but instead focus on the other thing about the move into February - that means it's Superbowl time, which is on Monday in New York. 

Wahoo - a superbowl NOT in the sunshine of Miami is very welcome.

All of the hype around the game is always amazing - it's just a game of American Football afterall. At least this year the two best teams will be meeting in the final.

The Seattle Seahawks go up against The Denver Broncos. I'm hoping for a Seahawks win. I have no allegiance to them beyond the fact that one of the whanau is a Seattleite, and, although Clay is not a big football fan, that's enough for me.

But there's more: there's the fact that the pissed off, I'm gonna getchew, seahawk icon (left) is way better than the Denver's slightly manic bronco (right)... 

...and there's Derrick Coleman. He's a Seattle Seahawks safety who also happens to be deaf. He wears hearing aids and lip reads the plays from Russell Wilson. Amazing and totally inspiring.



Besides which Peyton Manning, the quarterback for the Broncos, kinda rubs me up the wrong way. It's his whole mucking around at the line of scrimmage that gets me, plus his whole Tom Hanks aw shucks good ole boy personality. VERY unfair of me I know - but no one is that nice (apart from Tom Hanks that is).

Yes I'm really that shallow.

So - GO SEATTLE!!!!

Love and peace - Wozza

They put raisins in the pork roast and butter on your bread... (Lasse Karlsson)

A student recently asked me what was my favourite film of all time and the answer is always easy: Pelle The Conqueror.

I first saw it with Sam and Stas Sivak in Nelson in the early 1990s.

I bought a VHS copy of the film a short time later and showed SWMBO and the weirdest thing happened. 

She loved it too.

Normally our tastes in movies are very different. If proof is required - Woody Allen has her running for the hills while I love his movies (Stardust Memories is my favourite but Bananas, Mighty Aphrodite, Hannah and Her Sisters, Manhattan, and Annie Hall are all in my top movies of all time list).

Somehow we are united in our love of this long Swedish film with English subtitles set at the end of the 19th century. 

A brief run down from IMBD: A boat filled with Swedish emigrants comes to the Danish island of Bornholm. Among them are Lasse and his son Pelle who move to Denmark to find work. They find employment at a large farm, but are treated as the lowest form of life. Pelle starts to speak Danish but is still harassed as a foreigner. But none of them wants to give up their dream of finding a better life than the life they left in Sweden.

There are so many haunting images in the film. There is so much laughter, so much sadness and so much strength. 

I love great stories about relationships - especially fathers and sons, I love stories about rites of passage and I love films that are inspirational. 

Pelle The Conqueror is special.

It's my favourite film of all time. Nothing comes close.

Love and peace - Wozza

You find yourself just standing there (Neal Morse)

It was a busy old week just past. 

It had it all really: joy/sadness, lack of excitement/excitement, new/old, hot/cold, craziness/normality, visits/visiting, and all sorts of other yin/yangishness.

See if you can match the above to the following:

• Ross and Lynda and the troops arrived for a look around Red Phoenix Farm.
• Adam sent us a picture of snow at Ashleigh's place.
• We shot over to New Plymouth to move Brain (sic), a.k.a. the minister of defence, into his new house.
• I snatched a few precious minutes to zap into Vinyl Countdown on the way out of NP to buy Blackfield IV and a Beatles poster for my classroom.
• SWMBO and I had to administer to a fly blown sheep and I had to bury a lamb that died of some mysterious bug.
• The first day of the new school year happened on Friday.
• SWMBO and I had to wrap up warm in New Plymouth during Brain's move.
• We quickly stopped in to see Jacky/MaBelle's mum on the way out of NP.
• We quickly met Jade in Palmerston North on our way home - she's got a new job in the Mall which takes her closer to JB HiFi to pick up my orders (last one was Big Big Train - great proggy rock stuff).
• Otane was sweltering on our return on Thursday.
• Samantha and Jesse sent us a fantastic thank you letter. Yes - letter. Awesome guys!

Just a regular old week upon reflection!

Sadly (that gives it away) I have to report that we also lost Waffles, our perfect little cat, during the week. 

He dropped off a present on Tuesday morning (a perfectly formed tiny little mouse at the back door) and then vanished. He's not returned for food or cuddles since, which is unheard of from Waffles.

We've searched everywhere, rung all the neighbours, looked around the roadsides, made sure he's not locked into any outbuildings, contacted the authorities - all to no avail so far. We haven't given up but it's a case of expect the worst/hope for the best at this stage.

Love and peace - Wozza

Earthly pleasure ring out from the rigors of this road (Villagers)

Domestic bliss seems to have been a recurring theme during these holidays.

I've been reading my usual eclectic selection and domestic bliss (or lack of it) has definitely featured in them.

Graham Nash - Wild Tales (Mr 'two cats in the yard' himself). I enjoyed it by and large - he's honest and it presented a more balanced portrait of his relationships with his parents and musical buddies Allan Clarke, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills, and Neil Young. It ultimately changed my impression of him. I haven't liked his smug, earnest 'two cats' persona previously but I found myself liking him more while reading his autobiography.

Melina Marchetta - Looking For Alibrandi. We have a set of this at school so I read it to see if I could use it or not with junior classes. The answer was 'sure' as it deals well with family dynamics in particular and a mother/daughter relationship in particular.

Todd Strasser (under the pen name Morton Rhue) - The Wave. I was deciding whether to teach this at Year 11 again so I reread it quickly. Didn't seem as substantial as the last I read it about 20 years ago so I may pass on this one.

Markus Zusak - The Book Thief. Again we have a class set and I was looking for a good text to use for Year 13s - this one had me from page 1 - a narration by Death tends to get my attention! It's a brilliantly written story of young Liesel as she tries to survive relocation to a new family in a German suburb during World War 2. There is a kind of domestic bliss amid the death and terror that is inspirational and very emotional. I'll definitely use it at school if I don't use One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

Lloyd Jones - Mr Pip. Yep - you've got the idea now - another case of a class set that I may use - I'm currently reading this and so far it's a bit like The Book Thief with a 13 year old protagonist and dislocated family bliss in a foreign land - Bougainville this time..

SWMBO and I love watching Grand Designs on the Living channel (creates a nice balance from Death - The Book Thief's narrator). 

The hooks for us being the human drama involved in seeing a design vision through to its conclusion, the decisions people make in their designs and presenter Kevin McCloud who is acerbic at times and critical when he needs to be but he's also quick to spot moments of success, joy, and inspiration.

As I mentioned in an earlier post I had four construction targets for these holidays - tractor shed, chook house, bird aviary and double carport. Only two have been ticked off the list so far.

I blame Grand Designs.

The bird aviary started out as a simple rectangular design but SWMBO wanted something more stylish. Hmmm, I thought (to my...sorry PJ) - that's going to cause some headaches.

The budget was set at $350. I needed to buy some hardware (nails, latches, hinges etc), some construction board to provide shelter and the bird netting. Other than that I could use existing wood from around Red Phoenix Farm and from Sallie's place and I found a large piece of flat tin in our Three Bay Barn that I could use for the roof. 

In true Grand Design spirit the plans and vision were pretty much in our heads.

SWMBO's design brief for the aviary (after we'd scouted out suitable locations and settled on the area where the clothes line was located) were modest and not challenging at all. They included the need to fit in with existing plants and vegetable gardens; be as transparent as possible so that we could see the herb garden and hedges behind it; and not be boringly functional. Oh - and we also had to incorporate a lovely little birdbath sculpture thing that SWMBO got for a much reduced price from Mitre 10 in Waipukurau.

The other complicating factor was that we needed two distinct sections to the aviary. Lovebirds are my favourite, Canaries are SWMBO's and the two species don't coexist - indeed Lovebirds are extremely intolerant creatures and they kill anything not Lovebirdy.

We love a challenge! Eventually we came up with a double triangular type of arrangement with indoor and outdoor living for the birds.  

We went to work.

Know one thing: I'm a grumpy bum when I'm in building mode. I think a lot, process things in my head and don't explain myself clearly to co workers - i.e. SWMBO, because I know what I'm thinking. This can create a bit of tension - especially around lunch time - Purdys are bears when we're hungry!! It's the way we roll.

First up was relocating the clothes line behind the house. Easy huh? The clothes line was, of course, cemented into a block of concrete roughly the size of Texas. I toiled in the blazing sun for a morning and managed to extract it using a steel bar and move the concrete slab with my sack barrow to the new site. 

Phase two was digging a new hole for the concrete slab. Easy huh? The ground I was attempting to dig into, after the false security of three inches of topsoil, was as hard as, well, concrete really. The sun continued to boil and I continued to deplete whatever liquid makes up my internal combustion but eventually the job was done.

Next - the construction of the aviary.

Generally SWMBO and I are on the same page and you'll be relieved to know that we are not only still happily married but we also ended up with a cool double sided aviary!!

Phase three - we needed some perches and places for the birds to explore so I cut down a large but dying tree in one of the paddocks. It had plenty of gnarly branches to chop up and I needed an excuse to use my new chainsaw.

Phase four was buying some birds and so...introducing Lovebirds Squawk (Jade's suggestion for the female), Dave Dee and the Canaries Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.

I love it when a plan comes together. 

Love and peace - Wozza