From the category archives:

the social round

Keep your comments in your pockets

12 August, 2010

in O internet, commentatrix, in Aotearoa, the social round

When it comes to art, I enjoy complicated failures, an unintended consequence of all those years spent studying the unpublished fringes of New Zealand modernism.  When first I heard of it, therefore, I knew that The Room would likely be well up my street.  The opportunity to see it in a theatre at this year’s film festival was too good to pass up, and so it was that it became the first (and thus far, only) outing for which a babysitter was required since the birth of the harvestbaby.  I left her in the care of her grandparents and joined my lady-date, Wellington’s knowing cultural connoisseuse, at Hoyts Riccarton.

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Baby the Bittersweet

8 August, 2010

in at home, commentatrix, dogs, the social round, we are family

Centripetal Emotion

07082010The baby is a cementer, changer and concluder of relationships, and the baby’s needs a force around which the day spins in a variety of sometimes-predictable ways. We are initiated via experience into all kinds of secret societies. There is the witching hour, which runs any time from four until ten p.m. in our house, when the young cannot be pacified, entertained or settled and mothercraft becomes indistinguishable from chance and magic. There is the fallacious phrase “leg guards” concerning the nappies of a baby not much bigger in size than a newborn. There are the long moments and short hours of a life running entirely on hormones, in which holding a contended baby is the sweetest fix of all. The erratic sleep, strange dreams and rapid mood swings are like being a teenager in love, with the accompanying rising and setting of the emotional sun. Then there is the maternal body that, in spite of the habits of a lifetime, continues to shrink. This last point is in itself neutral were it not for the general bagging and falling down of jeans that were bought to fit. Money is tight, and I’d rather spend it on her (save for buying blue cheese, which never loses its deliciousness after a long abstention).

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Meandering metaphors partially executed

3 April, 2010

in at home, commentatrix, in Aotearoa, the social round, we are family


View Larger Map

To the south and west of the city centre here is a dryness that is as literal, as in the ground, as the cultural aridity of which our northern friends sometimes accuse us.  It is a dryness that has been fought over politically for some time now, most recently — and, to my mind, most troublingly — at the highest levels.

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Like the Spanish City, to me

14 February, 2010

in dogs, in Aotearoa, the social round, traveller's fragments, we are family

A word to the wise, said a colleague of mine a fortnight or so ago, the mother of two very lively young boys.  Take as many weekend breaks as you can before the baby’s born, because after that comes a period in which you are more or less housebound.  By this collegial advice was the decision that the señor and I should spend Waitangi weekend in North Otago further strengthened.  As the pregnancy fog, which I understand is said by most researched accounts not to exist, continues to envelope my mind, it felt also like an opportunity to do something involving fine-motor skills — such as driving — before my previous accomplishments of coordination and logical sequences of thought desert me completely.

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Birthday Honours

3 February, 2010

in O internet, in Aotearoa, the social round

By curious coincidence, Miss Megan Wegan and I share not only the same name but also the same birthday, which a quick perusal of the archives here will reveal is soon.  Readers of the other Megan will be aware that she has not been having the best time of late, but also that her zest for life incorporates a keen sense of fashion.

As one who has previously been dressed by proxy at Megan’s blog, I thought it timely that I attempt to return the favour.  

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Memento Memori

31 December, 2009

in commentatrix, dogs, in Aotearoa, the social round, we are family

The (contestable) fact of a decade passing has been slow to come to my attention, and it was only really the appearance of the obligatory lists (particularly by writers whom I admire) that alerted me.  I have nothing in particular to rank — and what would you gain, gentle reader, if I told you that 2007 was better than 2002, for example? — but have been trying mentally to compile some chronologies that might sum up my experiences of the last ten years.

Normally I ignore the contention, both reasonable and logical, that a better measure of a decade is one that begins with 1 and continues through to (1)0, but on this occasion, this would be a more meaningful division for me.  I handed in my PhD in mid-2001, a fortnight or so after I started working in tertiary preparatory programmes, and defended it in either November or December of that year (I forget which).  This was the end of a period of continuous study that had various markers of “beginning” in the compulsory and non-compulsory sectors.  Since the ‘01, therefore, it’s been a different game I’ve been playing.

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Both short and steep

1 November, 2009

in at home, the social round, we are family

Regular readers will have inferred that Señor Mojito and I got married a week ago, at Labour Weekend.  I have more to tell about this but must first exercise my obligations at our wedding hub, which may take a little time, as I find the process both of uploading photos, and of looking at myself in the photos, quite challenging.

All signs point to a good time being had by most, and I managed not to ironise the event while it was taking place, a process much helped by having paid some invoices in the days prior to the ceremony and the joyful company of our friends and family.

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Sixty Seconds of Ring-Tailed Lemurs

20 October, 2009

in the social round, we are family

Saturday was the Hen Day and Night.  In between lunch and dinner, we went to Willowbank.  There we saw the ring-tailed lemurs.

I like this video because you can hear my mother laughing.

Flickr Video

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To grow accustomed to this face

10 October, 2009

in commentatrix, the social round, we are family

Originally published at The White Mist.

With a long-sighted father and a short-sighted mother, it was more likely than not that my brother and I would need glasses one day.  For both of us, that day came before childhood was out.  With great determination, I switched to contact lenses at fourteen, rejecting that large-lensed, plastic-framed spectacles that were the style at the time.  I wore contact lenses until I started working full-time, when glasses became more practical in the air-conditioned, eye-drying environment.

Glasses frames remain, however, subject to the vagaries of fashion, and it’s with this in mind that I’ve decided to wear contact lenses again for the wedding.  (Señor Mojito, who, like many sensible people, cannot bear to put a finger against his eyeball, will be chancing future changes of fashion and staying bespectacled.)  For the first time in many years, then, I’ve had cause to see my face from a distance without glasses.  What a strange experience.

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Poneke Tales

30 September, 2009

in in Aotearoa, the social round

My thanks to you all for your kind wishes on the next few months’ change of occupation.  I spent today on sick leave, not discharging my duties.  The pattern of the days when I am on my feet and on the job is not that different from the rhythms of teaching: thinking, preparing, doing, reflecting.  The difference is that I share my work now with a wider variety of people, and have a rather more looming sense of my responsibilities to others, because I am new at them.

Last week I endeavoured to combine a meeting in Wellington with a few days’ break.  It may have been a better idea to schedule the break after, rather than around, the meeting, but I am not necessarily the best decision-maker concerning my leisure.  Nonetheless, it was splendid to see so many people and do so many things.

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