Faster than Fairies,

Faster than witches...

Can you see it?

The steam train?

A shot in the dark. Well no, a shot in the early morning schoolyard.

Early to be out, but a morning to say goodbye to eager campers with my camera to hand.  Capture them gathering in excitement; capture the stowing of bags and provisions; capture the crates of food and the glow of friendship, and hark!  While the teacher briefs her class, the morning train leaves the bridge, gathers the village in its embrace, and whistles for the High St crossing. Whistles?  This is a modern service - the Coastal Pacific, with its brand new, luxury viewing carriages - yet... look hard at the photo, today the train to the Picton Ferry is being hauled by a steam engine and I can find no mention of it on the Trans Scenic website.

So , the train whistles and one parent with her camera around her neck, runs to the single vantage point, can't get close, snaps anyway, no time to compose... and captures (centre stage) the flag pole, a passing police car, and oh joy, the engine itself! And is aware that Elwin would have completed his steam certificate at Te Wai Poutini Polytech by now, fitting him for work in the tourist sector.

I recently made a booking for the Eurostar, between London and Paris. Now I want to travel by steam between Rangiora and Picton!

 

Travel by steam to the close of this day. It has been lovely - with time to do things for pleasure, just because...  I drank coffee in pretty Victoria Park with my sister and chatted with friendly teenagers, admired the butterflied flower beds and strolled around the Secret Garden with my cats (stray Catkin has joined the fold).



Then it was time to try out The Sagittarian's Tuesday Tipple in honour of Owen's first ever exhibition.

With an extra glass for Saj and Owen's other blog-sister Louciao.

Cheers!

And then, with no-one but myself to cook for, it's time to eat the way I want to eat.

Technical Report

It's raining in the Secret Garden - filling the ephemeral stream, making the grass grow... I am only just recovering from editing my last post.  Of course it was an emotionally draining exercise. I think everyone who has read it would appreciate that (many thanks for all the lovely comments and emails over the course of this week); but the business of sourcing material and making it sit on the page is both exhilerating and tedious.

So, as I slowly brought photos and text together, I was ready for this family gathering; this memorial picnic on Elwin's mortal anniversary. Here we are enjoying being together on that sunny Sunday afternoon last week - Elwin's curiously blended New Zealand family: both of his wives, his four daughters and his four grandchildren. 

I am acutely aware that the grandchildren did not make it into my micro-biography of Elwin.  I am also aware that one of the drawbacks of second-time-round fathering for him, was not being a truly active grandfather to Paul, Kelly, James and Nathan. However they all seem to delight in deferring to their young aunties - Bryony and Kitty - and have shown both of us love and support always.

One of the many memorable things that happened in Elwin's last living week, was Kelly's 21st birthday, celebrated on 1st November with a family dinner and just a few milestone photos taken, including this one of Kelly with her maternal grandparents.  Looking at this photo of Elwin now, I see that his tiredness and poor circulation is due, not so much to a good night out, but to a very worn out heart.

One of the last photos of Elwin then.  What a trip down memory lane it was for me searching through albums, 

photo packets,

slides,

and family records  as well as computer files.

Often I knew exactly which photo I wanted, but there were surprises too that made it hard to choose. 

For long-time followers of Lady Mondegreen's Secret Garden, you will know that I have used old photographs to tell stories before now.  Handling them is a treat in itself,  while reading the hand written notes on the back (not enough of those), and wondering about the context of that moment-in-time is tantalising. On the back of the leading baby photo of Elwin is a written indication, maybe, that he had not yet been named after a favourite brother: the caption reads simply Harold's boy. And although I was familiar with little Elwin and his push-along elephant, it wasn't till I set it alongside text referring to Bridge St, Buckingham, that I realised that the eponymous bridge is there in the background, and that Elwin is playing outside his grandparents' front door.

How to get old photographs into my computer?  I realise that I should use my scanner, but the scanner so far has only given me black and white images looking exactly like early photo-copied photographs.

So I photograph the prints (and for Elwin's and Barbara's wedding shot, a slide projected onto a screen) with my digital camera for transfer to my computer.  For best results I need to capture them with diffuse daylight, and take a number of shots to be sure of a sharp image since my eyesight can't tell on the camera's screen. 

Someone like Owen of The Magic Lantern Show who sometimes posts print-photographs from his film camera days, will readily spot the cast of light and shadow, and ripple of paper in my photographed photos.  This process takes time, as I then edit the photos for use in my blog, but I enjoy doing it - working with the prints, handling with care, observing the way the light falls...

I do not enjoy placing photos and text on my blog.*@&!

I am not a computer programmer: I cannot "use HTML if you like."

I am a woman who grew up with pride in her copybook,

where I wrote and arranged illustrations with an eye to pleasing balance, placing elements of a story just as I wanted them - with pen and paper, and sometimes with the use of scissors and a pot of paste.

For the layout of In Memoriam I had intended to follow the form of my Blog anniversary post, where the photos sat more or less where I wanted them when I put the cursor at the point in the line where I wanted to insert the photo.  How is it that this no longer works?  The photos resolutely jump to the top of the page or some nearby gap.  Aaargh.  Is it silly to think that Blogger is neglecting me because they are developing their Dynamic Views format, and no longer maintain old-style formatting? 

Having managed to insert photos between lines, I could not then backspace the text that had moved itself down the depth of the photo without losing the photo.  I spent quite a lot of time stabbing in the dark over this, and for any eagle-eyed, repeat visitors to the post you may have noticed that some photos have indeed disappeared. It was just too chancy to try replacing them and losing others after I had added the early wedding photo retrospectively. I am not happy with the final look of Elwin's memorial post, and there are still a couple of photos that I want to add.  I would like to even out the text too.  Does it matter?  Probably not to my readers, but I would like to feel the satisfaction that I usually get after working on one of my complex posts - especially for the perfectionist in my life.

But since today is the anniversary of Elwin's holiday funeral I will close this post with another photograph of a photograph - from Elwin's sister Lizzie in England - of the coffin lid; a work in progress.

And for a reminder of a day that felt more like an intimate folk-festival than a funeral you can visit The Not-So-Secret- Garden

In Memoriam

Elwin Robert Jamison

14 April 1941 - 6 November 2010

adapted from an obituary published in the
NZ Morris Sphere

 Dear Elwin,

You used to say that you were a Jack-of-all-trades and master of none but it seems to me that you mastered everything that you set your mind to. Whether you were blowing up your mother’s new table top, or crafting a harp; improving effluent treatment systems or restoring a boardroom table and chairs; teaching yourself to play your father’s button accordion or baking a chocolate cake.  You even mastered the difficult  keying 
of Jenny Lind on your melodeon a few days before you died. You’ve shown me your grandparents’ house in Bridge St, Buckingham, where you  were born, while your father was serving with the Fleet Air Arm in the Middle East.  You didn’t meet one another until you were three years old.  After a few years in Felixstow, your growing family moved closer to aunts and uncles in Oxford and bought a house in Crotch Crescent. Your father worked

as a panel

beater on the production line at the Morris Motor Co. in Cowley, and you grew up with three sisters. I read your eight-year-old school report from Copse Lane Primary School while preparing for your funeral, and was surprised to see that you were not very good at maths. You wanted

 me to see the beauty in

mathematics and showed me

how to solve real life problems with algebra.  You’ve told me about the art prize you won for a drawing of a lightning-blasted tree, but by the time you entered secondary school, Art had been knocked out of you by a teacher who wouldn’t accept your detailed depiction of every brick in the wall.  Thankfully Music didn't suffer the same fate and you began collecting instruments and teaching yourself to play them; never reading music enough to spoil your playing, as you often joked. Your years at The City of Oxford High School sound like arbitrary exposure to some exceptional teachers as well as some drunken duffers, and a good measure of intimidation.  Undaunted, you discovered your strengths in Physics, 

Chemistry and Maths and went straight from school to work – in 1958 - with the

 UK Atomic Energy Authority. “Top Secret” was what you said when you first wanted to impress me, but years later (and it wasn’t even pillow talk) you mentioned researching radiation-strengthened wood for the heels of women’s shoes. At about this time you survived a horrific motorcycle accident, which damaged your eye socket, but not your eyesight. You went on to gain a B.Sc (Hons) in Chemistry at the University of London, and managed this while working and raising Tina and Lara with Barbara - your first wife, between 1962 and 1968.

 Jobs during this time, in research

and development and technical services at Associated Lead Manufacturers and Wiggins Teape

Paper Manufacturers laid down an understanding of textiles, paint production, printing, and paper qualities that has continued to inform our family’s daily lives.  In 1969 you emigrated to South Africa with your first family, to work for Shatterpruf Safety Glass Co, but this job did not last long, quite possibly because you were about to expose the theft of gold washed out in a processing operation. How you excelled at industrial washing – wet processing – the pumps and the plumbing, the efficacy and extraction of waste.  It was a surprise to me to discover after your death, that Esso recognised your design for a mini-bowl scouring system with an industrial award while you were working for the South African Wool Technical Research Institute in Port Elizabeth.  As liberal English, folk- music playing residents, you and Barbara began to feel unsafe under South Africa’s apartheid system

 and in 1973 returned to England: to a nation on strike; to the three-day week; to unemployment and despair. Meanwhile, Wool Research New Zealand had heard about your mini-bowl design – and since SAWTRI had 
not developed it, WRONZ saw a golden opportunity. So you were head-hunted! And in 1974 emigrated again, to New Zealand to work at Lincoln, and to live in Christchurch.  Your mini-bowl wool scouring system, using less water for a cleaner wash, took off; took you around the world to market it in fact, and featured in 1983 on a NZ stamp. You also joined Bob Crowder's revival Morris dancing side, Erewhon Morris.

When your first marriage ended, you optimistically joined a women’s morris dancing side, and in 1986 we both got lucky in love !  But in spite of your success in wool research, you had reached the pinnacle of your career and could see the writing on the wall for research and development in NZ.  We were both ready for a big OE.  Family-back-Home-in-England, challenge,

adventure, Narrowboat Ben, marriage… morris dancing, music. Four years of gadding about, but we wanted to make a baby, and you didn’t want to bring a child up in England, so we booked one last adventure  and travelled by truck across Europe and into Arabian Nights territory: Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Iran, Pakistan India, Nepal. The stench of sewerage, the perfumed garden, the savagery and the generosity of unworldly tribespeople, the thrill of ancient places, and appropriate technology. All these things we shared as well as debilitating sickness.  And then we were home in New Zealand; back to reality, a house of our own and time to think about work.  You had become

more and more interested in alternative technologies, and in healing, particularly the healing power of the mind. While you worked as an odd-job man for a year, we talked around possibilities: return to Britain to work at Machynlleth, The Centre for Alternative Technology, or return to university to study the Placebo effect. Naturopathy won the day and you began studying towards a Diploma in Naturopathy at the Canterbury College of Natural Medicine two weeks before Bryony was born. I remember then how much you wanted to become a midwife.  Once again you were studying and supporting a young family, and how well you did it too.  You were always meticulous in your research and presentation, and excelled at therapeutic massage. I know that if you had chosen to continue along the metaphysical path, you the grandson of a wart-charmer,

 would have made a superb Reiki

 practitioner.  I know this, because you were my Healer. You also had a talent for insightful counselling both in your professional practice and personally amongst family and friends.  Since your death, I have been surprised by the number of Rangiora people, who have come to me with their

stories of visits to your clinic. After all you were an outsider come into my world here in North Canterbury, but you certainly earned the respect and admiration of many local people during the seven years that you practiced as Elwin Jamison, Naturopath,in the Rangiora High Street. In 2004 your unusual combination of BSc and Dip Nat earned you a job with the Ministry of Health as Natural Medicines Advisor, and with Kitty and Bryony we moved to Wellington for two years. You were so excited about the possibilities of bringing complementary medicine into mainstream use, but the change of government and collapse of the Trans Tasman accord diminished your role, and in your latter days your work

 included the banality of advising

on sticking plaster and Viagra. Still your rigorous research standards were highly regarded and gave weight to Ministry dialogues when dealing with sceptical international authorities.You passed retirement age but never retired and in the last few months

of your life you did so much. 

After a year of preparation, we travelled

together as a family with Unlimited School's Project Iva to deliver supplies to Iva School in Samoa, where you formed a special raport with the village matriarch. 

You also completed the first module of  a new Steam Certificate course and came home enraptured after hands-on experience with Shantytown's working steam engine. And you never stopped making music. From Skiffle through Jazz and Folk: you played guitar, mandolin, banjo, but especially bass with various Canterbury bush bands, as well as button melodeon for the Morris. 

You were enjoying frequent touring with Bantam of the Opera English Country Dance Band, with bookings entered in your hand well into this year's diary.  How much I took you for granted, my very own Morris musician. How much I miss you now

 - laptop music doesn't measure up. 

You played one last Shepherd's Hey for me to dance my jig to, when the Tussock Jumpers visited Telegraph Rd, to have a look at the three metre Earthquake kink running across it. We drove home that sunny Halloween evening last year planning our next Honeymoon... 25 years this March - it was time for another wedding.

 You leave me with so many memories, some of them difficult, many of them happy, you who knew how to say sorry when it really mattered, you who loved dressing in drag… or less, you who could pull my leg and nearly get away with it, and whose fascination with how things worked was matched with the ability to make things work, you who adapted to raising two more daughters after a generation of change in child-raising attitudes, you who told me the day before you died how lucky you were to have me as your wife: You showed me our future and made dreams come true.

                With Love and Gratitude from Jeneane

ReStart

Time to take a deep breath; time to step back, through the terror, and into the future. Time to remember a year ago this week: driving with Elwin into the City to deliver Bryony and her friends to their Masquerade Ball. Elwin taught Tess how to knot her tie before we left home (she was dressed as a guy).  We dropped them off at

the foot of

the Hotel Grand Chancellor, (tallest teetering building in this photo),watched them walk to school - long-legged beauties - in the shivering Easterly, that wind of definitition, along with the Nor' Wester, of what it is to belong to Canterbury.
After we had dropped the girls off, Elwin said to me "Show me the City."  He'd not been, and seen the aftermath of 4th September.  No one had died then.  So we looked - like voyeurs - at cracked paving and crumbling facades, at the dis-sembling of Manchester Courts and
the novelty of terra-not-so-firma.

In the photo above I see ten years of Bryony's schooling: Northern Tower - the high building to the left, built specifically to suit Unlimited secondary school's requirements; Southern Star House - the roofless facade centre right; and Discovery 1, the primary school housed on the upper levels of the white foreground building.

The last time I was here in the City, was February 16th. I came to finalise matters of Elwin's Estate with the Public Trust and made a final appointment for February 23rd.  I was not here on that dreadful afternoon of February 22nd, when the City killed and maimed so many people.  But still I have felt that it would be difficult to return.  At every withdrawing of the cordon, the realisation of loss of place has cut deep into strong memories reaching back into early childhood.

So: that breath taken, that fear reduced, that step forward and I find that there is plenty of parking!  There are more parking lots than there are buildings now. In my Holiday's End post you can see one of the buildings that once stood on this site. The long building to the right of this photo is a multi-storey parking building: unsafe, closed.

But in the ReStart Christchurch village (opened on October 29th 2011) visited, with my sister on October 31st, all is fresh and bright and hopeful.  It is only slightly disconcerting that the false floors laid in these tres chic shipping containers maintain a constant tremor!  

. 

There is a spirit of experience shared. Shoppers, staff, workmen: we all banter, marvel, relate our stories.

We were still welding 30 minutes before opening, confesses a brisk barista and there are still no locks on the doors. Who needs locks when the cordon will go up again at closing time.

It was like a TV makeover show, says Maureen. They were digging the plants into the garden beds the day before opening. Ahem, I had noticed the new plantings weren't quite up to scratch.

If anyone I met today embodies moving forward it is Maureen with her new business Hapa She was trapped here in Cashel Mall on February 22, yet returns with dedication to her work and a belief in the City.

And surely the flag ship of this advance flotilla of shipping containers must be Ballantynes.  Risen once from the City's earlier tragedy - the Ballantynes Fire of 1947, when 41 people died - this luxury department store's post-fire building has also withstood the earthquakes remarkably well and is now open for business and is being re-furbished and strengthened. 

On a warm balmy day, the vibe here was urbane, funky and relaxed.  It was intriguing to find long-standing institutions from different parts of the City gathered together: Johnsons the Grocer, Scorpio Books, Cosmic Corner.  There was also a subtle thread of awareness, often expressed with humour, of the people we have become together over the last fourteen months.

For a taste of this humour read Wellyjewell's account of the barley wine that brewed itself in the Red Zone. 

And visit ReStart Christchurch if you can.