Further despatches

DEAR CRUNDLESTEIN,

PAST THE CABBAGE tree bordering my neighbour’s back garden, further on still from the chimney pot proboscis of the next bod along, long wispy clouds flick up and about in all directions with the rampant fervency of an older man’s eyebrows against the silvery water backdrop of the boulder bank and distant Glenduan.

Reorganising my backyard the other week, I have inadvertently created for myself quite the whimsical little outdoor nook. Come… this way… slip through the unassuming dampish curtain of towels and endless toddler garments slung up over the undercover washing line to reveal, not only the ideal place to surreptitiously tuck oneself away should the JWs or Inland Revenue come calling, but to while the hours pleasurably musing and whatever else one can do with such a view.

I realise, upon discovering its potential just this very morning, further renovations to this fine writing space ideally are required… some mood lighting weaved hap-dashly through the upended garden implements in the corner pot perhaps, the acquisition of an outdoor gas heater or childproof brazier (???) given the season, and a decent tea pot/distillery utility, at minimum.

My old (and now deceased) granny’s rocker has a vacancy, but I have been preferring instead to take seat at the ramshackle wooden table, thickly sweatered and sneakered as fitting for the thrill of the chill running across my face this time of year. I rather fancy it could also be a very good place for cards or bullshit talk. There's a little blue swing for Claudie hanging from the pergola rafters, and a mini trampoline, should playing with clothes pegs get dull or one has a need to keep warm.

This little nook may not be grand enough for your decorous tastes, Crundlestein, but personally I rather like its rustic appeal and romantic sense of adventure - as long as one has decent merinos and a healthy constitution. I can well envisage good whisky also adding value, in cases where the company is boring or the writing flow needs a helping hand.

I once made habit of writing in bathtubs at odd hours you know. Especially in hotels when travelling for work in a previous life. For one reason or another, which I don't altogether comprehend, these various aquatica worked well for me back then. As for this quaint space… well, I feel it may hold great promise. We shall sea.

I trust you are travelling well.

Love,
Me xx

A letter to Turkey via Greece

DEAR CRUNDLESTEIN,

SOMEONE HAS LEFT the door to the north ajar a crack this morning, just a shard of sunlight creeps into the bowl that is Nelson CBD; enough to warm my left cheek and soul and not much more. Eleven-nineteen ante meridiem. The tide is out. The ramparting hills we both know so well wear a cloak of indifference today. Not unpleasant, in fact, it rather matches autumn’s moulting canopy and the hot cup of tea sitting here in my curling hand quite perfectly. Now, if only the dude next door would trim all the rambunction from atop his tree that encroaches upon my window view, I could describe it for you more fully. But despite this arborist absence, I’m sure you get the picture. No doubt there is always a woman somewhere needing a bush trimmed, so we must just do the best with whatever we have to work with.

Claude woke me at 3am this morning. Sometimes he just doesn’t want to be alone and I indulge him because sometimes I don’t either, and he’s not always going to want to cuddle sweet and warm (with the sometimes not so occasional kicks to my bladder) with his mama. He would have lulled off to sleep again quite happily too only I let my head fill up with futility, tossing and turning with it awhile, unable to let it go. Three months now since I’ve had any real work to speak of. Plenty of promises, bookings even, but seemingly constant postponements and delays. Oh the shit that keeps us up at night… I doused tense neck and shoulders in lavender oil and found peace somehow, before we both slept through until a very civilised 8am. Heavenly. And this morning, well… I feel simply that a change to the combobulation that is the continual mothering and supporting oneself juggle is required. If something aint working, then change the configuration. Hardly rocket science. There is always a way and, if my friend is to be believed, I am sure to find it. Apparently I am an asteroid of determination.

Please keep writing. I enjoy your colourful letters from the edge. They sound like you, which always a good letter writer makes. More selfishly, they also inspire me to scribble words down without the arduous requirement of thinking too much about what. I am not in Greece obviously, or Turkey, or anywhere else even remotely exciting (although re your letter, I would like it noted that I have been before to Venice, and last weekend I did go to Wellington). I once had a notion that even if one lived in a very restricted society or is imprisoned in some way, it is still possible to know freedom if your mind is free. This was followed quickly by a second notion that the majority of people living in the ‘free world’ do not have free minds and are, therefore, actually unwitting prisoners of their own making. My point, as I feel I should get to it, is that I wholeheartedly support and encourage you in gaily draping your laundry out to dry on any and all near lying ferry bannisters and balustrades throughout the Mediterranean. This act I see as surely being euphemistic for a free mind? Back here in lil ole Nelson, although some days I do feel a little physically encaptured by my current financial situation, be sure that I am hanging out laundry freely everywhere in my mind. Perhaps this is what this letter writing lark is all about, and these written words my at-home equivalent of the tourist selfie stick?

Love,
Me xx

Taking the long way home

SYMMETRICAL DUCKS LEAVE Vs in their river wake, peace signs, fitting for this dusky subtle hour when folk, like me, launch their dogs and/or bodies about the neighbourhood. I am escaping a long day's work not yet complete, the man in my house whose primary hobby appears to be television sentry, the fact I'm so tired I want to ball, and yesterday's dishes. I ask the ducks what they're liberating themselves from, but no response. Perhaps they think I'm quackers.

A stringy cat and I make friends via mutual smooching. He's a cat on a hot tin roof, literally, only this aint Mississippi, it's The Wood. The shed he orgies himself upon is trooping in ants on reconnaissance some place to or from, who can ever tell. But Puss and I are both civilians and don't much care, we are bonding, that is until the little bastard bites me on the hand. I resist from cuffing him about the ears as I continue on my way because he's just a cat on a hot tin roof and that's what cats do.

Fused over time into letter Ls, two old white fellas stop on the bridge in front of me to resume a more natural position, elbows nosed over the iron hand rail, commenting on the lack of eels but plentitude of fish. As we three alight onto a leafy street bedecked with modern aquarium houses and insurmountable fences of irony, my heart smiles when the Ls break out into a loud, melodic and Maori rendition of God Defend New Zealand. Indeed.

They have chosen another path by the time, homeward bound now, I pass the clutch of tall poppies dressed as sunflowers dancing about happily of the evening from their dizzying heights. These make me happy too as I continue on my way, glancing as imperceptibly as possible into secret crevices of people's properties never before noticed, despite my frequent meanderings about my hood. Modern baby carriage waits patiently at a back door under an old lady shady hydrangea alcove, while another front door lies open onto the street revealing the butterfly décor preferences of the matronly-efficient woman often to be seen clipping her insanely tidily manicured hedge. And here lives the Rawleigh's Man.

Cornering my own picket fence, dinner fills any vacant space left in my curious nostrils and the world now seems like a definitely more aligned place. Fairies have even done the dishes in my absence, sort of. I am hungry, tired, happy and grateful. Peace.

11.11.11 at 11.11

I spent mine amongst the daisies.

Dead centre of town

I fell upon a dead place. It called to me on my vague no-particular-destination meanderings, appealling to a fervent curiosity, knowing I would respond. So I stayed a while, soaking up the overgrown ancientness of Hallowell Cemetery, “The Old Burying Ground”, lying somewhere down Nelson’s Shelbourne Street.

It shares whispers of neglect and long-forgotten secrets, the carpet of fallen leaves underfoot crackling loudly, traversing across splintering old bones. Hundreds of years on, the headstones marking graves of the dead and buried are all but gone, but no interpretation sign is really required to inform of their presence deep down underneath your shoes. You just feel it. Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

Hallowell today is an odd slopey wedge of land, juxtaposed at weird angles between houses of various eras and different lives. Like a peculiar three dimensional shape that doesn’t quite fit into any of the purpose-made holes of a child’s toy, instead remaining precariously and awkwardly perched – not quite in and not quite out of the space in which it used to reside. Slowly eroded away to this little patch of memorabilia turf, and I wonder who even comes here now.

The raucous din of cicadas snap, crackle and pop like sap burning and bursting in the bottom of a fire grate at a million degrees or suped-up electric fence waves on overdrive. Yet it’s strangely peaceful, fine great trees standing steadfastly, not succumbing to the downward slope as they look out down Manuka Street and onto the ranges beyond. I briefly muse upon how the dearly departed handled the slope lying horizontally in their beds of earth.

A just-ripe windfall Black Doris plum suddenly appears on the ground in front of me. It looks delicious, so I place it next to the only remaining grave to be seen, as a blessing. Annie Eliza Letitia Crawford died January 2nd 1866, in an asylum, age 10. She was one of the last to be buried here.

Hallowell well hallowed, dead centre or very much alive?