Remembering Juliette

Last week was the first anniversary of me finding out my first girlfriend had died. A year since the phone call saying the death notice was in the paper, a year since the funeral. It was the biggest reason I didn't blog much last year. I'd never lost anyone that close to me before and it really knocked me back for a while. I was pondering just what to blog about this, or even to blog about it at all. It's a confusing thing. She was the centre of my world once, but not for that long and it was half a lifetime ago, so why so bothered? What level of grief is appropriate? Is there even such a thing? But then you remember that even if you didn't see them often, you still cared about this person.

This is me and Juliette about a million nineteen years ago. We dated for 9 months between summers in 1994, when we were both 17 turning 18. I was a first year, and she was in her last year of high school. I wasn't her first, and very much a naif - she taught me a lot about how to be in a relationship. Somebody had to, since I was clueless on the topic. Both being stroppy teenagers, we partied well (I've been told we appeared virtually inseperable at times), and occasionally fought well too. Lots of good times, a few forgettable ones, and a few that will forever stay between me and her to protect the innocent guilty.

We didn't end well, and were on each others shitlists for a while, but stayed in the same circles and eventually realised that we actually could still be friends. After a few years we were pretty much reconciled (and ironically being a bit more mature much better suited to being in an actual relationship, had the prior history not been there). Eventually though as the 90's drew to a close we went separate ways, and lost touch a little bit. We caught up on the odd occasion, but after around 2003 I lost touch with her completely until a couple of years ago. The last time I saw her was about a year before she died (at a barbecue notable for the attendance of not only all of my exes but my wife. Since they are all nice people, my world didn't implode). My wife being the wonderful soul she is, left us alone to fill in the gaps. The deal fate gave her in the form of bipolar disorder was a particularly shitty one, and the intervening years unkind. It saddens me still to think of all the talents she had (she was good at a lot of things), and potential and happiness she wasn't able to realise. After a lot of struggle though, things seemed to be looking up for her. We parted well that night, at peace with each other, and made plans to try and see each other a bit more often, but busy lives got in the way and suddenly there could be no more catchups ever. 

It occurred to me that when an ex dies, and you are still living in the same place as you were when you were dating, it's a bit like breaking up with them all over again. You look around and remember, this is where we did this, that is where we did that, like no time has passed at all. I thought about what I could write about, what stories to relate, but then realised that the things that most reminded me of her were songs. Music was one of the things we bonded over and nearly two decades later the associations are still strong, so that is the eulogy I'm choosing. They might not be particularly great or funny memories, but they're mine.

The song she hated because she thought love should be a 24/7 thing : Friday I’m In Love

The song that reminds me a lot of that time, of being old enough to date, but still young enough to be restricted, particularly when it comes to having to catch buses to get around if the parents you are still living with won't lend you a car: Dancing in the moonlight

The song that we discussed a lot, and just seemed to capture a lot of moments, including a discussion at a party with somebody or other's cousin, who was the lead singer with a deep voice of an improbably named band called Thrusthusband (a name they wrote in Greek), and just how the deep voice in the song worked: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

The song she requested for me one night when we were playing dedication tag on Kix FM: Tunnel of Love. They didn't have it, so played Imagine instead, which isn't one of my faves (to put it politely). I still have the tape of the announcer's explanation somewhere.
 

The song I got played for her: Nights In White Satin. She loved The Moody Blues.

The song that at 2:20 reminds me of a single perfect moment at the 1994 Sacred Heart school ball : Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)

The song she got bouncing up and down excited about in the car one Friday night on the way to her hockey game because she picked the “very late” lyric before it came up on her first listen: Round Here. It’s one of my favourite memories of her. I still remember the exact stretch of road we were on.

The two songs we bought a matching pair of cassingles together: Mr Jones and Streets Of Philadelphia.

The song from that year's Pink Floyd album, that we sat with nothing to say just staring out the window from her parents lounge one rainy day: Marooned. She gave me a Pink Floyd T-Shirt for my birthday, which still fits.

The song that always reminds me of a particular Friday night party in March 1994 and going to watch her play high school cricket the next day, and whose “time to say goodbye now” lyric particularly resonated after her death: Tear in your hand.

The album she introduced me to, via an arabian pirate copy she got when her family lived in Syria: Wish You Were Here

The song I first heard on a Vic Uni pub crawl we both went on, on a jukebox in the old St George Hotel bar, despite neither of us being Vic students, or of a legal age to drink: Disarm. The opening to this song from the same album is beautiful and always reminds me of those times. That album was everywhere then.

The song from an album that was at every party we went to then, and would remind me of her in the period after we split: Sitting Inside My Head.

The song I played at her the night we broke up. Yeah, subtle: Crazy Love Part II.

Two songs that for whatever reasons, helped me deal with things last year: Diamond Jigsaw and Scribble. When driving alone in the car at night for a couple of weeks I would just play them over and over.

We both loved Supertramp. I remember her favourite song of theirs was School, but they carried her coffin out of the church to Take The Long Way Home. It's a favourite of mine but I haven't felt the urge to listen to it since.

ANZAC Day

This song by one of my favourite Australian bands plays on a perhaps slightly unfair myth about the ANZAC leadership, but still suits the day well, and is one of the better efforts in a field that often turns to the mawkish:


ANZAC day isn't, and shouldn't ever be about glorifying war or nationalism. It's a day for rememberance and acknowledgement, of what others had to go through (rightly or wrongly) in our name, and those who fell. And as an army Brigadier eloquently quoted at this morning's Lower Hutt ceremony, the bonds of mateship. Soldiers don't often fight for the higher ideals of national policy, which are close to irrelevant on the battlefield. They most often fight for those alongside them.

NB: The Christmas Truce referred to in the lyrics was a real thing that occured in 1914.

Getting it right for once

Listening to: one of my new comps, and this track right now: Run Run Run. I love the pun of the chanting at the end of the song.

It wasn't until I saw it on Huffington Post while following Boston news that I realised this had been noticed outside the country. It might not be as spontaneous as some are claiming, but this was still a pretty cool moment after the vote that made same-sex marriage legal in NZ this week.


Another unexpected viral clip from an unexpected source is this brilliant speech prior to the vote:

There's some post speech follow up including an "Ellen" invite here.

And a couple of friends of mine on why it mattered:

Re Compiling

I've been making comps for more than twenty years, first on tape, then on CD. I never used them to try and woo anyone, although I did make one for a girl I fancied as a birthday present, but more because I was broke than because I thought it would affect any other proceedings. They were more or less done for my own listening pleasure (for a while, there were times when I wasn't listening to actual albums at all). Besides countless tape comps, I made more than twenty CD compilations of my favourite tracks, including a 6-CD set that soundtracked my 30th birthday party. Listening to them now, especially the ones where I didn't record the tracklist anywhere can be a lot of fun, not only for reminding me of what I was into when I made them, but also since I've often forgotten what was on them, leading to lots of pleasant surprises. And the occasional skip or three when I wonder what I was thinking. Acquiring an MP3 player, and a car stereo that said player could plug into though effectively rendered the comps redundant, so it's been a few years now since I have put any together.

When that car died last month though, the stereo went with it. Our new ride has an actually much better stereo set up sound wise, but alas it doesn't have an AUX port (not yet anyway). And with it's first road trip beckoning yesterday, suddenly the comp is back in vogue, although being able to rip tracks straight from the MP3 player makes things a bit faster than the last time I did this. It was fun switching media on a whole bunch of new artists and songs I had never plonked on CD until now, and remembering the rules of making compilations. I was in a rush though, and a programme crash obliterated my first, near-perfect tracklist (which of course I neglected to write down first). Three road CD's resulted from a quick and dirty compile on Saturday morning.

The first one came out like this:

1. Unkle - "Keys To The Kingdom"
2. Dropkick Murphys - "Shipping Up To Boston"
3. Underworld - "Diamond Jigsaw"
4. Shihad - "Hard To Please"
5. Buffalo Tom - "Mineral"
6. Better than Ezra - "In The Blood"
7. The Twilight Singers - "On The Corner"
8. Big Country - "Porroh Man"
9. Third Eye Blind - "Motorcycle Drive-By"
10. Deborah Conway - "Today I Am A Daisy"
11. Jane's Addiction - "Mountain Song"
12. The Twilight Singers - "Never Seen No Devil"
13. Jakob - "Everything All Of The Time"
14. Talk Talk - "Life's What You Make It"
15. Chemical Brothers - "The Test"
16. Friendly Fires - "Jump In The Pool"

Having literally roadtested it now it kinda works, although "Today I Am A Daisy" and "Mountain Song" more co-exist than go together smoothly, and "Everything All Of The Time" does slow the pace a bit with it's epic moodiness.

The second one had more of an electronica theme, and not planned so much as themed.

1. Concord Dawn and Rido - "One And Only"
2. Underworld - "Scribble"
3. Crystal Castles - "Not In Love" (the Robert Smith version with a proper vocal)
4. Computers Want Me Dead - "Circles"
5. Concord Dawn - "The Space Between Us"
6. The Tutts - "i20"
7. Underworld - "Two Months Off"
8. Leftfield - "Open Up"
9. Shapeshifter - "One"
10. Prodigy - "Poison"
11. Chemical Brothers - "Star Guitar"
12. Unkle - "Burn My Shadow"
13. Underworld - "Rez"

That tracks in this genre tend to be longer is evident in the shorter traklisting. "i20" works as a kind of halfway break, and I originally planned to close it with "Burn My Shadow", but opted for "Rez" as a more trippy rather than punchy ender, and sort of breaking one of my own rules about not having too many tracks by the same artist on the same disc.

The third one was most rushed, and is more or less tracks that had caught my eye while putting the other two together:

1. Julia Deans "Skin (Everything Is Coming To A Halt)"
2. The Twilight Singers - "Gunshots"
3. Interpol - "Obstacle 1"
4. Foals - "Inhaler"
5. Hunters And Collectors - "Angel Of Mercy"
6. Paul Banks - "The Base"
7. Pearl Jam - "Brother" (the version with lyrics)
8. Neneh Cherry - "Manchild"
9. Dave Dobbyn - "Shaky Isles"
10. Foals - "Spanish Sahara"
11. Concrete Blonde - "Someday"
12. Hunters And Collectors - "Run Run Run"
13. Motocade - "Commandeering"
14. Pearl Jam - "Hard To Imagine"
15. The Twilight Singers - "Sublime"
16. Neneh Cherry - "Buffalo Stance"
17. Ween - "Mutilated Lips"

It's probably the messiest to listen to, but all three could flow a bit better. Maybe I should just play them all on random anyway.

Umm, yeah

I know my daughter made it with love and enthusiasm at day care, but this unicorn/baby/reindeer/yoghurt pottle thing is now resident on my kitchen windowsill and generally creeping me the hell out.

Driving out 2012

Harking back to the summer that was, we spent the last day of 2012 driving from one side of the North Island to the other. Depending on which bit of it you are crossing, this can take either a few minutes, or most of a day.

Guess which one we were doing.

Going from the Waikato coast to Hawke's Bay is a longish haul straight through the middle of the island. that said we had good roads, perfect weather, active volcanoes and pretty waterfalls to look at, and even the odd moment of perfection in the back seat. 

SH30 from Te Kuiti to Taupo. One of my favourite bits of road that I don't drive on very often.

 The aforementioned moment of perfection.

 The white smudge at centre right is the active vent on Tongariro being active.

Waipunga Falls on the Napier Taupo road, another new discovery for us (having travelled this road all of once before). After revisiting Marokopa earlier in the day this was almost starting to feel like a waterfall tour at this point, which bizarrely, someone has actually done.

Our first sight of the east coast from the Napier Taupo highway. Moment of triumph tempered slightly by the reason we were stopped being to clean up a motion sickness related incident, after foolishly giving a toddler a book to read on a winding road.

Spending all day on the road, then setting up a tent at the collective friends of friends before putting the children to bed though doesn't exactly set you up for a night of New Year revelry though. Although long days that end with a promising change of scenery are usually worthwhile.

Summer's Kiss is over baby

Nobody on the road, nobody on the beach . . .

I feel it in the air, the summer's out of reach.

We made a trip to Days Bay after dinner tonight to wave goodbye to summer on the last night of daylight savings time. The distinctly unsummeriness of the weather didn't stop the girls from having a paddle though.

Lyric reference #1

Lyric reference #2

Both excellent tracks for this time of year.

Thinking of this song a lot at the moment :)

It was funny to note the change in wording of the electronic billboards after our non drought ending rain last week too :).

People are actually taking it seriously which is good to see, including the guy at the car yard who apologised for our new car not being washed before we took delivery of it.

Free Treasure

One of the things about living in NZ is the ubiquitous green and yellow Department of Conservation markers you see around, particularly in rural areas, and how easy it is to ignore them, or think you'll come back to them some other time. Try not to; you might miss out on some cool stuff.

Near Marokopa there are three such signs, and on one of our days there we decided to check them out, knowing little or nothing about what they described. "We" being my wife and the old friend brothers we were in Marokopa with (seen here in best adventuring/don't-take-my-photo poses), brother's parents minding the kids for the afernoon:

The landscape around this part of the country is very limestone-y and prone to interesting erosion, as this appallingly lit photograph typifies. I love the view from the backyard of this house:

Our first stop was at the intriguingly named Natural Bridge at Maungapohue. For a few minutes you walk down an average little river canyon, like so:

Then suddenly you walk around a corner and are confronted with this, and involuntarily say "Wow" or words to that effect:

If you are wondering about scale, there is a person at the bottom of this shot. It's cathedralistic.

As to how it was formed, it's basically a cave with a collapsed roof. If you want to know more, click on this pic and read the info board :) :

And just a few steps out the other side and you wouldn't know it was there at all.

Also around the cave are littered eroded rock formations, including fun rocks for offspring to climb through, and intrepid explorers to conquer (note aforementioned DOC marker).

There are also rocks that look like they escaped from a Jim Henson movie and are about to wake up and start talking to you.

Moving on from the collapsed cave, a few minutes along the road at Piripri there is an intact one. This photographs about as well as you'd expect a large cave with only ambient lighting to photograph. On a hot and humid summer day descending into the cool gloom is incredibly refreshing.

And lastly a few minutes back along the road to Marokopa, and the last stop, are the magnificent Marokopa falls:

All of these things are pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but I love that these things are just freely available to explore and discover at your leisure. I knew nothing about these three things until we stumbled across them, and (taxes notwithstanding), no-one charged us an entry fee to go and look at them, or made us take a tour. We could just take it in on our own terms and in our own time.

Including family selfies when we took the children to see the sights on our way to our second camping destination the next day:

 I am smiling, it's just hard to concentrate on taking the photo as well :).

Just a splash

So I blog the other day about a drought being declared, and this happens

Lightning near Palmy, about 100 miles from where I live. Photo credit T.Hamilton, via Dompost. Yoinked because I wish I'd taken it.

It rains for a couple of days straight :).

This is just a splash rather than an actual drought breaker though, since there isn't any more rain of significance in the forecast for the next ten days at least.

Comet Chasing

One benefit of our current drought is that it ensured clear skies when I went looking for Comet Panstarrs last week. It was faint, but I managed to capture it on film CCD, mostly by boresighting the camera since while I could see the comet with the naked eye, I couldn't through the viewfinder.

Comet Panstarrs over Wellington and Makara West-Wind windfarm from Wainuiomata Hill Road lookout, 08 March 2013.

Endless Summer

Listening to: Foals - Holy Fire (2013)

Back in January we had our big fine spell of 10 days with no cloud or rain, and we all thought that was a big thing. Five and a half weeks ago I blogged about getting a month's worth of rain overnight to end it.

We haven't had any real rain since.

Today we in Wellington joined the rest of the North Island in officially being declared a drought zone, with water use restrictions applying from tomorrow. We've come close to this once or twice in my memory, but this is the first time I can recall it actually happening: even with the restrictions there is only an estimated 20 odd days supply remaining. There is some rain forecast for this weekend, but it isn't hanging around; given how dry everything is it will mostly run-off anyway before the next high takes over. It's the complete opposite of last summer. Long fine days with clear skies and little wind, and lots of evening swims at the beach. Last summer we barely got outside, except when we went camping and merely got wet somewhere other than home. Weirdly though we haven't used our barbecue all season - we have been too busy going to other peoples. I've gotten so used to the weather that for a while I stopped looking at the forecast.

This NIWA sourced satellite image quite dramatically shows the difference between the summer of 2011/2012, and 2012/2013:

About halfway up the east coast in those images is Hawke's Bay, traditionally one of the driest parts of the country anyway. Here is the view from Te Mata peak in central Hawke's Bay on New Years day, before the drought really took hold.

Victorian Photo Challenge

I'm heading over the ditch to Melbourne next weekend, and in the vein of the previous photo challenges I've tried, I thought for fun I'd revive the concept and ask for a hit list of things to photograph while I'm over there. Things must be readily visible, or not going to get me arrested by photographing them.

So, if you are reading, challenge away, and I'll post the results when I get back.

Marokopa

January and February go by so fast. We ended 2012 by hitting the road for our annual summer camping trip, starting at Marokopa on the Waikato coast. We'd been there a while ago pre-children, and it wasn't a hugely long drive, even allowing for Marokopa being a long way from anywhere, but two under fives in the back have a habit of drawing the journey out. They compensated by cuting the place up wherever we stopped. Like Taihape:

And Taumaranui (yes my daughter is picnicking on the footpath. That's where she decided the party was at):

It was getting to late afternoon by the time we arrived at Marokopa, and started putting the tent up in 30+ degree heat.

 That done we had a wee explore. This is pretty much it, and I like that:

After tea we retired to the cabin/unexpectedly plush guest house our friends (whose idea it was to go here in the first place) were staying at to hang out and admire the view:

Marokopa is all about the fishing, and this was proved when the campground manager wandered over to give us one of the two crayfish he'd caught that day. Cooked and ready to eat and completely free of charge. I didn't ask how big the one he kept for himself was.

As I said the essence of Marokopa is fishing. It's at the end of the road and there isn't much else to do there. It is also the quietest camping ground we have ever stayed in (apart from the ubiquitous quad bikes used to travel the beach) , since most occupants are getting up pre-dawn to catch the morning tide. So the next morning we joined our friends on the black sand beach to see what could be caught.

Nothing as it turned out. The crayfish would have to do (disappointing, I know). Charlotte did find a starfish in a tree back at the campground though, because that is where you would expect to find them of course.

When not finding sea creatures in weird places Charlotte practiced her horse whispering skills.

And Sophie practiced her photobombing skills:

And once they were in bed I practiced my handheld moonlight river photography skills.

Big Dry/Big Wet

After an epic unbroken run of nearly two weeks of clear skies, warm temperatures and no rain that saw us heading to the beach more times in the space of a week than we did for the entirety of last summer, on Sunday night the thickening clouds to the west, and a palpable increase in humidity suggested rain was on the way.

And on Monday it did, making up for lost time by delivering a month's worth of rain overnight. I was out on the motorway at the height of the deluge and it was some of the worst rain I have ever driven in. The 18-wheeler tailgating me so close all I could see in my rearview mirror was radiator grille merely added to the fun. When the warm front from the north eased off, a cold front from the south ramped it back up again. For a while the road outside my place looked more like a waterslide.