Walks and worries

Very good walk yesterday from Long Bay to Pohutukawa Bay and back around the rocks. There were only about 12 people compared to the usual 30 plus so I got to know a few of them better. We had coffee at the Long Bay container cafe where Denise and I annoyed the manager a couple of months ago by returning our over-spiced soup. This time it was sort of okay but the coffee was too strong. Fabulous view.

I'm worried about the Labour Party Conference this weekend. David Cunliffe has been preparing for it I guess because he has had a low profile recently with the Greens once again providing the most obvious opposition to government policies. This means the conference is crucial. It has to present us with some exciting policies and grab the attention of the media in a positive way. Cunliffe's speech will have to be a blisteringly good exercise in political leadership.

I singed like a man

That was grandson recalling that he had watched Jason Aldean singing Big Green Tractor on You Tube with headphones on. He had danced and sung along.

Love his developing grammar.

Earlier we had a talk about being naughty, about how another kid "dot told off" and "why was so and so naughty?" Out of the dim depths of my brain I answered that some people are naughty because they are "very emotional". I halfway expect him to remember that and ask me why people are "emotional" when he sees me this week.

The Signature of All Things

I was scornful about Elizabeth's Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love" with its indulgent psychobabble although I really liked an earlier book, "The Last American Man". She's a really good writer and in this novel she seems at first reading anyway to be going against the idea that there's anything particularly mystical in the world. It's a novel about nature and evolution and searching for meaning and understanding. The main character is a 19th century self-taught botanist Alma Whittaker, a lonely, plain-looking woman who finds purpose in a meticulous study of mosses. Don't worry, it's got some really exciting bits too.

From beginning to end the reader follows her physical, mental, spiritual and emotional development. Poor Alma tries so hard to understand the world. I particularly like this quote from near the end:

"Alma's stubborn, relentless, internal-speculation engine began to spin once more. This sensation angered her further. She was so weary of speculation. She could not bear anymore to invent new theories. All her life, she felt, she had lived in a state of speculation. All she had ever wanted was to know things, yet still and now - even after all these years of tireless questioning - all she did was ponder and wonder and guess."

Post fast walk exhaustion?

Walking groups are the new big thing with me. Thursdays and Sundays - and now I've heard of a once a month all dayer on Fridays. I'm really enjoying the Stanmore Bay Leisure Walkers who have a six month programme printed twice a year with a different walk each week. All walks are at least an hour, sometimes a little bit more. I've walked with them three times, once through the Alice Eaves Kauri Reserve at the northern end of Orewa and then down to Hatfield's Beach. As you wind down the walkway there's a good view of that funny little green volcanic looking hill behind Orewa. It's a totally rural, tree-filled view and a change from seascapes. Of course the kauri reserve is quite stunning. On the second occasion we left from Okoromai Bay in Shakespeare Regional Park and walked along the clifftop towards Gulf Harbour. Okoromai for some reason is almost mudflatty - the tide goes out a long way - but there was just enough water on the sand flats for the Norfolk pines to be reflected faintly on the wet surface.

Although there's a lot of development on the coast here both places provide a view of unspoiled scenery.

This week the walk was in Orewa - the Millenium Walkway - so was never going to be as spectacular. I've done it before ... blue painted footprints take you round the back of town, briefly through the kauris and back along the beach. It's a longer walk and I needed to be back by 11 am so walked with the blisteringly fast (to me) front people for the last part of the walk. My new orthotics seemed to work well, aching was minimal and stopped once I stopped walking but it was 1 1/2 hours of fast walking and I seemed to suffer today. Exhausted, Hoping against hope it's just part of a getting fit process not a sign I can't hack it. I like pushing myself, always have.

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Unexpected praise

Went to a Alzheimer's Society Carers' meeting on Tuesday. I'm in two minds about this group and my contribution to it now that Allen is in care. The Alzheimer's key worker said she'd like me to keep coming and one of the regulars uses it to offload her concerns about HER husband in care. Also, I need to get out and meet people. So I go and cringe sometimes at what I "share" on these occasions. But Tuesday was pretty good. There were only three of us in addition to the key worker and the conversation veered into the weird and wonderful at times. Like how newly single women in ancient societies were killed because they were a threat to the wives of the village and how there is still an undercurrent of this when an older woman alone ventures out into society. Huh. But more importantly there was a woman of about late 70s to early 80s there: very articulate and in that awful phase where her husband has a diagnosis but is still driving. I told her of the two accidents Allen had at that stage. She was on the verge of tears, something I've seen before at these meetings and my heart went out to her. Anyway, as we left she came up to me and touched my shoulder saying I had been a big help to her. She doesn't talk to anybody. Phew, I always feel I'm crap at empathy and that praise meant a LOT to me. I don't know know if you'd call it praise but acknowledgement that I'd been of help. So nice because helping others is so good for the soul:)

To top that off in a superficial way I got told I looked too young for a Gold Card at Mcdonald's

yesterday. Wow. I'm on a roll.

Windswept coast pics are also good for the soul so here's Orewa from Pinewoods Holiday Park.

I am your own forever

That was the best line I saw delivered in the National Theatre Live production of Othello. Iago said the words slowly after Othello had gone out the door. Then he took the handkerchief out of his pocket, shook it open, looked at it and walked out the same door stuffing the hankie in his pocket. It was kind as if he had Othello's heart in his hands.

That was one nice touch I saw in the production. The play as a whole didn't thrill me the way it would have once but I really loved the down to earth way Emilia and Desdemona delivered their lines. I think they were a tad better than the actors who played Othello and Iago.

My motorway phobia came back a bit when I drove to the theatre in Northcote. Long story but I was too scared to drive the motorway home; just headed blindly west and then north via Birkenhead, Glenfield, Albany and Dairy Flat. Took nearly an hour. I need to do my motorway practice driving in the mornings after rush hour. Or go to Matakana for art flicks.

I'm going to Milford this afternoon to get orthotics made up for my walking shoes. It won't stop the pain from my bulging disc and piriformis syndrome but by correcting structural problems with the way my feet hit the ground it MIGHT make long walks less painful. And if I can summon up the self-discipline to do Pilates exercises in between Monday classes  ....

Photo below is one I took of the Puhoi River last weekend.

I'm back!

Gosh, I stopped this blog in July 2009, four years ago and it's still here as if it were only yesterday. I've actually been meaning to start a new blog with a more specific focus for ages. After much pondering I've decided to pick this one up again. After all,  I became sort of unretired and now I'm retired again, after a fashion.

Nothing to stop me branching out to other topics apart from the "retiring and moving to Whangarei" story.

But to backtrack,  after July 2009 I went back to work full-time at a Catholic school - all senior classes - and I enjoyed it. But in October another cancer was found on my tongue and this time I had to have a large part of the tongue removed as well as some of the floor of my mouth. A so-called flap was formed by some tissue from my wrist. It was a big huge ghastly operation for which I was in Auckland Hospital for three long weeks. For the following two years there were a few panics when ulcers developed somewhere else in my mouth but by and large I've been well and in 2011 worked all year part-time (a big part-time job) at a small private school north of Whangarei.

That sounds quite good but in 2010 (probably earlier) Allen developed dementia. By the end of 2011 I didn't feel I could leave him at home while I worked and I wanted us to move to Auckland anyway to be nearer family. Eldest son, wife and baby had moved from the UK to Browns Bay. I didn't think I could cope in Whangarei with Allen by myself. End result was a move to Red Beach on the Hibiscus Coast in May 2012. Allen went into a rest home three months ago where he is amazingly well settled and I am once more carving out a new life. I know no-one in the local area apart from our young neighbours so I'm on a mission to meet people. Very hard when you have always struggled with socialising:) I've joined two walking groups for now - not a bad start. I've also had some relieving at Orewa College and have a small handful of students to tutor: two Chinese people and a Year 12 boy doing NCEA. I guess I've done pretty well to get out there in the world in the few months since Allen went into care. Before that I could barely go out at all.

In this blog I want to do more than chart my own personal process of retirement but also comment on the world around me. I'm fascinated in politics, the environment, books and films ...

Below is a view from Wenderholm - a place I'm delighted to live near.