Cabbage Trees

In my patriotic little heart there's a special place for the cabbage tree. They are such a distinctive part of the New Zealand landscape. They're not pretty or symmetrical or soft or gracious but sharp, spiky, irregular and unusual. Festooned with their sweet smelling, cream coloured flowers in late spring, they have a few weeks of glory. 

There's a sickly little grove of cabbage trees on the Orewa estuary walkway. The grove is totally monocultural which is quite unusual and because they are growing close together and are spindly and yellow, they add a spooky touch to that part of the walk. 

The trees in the Hatfield's Beach wetland are in spectacular flower this season. 

Popchik

I've just finished a wonderful new novel called The Goldfinch. It’s by Donna Tartt and featured a protagonist who was always on the brink of disaster. While it was nerve-wracking, all 700 pages of it, it ended on a philosophical note and contained some of the most lovable characters I've come across for some time. One of them was a little Maltese terrier called Popper in English and Popchik in Russian. He was important because while the main character was always in dire straits (drugs, alcohol, and the criminal underworld) his affection for the dog never wavered. He even took Popchik by bus from Las Vegas to New York. He hid him in a sports bag!

 Here is the first appearance of the little dog who bursts out of the house after Theo’s feckless father and girlfriend take the boy home to Las Vegas. Popper has been locked in the house for days:

“Before she’d opened the door all the way, a hysterical stringy mop shot out, shrieking, and began to hop and dance and caper all around us.”

That hysterical stringy mop is badly neglected in Las Vegas but becomes a part of Theo’s strange household in New York. Over a decade later Popchik is still there when Theo comes back from Amsterdam, pacing around his feet “in staunch geriatric figure eights of greeting”.

And on a different note, a photo of Orewa from the path to Hatfield’s beach, taken last week. 

Political headache

Woke up at 4 am with an intense headache on the right side of the back of my head. Third time I've had this and this morning it wouldn't go away. I took the usual painkillers and tried to sleep on a bag of frozen peas. They both helped but didn't ease the pain enough for me to feel that I could cope. Got up, had a coffee and digestive biscuit, watched a bit of Breakfast and checked a few things on the internet. Oh blessed, relief, it subsided and now is just a vague niggle.

It wasn't a migraine and I don't think it was a tension headache because they are not so focused. It could be a rebound headache from all the painkillers I'm taking for my back or a muscle thing. It's worse if I lie on my left side. 

I've been crossing my fingers that the Labour Party conference would go okay and it seems to have. Cunliffe's speech made all the right noises and was spectacularly oratorical. He left the podium and walked around the stage like a Maori orator, gesturing at the audience and addressing them directly. He couldn't have had an autocue and there were no notes. An extraordinary performance. And yet ... it seemed a bit too general. I preferred the speeches he made while he was a backbencher last year. 

The policies of KiwiAssure, housing solutions in Christchurch and gender equity in the caucus seem pretty good. 

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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