Empty

Why no blogging this past week? Ronnys' death has left me empty, with thoughts of why bother. We have been with Samantha and the boys every day to help them through this terrible time.
I am usually one that moves on fairly quickly but sometimes something hits you at a vunerable time and makes you reflect on the big issues of love, life and death.

R.I.P. Ronny

Lost a best mate to a car crash yesterday, 35 years old with a partner and three little kids.
Ronny applied for the job as our chef seven years ago and within a week we were best friends. He arrived with his partner Samantha in an old van with only the clothes on their backs, cooked for us for three years then started a landscape contracting business, bought a farm, built a house and did a hundred other things. Amazing man with such a zest for life, he gave me so much and I'll miss him terribly.
Every fish will be for you Ronny.

Language barrier

I am learning French. Why? Mmmmmm. I guess when I had to learn the big part in the play in three weeks I was amazed my old brain still had the ability to retain knowledge so thought I would throw it another bone to see what it could do. And I love the sound of the language and France and French philosophy. Enough?? I enjoy travelling but don't enjoy not being able to hold a decent conversation.
I must dig out my beret, I wonder if that would help!

Tsunami

It's October already. The restaurant opened yesterday much to the relief of the locals who haven't had a watering hole for 5 months. It's the first time in 11 years we haven't been involved and my son and his partner have done a great job.
My heart goes out to our friends in Samoa (we were there last year). After the tsunami in Thailand, warning systems have been put in place here in all beachside communities and we had our first trial two mornings ago with sirens wailing and the fire brigade shepherding people to higher ground. We are 500 metres back and about 50 metres higher than the beach so felt safe enough and only a 40 cm wave eventuated but it was a good trial mid morning on a nice day for when/if the real deal comes along.

Confusion

Confusion reigns for me at the moment. Should I paint/collage/sculpt and can I? Should I earn a living/need to/want to. Am I worthy/despicable/ordinary. If I had one year left to live would I be angry/sad/indifferent/change anything.
In this state I tend to look outside myself for direction when all the time it is my motor that needs overhauling.
Go back to simple things and just do, I say to myself, without thought of approval/dollars/time.
I started writing this blog because I felt a need to express myself through words but I've met so many brilliant blogger friends that lately I feel I am trying to keep up with them and not doing what comes naturally.
Naughty boy. Denise is in Australia with her Da and Sam is at the mountain snowboarding so the house is my studio and I'll be messy and eat biscuits and collage to my hearts' content.
Yes I've made a decision!!

Flight of the daughter

We farewell our youngest daughter Sarah this morning. She has given up her GOOD JOB and is flying out to London for two years. Good on her, there is plenty of time for good jobs and mortgages and family. I hope she understands that if she goes belly up we will be here. It will make her braver to follow her dreams.

Life, film, life

What is it about films that they can move me enough to want to cry.I'm not a crying type of person. I remember when I owned my first dairy cow and went out twice a day to see if she had produced her first born. One morning I could see in the distance the little calf trying to struggle to it's feet which filled me with a sense of delight. However coming closer I realised why it was struggling. In her concern for the newborn the cow had accidently trodden on the calfs' leg and broken it which meant the poor little thing, fighting for life, had to be put down. I sat for a long time agonising about the unfairness of life before I found the courage to do what had to be done and my face was wet with tears.But its death was not in vain. It taught me to respect all life. In my job as a farmer I have since killed many animals from a pig for the table to an old, diseased dog wanting release (she had disappeared for three days to die but came back when it didn't happen and sat and looked at me) and have always paused and felt for the animal before the act.Anyway back to films. We saw The Reader last night and Kate Winsletts' performance brought me close to tears but there was an easy antidote, just watch Ralph Fiennes incredibly wooden performance. Does he ever change??

House plans

The first concept plans for the house have arrived from good friend Linda Vugler and we love em! All earthy and curvy as if it has grown out of the rocks around. We would like it further into the hill so we can walk into the garden from the front right terrace. It will mean we don't have to have a balustrade and have an uninterupted view out to sea. It is a small house, only about 170 sq m with lotsa outside areas and surprises so in winter we have only a small cosy area to keep warm but in summer it opens out with plenty of inside/outside living. The top left area will be a bedroom and a studio/bedroom opening out to a roof deck.

I suppose our excitement will be tempered when we start dealing with consents from the council because it is not conventional but at the moment I can't wait to start (it'll be a few months yet!)

Cooking classes

Thinking about how to explain breadmaking on this site has brought me around to starting cooking classes in our area. I have the first on Tuesday and the next on Saturday and have had a good amount of interest. They run for 3 hours over lunch and will be hands on making ciabatta bread, pizzas and focaccia. The venue is Flaxhaven Lodge a bed and breakfast place next door to us with a well set out kitchen and beautiful grounds.
With our moderate recession, jobs have dried up around here so we have to think creatively to keep the wolf from the door and help pay for the new house I'm going to build!
Never a dull moment!

New house

Love Savin Couelles architecture and would like to build something similar for our new house. We can't afford him of course but by using pumicecrete or aerated concrete which I can carve like a sculpture I think I can make a beautiful free form with no sharp edges which will be in keeping with the outcrops of rock around us. With a wood stove for cooking, heating and hot water, solar panels for power, our own rainwater supply, a grey water disposal system and a vege garden I'll be a hippy all over again!

My die it

I started my winter diet yesterday. Eat fresh feijoas and mandarins off the tree and drink coffee till dinner time then have whatever I feel like. It's probably the worst diet (don't do this at home) anyone has thought up but it works for me. Why do I do it? Mmmmm. I'm having a little trouble painting my toenails and I'm sure my pecker isn't getting any smaller but I can't always see it. Mainly though, hunger makes me feel good, it clears my mind and gives me more energy. I seem to be more in tune with myself. Hey, and I can sympathise with the hungry 80% of the world except I get dinner.

Orcas

The orcas are back just below the house hunting their favourite dessert, stingray souffle. I feel for the resident stingrays who cruise our beach but life goes on and there is nothing like the arrival of the top of the food chain (if you don't count man and you shouldn't) to put your own life in perspective.

It was nice to have a last hurrah before we move out next week.

Sails

My wings have been clipped! Spent an overnighter at Great Mercury Island and developed a small rip in the mainsail so have taken both sails off to give to a sailmaker friend to check and fix. Hope it doesn't take too long or I might have to catch up on my shore work!

Oh starling, little starling

We only have two weeks left in our little house on the hill before it is demolished and the starlings are back in all their irridescent glory with new straw for the little house I built them. Such industry, such hope. There are four of them and the female is hard to distinguish from the male but two of them are going to be disappointed as are the victorious pair when their world turns upside down.

The open see

What makes a man leave his warm hearth and head for the open sea. Is it the last frontier. Is it the last chance to exorcise his earth demons and float coddled like an astronaut in the arms of a gentle and terrible mistress. Perhaps it's the horizon always there but never reached. Do we really know what is beyond it, what is beyond the horizon of our own soul, that gentle and terrible mistress. Could it be survival that strips away the pretense and leaves us one on one with life and death, to see how much we want of either. To fight death until the last breath must mean life is worth it.

Life on the ocean wave

Daughter Sarah with her dinner

Denise trying hard for her dinner

Son Sam spearing his dinner

Heading home for dinner with our newly repaired spinnaker.

Personal Chef

While the Egg is closed for 5 months I'm hiring myself out as a personal chef for romantic dinners or other special occasions. I'm in the process of setting up menus so customers can mix and match according to their tastes and budget and I'll bring the food to their house, cook it, serve it, clean up and maybe sing to them (if they are tone deaf!). I'm missing the creative side of cooking, my family are tired of me experimenting on them and want good old fashioned meals for a change.

Autumn shades of amber grain

Autumn is upon us. It's 6.45am and only just becoming light and a coolish 10 degrees. Summer is withdrawing her favours but her beauty is still apparent with cloudless skys and little wind. The oyster catcher chicks on the beach are flying but are still a dull black without the brilliant red feet and beaks of their parents and the shining cuckoos' call can be heard no more, presumably on the journey back to the Solomon Islands like a rat from a sinking ship. Frivolous bird, expecting summer all year round!

I love the changing of the seasons here. They are soft renewals without violence. You just get used to one then another nudges you awake and reminds you of a picnic on the sand or dinner by the hearth or birth or decay.

The cold, clear mornings also bring the john dory onto the beach. Disorientated in the shallow water, they are left high and dry by the receding tide and grace my table with their succulent flesh.

Ahhh... a life well lived.

Chica Bonita

The boat is paid for and now we have to get it from Kerikeri in the north to here. Will need at least two days good sailing so will take some tuna lures and a few beers and hope we know what we are doing. Which we don't really but we are fast learners! There is a mooring in front of the house here we can use which will make it easy to keep an eye on her.
So I'll have to trade my dog for a parrot and find lotsa 'pieces of eight' to pay for a transient lifestyle.

Sail away

We have officially put our section on the market and the horizon I can see past Shakespeares Cliff (named by Cook in 1769) is compelling!
My grandfather, Hugh McRae, was a naval architect. He came out from Scotland early last century to build floating gold dredges on the west coast of the South Island then went on to design the paddle steamer Earnslaw which was the mail and supply boat on Lake Wakatipu out of Queenstown. She is still running and is now a tourist attraction coming up 100 years old.
I built my first boat at 11. I hammered out a piece of corrugated iron till it curled up, brought the ends togther and bent them over with greasy rags as caulking to form the bow and stern. Then I lashed two lengths of big bamboo to it forming an outrigger with more bamboo as floats. My mother refused to let me take it out to sea so I mucked around in the estuary spearing flounder and catching crabs which I once boiled up in an old paint tin. No wonder I can hear voices!!
My first sailboat was an old kauri P class built like a brick shithouse and if I capsized it more than three times it would slowly sink until only the nose could be seen. Great fun though. I made a spinnaker out of mums old sheets and cruised along happy as a sandboy.
While in High School I raced Arrows, an open dinghy with mainsail and spinnaker, out of the Howick Sailing Club. There were 70 boats in the club so it taught me a lot about performance. Then I found fishing and a procession of adventures in speedboats followed.
But that's another story!