News from Nelson - October 2017

Hello again!
I hope you are all fighting fit? This month was a bit smoother for us than last month: thank goodness. Everyone has stayed well.

I have been clearing out my wardrobe a little: I have gotten rid of some unworn scarves, pants, jewellery, shoes and accessories... and even a very old laptop. While that has not made a huge difference to the space consumed, getting rid of stuff seems to make a difference mentally.

Doing yet another FutureLearn MOOC on “An Intermediate Guide to Writing” from the University of Reading. This is a two part course, which should be interesting.

Lara came for a week while Otto was up in Auckland at a hockey tournament, which was lovely. I took her for a leg wax and a facial... and she stealth shot me while having a haircut. Totally at my best!

Lara spent lots of time on with Lexie, walking, talking, playing pool, and even inner-tubing down the creek. She had a few baths with a bath bombs, and we did some cooking and watched a few movies. The dogs got walked a lot, which was great. We went Op Shopping to get her some gumboots, as her feet are now larger than mine, but had to give up. We bought some at the Warehouse instead. We have caught up with Dawn - Lara and I went to visit while she was here. She now has Pekin ducks - and a couple of those have cowlicks!

Our new couch has arrived (weeks ahead of schedule), and we have taken one of our old two seaters - the least worn one - to my Mother for her lounge. Now we are hoping that the L-shaped couch arrives too... but they did say the ETA on that one was the end of January. A while to go yet.

Boo and Bonnie are quite relaxed at home: and both have found good places in the sun, now that it has finally decided to stop raining.

Smudge, Scott's bulldog, adores tummy scratches. She trails around after Jan panting at him until he does his duty. 

The sunrises continue to delight:

Jan went down to Christchurch for a two day course in October and brought home a cold, bless him. That led to me having my first cold in 18 months, and ended up in bed for a few days. I missed Anabelle's birthday because of it, so Jan went on his own, as he had recovered!

I managed to strain my medical cruciate ligament, and thought that I could walk it off - and no you can't do that, as I have found - and now have it strapped. It seems to be very slow in healing, so instead of doing my 12,000 steps per day, I am just getting to whatever distance I get to without pushing it. One of my sport & rec students showed me how to strap it properly, so hopefully it will come right.

Jan has been approached by another organisation to see if he would be interested in working for them as a safety coach, and so he is exploring options. We will see how it shapes up.

We headed off to Auckland for a few brief days at the end of the month: I had a conference to go to, and we managed to squeeze in a couple of lunches with friends (one with Morv at Mojo, one with Doug at Bird on a Wire in Takapuna) and a night out with Janet & Shells at "Pleasuredome, the musical", out in Avondale. My advice on Pleasuredome: don't bother. It is pretty fragmented, and it took me quite a long time to work out where the songs came from. Most of them were pretty hard to recognise, and the storyline was very, very weak. The highpoint was the recreated New York street scene outside, which was pretty cool, however the prices for drinks and food was pretty steep. However, if you do go, and if you value your hearing, take earplugs. It was deafeningly loud. I stuffed chewed up tissues in my ears!

We booked an apartment in Lorne Street. It was very central, and - although it was getting quite worn - it had everything we needed. We did a lot of walking. Janet was awesome, picked us up from the airport and dropped us back again, as well as ferrying us to the Pleasuredome. We also did a spot of shopping at Sylvia Park (H&M). It was really lovely to catch up: it has been so long! 

The whole show was disappointing. Never mind: I am glad we went, because going is important. The songs included the Human League’s ‘Don’t You Want Me’; Bruce Springsteen’s ‘I’m on Fire’; Frankie Goes To Hollywood, ‘The Pleasuredome’; Diana Ross, ‘I’m coming out’; Lou Reed ‘You’re a slick little girl’; Luther Vandross ‘The Night I Fell in Love’; Grandmaster Flash, ‘White Lines’; Hall & Oates, ‘I Can’t Go For That’; George Clinton, ‘Tweakin’; Tears for Fears, ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’; Simple Minds “Don’t you forget about me'... I am sure there were more, but I didn't recognise them.

We caught the Devonport ferry on a bit of a day trip, and I visited the Anna Stretton outlet shop ;-D

Everything was going swimmingly at work, when a colleague from the IT degree died suddenly. She had leukaemia, but went downhill very quickly. One of my supervisory team was covering for the IT courses, and suddenly found herself with our colleague's entire workload. My supervisor is now off on stress leave, having tried to do it all without outside help. However, the rest of us have managed to pick up the slack, and to start the process of getting in an outside marker for the end of year reports. Thank goodness for having written up all the instructions last semester: it should make it reasonably easy for me to brief someone new. I have also been asked if I would be interested in developing and teaching a Master's course on Leadership. Oh, yes!

We caught up with Magda and David before they left for Aussie - QLD - to live. I hope to catch up with them when I am over for supervisory meetings. They don't go until the end of November, but this was their last trip to Nelson. Julie came out with Sterl and Siobhan as well. We had a great time, and though it is sad to see Magda move so far away, I am sure the move will be great for both of them.

Graeme and Julie, and my mother, have been out to Rose Road for lunch as well.  Allan and Sarah are getting married in Dunedin in January, so the family are planning a road trip south to help them celebrate.

More next month!


Sam (& Jan)

News from Nelson - September 2017

Hi everyone,
More sad news for 2017. My Uncle Norman passed away on the first of September at 5.45pm. Both Jan and I were with him at the end. My Mother had gone away for a few days to Auckland at Izzy’s 2nd birthday (Tessa's little boy), and the day she left he started to slip away. My brother came down, and together we saw him off on his last journey. He, like my parents, donated his body to the Otago Medical School, so the undertakers will do a special medical embalming and get him transported to Otago.

We held a memorial at the village he lived at for a decade, for his friends and neighbours to remember him. A lot of them had been visiting them, including a couple of them who can no longer drive, but happily biked the ten kilometre round trip to see him. That's dedication. My sister came up for the memorial, which was nice.

I am now winding up his affairs. His will has to go through probate, and apparently there is quite a queue in the High Court at present, so this is going to take a while. And, in going through this process again, I learned something new: if you are in a long term relationship, you need to have your bank account in joint names, not simply have signing authority. This is because at death, signing authority ceases but having a joint account means that the funds are free straight away for the surviving account holder. I hadn't realised the difference: and that is much easier than waiting for probate.

Jan's birthday was a fairly quiet affair at Poppy Thai, a Thai restaurant in Richmond. The food was good, and we had quite a range of people there - including Karen and Max whom we haven't seen in quite a while, despite them living out in Cotterel Road now.

Jan's boss at the DHB resigned this month, so they asked Jan if he would take on more hours. Of course he said yes! <sigh> He has gone up to 36 hours, but, instead of doing five days, he has packed the extra hour into four days of nine hours. That means he can keep playing in the quartet on Mondays, which is nice. What is really funny though is that Jan's boss was gone for a bit over a week, then was suddenly back as a contractor. It is also really murky about whether she is still the manager or not, and no one really seems to have any oversight of the actual practices going on there. The more I hear about this organisation, the more of a management debacle it appears to be.

Jenny L came to Nelson and we caught up with her for lunch at Karanga and dropped her off at the airport (which was lovely). She had been up for a couple of family birthdays. After that we went around to Glenys and Kevin's for Kev's birthday.

We know it is cold when Bonnie and Boo curl up together... and our spring has been cold and wet this year. Though, in saying that, we think Boo likes Bonnie more than Bonnie likes Boo. When Bonnie went to the vet for the day, Boo was totally at a loose end. Quite surprising.

And, speaking of couches - well, pictures of a couch, anyway - we have finally got around to ordering two new couches for our living area. We had meant to do this the year we moved in, but not only was money tight, but we just didn't quite get around to it. The intervening eight years didn't really get us any closer, either. However, two things came together this month: I was washing the upholstery and realised that it is getting VERY thin in places, and the burgundy has gone grey where the sun has bleached it; and we got invited to a 'cost plus 10%' evening for Farmside account holders at a local furniture shop. We went in, and found a lovely L-shaped leather couch to replace two of our old ones... which then left us with needing another two seater to replace the remaining two seater, and we found that at another store. Both are on order, in chocolate brown. The two seater should be with us in 6 weeks, and the L-shaped one in 16 weeks. No rush - the old ones were 23 years old, after all :-)

The rubbish weather has brought some lovely sunrises with it, which is nice. Always a two way thing!

The NSO had a pretty ambitious programme for the spring concert, including Pictures at an Exhibition, which I managed to find illustrations for, and popped on a PowerPoint for Jan to change as the movements progressed. This concert was in the Nelson College Hall.

I got an interesting surprise at the concert's after-match function: Jan has decided to step back onto the committee as the Chair - in the same month that he has gone back up to almost full time. That will also be interesting. He is also currently in rehearsals for the Cantata Memoria in conjunction with the Nelson Civic Choir, which will be performed at Labour Weekend.
 
Again, to polish my writing I have been undertaking another MOOC over four weeks, the University of Leicester's course, Discovering Your PhD Potential. This is proving very interesting. I have got quite a few tips already. I am still plodding away on getting my academic articles written: up to draft #8 on one of them now. By crikey, I am sick of the sight of it! The other one is languishing in "not enough data collected yet" land. I am trying to get more students to answer the survey, but there is only so much I can do without creating unacceptable amounts of bias <sigh>

I am looking to the study break and spending some time with Lara, who is coming down to stay next month. It should be great fun. 

That will do us for this month: back to you in another four weeks... and hopefully everyone is well next time.


Sam (& Jan)

Elizabeth Knox's Trilogy: Paremata, Pomare and Tawa

Some years ago I 'discovered' Elizabeth Knox as a New Zealand author, and have read pretty much everything she has written. However, there are three novels which have really lived in my memory since reading them: Paremata, Pomare and Tawa. These three short books - novellas, really - tell the story of the main character's adolescence and womanhood near 1960s Wellington.

Elements of these stories resonate with me because they felt like my experience. It gave a voice to my own experiences which had not truly had coherence until Elizabeth Knox manifested it.

If you have not yet read these books, investigate your local library. They are refreshing, eye-opening and enlightening.

Sam  

News from Nelson - August 2017

Hi everyone,
I hope you are all in good health.

As I mentioned last month, my semester started well, and the students are now well underway with their projects. I have a great team of supervisors, and we are all only directly supervising 9 students each. Whew: it is like night and day compared to the beginning of previous semesters. Some students will still struggle, but I hope that we can get them all to 'competent' level. We have good library and mentor support for the international students, and enough of the mentors are coming to our weekly supervisor meetings to share the knowledge around about exactly what the expectations are. 

In addition to the FutureLearn courses I told you about last month, I started another MOOC this month which ran for four weeks through Berkley on Academic and Business Writing. It was an OK course, and I did learn some new things. This is all in support of getting a couple of academic publications submitted toward the end of this year... though I am running out of time, rather!

My family celebrated my brother's birthday at Nahm, a Vietnamese restaurant along the waterfront. They do lovely food - and there are good options for people with all the restrictions I now have in order to avoid migraines (and the migraine avoidance is going very well).

I was at the hairdressers when Katherine and Craig walked in, on a spur of the moment weekend trip to Nelson. We caught up with them for dinner at E-Street (East Street), a local vegetarian restaurant. A serendipidous meeting and a lovely night out.

Jan is starting to need a bit more focus... and is borrowing my magifying glasses! He suits them better than I do though :-(

As usual this month, although the mornings were crisp we had some gorgeous clear days. Lovely. And easy for Bonnie to cope with a good long walk. The cancerous tumour on her leg has been very slow growing (thank goodness) and it is not yet impeding her at all, nor is it causing her any pain. As Jan keeps saying, "She doesn't know she has it, and we aren't telling her"! Boo has been taking herself off for walks during the day. She doesn't seem to have been getting herself into trouble, but it does remind me that there is an element of "Well, if you don't take me for a walk, I will have to take myself" which is spurring me to take them both for a walk morning and evening, regardless of the weather.
 

Jan is going to sell his motorbike and get a BMW later this year. John is in charge of the advertising, sale and new purchase. The BMW should be here early December, but will depend on what John manages to find in Europe between now and then.

It has taken us a while, but we have started to buy Oaklands milk. This is A2 milk (read more on this here), locally produced, and we self-fill our own bottles in a Latreria machine (very cute!). It has cut our plastic recycling down significantly... the best plastic being the plastic you don't buy or use. You get a wee 'token' - like a key fob - which you slide into the machine and the chip holds your balance. You load funds onto it by putting notes into a slot. The milk is very nice: not homogenised, and doesn't go off as quickly as the supermarket milk does.

We had afternoon tea with my Mother a couple of times, and visited Uncle Norman as much as we could in the nursing home - Kensington Court in Stoke. He is continuing to be plagued by ulcers and is steadily growing more frail. My Mother has not managed to visit him very often as she has had a couple of colds, following on from her pneumonia in June. 

While Jan is enjoying only working three days a week, I am sensing quite a bit of edginess in him. He has started to play in a quartet on Monday mornings, but whether that will be enough to structure his week will remain to be seen!

Until next time

Sam (& Jan)

News from Nelson - July 2017

Hello everyone!
Another month rolls around, and here we are again.

First of all we had Joan's 80th birthday at the Boathouse, on the wildest, stormiest day of the year. Because we were in Nelson, we were out when our creek flooded and cut off the houses on the Road. We missed it completely: had no idea when we came home that the creek had been raging away.

Part of the problem was that the Council had been prepping a ford, as they were about to replace the bridge at the bottom of our road. Their contractors had put in a temporary ford for us to cross while the new bridge was going in. When I looked at the culvert pipes on the way home on Friday night, I realised that they were miles too small, and that one rain would overwhelm them. Well, it ended up being a bit of a debacle as the torrential rain we had on the Saturday certainly did that: there was no ford left after the rain. Of course, the undersized culverts in the temporary ford was part of the reason that the road higher up became impassible. However, water will find a way, and the force of the backlog pushed all the fresh earthworks out of its path: one of the culvert pipes was found half a kilometre downstream.

Aside from that excitement, the 80th birthday party went well. Despite the terrible weather about 40 of us were warm and snug at the Boathouse, well fed, with lots of chat and catch ups. The family set up in the morning, Mike staffed the BBQ as Jan had only had surgery 10 days before, the Lionesses did the salads, and Barb organised a spectacular cake.

The one difficulty was in packing up afterwards: I had far too few plastic containers to pack things away in to transport home again. I have made a mental note to remember to take LOTS more next time!

The next day 'the gang', my parents group of friends, came out to Rose Road for a BBQ, to eat the leftovers (everyone had had strict instructions to bring NOTHING). A fabulous way of getting rid of lots of food from yesterday’s Boathouse shindig, and a great afternoon.

As I mentioned in last times' newsletter, my Mother ended up in hospital with a lung infection. I turned up to visit her just as her lung specialist was explaining that "with congestive heart failure this type of thing happens", which was a "$#^%?!" moment. I explained that she had been waiting to see a cardiologist to get a diagnosis since January, and the lung specialist said he would speak to the cardiology nurse and get my mother into the system. He did, and she now is in the system. Crikey. I am so glad that I came in when I did. She finally got to see a cardiologist, and the prognosis seems pretty good. She has a clear plan of action to work to, and I will attend her future appointments as an extra pair of ears, and to ensure that her case continues to be pushed forward.

Jan has recovered really well from his surgery, and in mid-July got the sign-off to return to work. He has been very careful in what he is doing, and has been slowly working up to full use. The specialist is very happy, but has warned him that he really needs to give everything a year to properly bed in before he can really relax and go back to 'normal'.

As Jan was getting signed off to return to work, I headed off across the Tassie for a PhD induction and a meeting with my supervisors. I flew out of Auckland on the Wednesday. When I arrived in Brisbane close to midnight, the airline had left my luggage behind in Auckland. This was because my flight out of Nelson had been delayed by an hour and a half due to bad weather around the rest of the country delaying inbound aircraft... Dunedin had hail, Queenstown had snow, Christchurch had fog, Wellington had a wild windy storm, and Auckland had rain. Nelson was fine, but the inbound aircraft was delayed by an hour and a half. While Jan and I were waiting at the airport, we were sitting at a table next to a South African couple, who were talking about the delay to the flight, and I realised that they too were flying to Brisbane. I talked to them about it, and when we boarded a plane at long last, they were sitting on the row opposite me. We asked the crew to radio ahead to let them know we were on our way. We arrived at Auckland domestic terminal with 35 minutes to get from the domestic terminal to the international terminal, and down to gate nine right at the end of the international terminal. I just made it as they were doing the final call for passengers. Funnily enough, I sat with the South African couple all the way across to Brisbane.

I had anticipated having enough time to get to dinner, and to go through duty-free, and get a combination Wi-Fi hub and charge unit. Epic fail there! Luckily I had a peanut stash in my handbag. But dammit, my checked luggage didn't make it. So I spent two days in the same clothes until Brisbane airport services reunited me with my gear. At least it was delivered to the door!

Tanja and Tony were awesome to stay with: they couldn't have been more helpful! Hotel Kuwilsky is alive and well in QLD! Tony lent me his travel card, which made it really easy to take buses and trains from Brisbane down to the Gold Coast. It’s the same as the Oyster card, or the Snapper card, with a tap and go function. I am going to buy my own, as I think this will be very useful for what is likely to become regular trips.

The PhD sessions were really useful. I have a Griffith ID card, got to see around the Gold Coast and the Nathan Campuses, and get a feel for the place. I really like it, and the culture. I learned some useful things, and have started to build a network - including a study group. I have a 'discipline librarian' (hilarious title!) who, funnily enough, turns out to come from Wellington.  I also attended a poster competition, which was interesting to see. There is an awful lot of VERY poor design with the posters, but there were some really good ones that I took some shots of below.

While I was away, Warren had arrived. After picking me up at Nelson airport, Jan, Warren and I called in to see Michelle and Margot, who were having a Rose Road midwinter party at their place. Jan and Warren had made marzipan horns, rounds of cucumber with cheese and ham, and taken basil and feta cheese dip with carrot crudités... that was a very nice dinner! Warren caught up with Erica, before flying on to Wellington for a Monday morning meeting.

We caught up with Dawn, who is happy, but is battling fibromyalgia. We spent a wonderful afternoon telling war stories and having lots of laughs... which reminded all of us how important it is to get together regularly!

Jan has had a graduated return to work which has worked really well. Although he was impatient to get back - as he was bored at home - I think he found himself more tired than expected at the end of each week. That makes the graduated return to work even more sensible. He is absolutely fine physically and mentally though, and gets out brushcutting every chance he gets.

He will be starting rehearsals for the next NSO concert next month, and has been asked to go back on the NSO committee. He is thinking about it.

Jenny Ladley was up in Nelson and we caught up with her for dinner, which was really nice... though the reasons she was here wasn't so good: a death in the broader whanau. Note that Jan had the briefing finger out while he was explaining the pertinent points of working for the Government at dinner.

Uncle Norman got hospitalised with a gastro bug, but is now back in the nursing home. I didn't go to see him after my trip away because of the possibility of having brought back a bug on the plane, neither has my mother been able to see him because she got another cold, then the hospital trip. Not a good month for visits.

Semester two is underway, and I am off to a much smoother start than last semester. This time we knew ahead of time that there were close to 50 research students, and there were two other supervisors from last semester to step in and know the ropes. With only one supervisor to onboard, it has been much easier. I am teaching a new AUT paper that is not well-resourced as yet, but I am organising that week by week instead of having it all ready to go at the start (an approach that I am struggling with, but am aware that I need to do it that way or else burn out!).

I have been writing a couple of articles for submission to peer reviewed journals. NMIT's research department suggest that NMIT researchers work with two emeritus profs who have moved to Nelson to retire, and who like to be paid in coffee (now there's a deal I approve of!). I have had a couple of meetings with Prof Bevan Grant about some work I am doing, and he suggested that I needed to get help in writing professionally, which took me back a bit at first. However, knowing he wasn't telling me this for no reason, I had a scout online, and found an English writing programme on FutureLearn, “English for University Study” from the University of Reading. As this is a self-paced three part MOOC, I completed the first unit fairly quickly (the whole thing took about 6 hours), and have signed up for round two, and for another course with Berkeley, on the edX platform. I have learned some things that I didn't know existed (such as topic sentences) which has, I think, made my academic writing more clear. The Prof was right, of course :-)

We had a wonderful mid-winter Christmas celebration at Rose Road with Kathleen & Frits, Amy, and Phil and Pauline. A fabulously easy weekend of laughter, conversation and relaxation. I wish I had taken some photos!

Magda and David are off to live in QLD in November, sadly... but they will also be there to visit when I pop across to Griffith. And speaking of that, Jan & I are both going across at the end of November/beginning of December for ten days.

Again, we have had some lovely views to enjoy:

Lara is coming to stay for a few days in October, which will be fabulous. Looking forward to it already!

Hope all of you have a wonderful month, and I will be back to you in September.


Sam (& Jan)

News from Nelson - June 2017

Hi again,
I hope you are all well. Jan came through his second hip replacement surgery well, and appears to be completely on track with post-operative healing and mobility. This is excellent.

However, just when I thought that family was the gift that might stop giving, Uncle Norman had to be moved to a nursing home. My mother, Mike, Jan & I worked non-stop for about three weeks to pack up his whole flat, put all his gear in storage, and do our best to wind up his outside affairs as he would have liked them done, find him a rest home, and start getting into a routine of visiting him.

It has been pretty crazy. I am glad that I took most of May out of doing my PhD, else I think I would have been going spare now.

Uncle Norman's change in circumstances also coincided with NMIT end of semester reports coming in and me needing to moderate 50 students' project work and reflections. No pressure.

Then my mother got sick and had to go to hospital with breathlessness and a lung infection. Turns out she has a heart condition, which I found out about accidentally by turning up when her lung specialist was talking to her. Thank goodness I arrived in her room when I did.

All that was two weeks out from her 80th birthday party, which I was trying to organise in the remaining three minutes I had left this month... all while waiting for Jan to go under the knife for his last hip operation, and fighting the council to ensure that they put in all weather access to our valley as they were replacing our bridge (initially they hadn't been going to do ANYTHING about allowing us to get to our homes. Perhaps they were expecting us to fly?).

Though a local wag added an addendum to the bridge notice, as follows:

Collectively, all the happenings over the past four months led to three break-through migraines last week: the first patch I have had in a year. Not surprising really. But, by crikey, I hope that is IT for a while. I need six months of peace and quiet.

Of course, I am not going to get it. Next month I am off to Australia for a PhD induction and a planning session, I have two other research papers which need to be edited ready for publication, I start teaching a brand new paper in four weeks' time which I haven't even looked at yet, my sister tells me that the rest home my Uncle is in is poor, so he needs to be moved, my mother goes to the cardiologist in a fortnight and I need to go with her, and and and...

Deep breath.

We have concreted in part of the dog run under the gate, and bought and hung a new steel gate, as Boo has turned out to be an escapologist. So far she has not escaped since "project imprisonment" was completed. Bonnie has a malignant tumour on her hind leg, so is not likely to be with us for much longer.  However, we have not told her she is sick, so she doesn't know, and is carrying on as normal ;-D

And the world continues to give us visual gifts, as you can see:

 

Barb was back from the US this month, and came to stay in the last week, to help me organise the last bits and pieces for our Mother's 80th.

But more about that next month... and hopefully this time it is all good news.

Take care!

Sam (& Jan)

News from Nelson - May 2017

Hi everyone,
Another month has rolled around, and hopefully it will be less stressful than the last one.

We started with a bang: Jenny L came to visit - and stayed - which was great. Warren also stayed for a night with Erica. Warren helped Jan to get the pool table lights finished. Then Jan got one more spotlight to fit over the VERY last electric light wiring in our ceiling, and AT LAST the lights are complete: almost seven years after we moved in.

I decided that for this month I was not going to do any study or work other than that which was already booked: to give myself four weeks break. It was nice to have permission to play for a while.  Jan & I have taken the dogs for lots of walks, and I have been doing at least 11,000 steps per day.

My mother had booked a holiday before my father died: a two week bus tour of the far north. She decided that she would still take the time away, and enjoyed it. It gave her time to think, but also enough structure in her day to prevent brooding. A good balance.

While she had been away, she had all the carpets shampooed. We called around and helped her put her furniture back just after we dropped Warren off at the airport. My mother gave my father's stereo to Erica, who is now a real teen with her own music centre. Except for being ten years old!

I have rediscovered two crime writers: Louise Penny and Jo Nesbo. I now have pretty much all their books as talking books, and am working through them in order. It is proving quite restful. We also got a notification from the Tasman District Council library that the third series of the Danish programme "The Bridge" had come in on DVD. We picked it up and binge watched it.

Jan got access to John's Netflix account, and has been watching all kinds of things. We watched the Crown, which was quite fun. 

Jan, my Mother and I went to see the latest NSO Concert, The World’s Most Beautiful Melodies. It was a good concert, and the spinto soprano was very good in the Puccini ...except for her last two notes (which were screamed, as opposed to sung). Extremely enjoyable aside from just four seconds. There aren't many experiences you can say that about.

We went to visit Kathleen and Frits, taking with us a pair of Fluevogs - Investigators - that I was returning to Timeless Soles as they were too narrow for me. Kathleen got me to open them, saw them, tried them on, and bought them. They are gorgeous on her.

Barb is back in the US, spending time with Joe. She has been to visit the Fluevog shop in DC. I can't wait to see what she has on her feet at my Mother's 80th birthday party in July.

Justine came down for a visit for a few days. We spent some time talking about our experiences in having just lost one parent each, and how we are processing that. We went to small, out of the way places like the Macmillan Gallery and tried to call in on Vickie's Originals (but they were shut. Next time).

We had lunch with Sharon & Ian at the Moutere Tavern, eating inside this time. Another great menu and a relaxing afternoon. Sharon and Ian bought me a shrub to remember my father by, which was very nice of them.

Warren, who is up again to visit Erica, came for a visit in the afternoon with Erica, and we went for a walk down the hill with Ollie and Boo. Jan and Warren had a good chat, and Erica read quite happily. Jan has managed to get Netflix working on his tablet so he can download 50 episodes of Dr Who in preparation for his next hip operation in June.  

Donna suggested that we celebrate my Father's birthday somewhere he liked going, and everyone - aside from me - had a chocolate ice cream sundae in his honour:

Late in the month Uncle Norman had a couple of bad falls, and ended up in hospital with a fractured scapula and broken ribs. He is determined to get home, and is in the AT&R ward again already, undergoing rehabilitation to get him ready to return to his flat. However, when we went to visit him, he is floating in and out of reality: it doesn't seem to me like he can go home in a hurry.

I will be heading for Aussie in July for my doctoral induction, and to have a half-day planning session with my supervisors.

Take care - catch you all up next month.


Sam (& Jan)

News from Nelson - April 2017

Hi everyone,
I hope you are all well, and that the year is treating you kindly.

We have had a big month again. I was just getting back into my PhD work during the study break, and following my illness last month, when my father took a turn for the worse. He went into the hospice before Easter for few days, as he was getting very breathless. They thought they would simply stabilise him, and he would go home again.

However, once he was in, they felt that he really needed to stay until after Easter because they were worried how my Mother would cope on her own with him. Then on Easter Saturday, they called me in the evening, and said that he was quite bad, and that I should come in. Jan & I drove in to the hospice, saw him, then called the family, and everyone came in. My sister was just back from the US, and she and Bella hopped in Bella's car and drove up from Christchurch. Tessa caught a flight down from Auckland. We spent the next five days camping out at the hospice, taking turns to sit with him, talk and share memories as he slowly slipped away.

Kim flew up from Dunedin to Christchurch, and drove from there with Aunty Diana. Aunty Jill came to visit. Graeme and Julie came to see him a few times. We have had lots of laughs, reflections, and shared stories. The family has probably spoken more about our impressions of past events in the past week than we ever have in the past. Various spectres have been laid to rest.

He died on 19 April, and, as he had chosen to donate his body to Otago Medical School for student learning, we had no funeral. Instead we held a memorial service at Club Waimea. Over eighty people attended. I MCed, and Barney Thomas arrived – serendipitously – and I asked him if he would do a karakea: which he did. It was just perfect. Mother spoke about father not giving in to his illness. I spoke about his desire for us all to learn. Barb spoke about lessons from hockey. Mike spoke about father calling him at aged 25 to ask if he had been 'playing' with his screwdrivers in the garden. Tessa did the housekeeping about the donations to the Hospice and St Johns, then told stories about how she would play Nana and Poppa off against each other, and how her son Izzy loved his Poppa. Diana told a story about her 'stink' money – she got 2-/6 per week for cleaning his sleepout. Kim talked about my father as being like a father to her. Various people spoke about his community work, his hockey and bowls dedication, his fundraising, and his work at MAF… it was really lovely.

Then Bonnie got diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer on her hind leg. We are simply going to leave it until the tumour gets too large, or she gets ill.

Jan went in for the first of his two hip replacements, and the surgery went very well. But it was still worrying. He is recovering very quickly, and is already in much less pain than he was in before the surgery. 

However, it is turning out to be a bit of a shitty year, to say the least.

I did get a bit of a birthday celebration, at The Grape Escape:

And I did buy myself a pair of shoes. Fluevogs, naturally:

More next month. Hopefully next month's news is a lot better.

Sam (& Jan)