So, hordes of music fans have organised themselves and made Killing In The Name Of this year's Christmas #1 as a protest against TV talent show hit singles. When they said "Download", you said "How many times?" It's been I-don't-know-how-many years since I bought a chart single or album, and I wouldn't say it bothers me enormously what's at #1 in any given week, but still, I quite like this bit of news. I'd rather have had Slade in there again, but I suppose you can't infer the same pithy comment on the talent show lovin' mob from the lyrics of Merry Christmas Everybody. (And you can't infer a similar comment on the activities of the backlash mob, nyuk nyuk...)
The Lovely Jo has been diligently keeping her blog up to date with our personal activities, which takes the pressure off me doing the same - I can just point to the link over on the right. Ah, expediency. To recap, as things currently stand we've been in New Zealand for about a month and a half now, and we're still looking for jobs. It isn't really so damning to still be job-hunting after a month and a half, particularly in the run up to Christmas. It's a bit annoying, because we're restraining our spending until at least one of us gets work, and dammit, I want professionally made coffee. Coffee and sushi. And more wild book-buying. Among the many things I want... I'll come in again.
We've already settled in well in Lower Hutt, thus continuing a trend of swift adjustment that began with having no jet lag at all and not feeling disoriented by the warm winter weather. The facilities are good, we've built up a promising relationship with our second-hand bookseller, we're beginning to feel more comfortable about the whole business of keeping an eye out for our elderly neighbour, and just lately someone's moved into the area with a friendly cat. We've found an orchestra, although they take the whole of December and January off, so we're not actually going to get to know them until February. Things, outside of the job situation, are going well.
But will we stay here? It seems that most of the Wellington SF group live in the Johnsonville/Newlands area, which is in the next valley along, and transport links between the valleys are pretty well limited to the bay road and central Wellington. We may be getting by now with a mixture of public transport and cadging lifts from some far too obliging fellow SF fans, but pretty soon we'll have to look at either getting a car, or relocating. It has to be said that Newlands doesn't offer much in the way of jolly Deco architecture, and what we've seen of the weather (admittedly one evening of it) was entirely mist and rain, probably more of it concentrated into a few hours than we've seen in six weeks in balmy Lower Hutt. What the facilities are like, we couldn't say. A reconnaissance trip to Johnsonville may be in order. MetLink may be of help here, since on Christmas Day all train travel in the two valleys is free! That's right, free train travel! Chew on that, First Great Western! Of course, it could chuck it down on Christmas Day, so we're playing it by ear. But what with the weather, environs and orchestra in Lower Hutt, it'd take a lot for us to move out. A car's the more likely solution.
And so onward to Christmas, New Year and probably another two weeks of no job news. Fingers crossed for January. More blogging in a week or so, when it'll be the usual monthly book blog again.
And a Merry Solstice to all of you at home.
Showing posts with label New Zealand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Zealand. Show all posts
Monday, December 21, 2009
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Books read in November
The district around Lower Hutt's main rail and bus interchange is, amusingly, called Waterloo. On one side of the tracks is a full complement of local shops (and this, no word of a lie, is Trafalgar Square). On the other, just a couple of minutes' walk up the road from the railway station and well supplied by a brace of corner shops, is the semi-detached bungalow we now call home. It has all the space we need, pleasant neighbours, gardens front and back and a (small) greenhouse. It's far enough back from the road that we can barely hear any sound from the railway track. Fifteen minutes' walk up the road is the local shopping precinct, and five minutes beyond that is the central library. Colourful Deco architecture in all directions. Twenty minutes away down the track is central Wellington, and the trains run frequently and late into the night. There's even a quality second-hand bookshop just the other side of the station. All we need are jobs.
Latest update on our worldly goods is that they have literally only just been shipped, seven weeks after a removal company that shall for the moment remain nameless took them off our hands, so we're not getting the rest of our books back until January. Now we're glad we brought a few with us.
Cobralingus, Jeff Noon
A very poetic book, in which Noon takes a selection of texts and transforms them through various stages, the conceit being that these transformations are the work of a piece of language remixing software called Cobralingus. It may give some insight into Noon's working practices, or it may not, but some of the results are fantastically imaginative and strangely beautiful.
The Wallet of Kai Lung, Ernest Bramah
Chinoiserie is a kind of faux Chinese-ness, in artistic or literary terms, that was popular in early twentieth century Britain. Apparently there was a lot of it about. One example that has lasted over the intervening years is Ernest Bramah's canon of Kai Lung stories, which take the form of folk tales either about or told by the itinerant storyteller Kai Lung. Convoluted and evasive dialogue is the order of the day, so that characters give each other the most delicate back-handed compliments, or struggle to outdo each other in self-abasement. Dominating this particular volume is the novella The Transmutation of Ling, in which a captain of bowmen drinks a potion that causes any dead part of him (cut nails, trimmed hair, etc) to turn to gold – ingenious twists and turns and a satire on the futures stock market ensue.
We then moved into the bungalow and became members of Lower Hutt War Memorial Library. There followed a predictable frenzy of borrowing.
Quite a lot of Lower Hutt Library's graphic novel section
Titles borrowed include Mr Punch by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, the story of a boy's childhood seen through the distorting mirror of the Punch and Judy show; Edgar Allan Poe Graphic Classics, a compendium of Poe stories and poems either illustrated or fully cartooned by various artists; and Iron West and Creature Tech by Doug TenNapel, creator of Earthworm Jim and a thorough lunatic.
The Gentle Art of Advertising, W Heath Robinson
Ex-library book, now mine for the pittance of two dollars. A collection of cartoons illustrating industrial practices in the early twentieth century. They're all absolutely, completely true, so there.
Wodehouse at the Wicket, edited by Murray Hedgcock
Library book. Fifty pages of introduction, detailing PG Wodehouse's own cricketing exploits as well as examples of the sport in his writings, followed by a hundred and fifty of selected extracts, short stories and poems. A notable curiosity is a journalistic piece on fast bowling that Wodehouse ghost-wrote for NA Knox.
How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, Pierre Bayard
Library book. This struck a definite chord. With impeccable reasoning, Bayard shows that, because of the way we skim books, forget the details of books we once read and assimilate other people's opinions into our own perception of books, it's disingenuous for us to claim that we know a book at all, at least in the overwhelming majority of cases. He then goes on to explain why this isn't necessarily a bad thing, why it might even be of benefit to us and to the book, and how we should confidently approach discussions of books we haven't read. The tone is playful – whenever Bayard names a book, he uses a system of annotation to show whether he's heard about it, read it but forgotten it, only skimmed it or never heard it of at all, and what his opinion of the book is in each case, and you start to wonder how sincere he is when he annotates his own titles (forgotten about it, low opinion) and titles that exist only fictionally in other books (never heard of, excellent opinion). Before I forget about it or hear any other opinions of it that might influence me, I'd better record that it's an excellent book.
The Stupidest Angel, Christopher Moore (“A heart-warming tale of Christmas terror”)
Library book. A child witnesses the apparent murder of Santa Claus; a passing angel overhears his wish that Santa be brought back to life; zombie terror results. Well, it does after the first couple of hundred pages. Mostly, this book is just a comical portrait of small-town America. Has a few excellent one-liners, but overall it's not very memorable.
(At least some of) Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R Hofstadter
Library book. In the author's eyes, and I assume in the eyes of his many fans as well, this is a profound meditation on the nature of consciousness, taking as its main theme the self-referentiality in the work of the three named illustrious persons. In my eyes, it's a maths textbook (or at least a cognitive science textbook) masquerading as something more, with illustrative examples from the worlds of literature, music and art at regular intervals. The author's anniversary edition preface lays out his ultimate goal and the route he plans to take to get to it in abundant detail – then the book proper starts, and with it the logic formulae and the programming language.
Had I simply read the preface and left it there, I might have walked away with a positively glowing opinion of this book (and though it be an unworthy thought, how many of the book's fans have done just that? - see two items above). In the event, lured on by the promise of the preface, I waded through the first 250 or so pages before deciding that enough was enough, and started skimming to see if the ratio of promised insights to maths improved at all. As far as I can see, it didn't. It's obviously a significant achievement qua book, but I don't think it's quite what it claims to be, and I doubt I'd pick it up again or recommend it to anyone who didn't have a degree in a maths-related subject.
Can You Speak Venusian?, Patrick Moore
Picked up cheap in second-hand bookshop. Now, this is more my speed. Patrick Moore, astronomer-broadcaster and writer of a modest assortment of science fiction and popular science books, examines some of the more eccentric theories that were in circulation at the turn of the 1970s. Many of them were formulated or adapted by people he knows personally, or had sat alongside on TV discussion programmes, so open mockery is out of the question. In fact, although there's a fair amount of thinly concealed mockery, Moore's handling of the subject matter is very even-handed. As he reminds us, Sir Isaac Newton was an astrologer and alchemist by vocation, but we don't think of him in those terms because modern science has given astrology and alchemy the pip – we remember him as a mathematician and the originator of the theory of gravity, because his work in those areas has been borne out by centuries of study and experiment. (And I like to believe that we'd think of Dr John Dee as the originator of the theory of gravity, if he hadn't blotted his copybook with all that stuff about taking dictation from the angels.) Posterity decides who's a genius and who's a nutter, and it's not necessarily easy to tell the difference at the time. If NASA had discovered that the interior of the Sun is balmy and habitable, we'd think of William Herschel as a visionary 200 years ahead of his time and not just as the discoverer of Uranus.
Basically, keeping an open mind is the essence of the true scientific thinker – Moore profiles some of those who've simply kept their minds more open than most. Oh, all right, it's about wackos. It's about wackos and their loony theories. Most of the subject matter is astronomical in nature, although there's a certain amount of overlap with mythology – yes, Atlantis pops up once or twice. A warm and witty wander through some of science's less well-lit back alleys.
Le ton beau de Marot, Douglas R Hofstadter
Library book. The other big (in both senses) book by Hofstadter, this one examines the many aspects of translation. Although there's some overlap with GEB, and a couple of chapters drift into the realm of cognitive science, it's a lot more readable. I actually wish I could “unread” GEB and have read this one first. Obviously I'm biased by the subject matter – it's quite possible non-linguists would consider the book best left to linguists in a mirroring of my opinions. But anyway.
Hofstadter's authorial voice still irks me in places, and although I heartily agree with him that Vladimir Nabokov, while an admirable writer, was a complete dick in other areas – my opinion of Nabokov has taken a pronounced nosedive – I wish he hadn't banged on about it for quite so long. It also bothers me somewhat when he admits to not having read a book in the original language (La disparition, Evgeni Onegin) and then holds forth at length on how his preferred translation has captured the spirit of the original, or gives a flavour of the original. He's at liberty to say that it's more readable than other translations, but this is going a bit far.
But where this book scores highly with me is in its rich value as a reference book – he's chosen some absolutely fantastic examples to illustrate his various points, several of which I'd never heard of before, and I wouldn't be averse to picking this up again if the library should ever decommission it. Most of the illustrative content is poetry, one major theme of the book being that it's difficult for a number of reasons to translate poetry well, but it's always worth making the effort, something I'd agree with. Most notably, the backbone of the book is a 28-line novelty item by 16th century French poet Clement Marot, or rather it's a selection of 88 varied translations of it. All of this material is a joy to read, and large sections of the discussion around it are also thought-provoking and satisfying. So while I'm still not a Hofstadter fan, I am at least glad to have read this one.
Latest update on our worldly goods is that they have literally only just been shipped, seven weeks after a removal company that shall for the moment remain nameless took them off our hands, so we're not getting the rest of our books back until January. Now we're glad we brought a few with us.
Cobralingus, Jeff Noon
A very poetic book, in which Noon takes a selection of texts and transforms them through various stages, the conceit being that these transformations are the work of a piece of language remixing software called Cobralingus. It may give some insight into Noon's working practices, or it may not, but some of the results are fantastically imaginative and strangely beautiful.
The Wallet of Kai Lung, Ernest Bramah
Chinoiserie is a kind of faux Chinese-ness, in artistic or literary terms, that was popular in early twentieth century Britain. Apparently there was a lot of it about. One example that has lasted over the intervening years is Ernest Bramah's canon of Kai Lung stories, which take the form of folk tales either about or told by the itinerant storyteller Kai Lung. Convoluted and evasive dialogue is the order of the day, so that characters give each other the most delicate back-handed compliments, or struggle to outdo each other in self-abasement. Dominating this particular volume is the novella The Transmutation of Ling, in which a captain of bowmen drinks a potion that causes any dead part of him (cut nails, trimmed hair, etc) to turn to gold – ingenious twists and turns and a satire on the futures stock market ensue.
We then moved into the bungalow and became members of Lower Hutt War Memorial Library. There followed a predictable frenzy of borrowing.
Quite a lot of Lower Hutt Library's graphic novel section
Titles borrowed include Mr Punch by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, the story of a boy's childhood seen through the distorting mirror of the Punch and Judy show; Edgar Allan Poe Graphic Classics, a compendium of Poe stories and poems either illustrated or fully cartooned by various artists; and Iron West and Creature Tech by Doug TenNapel, creator of Earthworm Jim and a thorough lunatic.
The Gentle Art of Advertising, W Heath Robinson
Ex-library book, now mine for the pittance of two dollars. A collection of cartoons illustrating industrial practices in the early twentieth century. They're all absolutely, completely true, so there.
Wodehouse at the Wicket, edited by Murray Hedgcock
Library book. Fifty pages of introduction, detailing PG Wodehouse's own cricketing exploits as well as examples of the sport in his writings, followed by a hundred and fifty of selected extracts, short stories and poems. A notable curiosity is a journalistic piece on fast bowling that Wodehouse ghost-wrote for NA Knox.
How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, Pierre Bayard
Library book. This struck a definite chord. With impeccable reasoning, Bayard shows that, because of the way we skim books, forget the details of books we once read and assimilate other people's opinions into our own perception of books, it's disingenuous for us to claim that we know a book at all, at least in the overwhelming majority of cases. He then goes on to explain why this isn't necessarily a bad thing, why it might even be of benefit to us and to the book, and how we should confidently approach discussions of books we haven't read. The tone is playful – whenever Bayard names a book, he uses a system of annotation to show whether he's heard about it, read it but forgotten it, only skimmed it or never heard it of at all, and what his opinion of the book is in each case, and you start to wonder how sincere he is when he annotates his own titles (forgotten about it, low opinion) and titles that exist only fictionally in other books (never heard of, excellent opinion). Before I forget about it or hear any other opinions of it that might influence me, I'd better record that it's an excellent book.
The Stupidest Angel, Christopher Moore (“A heart-warming tale of Christmas terror”)
Library book. A child witnesses the apparent murder of Santa Claus; a passing angel overhears his wish that Santa be brought back to life; zombie terror results. Well, it does after the first couple of hundred pages. Mostly, this book is just a comical portrait of small-town America. Has a few excellent one-liners, but overall it's not very memorable.
(At least some of) Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R Hofstadter
Library book. In the author's eyes, and I assume in the eyes of his many fans as well, this is a profound meditation on the nature of consciousness, taking as its main theme the self-referentiality in the work of the three named illustrious persons. In my eyes, it's a maths textbook (or at least a cognitive science textbook) masquerading as something more, with illustrative examples from the worlds of literature, music and art at regular intervals. The author's anniversary edition preface lays out his ultimate goal and the route he plans to take to get to it in abundant detail – then the book proper starts, and with it the logic formulae and the programming language.
Had I simply read the preface and left it there, I might have walked away with a positively glowing opinion of this book (and though it be an unworthy thought, how many of the book's fans have done just that? - see two items above). In the event, lured on by the promise of the preface, I waded through the first 250 or so pages before deciding that enough was enough, and started skimming to see if the ratio of promised insights to maths improved at all. As far as I can see, it didn't. It's obviously a significant achievement qua book, but I don't think it's quite what it claims to be, and I doubt I'd pick it up again or recommend it to anyone who didn't have a degree in a maths-related subject.
Can You Speak Venusian?, Patrick Moore
Picked up cheap in second-hand bookshop. Now, this is more my speed. Patrick Moore, astronomer-broadcaster and writer of a modest assortment of science fiction and popular science books, examines some of the more eccentric theories that were in circulation at the turn of the 1970s. Many of them were formulated or adapted by people he knows personally, or had sat alongside on TV discussion programmes, so open mockery is out of the question. In fact, although there's a fair amount of thinly concealed mockery, Moore's handling of the subject matter is very even-handed. As he reminds us, Sir Isaac Newton was an astrologer and alchemist by vocation, but we don't think of him in those terms because modern science has given astrology and alchemy the pip – we remember him as a mathematician and the originator of the theory of gravity, because his work in those areas has been borne out by centuries of study and experiment. (And I like to believe that we'd think of Dr John Dee as the originator of the theory of gravity, if he hadn't blotted his copybook with all that stuff about taking dictation from the angels.) Posterity decides who's a genius and who's a nutter, and it's not necessarily easy to tell the difference at the time. If NASA had discovered that the interior of the Sun is balmy and habitable, we'd think of William Herschel as a visionary 200 years ahead of his time and not just as the discoverer of Uranus.
Basically, keeping an open mind is the essence of the true scientific thinker – Moore profiles some of those who've simply kept their minds more open than most. Oh, all right, it's about wackos. It's about wackos and their loony theories. Most of the subject matter is astronomical in nature, although there's a certain amount of overlap with mythology – yes, Atlantis pops up once or twice. A warm and witty wander through some of science's less well-lit back alleys.
Le ton beau de Marot, Douglas R Hofstadter
Library book. The other big (in both senses) book by Hofstadter, this one examines the many aspects of translation. Although there's some overlap with GEB, and a couple of chapters drift into the realm of cognitive science, it's a lot more readable. I actually wish I could “unread” GEB and have read this one first. Obviously I'm biased by the subject matter – it's quite possible non-linguists would consider the book best left to linguists in a mirroring of my opinions. But anyway.
Hofstadter's authorial voice still irks me in places, and although I heartily agree with him that Vladimir Nabokov, while an admirable writer, was a complete dick in other areas – my opinion of Nabokov has taken a pronounced nosedive – I wish he hadn't banged on about it for quite so long. It also bothers me somewhat when he admits to not having read a book in the original language (La disparition, Evgeni Onegin) and then holds forth at length on how his preferred translation has captured the spirit of the original, or gives a flavour of the original. He's at liberty to say that it's more readable than other translations, but this is going a bit far.
But where this book scores highly with me is in its rich value as a reference book – he's chosen some absolutely fantastic examples to illustrate his various points, several of which I'd never heard of before, and I wouldn't be averse to picking this up again if the library should ever decommission it. Most of the illustrative content is poetry, one major theme of the book being that it's difficult for a number of reasons to translate poetry well, but it's always worth making the effort, something I'd agree with. Most notably, the backbone of the book is a 28-line novelty item by 16th century French poet Clement Marot, or rather it's a selection of 88 varied translations of it. All of this material is a joy to read, and large sections of the discussion around it are also thought-provoking and satisfying. So while I'm still not a Hofstadter fan, I am at least glad to have read this one.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
New Zealand plus 5 days
In the UK once more and, alas, back to work. Along my morning walk, just outside the office's rear gate, some hefty beast has laid the biggest pile of dung I've ever seen. I thought it was a dead dog at first sight. It's seriously hard to imagine any of the usual local wildlife leaving it. A lesser and more pretentious man than myself might draw some sort of metaphor out of this, but I'll just leave it there and the reader can make whatever connections they choose.
Dunedin did turn out all right in the end. It's NZ's big student city and has that pleasant, artsy vibe about it. We made the most of our last full day in NZ, driving out along the Otago peninsula in the morning and wandering around town in the afternoon. Otago has probably the most terrifying roads in the whole country - taking hairpin bends around mountains at a cautious 30 kph is one thing, but the peninsular coast road has about six inches of crumbling tarmac verge and a sheer drop into the water, and no barrier, and it expects you to take it like a Southern Man at 60 kph. You big pussycat. This seems to be just another sign of Dunedin's Scots heritage, along with the disdain of anyone who complains about the bracing weather.
That's the other thing about Dunedin, besides the students and the All Blacks - the Southern Man. NZ has this romanticised image of the frontier farmer that's basically the same as America's mythic image of the cowboy, but with sheep instead of steers. No one has done more to perpetuate this image than Speight's, Dunedin's own brewery and apparently NZ's most successful brand of beer. Speight's, incidentally, was founded by a tubby bearded PR man and his two tubby bearded brewing friends. See, it was us hairy fatties that won the West, ha ha. Well, the South in this case.
The holiday was rounded off with a rousing concert from Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen, then most of a day of driving back up to Christchurch and our flight home. I couldn't help noticing that, unlike the waterways of the North Island, all the South Island's rivers seemed to be running dry. (Again, a lesser and more pretentious man might read a metaphor into this...) The last thing we did in NZ, before handing back the campervan and heading for the airport, was to visit Mount Hutt, so we did at least get a close view of one of the South Island's mountains.
The Lovely Jo will be blogging about our holiday in much more detail. I'll just post a few links and leave it there.
Dunedin did turn out all right in the end. It's NZ's big student city and has that pleasant, artsy vibe about it. We made the most of our last full day in NZ, driving out along the Otago peninsula in the morning and wandering around town in the afternoon. Otago has probably the most terrifying roads in the whole country - taking hairpin bends around mountains at a cautious 30 kph is one thing, but the peninsular coast road has about six inches of crumbling tarmac verge and a sheer drop into the water, and no barrier, and it expects you to take it like a Southern Man at 60 kph. You big pussycat. This seems to be just another sign of Dunedin's Scots heritage, along with the disdain of anyone who complains about the bracing weather.
That's the other thing about Dunedin, besides the students and the All Blacks - the Southern Man. NZ has this romanticised image of the frontier farmer that's basically the same as America's mythic image of the cowboy, but with sheep instead of steers. No one has done more to perpetuate this image than Speight's, Dunedin's own brewery and apparently NZ's most successful brand of beer. Speight's, incidentally, was founded by a tubby bearded PR man and his two tubby bearded brewing friends. See, it was us hairy fatties that won the West, ha ha. Well, the South in this case.
The holiday was rounded off with a rousing concert from Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen, then most of a day of driving back up to Christchurch and our flight home. I couldn't help noticing that, unlike the waterways of the North Island, all the South Island's rivers seemed to be running dry. (Again, a lesser and more pretentious man might read a metaphor into this...) The last thing we did in NZ, before handing back the campervan and heading for the airport, was to visit Mount Hutt, so we did at least get a close view of one of the South Island's mountains.
The Lovely Jo will be blogging about our holiday in much more detail. I'll just post a few links and leave it there.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
New Zealand, day 14
Much fun was had in Wellington, which is still the preferred destination once we start the emigration process in earnest. To be honest, I'm cheap and can be won over with a sufficiently large second hand bookshop and a nice inexpensive sushi bar, both of which Wellington offers. It also houses Te Papa, NZ's national museum, as well as some very nice looking suburbs, Weta's new visitor facility and the Karori wildlife park. The noble idea behind Karori - and an especially surprising one considering it's part of NZ's capital city - is to section off a large valley, remove all non-native animal and plant life, and restore it to the condition it is presumed to have been in before the settlers arrived. Apparently it'll take 500 years to get there, but it's already a very impressive place. Sadly we only discovered it an hour before closing time, so a full exploration will have to wait until we've moved out here.
The ferry crossing between islands wasn't much different from the ferry to Jersey or France - smoother, if anything, and obviously much shorter. And so here we are in the South Island. People have been telling us we'll love the South Island since we arrived in NZ. It got to the point where I was prepared to loathe it out of sheer stubbornness. But on sober reflection, having now been here for a few days, I think I can honestly say that the inhabited areas are better laid out and nicer to look at, the campsite amenities better, the tourist attractions more attractive, the shop and site staff more friendly, helpful and welcoming, the motorists less aggressive and the scenery no less enjoyable in the North Island. It's the North for me. The weather was nicer, the children happier, the recycling facilities more complete and the Wagon Wheels larger too, since you ask. But seriously, I prefer the North.
One thing that bothers me about the South is that it's been made to look so much more like the UK - the brick buildings, big stone municipal buildings, low brick garden walls, over-familiar trees and plants muscling out the bromeliads, tall hedges partitioning the countryside all over. I realise that was exactly the intention for the 19th century settlers, and maybe that was why people thought we might love the South Island, but we didn't come all this way to be reminded of home. We haven't come out here to look at fields and hills and villages that look just like bits of the Black Country - we've come out here to look at NZ.
Christchurch takes it slightly to extremes by having a River Avon along which one may punt. On the plus side, the city centre is peppered with diverting sculptures, and it does have its share of Art Deco and weatherboard, so it's not all Victorian homesickness made urban flesh. And just the other side of Christchurch's nearest mountain there's the attractive Lyttleton Harbour. On Monday we visited the Antarctic Centre, with its penguins, its Antarctic storm simulator and its surprisingly large entry price.
Now we're in Dunedin, where we're experiencing the first proper day of rain all holiday - we've done pretty well with the weather so far. The campsite is a jumble of brightly painted wood, with board games laid out on the bench tops, and blue and yellow wooden cubes scattered around the grounds like computer game furniture. In a small outdoor cage huddle some very ordinary budgerigars - I'm pretty sure they're not even native. Disappointment falls with the rain. Tomorrow we drive out of town to see NZ's biggest albatross sanctuary, then in the evening it's the Mikelangelo concert, so tomorrow should be a much better day all round.
The ferry crossing between islands wasn't much different from the ferry to Jersey or France - smoother, if anything, and obviously much shorter. And so here we are in the South Island. People have been telling us we'll love the South Island since we arrived in NZ. It got to the point where I was prepared to loathe it out of sheer stubbornness. But on sober reflection, having now been here for a few days, I think I can honestly say that the inhabited areas are better laid out and nicer to look at, the campsite amenities better, the tourist attractions more attractive, the shop and site staff more friendly, helpful and welcoming, the motorists less aggressive and the scenery no less enjoyable in the North Island. It's the North for me. The weather was nicer, the children happier, the recycling facilities more complete and the Wagon Wheels larger too, since you ask. But seriously, I prefer the North.
One thing that bothers me about the South is that it's been made to look so much more like the UK - the brick buildings, big stone municipal buildings, low brick garden walls, over-familiar trees and plants muscling out the bromeliads, tall hedges partitioning the countryside all over. I realise that was exactly the intention for the 19th century settlers, and maybe that was why people thought we might love the South Island, but we didn't come all this way to be reminded of home. We haven't come out here to look at fields and hills and villages that look just like bits of the Black Country - we've come out here to look at NZ.
Christchurch takes it slightly to extremes by having a River Avon along which one may punt. On the plus side, the city centre is peppered with diverting sculptures, and it does have its share of Art Deco and weatherboard, so it's not all Victorian homesickness made urban flesh. And just the other side of Christchurch's nearest mountain there's the attractive Lyttleton Harbour. On Monday we visited the Antarctic Centre, with its penguins, its Antarctic storm simulator and its surprisingly large entry price.
Now we're in Dunedin, where we're experiencing the first proper day of rain all holiday - we've done pretty well with the weather so far. The campsite is a jumble of brightly painted wood, with board games laid out on the bench tops, and blue and yellow wooden cubes scattered around the grounds like computer game furniture. In a small outdoor cage huddle some very ordinary budgerigars - I'm pretty sure they're not even native. Disappointment falls with the rain. Tomorrow we drive out of town to see NZ's biggest albatross sanctuary, then in the evening it's the Mikelangelo concert, so tomorrow should be a much better day all round.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
New Zealand, day 8
Ah, braindump at last. We've arrived in Wellington, city of wind and (intermittent) rain, home to the cheapest Internet facilities since Waitomo. Thoughts on the holiday so far follow.
Auckland
There's not much to be said about Auckland except that it's a city. Admittedly we only saw the central, most typically urban part of it, but general impressions are of blandness. Many non-Aucklanders seem to agree.
Pedestrian crossings in Auckland are a bit special (see, this is the level...). They bide their time making "Pong" noises - this effect is most noticeable at crossroads, where you get two competing sets playing against each other. And then, when the green man appears, they make a noise like a fruit machine being goosed.
There is one other special thing about Auckland, and that's the Skytower, its sole prominent architectural feature. It looks (and, with a name like "Skytower", sounds) as though Dr Hans Zarkoff had designed it. However, it had its own stall at the Auckland jobs fair, and from this we know that inside it's nothing but solid casinos.
We met some relatives here, wandered around a bit, had some coffee, left again.
Kawakawa
The furthest north we ventured, the midpoint of a day trip up Whangarei. With its exposed rail line running down the middle of the dusty high street and its worn verandas, Kawakawa looks like a small town in Mexico. (Mind you, so do some of the suburban parts of Auckland that we drove through.) But Kawakawa also has a lot of colourful tiling and some very ornate shop fronts, thanks to an Austrian artist by the name of Hundertwasser. Apparently he came and personally designed the town's public toilets, the most famous public toilets in NZ. Naturally we had to drive up and see them. And use them. Not every day you get to relieve yourself over a work of art. They were very nice lavs, too.
Waitomo
A halfway stop between Auckland and Taupo. The campsite is a small strip across the road from the Waitomo Cave Museum and next to a trendy cafe. Mere minutes down the road is the entrance (and gift shop) to Waitomo's Glowworm Caves, one of three well-publicised caves in the area. This was one of the things we'd vowed to see when arranging our holiday, and well worth it it was too.
Readers might think that there's nothing to Waitomo but caves, but that just isn't true - visitors can also indulge in extreme sports. In caves.
Otorohanga
Is not the home of, and has nothing particularly to do with, NZ's own favourite cartoon strip, Footrot Flats. We weren't the first people who'd asked, said the woman in the information office. She didn't know where we'd got the idea from. I'll tell you where - from the Lonely bloody Planet guide book. That thing has steered us wrong more than once this holiday.
What Otorohanga does have, besides a disturbing urge to crown itself the king-town of "Kiwiana" (i.e. of tourist tat), is a rather nice bird sanctuary. We were still seeing the birds in aviaries rather than in the wild, but at least we were seeing them. The chief attraction is the kiwi house, where the staff have tinkered with the poor nocturnal creatures' body clocks sufficiently to get them active at midday. If you were to draw yer most basic cartoon bird - big ball of feathers, feet and head - it'd look like these. They behave like basic cartoon birds too.
Taupo
A facade of false bonhomie fails to cover the campsite's drab, colourless features. Empty 300 sqm fields masquerade under absurd names like "Dinosaur Valley". The receptionist makes it implicitly clear that, through gritted teeth, he and you will have fun at all costs. The staff police the site in tiny motorised buggies. Happiness will prevail.
The Lake Taupo area has one fairly obvious feature of tourist interest, which it plies with scenic walks and spa resorts. It appears to be the school holiday destination of choice for the locals. Lake Taupo was caused by a large volcanic explosion mumble hundred years ago, and the area now boasts a selection of hot springs, bubbling mud pools and sulphurous smells. We spent a couple of hours strolling up to the Huka Falls and back, but that and a few bayside photos pretty much covered it.
Napier
Probably the nicest campsite so far, albeit stuck in the middle of suburbia. If you could put this campsite in the Taupo campsite's location, you'd have the perfect combo.
Napier has many things going for it. For a start it has the southern hemisphere's biggest collection of Art Deco architecture - thanks, 1931 earthquake! Smooth pastel-coloured buildings line the streets like block after block of elaborately decorated wedding cakes. If we'd had more time it might have been worth taking an organised tour, but a couple of hours with the camera and a glossy souvenir book will have to do.
Then, like the rest of Hawkes Bay, it has wineries and wine tours. A couple of friends recommended a particular tour to us, and it made for a very pleasant afternoon of mild alcoholic fug. Winery tasting notes follow:
Matariki. Looks exactly the way you'd imagine a wine ranch would look. You drive up the dust path to the wooden offices where a hearty fellow in a big straw hat bounds forth to greet you. Seems to specialise in fruity reds and red blends. Plenty of body.
Trinity Hill. Looks like a trendy wine bar, but don't be fooled. Specialises in whites, including a nice smooth Sauvignon and a cheeky dessert wine. We spent a little while in here.
Sileni. With its big metal triangle-in-circle logo out front, it looks rather like a sinister corporation of some sort. A very small one, obviously. Has an extensive shop. Good reds, but pricey.
Ngatarawa. Previously a racehorse stables, which gives the place a very homely look. Offers a range of wines in a range of prices. A nice end to the afternoon.
And so to Wellington, where we'll be spending a few days scoping the place out before hopping on the ferry to the South Island on Saturday. Further thoughts may follow.
Auckland
There's not much to be said about Auckland except that it's a city. Admittedly we only saw the central, most typically urban part of it, but general impressions are of blandness. Many non-Aucklanders seem to agree.
Pedestrian crossings in Auckland are a bit special (see, this is the level...). They bide their time making "Pong" noises - this effect is most noticeable at crossroads, where you get two competing sets playing against each other. And then, when the green man appears, they make a noise like a fruit machine being goosed.
There is one other special thing about Auckland, and that's the Skytower, its sole prominent architectural feature. It looks (and, with a name like "Skytower", sounds) as though Dr Hans Zarkoff had designed it. However, it had its own stall at the Auckland jobs fair, and from this we know that inside it's nothing but solid casinos.
We met some relatives here, wandered around a bit, had some coffee, left again.
Kawakawa
The furthest north we ventured, the midpoint of a day trip up Whangarei. With its exposed rail line running down the middle of the dusty high street and its worn verandas, Kawakawa looks like a small town in Mexico. (Mind you, so do some of the suburban parts of Auckland that we drove through.) But Kawakawa also has a lot of colourful tiling and some very ornate shop fronts, thanks to an Austrian artist by the name of Hundertwasser. Apparently he came and personally designed the town's public toilets, the most famous public toilets in NZ. Naturally we had to drive up and see them. And use them. Not every day you get to relieve yourself over a work of art. They were very nice lavs, too.
Waitomo
A halfway stop between Auckland and Taupo. The campsite is a small strip across the road from the Waitomo Cave Museum and next to a trendy cafe. Mere minutes down the road is the entrance (and gift shop) to Waitomo's Glowworm Caves, one of three well-publicised caves in the area. This was one of the things we'd vowed to see when arranging our holiday, and well worth it it was too.
Readers might think that there's nothing to Waitomo but caves, but that just isn't true - visitors can also indulge in extreme sports. In caves.
Otorohanga
Is not the home of, and has nothing particularly to do with, NZ's own favourite cartoon strip, Footrot Flats. We weren't the first people who'd asked, said the woman in the information office. She didn't know where we'd got the idea from. I'll tell you where - from the Lonely bloody Planet guide book. That thing has steered us wrong more than once this holiday.
What Otorohanga does have, besides a disturbing urge to crown itself the king-town of "Kiwiana" (i.e. of tourist tat), is a rather nice bird sanctuary. We were still seeing the birds in aviaries rather than in the wild, but at least we were seeing them. The chief attraction is the kiwi house, where the staff have tinkered with the poor nocturnal creatures' body clocks sufficiently to get them active at midday. If you were to draw yer most basic cartoon bird - big ball of feathers, feet and head - it'd look like these. They behave like basic cartoon birds too.
Taupo
A facade of false bonhomie fails to cover the campsite's drab, colourless features. Empty 300 sqm fields masquerade under absurd names like "Dinosaur Valley". The receptionist makes it implicitly clear that, through gritted teeth, he and you will have fun at all costs. The staff police the site in tiny motorised buggies. Happiness will prevail.
The Lake Taupo area has one fairly obvious feature of tourist interest, which it plies with scenic walks and spa resorts. It appears to be the school holiday destination of choice for the locals. Lake Taupo was caused by a large volcanic explosion mumble hundred years ago, and the area now boasts a selection of hot springs, bubbling mud pools and sulphurous smells. We spent a couple of hours strolling up to the Huka Falls and back, but that and a few bayside photos pretty much covered it.
Napier
Probably the nicest campsite so far, albeit stuck in the middle of suburbia. If you could put this campsite in the Taupo campsite's location, you'd have the perfect combo.
Napier has many things going for it. For a start it has the southern hemisphere's biggest collection of Art Deco architecture - thanks, 1931 earthquake! Smooth pastel-coloured buildings line the streets like block after block of elaborately decorated wedding cakes. If we'd had more time it might have been worth taking an organised tour, but a couple of hours with the camera and a glossy souvenir book will have to do.
Then, like the rest of Hawkes Bay, it has wineries and wine tours. A couple of friends recommended a particular tour to us, and it made for a very pleasant afternoon of mild alcoholic fug. Winery tasting notes follow:
Matariki. Looks exactly the way you'd imagine a wine ranch would look. You drive up the dust path to the wooden offices where a hearty fellow in a big straw hat bounds forth to greet you. Seems to specialise in fruity reds and red blends. Plenty of body.
Trinity Hill. Looks like a trendy wine bar, but don't be fooled. Specialises in whites, including a nice smooth Sauvignon and a cheeky dessert wine. We spent a little while in here.
Sileni. With its big metal triangle-in-circle logo out front, it looks rather like a sinister corporation of some sort. A very small one, obviously. Has an extensive shop. Good reds, but pricey.
Ngatarawa. Previously a racehorse stables, which gives the place a very homely look. Offers a range of wines in a range of prices. A nice end to the afternoon.
And so to Wellington, where we'll be spending a few days scoping the place out before hopping on the ferry to the South Island on Saturday. Further thoughts may follow.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
New Zealand, day 3.
So, here we are in New Zealand, for 16 solid days of campervanning holiday! Providence has played a surprisingly large part in this holiday, from the discovery after we'd booked it of a jobs fair in Auckland this Saturday and a Mikelangelo gig in Dunedin two days before we fly back, both of which fit neatly into our itinerary, to the half-price taxi fare from home to the bus station, which came about through sharing our ride with someone else going to the bus station. His had broken down, and by chance our taxi driver was driving a minivan that day because her usual car had a flat tyre. Out of these small misfortunes, some good came. On a similar note, it's free Internet access at this campsite because their access rationing system is broken. Full advantage must therefore be taken.
The flight out was delayed by a couple of hours, but on a 24-hour flight that doesn't really make much difference. Points in Air New Zealand's favour include surprisingly good food and an extensive suite of in-flight entertainment, including new and old films, several TV programmes and a large CD catalogue. So at last I've heard Third, the new Portishead album (hmm...) and Seventh Tree, the new Goldfrapp album (bouncy, bouncy, bouncy - who are you and what have you done with Alison Goldfrapp?) as well as I Went To This Party And There Were 88 Guards With Guns by Kiwi dance act Minuit (pretty good, overtones of Tricky). Also watched Speed Racer - that's a hell of a surreal film. Even for a kids' film. Or maybe especially for a kids' film. This does mean I've slightly exhausted the options for the return flight, though.
Another happy misfortune on the way out of the airport on Tuesday with the campervan - we'd intended to park up at the nearest campsite, in Auckland suburb North Shore (where Jo has family) but couldn't find it. Never mind, we thought, may as well drive on another half an hour to the next one. Turns out the North Shore site was a couple of blocks off the road in the middle of suburbia, and recently lost its "Top 10" status. "Top 10" in this context means a network of well-provisioned campsites with cheeky discounts for local cafes and tourist attractions, of which we've already made liberal use. The next one up the road was the Orewa Beach facility, where we've stayed for the last couple of days in a spot overlooking the beach front, which doesn't do any harm at 8 in the morning. Ha, and again I say ha.
First impression of NZ is that it's a very matter-of-fact place. The supermarket we stopped at on Tuesday was called Foodtown ("Home of good food"). Where's the food? It's in Foodtown. Righty-ho then. This morning we reprovisioned at a butcher's called Mad Butcher. "Mad" here meant "cheap" and not "psychotic", which was a relief. The streets are full of shops with names like these. So far we're managing to live cheaply, and we don't seem to have offended the locals yet. I say that, but then I don't honestly know how they react to being overtaken on the motorway by a campervan. We're usually too far ahead of them to tell by the time it occurs to me to look. Anyway.
Tomorrow, off to Whangarei, where we may or may not look in on the big cat sanctuary made famous by the Lion Man TV show hosted by Steve Busch, recent subject of a controversial domestic violence court case. ("So, John, how are you finding married life?" "You just can't beat it, Steve." Watch out for that on his next series.) On Saturday, the jobs fair in Auckland and then down the road to Waitomo. Any further blogging will depend entirely on how much the campsites in Waitomo and thereafter charge for Internet access, assuming their systems aren't on the fritz as well.
The flight out was delayed by a couple of hours, but on a 24-hour flight that doesn't really make much difference. Points in Air New Zealand's favour include surprisingly good food and an extensive suite of in-flight entertainment, including new and old films, several TV programmes and a large CD catalogue. So at last I've heard Third, the new Portishead album (hmm...) and Seventh Tree, the new Goldfrapp album (bouncy, bouncy, bouncy - who are you and what have you done with Alison Goldfrapp?) as well as I Went To This Party And There Were 88 Guards With Guns by Kiwi dance act Minuit (pretty good, overtones of Tricky). Also watched Speed Racer - that's a hell of a surreal film. Even for a kids' film. Or maybe especially for a kids' film. This does mean I've slightly exhausted the options for the return flight, though.
Another happy misfortune on the way out of the airport on Tuesday with the campervan - we'd intended to park up at the nearest campsite, in Auckland suburb North Shore (where Jo has family) but couldn't find it. Never mind, we thought, may as well drive on another half an hour to the next one. Turns out the North Shore site was a couple of blocks off the road in the middle of suburbia, and recently lost its "Top 10" status. "Top 10" in this context means a network of well-provisioned campsites with cheeky discounts for local cafes and tourist attractions, of which we've already made liberal use. The next one up the road was the Orewa Beach facility, where we've stayed for the last couple of days in a spot overlooking the beach front, which doesn't do any harm at 8 in the morning. Ha, and again I say ha.
First impression of NZ is that it's a very matter-of-fact place. The supermarket we stopped at on Tuesday was called Foodtown ("Home of good food"). Where's the food? It's in Foodtown. Righty-ho then. This morning we reprovisioned at a butcher's called Mad Butcher. "Mad" here meant "cheap" and not "psychotic", which was a relief. The streets are full of shops with names like these. So far we're managing to live cheaply, and we don't seem to have offended the locals yet. I say that, but then I don't honestly know how they react to being overtaken on the motorway by a campervan. We're usually too far ahead of them to tell by the time it occurs to me to look. Anyway.
Tomorrow, off to Whangarei, where we may or may not look in on the big cat sanctuary made famous by the Lion Man TV show hosted by Steve Busch, recent subject of a controversial domestic violence court case. ("So, John, how are you finding married life?" "You just can't beat it, Steve." Watch out for that on his next series.) On Saturday, the jobs fair in Auckland and then down the road to Waitomo. Any further blogging will depend entirely on how much the campsites in Waitomo and thereafter charge for Internet access, assuming their systems aren't on the fritz as well.
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