I lived through the War. I lived through air-raids and the Blitz but this is worse.
– Dowager Empress (mother)

 There was a woman running around screaming. She was completely out of control. She wouldn’t stop. I had to grab her arm really hard and yell at her to sit down because I was scared she’d run outside on to the road and be hit by something.
– Jo (sister)

We all made our way out of the buildings and crossed the road to Latimer Square. People were just milling around. Everyone was so quiet. You know how you can get large groups of people together, like at rugby matches, and you can feel that everyone’s a part of the excitement and they’ve all got it in common? Well, this was a large group of people and the thing that they all had in common was terror.
– Ciaran (brother)

I walked home and I saw a crowd of people down by the corner shops, so I thought I’d go over and see if I could help. The shops were all destroyed. When I got there, I heard someone yelling for anyone who knew first aid. I went to the front of the crowd and I saw some guys pulling a girl out from the rubble. I knew her. She worked at the fish shop and I used to talk to her sometimes when I went in there. She’d been crushed when the building collapsed. I tried to find a pulse but she was dead.
–Steve (brother)

I’d spent the night at the radio station where I work. Once Red Alert is called, where you are is where you have to stay. I’d said I’d be available to work during the cyclone, so on Monday evening I’d packed a bag, grabbed an inflatable mattress and some bedding, and left a flu-ridden Dreamboat at home.

On Tuesday morning we went to rolling cyclone coverage. My program was going to start an hour earlier than usual. Ninety seconds before I was due to go on air, I had a call from the Dreamboat. He was crying.

“There’s been a huge earthquake in Christchurch. It’s bad… really bad and I can’t reach anyone on the phone.”

It took a few seconds to sink in. All of my family live in Christchurch.

“Stop that! Stop crying!” I snapped at him. Some primitive part of my brain had the notion that he’d jinx things with his tears. What I hadn’t yet realised (and he had) was that at that time of day, everyone in my family — mother, sister and two brothers — would’ve been in or near the Christchurch CBD.

That three-hour broadcast I did was the longest of my life. Every news break, I’d ring the Dreamboat and ask if he’d managed to contact anyone. The answer was always no. He sat, like many other people stuck at home during the Red Alert, and watched the horror unfolding on the TV — shattered buildings, broken and bewildered people, sirens and dust and blood.

Everyone in my family made it. We were so lucky not to lose anyone; during the quake, all of them were in buildings that suffered damage. It was a miracle my mother wasn’t killed. She’d just been to Mass at the Holy Cross Chapel in Cathedral Square (completely destroyed) and had made her way to the Bus Exchange in Lichfield Street to catch a bus home. She was there when the quake struck. It threw her against a wall, injuring her shoulder. Part of the building collapsed and killed a woman and her child.

Only minutes afterwards, a guy living in a CBD apartment took a camera outside and started filming what he saw. He took some footage of people making their way down the middle of Lichfield St. My Mum, the Dowager Empress was one of them. You can see her coming into the shot at 1:50 — a little, white-haired old lady, utterly dazed and frightened by what she’s witnessing. It’s here:

My sister told me about this footage. It had been picked up by one of the TV channels and screened on the News. She had no idea what was coming. I had prior warning but I still found it very distressing.

You can read my youngest brother’s story here.

Like every other ex-pat Christchurch native, the first thing I wanted to do was jump on a plane and get over there. Then I thought about it and realised I’d be just one more person using up precious resources. I briefly considered going to our farm, buying food and inviting my family up there to be cooked for and fussed over and cosseted. There was talk of my youngest brother taking up the offer with his family and the Dowager Empress but at the point, they couldn’t bear to leave. Everyone’s still in Christchurch and although I can understand why, I wish to hell they weren’t.

So, back to Carlos… well, Carlos was a bit of a fizzer, really. He came and went. At 6pm, we were taken off Red Alert. I packed up my bedding and headed home to the Dreamboat. We watched the rolling TV earthquake coverage and cried.

We’re flying over at the end of the month. We were always planning to do that anyway because the Dowager Empress is celebrating a Significant Birthday on 2 April, but we’ve changed the flights so we’ll arrive a few days earier than originally planned. This will give us more time to spend with everyone before we head up to the farm for a week. We’ll be taking anyone who wants to go with us.

It can’t come soon enough.

France trip (every bit as good and bad as I’d expected)
Good bits: meeting a new cousin. Hanging out with lots of old nuns. Helping out in the convent gardens. Speaking French and realising my accent had improved ten-fold. The kindness of French people generally. Seeing my aunt again (on her good days).
Bad bits: The length of the journey. Having luggage lost at Charles de Gaulle airport. Sharing a room with the Dowager Empress (mother), who is a somewhat voluble sleeper. Seeing my aunt again (on her bad days).

Getting a part-time office job
Good bits: scoring the job with no questions asked, despite CV saying “Feb 09 - present: being mental”. Having money that the Dreamboat didn’t give me. Meeting nice people.
Bad bits: crap money. The original ‘two days a week’ agreement going out the window after the first week, with work creeping up to full-time and totally taking over my life — hence, finishing up before Christmas. Which belongs in the ‘good bits’ section.

Casual work in radio (never say never)
Good bits: being back on air. Remembering how much I love it. Getting nice messages from listeners. Making more money. Only doing it occasionally, so no burn-out.
Bad bits: none yet.

Freelancing feature-writing work
Good bits: seeing the France story in print. Lots of ideas for other stories. Finding great talent to interview for two of them.
Bad bits: not enough time to pitch or write the damn things.

Medical matters
Good bits: lots of tests earlier in the year delivered up nothing more sinister than a hiatus hernia. Officially downgraded to “low risk” at the oncology clinic. Ongoing physio for damage caused by radiotherapy.
Bad bits: have pretty much given up hope that the damage will ever be fully/permanently repaired.

Yuletide etc
Good bits: spending first Xmas on our farm in NZ with wonderful family (nuclear and extended) and working our arses off for three weeks. Getting to know my 2-year-old neice and becoming her willing slave forever. Picking our own raspberries, strawberries and currants. Watching redcurrant jelly being made at the speed of light. Witnessing the construction of an exceptionally beautiful compost heap. (Yeah, you read that right.)
Bad bits: having to leave. Having to leave in order to return to Karratha. Having to leave in order to return to Karratha in summer. Having to leave in order to return to Karratha in summer and then immediately coming down with a bug.

2011 will be the year we leave Karratha (and Australia) to start a scary, wonderful new life on our farm in New Zealand. It will also mean the end of this blog… and the beginning of a new one. None of this will be happening for months yet, though, and I’ll try to step up the posts here in the meantime.

Happy New Year to anyone and everyone who still visits this site. I hope 2011 brings you plenty of the right sort of adventures. If not, come and visit us later in the year and we’ll happily acquaint you with the Zen of cow-shit shovelling.

Actually, it was 5:45am and I was wearing a very ugly hat. Official hotness rating of “Extreme” still applies, thank you very much.

One day, word went round my grandmother’s neighbourhood that one of the residents had witnessed a genuine miracle: she’d seen Jesus’ disembodied head looking serenely up at her from inside a nearby drain.

“Jesus Christ!” exclaimed my Aunty Cassie. (A different aunt again. She had a temperament to match her fiery tresses and a colourful vocabulary that regularly scandalised the rest of the family. I think I inherited my love of swearing from her). “That’s a hell of a place for him to turn up.”

Her avowed skepticism did not stop her lining up with the rest of the neighbourhood to peer into the Blessed Drain, however. She didn’t see anything remotely resembling Jesus’ head and neither did anyone else. But for weeks afterward, people procured and poured vast quantities of Holy Water down their plugholes, presumably to make him feel more comfortable in the sewers.

Here’s the back story: my Mum, the Dowager Empress, is the youngest of nine children. Only two others are still alive, both sisters. One of them — the eldest, turning 97 in July — just happens to be a Catholic nun in France. And this year, she’s celebrating her 75th Jubilee of nunhood. Nunship. Nunience. Nunnerousness. Nunerosity. I could go on all day.

Back in March, the Dowager Empress received a card in the mail, inviting her to the “special Jubilee celebration” on 6 June. And although she’s not yet at the carbon-dating stage of advanced decrepitude, she’s still somewhat senior to be contemplating a NZ-France trip on her own. She’s never been there before and she doesn’t speak the lingo. So Your Correspondent, drawing on the experience of three holidays in France and six years of high school French, offered to take her. It took three days to book flights from New Zealand, flights from Australia, train fares from Paris and travel insurance for us both …

… and it’s all for a lunch.

Yes, superheroes, we’re travelling from the Antipodes to France … for lunch. I can live with this, though, having experienced first-hand the type of slap-up meals this convent puts on (it is French, after all). The Dreamboat and I were served a bloody yummo three-course lunch with wine at the afore-mentioned convent when we visited back in 2006.

The fact that I’ve been to the convent once before and met my aunt fairly recently is gong to make things easier for me but it’ll be a very emotional experience for the Dowager Empress and her sibling. This is the first time they’ll have seen each other in 60 years — and it’s probably the last time they’ll see each other in their lives.

The contrasts are amazing — two women, born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, whose lives couldn’t have been more more different. One left home at 18 to join a French convent, was imprisoned by the Germans in WWII, lived in constant fear of arrest in Spain during the Franco era … and the other sailed across the world at 28 to marry the fiance who’d emigrated to NZ three years earlier, and raised four children.

Then you’ve got the setting — on the one hand, thousands of people taking part in the noise and fanfare and spectacle of a massive public sporting event … and on the other, this deeply intimate and poignant reunion taking place in the hush of a convent on the Rue de la Solitude (the “Road of Solitude”).

Part of me is dreading this trip, part of me is excited and another part of me can’t believe it’s real. I do know that once I’m there, I won’t regret it.

Hopefully, the magazine that’s just agreed to buy the story won’t regret it either.

I’m not sure why I like swearing so much. I suspect the reason isn’t too complicated … the shock value, perhaps? Or maybe it’s that as an adult, I can get away with the sort of language that, as a child, would’ve sent my mother grimly rummaging around in a drawer for a wooden spoon.

When I was working in radio, a Media Studies student came to the station for a week’s work experience. After two days of sitting in the cubicle next to mine, she said I swore more than anyone else she’d ever met in her life. I rather liked this. Eventually, my foul mouth wore down my colleagues and one or two of my better efforts were absorbed into the workplace vernacular, like substituting “arseholed” for “drunk”:  I went out on Saturday night and got completely arseholed.

But now I work for myself. I no longer get much opportunity to wow the Great Unwashed with my profanity, so you can imagine how very excited I was indeed to join online knitting community, Ravelry.

Stop smirking.

Ravelry is great. Yes, it is. Not only is it filled with funky fan groups like this and this (enabling Your Correspondent to nurture her inner geek while playing with pointy sticks), you also get to include your very favourite swear word on your profile. You’re invited — nay, encouraged — to do so. Why else would Ravelry’s designers put a blank field next to a label reading, “Fave curse word”?

You can be sure I wasted no time at all in obliging. These Ravellers were my kind of people! I duly typed up my current favourite — fucking mongrel arse-head — and sat back, waiting for all the like-minded cuss-merchants to add me as a friend.

That hasn’t exactly happened. I have just one friend on Ravelry. I think the only reason she added me was because she joined a group I belonged to and automatically clasped every member of it to her bosom. Still, it’s nice to have a “friend”, even if her “Fave curse word” is “pork monkeys” and she’s never contacted me again since and probably never will.

There are times when I wander blithely through Ravelry, hoping I’ll connect with someone — anyone — who’s prepared to bare their all in the “Fave curse word” stakes … but I never have. Most people leave the field blank. Others make weak excuses: they’re trying to give up swearing or they stopped when they had kids (I thought that was when a lot of people took it up in earnest). Then there are the “pork monkeys” brigade; those who use ordinary words (sometimes with exclamation marks) and weakly try to convince us that these are a credible cursing substitute. Here are a few examples I’ve just found: Monkeys! (What’s with the fucking monkeys?) Flangdang; bother; rats; diggity … you get the picture.

It’s a bit disappointing, really. I’m considering starting up a new Ravelry group called “Knitters who think it’s clever to swear”. I want to reach out to them, those special few, those oh-so-lost souls forlornly crying, “Fucking prick!” and “Shithead wanker!” into the void. I will gather them together, offer them sanctuary and then, as one, we’ll brandish our bamboo needles … and really let rip.

Yes, I’ve taken up yoga. Yes, I am aware that taking up yoga, along with taking up tap dancing, are things that Women Of A Certain Age tend to do.

So be it.

The truth is, I like yoga. It makes me less mental. It makes me so less mental that I haven’t really felt mental at all for quite some time now. Maybe I’m cured — how pleasant! But even if I’m not, at least I’m a lot more in control and a lot less fraught and everything’s a lot better for everyone, all round. Thank you, yoga! You’re the tops!

But back to the music. I was looking to download some so that I could have some variety when I practised (which hasn’t exactly happened with any great regularity yet, but ya never know). I found a couple of albums that had the right kind of eastern-y, yoga-y vibe. But then my eyes — oh unfortunate orbs! — fell upon this. Yes, folks, it’s Yoga To Rick Springfield! Well, fuck me dead!

As if assaulting our sensibilities with Jessie’s Girl way back when wasn’t bad enough, now the song’s back to potentially menace a whole new captive audience of poor innocents wobbling through their Lord of the Dance pose.

But wait! There’s more! How could I possibly not mention Yoga To The Killers? Or Yoga To Coldplay or John Mayer or Grease (fucking Grease! What are these people on?) or … wait for it … Radiohead? What the hell am I doing here? wails some poor individual as they struggle not to fall and break their neck in a Crane pose. I don’t belong here …

There are others but I don’t want to spoil the fun for you of finding them yourself. Go on — head over to iTunes or Amazon and prepare to be quite delighted.

I thought yoga was meant to be uplifting. I thought it was supposed to help people become centred and kind of enlightened. Then again, I’m getting on a bit. I might have missed something. Maybe those strangulated hernias acquired from maintaining a Firefly pose don’t hurt so much when You’re The One That I Want is tinkling away in the background.

I’ve saved the worst — or best, depending on how you look at it — til last. Even if you haven’t clicked on any of the other links, click on this one and know the true meaning of “ghastly”. Words almost fail me at its awfulness. Note the demented goblins on the cover. Presumably, this image is supposed to encourage parents to buy the double CD (containing no less than 72 tracks — what a bargain!) for their own kids. But these ones don’t look chilled and centred and yoga-fied. They look as though they’ve been locked for three days in a vat filled with cocaine.

If that cover isn’t enough to convince you that Ultimate Evil does indeed exist and it’s trying to destroy us all through the medium of putrid yoga music, listen to the Track 2 sample … and then tell me there is no Satan. If you’re powerless to stop the forces of darkness from bitch-slapping you a little more, listen to the sample for Track 22. Heaven help you and heaven help any poor kids whose parents foisted that on them for their birthday.

And if you’re thinking of taking up yoga … well, go for it. Just be sure to inspect the instructor’s music collection before signing on any dotted lines. Otherwise, you could be consigning yourself to a very particular sort of hell — where you’re forced to spend eternity in Corpse Pose, with Summer Nights playing on a perpetual loop.

Gand-Agent: Hi, I promised you I’d ring as soon as possible because I know you really want to know the outcome of your offer on the property and I don’t like to keep people in suspense, blah, blah, blah …
Faithful Ham: (thinks) God! Will you just get the fuck on with it?
Gand-Agent: What’s that noise in the background?
Faithful Ham: It’s tango music. We ran away to Argentina. Waiting makes us restless.
Gand-Agent: Really? I’ve always wanted to travel around South America but it certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with all those extremely gorgeous women wearing teeny little skirts, blah, blah, etc …
Faithful Ham: Yeah, so anyway …
Gand-Agent: … blah, blah, congratulations, your bid was successful, blah, blah …
Faithful Ham: (nearly puts fist through window while banging on it to get Frodoboat’s attention, displaces three neck vertebrae due to violence of nodding, then bursts into tears — again.)
Gand-Agent: … blah, blah, papers to sign in the morning so I’ll meet you at the airport when you’re seeing off Frodoboat.
Faithful Ham: (runs back inside and is picked up and whirled around by Frodoboat while David Wenham look-alike barman beams on benevolently.)

The following morning, Frodoboat and Faithful Ham (nursing her throbbing, hung-over head) meet Gand-Agent at the airport.
Gand-Agent: I couldn’t really mention this last night but now that everything’s signed, I thought you should know — the orc rang and made an offer on the property.
Faithful Ham and Frodoboat: (exchange a look that is 38.573% sardonic and 61.427% smug)

It’s right at this moment that a flight arrival is announced. It’s the plane that Frodoboat is due to fly back out on. The luggage is off-loaded … and sure enough, Frodoboat’s missing bag is among it. One of the airport staff takes the bag off the trolley, affixes a new label, and puts it back on.

It would be nice to say that from then on, our victorious couple lived happily ever after.

And so they did … apart from the tiny matter of four hours spent by Faithful Ham in a lawyer’s office later that day because of a misunderstanding (the lawyer’s) over an easement on the property, the subsequent withdrawal and then reinstatement of the offer … not to mention some interesting discussions with Mrs Vend-Or concerning the property’s chattels. But hey, every good story has its Gollums and Shelobs … this one was never going to be any different.

P.S. Hey, it’s 2010. When the hell did that happen?

Before driving back to Nelson, Frodoboat and Hamwise visit the Enchanted Land once more. They’re standing at the gate, filming their surroundings, when a strange chariot covered in symbols pulls up. The driver is an orc.

Orc: Are you the owners?
Faithful Ham: Not yet.

There is a silent passenger in the chariot. He is not an orc. He is merely dull and stupid.

Orc: Not many properties with this amount of land left. What would you do with it?
Faithful Ham: Set it up along permaculture lines … regenerate more native bush … maybe put a B&B on it.
Orc: Well, I build eco-homes. Carve it up and I’ll build all the houses for you. That house there doesn’t look like much. Tear it down, carve up the land, put an eco-village on it … you’d make a fortune. (He uses the phrase ‘carve it up’ twice more in the conversation.)
Faithful Ham: Wow. Your obvious deep love and respect for the land is very touching. Am I going to have to fight you for this place?
Orc: Oh no … my money’s all tied up in properties I’m building in town. I wouldn’t be able to afford it.
(He eventually departs, for which relief Frodoboat and Faithful Ham sacrifice 17 goats, someone’s pet lamb and a crow that got in the way)
Faithful Ham: Babe, if you’re sure about buying this property, we need to ring Gand-Agent right now and make an offer. I don’t trust that guy.

The phone call is made on the shores of Lake Rotoiti, while eating pies. Gand-Agent instructs the pair to meet him in his tower later in the afternoon. When they arrive …

Gand-Agent: Someone else flew in from Hamilton this morning and I’ve taken them to see the property. They’ve already made an offer. I can’t tell you the amount, obviously, but I’ve told them I’ll be presenting yours to Vend-or first. You need to understand that if your offer is unsuccessful, you probably won’t have any come-back.
Frodoboat and Faithful Ham: (shattered)

They put in their very best offer. They’re not optimistic. Gand-Agent doesn’t seem very optimistic either. He tells them he’ll ring them back that evening with Vend-or’s decision. Utterly dejected, they leave Gand-Agent’s tower and look for somewhere to eat.

Faithful Ham: There’s a restaurant in town called Plan B. Let’s go there because I have a feeling we’re going to need one.

The restaurant is shut. It’s a miserable, rainy Sunday night. They start hunting for somewhere, anywhere that’s open. Eventually, they find a nicely refurbished pub with a restaurant. The place is called The Verdict*.

They enter to the strains of mournful violins. The local tango club has booked out the restaurant for its weekly get-together. Beautifully-dressed middle-aged people wander in and out, managing to look simultaneously self-conscious and self-important. An apologetic barman who looks a little like David Wenham (happy, Lizz?) informs us we’ll have to sit in the bar and slum it with the rest of the non-tango personnel.

A few drinks later, the snivelling begins …

Frodoboat: (eyes welling but in a manly way) I should’ve offered more …
Faithful Ham: (blubbering openly) I can’t believe we came all this way, just to lose it at the end …
Frodoboat: We don’t know that yet … we have to keep hoping … but I don’t know if I have the strength … (hangs head over beer)
Faithful Ham: Come on, dear Mr Frodoboat. Snap out of it. I can’t carry this burden of worry for you … and I can’t carry you either, you fat bastard.
Frodoboat: (to the David Wenham look-alike barman) What the fuck are you looking at?
Barman: (whimpers)

To be continued …

* I swear I’m not making this up.