Another year has gone by.

Tomorrow I’ll be 78.

Birthdays are good times to spout cliches about how age is just a number, how I still feel young and so on...

The truth is, that though I don’t yet feel old, I do feel older. In the past year a few aches and pains have made themselves felt and slowly I’m transforming from someone in the mid-seventies to someone in their late-seventies. What’s next?

It’s time to slow down. It’s an old refrain. I’ve been telling myself that since I retired as a youth of 67, but somehow things keep speeding up, which is why I haven’t written in this column for a few weeks. There’s just too much going on.

As I’ve been told before, this is all self-inflicted. It’s true, I like to think of things to do and then curse about it when I find myself doing them.

Nelson Clay Week is coming up in the first week of October.

A year ago, I found myself on the committee of the Nelson Suter Art Society. When discussion came around to the subject of “what can we do for Clay Week?” I found myself in the firing line.

“You’re the clay guy, after all.”

Ditto for our art collective Wall to Wall.

I could think of many good ideas - I just didn’t want to do all the work.

Time passed.

I asked my old friend Greg Barron and his wife Jin Ling if they’d like to be guest exhibitors at the art society. Their work is very big.

I asked my old friend Debbie Pointon if she’d like to be a guest exhibitor at Wall to Wall.

Her work can be quite fragile.

It seemed we had a mountain of clay art to get down to Nelson and nobody could come up with a good plan.

I’m the organiser, so what could we do if there wasn’t a plan?

We decided to drive from here at the top of the South Island nearly to the top of the North Island, so just over a week ago, on a Saturday, off we went.

First we got eaten by a ferry. It wasn’t a bad crossing of Cook Strait, but as a precaution against mal-de-mer we stood on deck during the open water section. The car was spattered in salty spray when we arrived in Wellington.

Parts of the drive are dramatic.

The vast Lake Taupo was created by a massive eruption more than 25,000 years ago, but its most recent big event was only 1800 years ago. It’s a fragile area.

Further north, the geothermal fields of Wairakei are a reminder of why New Zealand is sometimes referred to as “the shaky isles”.

On north we went, intent on our mission. Saturday night in Taupo.

A Sunday morning dip in Taupo before the drive north to Auckland. The air temperature was chilly, but the water was very nice.

A night of carousing (as only people in their late-seventies can) with our friends Anne and Keith in Auckland, then we pressed on to Whangarei on Monday. Morning tea with our friend Kay in Ngunguru and then the first pickup of pots from Greg and Jin Ling.

Lunch at the Whangarei town basin, only metres from the family home of my teen years, then back down to Dairy Flat and another raucous night - this time with young swim friends. I wondered about our stamina, but we were holding out.

Tuesday night with Keith and Anne. Another lovely meal, more wine and talk of old times, then a ferry trip to Waiheke. More friends, Jenny, Pieter and Martine. We have so many friends, it’s wonderful to count our blessings.

Thursday, we were back to Auckland, into the car and on the road to my brother Ian and partner Kay’s house in Katikati. An unexpected road closure in the Karangahake Gorge led to an 80km detour, but by now we were seasoned travellers, so took it in our stride.

A long drive Friday to Paraparaumu.

The gods were smiling. Our very cheap and wonderful bnb included a spa pool, which we indulged in before a brilliant Indian meal with Debbie and her partner Pat.

The next morning we picked up Debbie’s pots. By the time we had them onboard, the car was pretty packed. We stopped at a supermarket to finish things off - we were going to be at our hideaway in the Sounds for another ten days.

On the ferry, we teamed up with my son Sam.

Back in the South Island it was a bit of a puzzle, getting Sam and his gear (which included nail guns and other essential equipment) into the car, but we squeezed him into a seat, piled all the luggage on top of him and wound our way back along Queen Charlotte Drive to Tirimoana. We’d travelled just over 2,000km in a week.

Phew.

What now?

Sam got right into deck building.

This is what it looks like now. It’s our west-facing fern-fringed sanctuary for afternoons, out of the sea breezes and catching the last of the sun.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we also had the installation of the long awaited roof over part of our front deck.

This place is really shaping up.

So here I am - 78-years-old.

Give me a break.

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You were probably surprised to get a newsletter from Wall to Wall Art Gallery a little while ago.

My fault entirely.

I operate a Substack account for Wall to Wall Art Gallery and I finished up sending their newsletter through the wrong account.

Sorry about that.

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Welcome to the mid-August newsletter.

The Bridge to Better project is proceeding in leaps and bounds. Despite the leaping and bounding, the gallery is still going strong, although inevitably foot traffic is down a bit.

Bring your feet in, there’s plenty to see. Park free for two hours in Buxton Square and come in the back door by Aboki.

Featured artist

Nicole Russell

Nicole Russell takes the feature spot by the front door for the next few weeks.

Nicole has been a watercolour artist ever since she started her painting adventure in the USA in 2009. After sailing to New Zealand in 2016, she and her family settled in Nelson. About a year later, in 2018, she joined Wall To Wall Art Gallery, then known as Art@203 and located in Trafalgar Street.

Nicole’s passion lies in painting in the outdoors and for eight years she has organised a local plein air painting group. The paintings on display are inspired by her outdoor sketches from the Nelson/Tasman area.

Visit the gallery and enjoy some inspirational scenes from around the region.

Member news

Mary-Jane Steffens

Mary-Jane Steffens is one of the busiest artists in the Wall to Wall collective.

Her next project is an outing as part of a group in the McKee Gallery at the Suter.

Paint, Pastel and Panache includes five artists and will be set up on Sunday.

The opening is on Wednesday 19 at 5.30pm. Take the side entrance to enter the gallery. All welcome.

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After ten days in Nelson, we’re back in paradise, getting on with a few pottery activities.

It was a foggy start to the day, but at least the sun is starting to find its rightful place in the sky, dragging itself up from the depths of winter.

In my last post I started musing about the things I like and don’t like about computer technology.

I got sidetracked when I went back in time 40 years or more to my first experiences with computers, so never really got to the point.

Computers have always been slightly frustrating things. As soon as you get comfortable with your current setup, something comes along to change it.

What’s irked me a lot in recent years is the habit of the industry of trying to help you by over-ruling the things you do.

Spell-check comes to mind. Then grammar correction software.

I don’t want help with these things and I certainly don’t want my good Anglo-Saxon spelling replaced with something American.

For goodness sake - they’ve forgotten how to put a ‘u‘ in colour and an ‘s’ in maths. How can I trust them?

As things become more accessible worldwide, it’s become easier for nasty people to try to get into our files.

Simple passwords are no longer enough. Impossible to remember complicated passwords are now the thing, combined with codes sent to your phone.

As things get harder for hackers, so it gets harder for simple citizens to keep track of the ways to access their own files.

Then there’s AI.

Like all online stuff, it has good as well as bad. It’s very handy to just ask AI how to do something - anything.

Handy to get tips about health problems (especially as you get older).

Of course, you have no way of knowing whether the answers to your questions are correct. That’s why the feature of some AI programmes that tells you where the material comes from is very handy - you can do your own partial verifications.

However, there’s a danger in asking questions of AI, then publishing the results, even if it’s mentioned that there may be AI content.

Writers need to be careful that they’re not stealing the work of someone else and publishing it online without acknowledgement.

But now for something positive.

Cathie, my sales and promotion genius, has been promoting the pottery in a Facebook page (Peter Gibbs Pottery) and the associated Instagram stuff.

Recently, she’s moved on to reels - little video clips from the pottery of less than 15 seconds (AI tells us this length is just right for engagement).

At first we were getting 400 or 500 views of each one, but two weeks ago something changed.

We began to get a few thousand views, then tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands.

As you’ll see from the screen shot, we now have one that’s sitting on 249,000 views. By morning that will be a quarter of a million.

We also have close to 2000 followers.

It’s great entertainment, but we’re not inclined to go looking for profits - it’s all a bit of a game and none of those people have bought a pot yet.

We did have someone from Morocco applying for a job though.

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I was an early adopter of computers and technology and I’ve had a love/hate relationship with them ever since.

I had my first magazine article published in 1978, beginning nearly half a century in which writing has never been absent.

I’ve written newsletters for a lot of organisations, starting with the newly-formed Nelson Potters Association in 1979.

These days, I still write newsletter for two organisation, both published right here on Substack.

Back in those early days we reproduced the typewritten copy on various machines - firstly a spirit duplicator, one in which you used methylated spirits and produced purple copy. It was called a Banda machine - don’t ask me why.

We graduated to a Gestetner Machine, which used more advanced technology - don’t ask me what, although I remember you used to type on a master sheet without a typing ribbon, cutting into the surface.

For both these machines you had to stand there and turn a handle, one turn produced a sheet of paper. They were owned by the Nelson Provincial Arts Council, who were enthusiastic supports of my newsletters

Photocopying was expensive at first, but gradually became the reproducing mode of choice.

In the early 80s computers came on the scene. An early 64k machine (rumoured to be suitable for business) cost a couple of thousand dollars and the first dot matrix printers were close to $1000, so it was a frightfully expensive business in the days when a new car would set you back about $10,000.

In those days, computers came without software. The fellow who sold me my first usable computer was only able to get me across the line by loaning me a version of Wordstar. It came on disc and it was said that if you could master Wordstar you could handle any computer programme.

After six months he asked for the software back, as he’d more or less stolen it from his company in order to make the sale to me.

Time went by.

By the later 80s I was writing for many magazines. By then I could print a clean copy and send by surface mail to wherever it was headed. A fancy printer then came with a couple of fonts, but you could buy extras if you wanted to get fancy. I also did the two-monthly newsletter for what was then called the NZ Society of Potters.

I would save the text as data on a five inch disc and take it to a small company in town. The woman there would format it using a new programme called Page Maker.

I was fascinated by that and would sit behind her and watch, wishing I could afford the fancy computer and software that made it all possible.

Eventually I became the editor of a magazine called NZ Crafts, owned by the Crafts Council of NZ, a funded body based in Wellington.

I started out typing the copy, saving it on disc, and sending them instructions for how I wanted it to look.

The type-setting company were arrogant sods. We had a few arguments over the outcome for a couple of issues. They charged a horrendous amount for their small part in the production of the magazine - more than I was getting as editor.

Eventually, I bit the bullet and bought an Apple Macintosh. It had a nine-inch screen - measured on the diagonal.

I put my case to the Crafts Council committee - I would do the layout for way less than the Wellington company.

In a giant leap of faith, they accepted my proposal, so I set out trying to do the layout of a 40-page A4 glossy magazine on a screen not much bigger than a scrap of notepaper.

I had many late nights and a couple of dodgy-looking magazines, but eventually they started to look okay.

I would have to leave blank rectangles for the photos, which in turn would need to be sized to fit exactly by a photo studio in Nelson.

My finished pages would be printed on to blank sheets - I can’t remember whether it was paper or some sort of transparent material - then the photos would be pasted on to the appropriate rectangle.

The entire concoction would be photographed in some way and strapped on to the printing press.

In those pre-internet and email days, each part of the process would involve me driving from the pottery into town - half an hour each way. On some days I did the return trip two or even three times.

In the fullness of time, sometime early in the 90s, the Crafts Council lost its funding and I became the owner of the magazine, changing its name to Craft NZ. It wasn’t without drama, as the magazine subscriptions that the council had been hoarding for me were swooped on by the receivers as the organisation went down the gurgler.

I started my career as a publisher owning a magazine with a couple of thousand subscribers but no money in the bank. With four issues a year owing to the subscribers I was in a deep hole.

Fortunately, the QE2 Arts Council, as it was then known, bailed me out with $10,000.

I was lucky that I was then working fairly steadily as a freelance contributor to the NZ Listener. They would pay my airfares to cover artsy events all over the country and I would utilise those trips to do stories and sell advertising for the magazine.

Still, it was a hard grind. A lot happened and a lot went wrong. I became single.

At the beginning of 1994 I made the decision to close the magazine down. I should say, it was decided for me. We were out of funds and my friendly accountant helped me ease out with only minor debt.

At the age of 45 I was completely unemployed, with no savings.

I got a part time job as a reporter with The Leader, a privately-owned Nelson weekly community newspaper.

Based in offices upstairs on the corner of Bridge and Rutherford streets (the top floor of where Torpedo 7 used to be), they would borrow a sub-editor from the Nelson Mail across the street.

That sub would draw up a layout sheet, compositors at the Mail would paste it all up and the finished newspaper would be printed.

Fortune plays funny tricks. Within a few weeks that sub left to work with Radio NZ.

“I can do that job, I said. And so I did.

Just a few months later, The Nelson Mail bought The Leader, giving them three community newspapers.

I applied for, and got, the job of sub-editor for this little group, putting together the Marlborough Times, The Leader and the Nelson-Golden Bay news on consecutive days. I worked ten-hour days, so had three-day weekends.

Things unfold. Not long after that, the Nelson Mail decided to go digital with layout.

Who knows how to use Page Maker and the next-generation programme Quark Xpress?

I jumped ship, which meant moving out of one desk and into another and so began a 20-year career as a sub-editor.

I was required to do a post-graduate journalism qualification, which I slogged away at for a few years until I became a bona-fide educated journalist.

At first, my work was all for the Nelson Mail, then owned by Australian company INL (International News Limited). Later, Fairfax took over.

Fairfax was intent upon utilising NZ resources, so somewhere along the way they formed a sub-editor hub.

There were about 200 of us in offices all over the country. It was a rocky road at first as we all jockeyed for the best tasks. Someone in Christchurch or Wellington would be assigning tasks, not always to my liking.

Early on I was doing a lot of copy subbing, which I hated. Just correcting grammar, cutting stories to fit a pre-determined space, checking legal stuff. As fast as you finished one story you’d have to grab the next one in the queue. It was never-ending.

Eventually though, I found a little niche, by delivering fast layout which looked good. Most importantly, I could be given a stack of tasks and left alone, which suited those running the place and suited me.

By the time I was 67 I was loving my job. My income had climbed over the years, I was saving heaps and had given no thought to doing anything else.

By then Fairfax had bailed out and Stuff had taken over.

Times weren’t easy for newspapers a decade or so ago - not that they’re any easier now.

To save money, the brains behind Stuff decided that we didn’t need so many subs.

By using a standard format for newspapers such as the Southland Times, Timaru Herald, Nelson Mail, Daily News (New Plymouth), Manawatu Standard and so on, stories could be copy subbed and laid out in one paper then just picked up and dropped into another,

Besides - who needs good grammar? Why not make reporters better trained to generate clean copy and do away with a few more subs?

They offered a couple of dozen redundancies to the sub-editor group.

It was now or never. I had a great contract with a good redundancy clause and I’d been with the company 22 years.

Time to go.

And so I took the money and became a retired old person at the age of 67.

I meant to talk about the vagaries of the online world, but all I’ve done is set the scene. More next time.

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Over the years I’ve written a lot of stories about my friend Christina Harris.

In March I published this post: It’s all about the swim.

That story detailed two swims, one of 21km, the other of 34km, both close to home in Tasman Bay.

Christina never rests on her laurels for long and always has a few projects simmering inside her watery brain.

Some swimmers take a break over the winter, but these days most of our swim friends seem to continue, some in the pool, while others push on through the frosts to the chilly sea.

Christina’s not one for cold water, so most days she’s clocking up a few kilometres in the pool before work.

What she really likes is tropical waters.

A regular visitor to the Samoa Swim Series in late July or early August, Christina made a successful crossing of Apolima Strait in 2017, heading west from Samoa’s main island Upolu to finish on the island of Savai’i.

Organiser Seti Afoa wasn’t optimistic about the chances of crossing the strait in the opposite direction. It’s been tried before, but without success.

“Seti said the Gods would never allow anyone to swim the other way,” said Christina. “But, more recently he decided we should try. My first booking was in 2026, but I had a burst eardrum and cancelled. There have been other unsuccessful attempts to swim from Savai’i but no one has yet managed it.”

Christina finally slipped into the water at 6.42am on July 23, with her partner Roger Matheson and a lifeguard in an inflatable and accompanied by Samoan guide Samasoni Nimarota in a kayak.

Conditions were good, but she had to combat some awkward currents along the way.

“I started well in the first hour. My stroke count of 500 strokes per 500 metres was normal, but then increased to 600 strokes as the swim progressed.”

She kept up a good pace of about 20 minutes a kilometre, picked up a good dose of sunburn and stepped out of the water at Mulifanua, on Upolu, covering the distance in six and a half hours.

Another mission successfully accomplished, but as a youngster of barely 63, there’s bound to be a few more projects yet to be revealed.

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Here in the South Island of New Zealand it’s freezing. Snow is falling everywhere, except maybe in Nelson, to where we moved ourselves a couple of days ago.

Our house here is so warm that we don’t notice. Over in Tirimoana we’d be feeling it much more strongly.

We’ve been pruning trees. After an early-morning pool session and a couple of hours hacking through large branches, our necks and shoulders have noticed the difference, but that’s possibly good for our ageing bodies

We’re doing days in Wall to Wall Art, our collective gallery, where we get to sit behind a lovely desk, making idle chit chat with a very sparse bunch of winter visitors and doing puzzles, clattering through odd admin tasks and pondering the fate of the world under the self-serving sycophants who prop up the orange puppet in the White House. I suspect the puppet himself is some sort of fantasy figurehead who may or may not still be alive - how would you know?

Enough of that. I believe strongly in the power of political people to govern us - I often wish they would do a better job of it.

In politics, I’ve always voted Labour. My father backed the party to the extent that he managed campaigns and took an active part in the whole business. Always listen to your father, children. I believe the party’s philosophy cares more about people than the main opposition (whose business is business), so I’m sticking with that.

I’ve never got that involved, but I just donated a pot to be auctioned at a party fundraiser. I promised to buy a ticket in a party raffle too. Maybe I’ll win a pot.

Many of our friends are swimmers and their number includes the good Brian McGurk, former senior policeman, deputy mayor of Nelson and political activist. Brian works very hard for some sort of political nirvana and I support him every step of the way - which is why we donated a pot and bought a raffle ticket - and then left him to do all the work.

We’re pretty democratic in our support for causes, so we’ve also donated a pot for a raffle in a fundraising dinner for the Linkwater School, over in the Marlborough Sounds. We’ll go to their fundraising Italian dinner later in the month too. Good to be in touch with the local community.

Cathie recently bought a new phone with the goal of taking better photos and videos for online pottery promotions.

In the last week or so, a weird thing has happened. Cathie posts photos and videos on Facebook, which are then transferred to Instagram. She’s very good at it. Most of them get a few hundred hits. Very rarely above a thousand.

However, last week she posted a reel to Facebook and Instagram which has just grown and grown. Currently it has more than 80,000 views. Can you believe that? We’ve gained more than 100 more followers and a huge number of comments.

Here’s the clip:

Among the pottery fraternity, there’s been a lot of comment about my use of a regular kitchen knife as a rib. It’s not something I’ve thought about, it’s just a tool I use, but you never know.

Easy to be philosophical about the world from the warmth of our city house, but we can’t wait to get back to our coastal forest home with all the cold and inconvenience.

We have another plan for next winter, but it’s a work in progress. The words “Spain’ and “Camino’ enter into it, but more about that later.

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I feel a bit like a deciduous tree.

Over the winter, my leaves have fallen off, the sap’s stopped rising and life systems have gone into a bit of a decline.

It’s still freezing here. My Canadian family by marriage will scoff at this, but we don’t live in warm houses or venture out into heated public spaces, so we’re allowed to complain.

Oh no, we brave it with the wolves and the bears out there in the great outdoors.

Metaphorically speaking of course. Thank goodness no well-meaning early settler didn’t think to introduce those creatures, along with rabbits and gorse bushes, both of which have terrorised our antipodean landscape.

I’ve been worrying (a little) about the effects of the passing years.

There’s bound to be an effect on the gradual decline of both mental and physical attributes.

The physical bits are easy to understand.

Aches of joints, loosening of once-taut muscles, a general inclination towards lying in bed longer and reading books instead of undertaking pioneer activities - they’re all expected. Not welcome though.

We do our best to ensure our mental acuity remains sharp, but when we went back to Nelson a few days ago I forgot my wallet. That was inconvenient.

When we came back to Tirimoana yesterday for a fortnight stopover, I managed to leave a whole bin full of stuff in the Nelson kitchen. Five litres of milk, two kilograms of yoghurt and sundry other non-essential but useful stuff. We debated going back, but instead rang our friend Maggy and implored her to drop in and put everything back in the fridge. I had powdered milk in my coffee this morning - it was horrible. Porridge without yoghurt was bleak too.

Is my brain going foggy? There’s plenty of it around.

A drive through a similar fog to Havelock this morning sorted out the immediate shortages. We have milk and yoghurt. Some cream too - just in case.

Short-term irritants aside, nature is on the move.

Since the shortest day a month ago, we’ve gained more than an hour of sunshine each day.

It hasn’t gotten any warmer, but on those happy days when the fog retreats, the sun’s golden rays have a huge effect on our mood and motivation.

I haven’t done much in the pottery since March, but suddenly there’s some urgency.

Orders, exhibitions and the need to service a couple of outlets mean it’s time to get back to work.

Today was glazing day for me, while Cathie started sealing the plywood linings we’ve nailed up in the new garage.

Suddenly, there’s urgency on the air.

Summer’s coming - faster than we thought.

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Shakespeare had a bit to say about the sadness of winter.

“Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York”, he had the hapless Richard declare.

Basically, the Bard told us that Richard III was fed up with winter but summer has arrived, bringing good cheer.

However, although more handsome chaps could expect to soon be cavorting with lovely damsels, no such relief from gloom was available to him, as he was such an ugly brute (Shakespeare could be cruel).

What made Dick happy was that some of these handsome chaps would soon get their comeuppance - particularly his brothers Clarence and Edward, the King.

Shakespeare seems to have used a bit of poetic licence, as he would, being the Bard. According to recent carpark excavations, Richard was nowhere near as ugly and bad as portrayed in the play.

But what would theatre be without extreme good and evil?

We’ve had a winter of discontent too. My back gave me hell for five weeks, causing the cessation of a lot of meaningful activity.

I’ve felt overwhelmed by tasks and been giving consideration to resigning from one or two organisations.

I’ve also felt gloomy about the winter, just like Richard III.

Popular science tells us that it’s the lack of sunlight. Not all popular science is true thanks to the myriad of clowns online giving their opinion about everything - especially things they choose not to like. The President of the United States leads these idiots by example, backed up by his health spokesman.

Luckily, science doesn‘t have to be popular to be true. However, I’m inclined to believe that lack of sunlight turns you into a miserable sod.

I wait eagerly for the sun to appear each day. At the moment, nearly four weeks after the shortest day, it peaks out from the hill and hits our deck at 11.19am.

That bloody hill. The golden rays hit our driveway - just 20m away - before 9am. We can’t move our house 20 east, but if the earth would just tilt another degree or so, the sun would track across the sky just above the hill, instead of just below it. It must happen soon.

The winter gloom has been enhanced by my own optimism in taking on too many tasks. Too much to do when you don’t feel like doing anything. I have a plan to shed some responsibilities as summer comes closer, giving me more time to swim, walk and read.

I wouldn’t mind making a few more pots, but it’s too cold down there in the workshop and nothing dries.

My mood has recently taken a turn for the better though - as I always knew it would.

The painful back episode lasted five weeks, but has retreated now, so I’ve been able to join Cathie back in the pool with our friends whenever we’re in Nelson. If only they didn’t gather at the lunatic time of 6am. Unfortunately, most of our swim friends still belong to the working classes, so have to get their exercise before the daily grind. It has the virtue of making us feel virtuous though.

A couple of things have really turned the gloom around in the last week or so.

The arrival of fine days and the cessation of back pain have allowed us to get on with some overdue building projects, fitting out the new garage with shelves and tidying up the mess that’s been there all winter.

We’ve been walking a little. Even if we don’t have sun here in the house, we have plenty down by the water.

We need to walk. As well as staving off the vicissitudes of age we have a new project to look forward to.

We’ve only walked the Camino Frances twice. Is that enough? Time will tell, but there’s a bit of conniving going on to avoid the worst of winter 2027 in New Zealand.

I loved walking the route alone in 2019 and loved it even more walking with Cathie in 2022.

Since then we’ve walked the Camino Norte, the Wainwrights Coast to Coast in England and part of the Via Francegina in Italy.

I’ll be 78 soon. How long can we keep doing these walks? We may as well get on with it while we can.

Having hatched the plan, we obtained quotes from five companies. The one we chose was only 60% of the most expensive one - it obviously pays to shop around.

We’ll walk from St Jean Pied de Port in France, through to Santiago de Compostela in Spain - about 770km, starting in mid-May next year.

We get bed and breakfast for 45 days and our bags transported each stage, so we can saunter along like old people for 20-25km a day.

It’s so exciting.

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While Europe sweats under the latest summer heatwave, we’ve been having a go at winter in the Marlborough Sounds.

Over recent years, we’ve walked our way across various parts of Europe during the New Zealand winter, but not this time.

Life changes. We bought the house in Tirimoana as a holiday home, but it’s somehow morphed into the place we spend most of our time.

The pottery has had a bit to do with that, but mostly it’s just because we love being here.

There’s no traffic. Not too many people either, although that’s a mixed blessing. We miss our friends in Nelson. We miss the chance to swim with other people - in the pool in the winter and in the sea in the summer.

The biggest change may be the inexorable march of time. We’re getting older.

It seems that Cathie’s heart problem in Canada was a deviant event brought on by stress, but it’s still a signal.

When we got back here early in May, the new garage was finished.

There’s a bit of work to do to blend it into the landscape, but it was exciting to remove from the pottery everything that didn’t belong there.

We worked hard, stripping the pottery and building new shelves and benches.

It turned out to be way too much fun. With so much to do, after a few days my body called it quits. My back went into a spasm and all work ceased.

For three weeks it got worse until the day when I was completely frozen in place with every movement causing pain. Cathie drove the 90-minute journey to Nelson hospital, where they gave me a mega-dose of painkiller and sent me home.

The next day we were able to see a doctor and start on a course of drug-induced comfort.

It’s now five weeks since the episode started and today we went for a walk.

The time has come to get the body back into motion and to celebrate I went and made some pots.

These bowls were fun.

You can never have too many mugs.

With getting the body back in shape and kick-starting the pottery, I thought the brain needed a boost too, which is why I decided to break the drought and write a substack column. I don’t really have much to say, as you can tell, but at least my typing fingers still work.

The back episode wasn’t much fun, but I’ve spotted another sign of ageing that I thought was pretty funny.

When I wake up in the morning, my eyelids are all frilly and droopy - a bit like you sometimes see on Grandpa in the Simpsons.

What next?

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We have a nice house in Nelson. A multitude of friends too. A swimming pool nearby, a library and a nice little community.

A couple of years ago we were in a position to buy what we New Zealanders call a bach. Perhaps if we lived further south we might call it a crib, or if overseas, then a beach cottage.

We found perfection here in Tirimoana, a 90-minute drive from Nelson.

It was meant as a hideaway. A place where we would rest and read, swim and learn to fish and go sailing.

It’s a summer paradise.

It seemed a good idea to move our small hobby pottery over here too.

The plan was to build a bigger deck, hide the pottery underneath and then when space got tight down there build a garage to hold all the extra stuff - and the car.

It’s all worked extremely well.

So well, that we thought maybe we’d just live here all the time.

It would mean leaving our Nelson friends behind, although we have a steady stream of swim friends visiting in the summer.

There’s a lot working both for and against the move, although there’s no need to rush a decision. At the moment we have the best of both worlds.

This is the second winter since we bought the place. Last year we sweated it out in an Italian heat wave, so missed the depths of winter here and never really got to grips with how it would be.

The climate seems to be on the move, so whatever conditions we’re finding can’t be relied on as an accurate indication of what the future will bring.

However, in the last month we’ve had almost a fortnight of solid rain.

Then we’ve had fog - “oh mist rolling in from the sea”, as Paul McCartney might say.

Not that you can see the sea, but it’s out there somewhere.

Putting a few translucent panels in the garage roof seemed a good idea, but oh, the condensation. Everything within reach has been getting dripped on.

And it’s cold.

On the negative side, it’s too cold to make pots and when you do they don’t dry.

These few bowls are my only output of the last month.

On the positive side, our house is small and easy to heat. If only we could relax, read books, cook and eat.

We’re spoiled for choice.

As we approach the shortest day, the sun comes out at about 11.45am.

Today it took an hour for it to fight its way through the mist.

At 1.15pm it fell below the hill.

We should be laughing our heads off at our good fortune.

So what to do?

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It’s Sunday afternoon. It’s been raining since morning and it’s slowly getting heavier. The wind has started to rise a bit and could get worse.

According to one weather app, there’s 2mm falling each hour now.

It’ll still be falling in 36 hours, with brief heavier periods.

It’s a good excuse to take a break and devote ourselves to the primary task of relaxing.

We’re conducting a trial. Can we live here in the Marlborough Sounds during the winter?

When it’s not raining, we’re a bit deficient in sunshine hours, but we’re busy enough that we stay warm.

With the shortest day still a few weeks away, the sun rises at about 9am.

At about 10.30am it ducks behind a hill.

Then comes back again at about 11am.

By 1.45pm it’s found another suitable hill to hide behind.

So there’s the sunlight hours to consider.

We can always fill in time in the pottery. Things have been pretty disorganised down there but it’s looking good now.

Since we had a new garage built, we’ve been trying to find spaces for all the stuff that used to be in the pottery.

The garage is a long way from finished, but we’ve made a start.

We’ve been more focused on getting the pottery back in shape. We noticed on Friday that a lot of houses nearby were filling up with people taking a break for the holiday weekend, so we decided to make it a goal to have the pottery open for sales by Saturday morning.

The sales area is looking pretty good now that Cathie has painted the new shelves and filled them up.

There’s some nice pots down there.

Things have been busy on the writing front.

The start of the month brings two newsletters to complete and mail out.

I got the Wall to Wall Art model away this morning. Here it is.

The Nelson Suter Art Society newsletter is mostly done, so getting that away will be a task for the morning. It’ll be here.

The online world is never too far away these days, although we sometimes have problems without internet. Apparently there are copper connections up the street, but they’re said to be woefully inadequate.

Our cellphone phone connection is marginally better, with one or two bars mostly showing. That’s enough for using our phones as hotspots, although from time to time there are loud expostulations when the connections drop out at critical moments.

On moral grounds we’ve held out against Starlink, not wanting to profit corrupt American squillionaires. However, there’s no point in cutting off your nose to spite your face, so we’ve coughed up the deposit and expect to be online in a couple of weeks.

That’ll have the added benefit of boosting our TV options too.

We both seem to spend a lot of time on our computers while we’re here. We’re retired after all.

I spend my time complaining that I have too much to do, then wondering how to fill in rainy days.

A solution came ready-made yesterday.

The Tirimoana/Anakiwa community is quite small. Plenty of houses, but not so many permanent residents. That means there has to be a certain degree of infrastructure, but few people about to maintain it.

We have a great little library, a petanque court, a long jetty and a plentiful supply of beautiful fresh water.

I’ve felt a bit guilty about not pulling my weight, although Cathie has joined the committee of the local residents association.

The water comes from the hills where the sun sets and is stored in big tanks just behind our place. At least that’s what we know, although we’ve never laid eyes on it.

There’s a committee that runs the water scheme.

Our neighbour Marcel called yesterday. He has to leave the committee, would I take his place?

Despite the fact that I’ve vowed not to be on any more committees, I felt that I had a civic duty to pull my weight. It was only this morning I discovered that the committee was voting for a new president. Really?

I should learn to keep my mouth shut.

In the light of the various issues to do with health and mortality that have affected those near to us lately, we spend a lot of time thinking about health and food.

Our breakfast porridge usually has five varieties of fruit and three sorts of nuts mixed in with the oats, not to mention a splash of yoghurt and a liberal sprinkle of psyllium husk, so we have a healthy start to the day.

In this colder weather, dinner has lately been chicken or lentil and bean soup of dubious recipe, which progresses much like the fabled axe head soup, or stone soup.

We always seem to add so many ingredients that we can never eat it all. The next night we add a few more things so there’s enough, but again there’s always too much. We added sausages to the bean soup, but then we had leftover sausages, so we had to do something with those.

After six straight nights, we’ve extracted all we can from the chicken bones and we fondly imagine we’ll finish it all off tonight. Then we can start again.

We’ve been a bit overwhelmed with persimmons and walnuts too. Although both find their way into the breakfast porridge, we’re not making a dent in them quickly enough.

It’s hard enough keeping up with the feijoas, which seem to go on forever. Although we have a lot frozen.

Cathie has a solution to some of it - persimmon and walnut cake.

Today she cooked her second one and we had a big warm slab for afternoon tea. Maybe we’ll have another for dessert tonight?

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As you grow older, you expect a few health problems.

It probably follows that your contemporaries and those older will also have something major happen at any time, maybe even death.

That’s happened to those close to us quite a lot in the last couple of months, but disconcertingly there have been some major issues among friends and family in the younger generation too.

That just seems cruel and hard to understand.

This has all come at a time when we have a huge amount going on with building projects at our house in the Sounds and when I have a lot of commitments to various art organisations, which sometimes just pile up.

For the past few weeks I’ve been feeling that the weight of the world is on my shoulders.

The building projects have involved a lot of physical activity and at first we loved the feeling of involvement in real things and the satisfying tiredness at the end of the day.

A few days ago, it all came home to roost. A recurrent back issue which has left me alone for a long time suddenly decided that enough was enough. Why not add to the misery?

At least that’s put paid to the physical stuff for a few days, although long walks seem to help. That’ll be good for the mental balance too, although I still have writing deadlines to meet.

After the black cloud, the enforced idleness has lifted my spirits. I’ve realised I’m not superman and given myself permission to pause the activity.

Yesterday I wrote a newspaper story about the exhibition of portraits that’s now on at the Suter gallery in Nelson. At first, that was just another part of the load, but like all tasks once achieved it made me feel great.

As my sainted mother would say, “ït’s like deja vu all over again”. Writing about exhibitions and trying to pretend you’re just an interested bystander (and not a participant). That’s what I struggled with 30 years ago. Well of course I want it to sound appealing and describe what’s great about it. But, ahem, don’t mention that I’m part of it.

You might wonder how a simple potter could enter a portrait exhibition, but as you can see from the photo at the top of this post, you can be sneaky. For those pottery aficionados, those were made by throwing a cylinder, scratching a rough face on it with a needle and then pushing out the walls of the cylinder with a throwing stick (I have a sturdy one thanks to my good friend Jack Troy). The distortion of the clay makes them look very sly - which they are.

Why I’m writing really, is to say that, funny faces notwithstanding, life’s a bitch, not just for you and me, but for all our friends and family.

We might need help to get through it, but in the end our biggest weapon is self-belief, a firm grasp on optimism. Not blind faith, but the knowledge that a miserable outlook won’t change the reality of life but our positive stance will make it look better.

After nearly 78 years, I know how corrosive negative thoughts can be.

So for tomorrow, a nice walk in the splendid Marlborough Sounds, followed by a few concentrated hours of writing - I bet the world will seem a better place.

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Tomorrow we leave Canada and head home to New Zealand.

It’s been a strange trip. We were scheduled to leave NZ in late May for a three-week trip, but the sudden death of Cathie’s mother changed all that.

Wilma seemed as if she’d make it to her 99th birthday, but by Easter Monday it seemed clear that this wasn’t going to happen.

It was a flurry of changed flights and altered plans. We changed our three-week insurance policy to start on Cathie’s departure. We had no idea when we’d be getting home.

After that, nothing went quite right.

Cathie made the funeral with a few hours to spare after being held up by unnecessary entry formalities in Los Angeles, missing her onward flight and having to wait half a day for the next available flight. Not the best preparation for an emotionally draining occasion

I followed on a week later. We had a plan for a few days later to take an overnight train to Nova Scotia and spent most of a week in and around Halifax.

On the eve of that trip, Cathie was admitted to Joseph Brant Hospital in Burlington with chest pains. The stress of the past two weeks had caught up with her. Needless to say, the train journey was cancelled.

During the discussions with the insurance company they reminded us that our cover expired at the end of April - would we like to extend it until we got back to NZ?

Well, just as well they reminded us. However, they pointed out that for the last 12 days of our trip, heart issues had now become an existing condition that wouldn’t be covered in the extended period - how kind.

With everything that had gone on, we decided to keep a low profile for the remainder of our Canada trip.

In my last post I talked about some of the nice walks we’d had.

Joe (Cathie’s brother) and Deb took us on a day trip to the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

It’s a wonderful building, set in beautiful forest surroundings about 40km from Toronto.

Guarded by fierce bears.

There were some thorough historic collections, which gave an insight into the art of a century or so ago, but what I found really interesting was the work of Norval Morrisseau of the Anishinaabe, an indigenous people of the Great Lakes region.

The gallery space was astonishing.

The art vivid and distinctive.

Reading his story later revealed a lot about the cultural deprivation the indigenous people of Canada suffered until quite recently. Find out more here.

We had some nice family experiences - a beautiful dinner with Mark and Diane, when we absorbed some night-time experiences in downtown Toronto.

On another day we met with Mary and visited a textile museum.

Later we walked past a celebration of World Falun Dafa Day, where endless charming acts swirled across an outdoor stage.

On to a great Chinese meal, where despite our best efforts we couldn’t manage to eat everything.

On Thursday our flight to Vancouver was to depart at 8am. We woke at 5am to emails announcing that our flight was cancelled - seemed pretty par for the course on this trip.

Instead, we’d fly to Edmonton at 5pm, stop over for a couple of hours and then arrive in Vancouver sometime after 10pm - the equivalent of 1am Friday in Toronto.

Our friends Bruce and Bernie had sailing plans for us the next day.

During the morning, Cathie had some twinges. It seemed irresponsible to be out on the ocean if we were to need a mercy dash to hospital, so we chose the cautious option and stayed put in West Vancouver.

We’ve had a couple of very nice walks along the sea wall towards the Lions Gate Bridge.

Today (Saturday) we looked across the harbour towards the yacht regatta we could have been part of.

We admired the old ferry building.

And the sculptures.

And so we’ve arrived at Saturday evening. Tomorrow night we’ll be on the 14-hour flight back to Auckland. We’ll lose a day, so it’ll be Tuesday when we land in Nelson.

In a rare piece of good luck, we’ve travelled so much in the past year that we can now access airport lounges and have been able to upgrade to business economy on the long flight across the Pacific. That all makes a big difference on these cruel flights.

We’ve had more than a week of daily walks and long periods of reading books. We’ve tried to put future plans out of our minds, but we’re not good at that, so we’re ready to do things.

We’ve learned a few lessons about mortality. We’re the next generation to go. Do we have 20 years, or five minutes? That’s fairly morbid, but it’s no use being in denial. We’re determined to make every minute count. And to do our best to stay healthy.

With those cheerful thoughts - goodbye Canada and hello NZ, we can’t wait to see you.

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Today we took a walk along the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto.

It’s been our pattern in the last few days to sleep in, have a cup of tea in bed and read, then finally drag ourselves out for breakfast and then for a brisk walk.

A week ago, Cathe was in hospital. Now it’s hard to believe it ever happened.

Following advice, we’re taking it easy. Apart from the brisk walks, we read, take afternoon naps and have long family chats.

We’ve walked in Burlington, in High Park, west Toronto and along the banks of the Humber River, following ancient trails that lead to the lake.

It wouldn’t be compete without a nosy Canada goose.

Or a cardinal.

Today we walked along the lake shore with Cathie’s brother Joe.

Small turtles climbed among the lakeside garbage.

Swans performed a courtship dance.

Beaver left signs of their activities.

We’re staying close to home for the next week. Every time we make plans, things go wrong.

It’s not the holiday we planned, but we’re going with the flow.

Very lazily.

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There are some nice places to walk around the city of Burlington, on the shores of Lake Ontario.

We went out for an hour or so today. The temperature wasn’t much above 10 degrees, but we soon had our coats off in the spring sunshine.

Simple pleasures.

After the drama of the past few days, it felt great to be outside on such a day.

If you read my last posting, you’ll know that all wasn’t quite right with the universe.

Cathie suffered some chest pains, probably stress related, which is strange because she seems to be less afflicted with stress than anyone I’ve ever known.

After two nights in hospital, it’s all another episode to reflect on as we grow old.

We’re not fretting about what actually happened - or worried about the future (maybe just a little). She has a raft of pills designed to head off any of the things it might have been.

Our immediate concern is to make the most of the unexpected void in our expectations for the next couple of weeks.

On Friday two days ago, we were scheduled to take an overnight train to Halifax and spend some time looking around.

There’s an old saying that when mortals make plans, God laughs.

That’s happened to us quite a bit lately, so right now we’re not making any (plans).

While Cath was in hospital, we thought of taking a train to Quebec for a couple of days, but we can hear an echo of that laughter, so we’re taking the path of least resistance.

In a couple of days we’ll leave the home of Cathie’s brother Mark and his wife Diane and return to the home of brother Joe and wife Deb in Toronto.

Suburban Burlington is a newer version of the area of Toronto where Joe and Deb live. Houses stacked closely side by side - all close to the street.

In Burlington the cars occupy the front of the property.

In Toronto, the cars take a back seat at the rear of the property.

What might we do in Toronto?

In all the unexpected activity of recent days, I never got around to mentioning that we visited the Gardiner Museum in Toronto last week.

It’s completely a ceramics museum and a highlight. We last visited a few years ago and it didn’t disappoint this time.

It has a fancy restaurant upstairs. We went for a coffee late morning and were tempted by the menu to stay for lunch.

Cathie ordered an omelette - I went with pancakes.

I’d had a few bites when I felt something like a hair in my mouth.

I grabbed a bit that I could feel on my lip and pulled, and pulled, and pulled, until I had a sizeable strand to lay on the table.

I felt like the man in the joke who says ‘waiter, there’s a fly in my soup’ - except I couldn’t remember the punchline.

Our waiter appropriately displayed deep remorse as he took the plate and the offending hair away.

He returned to tell me that not only would they prepare another version of the pancakes, but that our entire meal would be free, so why didn’t we order a dessert as well?

I wasn’t that keen on the pancakes, so I went with the same omelette Cathie had. Canadian portions are not meant for slender antipodeans, so we passed on the dessert.

But it was all very nice of them. On a trip like this, when you open your wallet and a small fortune falls out, it was nice to get a little redemption.

Speaking of size. We’ve offered to cook for a couple of nights. We’ve been overwhelmed with family kindness and hospitality recently and wanted to return some of the favours.

We had a good time at the supermarket buying food, but it’s all so huge.

Cucumbers on sale - not individual - but two for $5. Ditto for avocados.

Chicken thighs - not two in a pack, but four - and huge.

Everything supersized and larger than life. Not one, but many. Hardly worth noting for Canadians, but very noticeable for us.

I won’t comment on the average size of the citizenry. (Strike me down if you’re Canadian.)

In the meantime, things are happening back in Tirimoana.

By the time we get home, it should be finished.

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This trip has been a series of unexpected adventures and plan changes.

This entire column over the past three years was predicated on the idea of describing the process of growing old. It’s meant to be fun.

The whole process goes slowly.

We seem to stay the same age, we don’t have dementia or major disabilities. And yet, we grow older.

Some things change. My hips hurt a little when we walk. I wake up at night with a sore knee. The operation on my finger a couple of weeks ago has been slower to heal.

It’s all trivial stuff for a 77-year-old. At least my young wife is in good health. We’re spending a few days with Cath’s brother Mark and wife Diane.

Bt sometimes there’s lurch in the universe.

Cath looked a bit grey and tired when she woke this morning, but we had the great luxury of sleeping in with our books and cups of tea.

Eventually we rose and had a healthy breakfast of cereal, fruit and yoghurt.

We were preparing for a walk on the shores of Lake Ontario at Burlington, followed by a visit to the huge ceramics collection of the Burlington Art Gallery, but at about 10am Cathie announced that she didn’t feel quite right.

She went upstairs for a wee lie-down. A while later, she phoned (from upstairs) “I don’t feel right, we need to call 911”.

Mark was on the case in the blink of an eye and we were speeding our way to hospital.

The day passed in a blur - all eight hours of it from there.

Cathie was inspected, tested and analysed to the nth degree.

In the end, the decision was made - they weren’t sure what had happened, but they were going to hang on to her overnight and do more tests in the morning.

We can’t argue with that.

Mark and I came home and, with Diane, debriefed over his best Glenfiddich. There’s nothing like family at times like this. As well, I needed a couple of calls to NZ to settle me down

It made me feel a whole lot better, but I still can’t sleep. Which is why I’m still awake as midnight approaches.

Growing old is one thing, but we can do without the reality of it.

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The last week has passed in a blur. Today has passed in a Bloor (pardon me).

I arrived in Toronto last night (Friday here) sometime after 11pm to be greeted by my lovely wife and her brother Joe, who stayed up late to collect me from the airport. It was after 1am by the time we turned out the lights in our basement Air BnB and we slept right through until 12.30pm.

From the basement, we couldn’t tell what the weather was outside (that’s our window, at ground level), but we soon found out.

We wandered off in the light rain to Bloor St West, one of our favourite streets anywhere. It’s like Motueka would be if they added more cafes and bakeries and put out a few stands on the pavement.

We ducked into the state liquor store - LCBO. It’s very festive in there. Booze from all over the world, including quite a bit of wine from NZ.

We stocked up on the essentials. Now we’re ready for dinner at Joe and Deb’s (Cathie’s bro and wife).

It’s been a busy week since Cathie dashed across here for her mother Wilma’s funeral. Although I missed it, I watched the video and was moved by the love and emotion shown by everyone.

Back in Nelson it was a relentless round of visitors, dinners and duties, not to mention a trip across to Tirimoana.

Just over a week ago, the concrete slab was poured for our garage there.

This is how it looks now, (thanks to the vigilant photography of our neighbour Leith).

The whole building team is remarkably efficient and promise the job will be done by the end of April.

That’ll be a nice surprise for when we return in three weeks.

The trip from NZ was as good as it can be.

Because of the late changes in our itinerary, I couldn’t get an aisle seat on the 13-hour flight from Auckland to Houston, so was allocated one in the central section of four. I would have to climb over someone to get in and out.

As I approached the row, I could see I was seated beside a very large chap in a black singlet - Uh Oh. Did he have deodorant?

To my surprise, he very politely addressed me by name (it was on the screen of my allocated seat). “Hello Peter, can we ask you a favour? Would you mind changing seats with my wife?”

Since she had the aisle seat on the other side and the seat between us was empty (probably the only on the plane), I was very pleased to accept the request.

That fortuitous good fortune set the tone for a largely uneventful flight.

As usual, I had very little sleep, but I watched four movies.

Train Dreams was an unexpected delight. Slow-moving and thoughtful. Set in the early part of the 20th century, it was the tale of a logger and rail worker in the forests of the US.

Next I saw Prime Minister, the story of Jacinda Ardern. It was a useful reminder that politics isn’t all about balancing the books and made me ashamed of those who embrace confrontational politics and care more about personal rights than the common good.

Tenor: my name is Pati was a moving story about the career of Samoan opera singer Pene Pati. Not only the singing bits, but insights into Samoan culture, including the stern parental discipline he faced and accepted. Family values are big in this movie. Many people will remember Pati as a member of Sol3 Mio, but won‘t know how this was a stepping stone to raise money for overseas training.

Finally, Blue Moon, the story of Lorenz Hart, lyricist who worked with composer Richard Rogers.

Sadly, the movie portrayed Hart as a bitter, effete alcoholic, who resents the success of Rogers when he teams up with Oscar Hammerstein and produces Oklahoma! Not a very lively movie and way too intent on introspective bitterness. Maybe unkind to Hart too, but who knows. I’d like to think better of the author of such great lyrics

So that was my movie experience.

At Houston, I shot through all the passport formalities and had oodles of time in hand before my final flight.

Pasta and beer was great, but made a big dent in the finances. They certainly know how to charge at those airports and the built-in tip of 18% is a shocker to innocents from the antipodes, where such practices are frowned upon.

And so, on to United Airlines flight to Toronto.

My seat was near the back of the plane and I couldn’t believe that I was by the window in an otherwise empty row of three - yet the plane was full.

At the last minute a quiet man of nearly my vintage took the aisle seat, but the one between us remained empty. We exchanged friendly words and felt we had a good deal.

While I was still awake, I watched The Choral, a movie set in WW1, about a choir, although that’s a rather simplistic description. In a trip of great movies, this was right up there.

Ralph Fiennes is always good, but the rest of the cast was great too. The movie worked on many levels and although I won’t pretend to be a movie reviewer I’d recommend it highly. I loved it.

For someone who hasn’t been to the movies for a couple of years, it was a decent binge and reminded me that our lives have got a little out of hand, so we’ve lost track of such simple pleasures.

Our plan for the next three weeks is to slow down, go for walks and generally relax. We shall see.

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It’s nearly the time for our persimmons to ripen.

As usual, we’ll probably miss out.

We seemed doomed to travel every year just as they come into their season.

On the other hand, I’m enjoying the best crop ever of feijoas from our little tree. The fruit is huge and lovely.

The abundance of all sorts of fruit right now is wonderful for our internal health, but once again we’re going to miss most of it - for a very sad reason.

We were booked for a few weeks in Canada from late May to help Cathie’s mother Wilma celebrate her 99th birthday.

Sadly, Wilma didn’t make it.

Cathie got back to Toronto in time for the funeral last Thursday and I’m heading off later this week in pursuit. I don’t think the persimmons will wait.

Over in Tirimoana, the concrete was poured on Friday and there’s a builder on site today. By the time we return, we’ll probably have a fully constructed garage.

I’m travelling over there tomorrow with old friends Lesley and Markus.

For me it’ll be a chance to see what’s happened on the building site in the last week and for Lesley and Markus a stepping stone in their journey from Wanaka to the Cook Strait ferry, as they cross to the North Island on Wednesday.

Since I last wrote, we’ve assembled the work for the May exhibition at the Suter.

Here’s one of four little groups of pots that will be on show.

Sadly I’ll miss the opening, but it’ll still be going when we get back in May. Will the same be true for the persimmons?

If you’re in Nelson, get along to the Suter at 5.30pm on Wednesday May 29 and have a glass of wine. There probably won’t be persimmons.

In another recent development, the 400th subscriber to this substack just signed up. I’m sure he won’t mind me saying that it’s my nephew Kim, from Australia - a good way to keep up with family gossip.

There’s bound to be news from Canada in the next few weeks. We have no plans, but we may take a road trip up to Quebec and check out the sights.

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We have an urgent need to get some pots made, but will we have time?

Our next project has begun.

Over the weekend we tied up all the loose ends related to Captain Cook’s Caper and turned our attention to the Great Tirimoana Garage Construction.

I know this isn’t very interesting, but writing has always been a way for me to debrief and clear my head, so here goes.

Sunday was a whirlwind.

We drove back to Nelson, where the kayaks from our swim trip were waiting on board the good ship Fidelis. With some difficulty, we extricated them, loaded them on to our new second-hand trailer and drove them back to their home with our friends Ralph and Sally.

Then we had a cup of tea. It’s been a while since we sat down for a good chat with some of my oldest friends. We all started making pots in Nelson nearly 50 years ago and it was Ralph who was responsible for giving me a wheel and telling me to get back to work three years ago.

Feeling better for the chat, we had a whirlwind tour around Nelson, dropping off pots for the next art society exhibition and ticking off a heap of tasks that could only be done in the big city. A major job was buying a new stove to replace the tragic relic we’ve been burning food on for the last year. That was very exciting. When the electrician comes to wire the garage we’ll get it installed.

As part of the garage project, we’re moving the laundry out of our tiny bach to make a bit of space.

We’d been planning on buying an expensive but flimsy laundry tub on this trip, but Cathie found a large and sturdy second-hand one on sale for $40 at nearby Duncan Bay.

Its longest dimension was listed as 900mm, so we knew it would fit in the car.

Duncan Bay isn’t exactly nearby. Turns out it’s 90 minutes from Nelson and then another 90 minutes on to Tirimoana.

From Nelson, you drive 45 minutes and then turn off State Highway Six at Rai Valley and drive through very green and pleasant farmland before undertaking a tortuous drive across a mountain.

It’s beautiful native bush and with the windy road you drive slowly enough to take in how nice it is.

They even left this forest giant in the middle of the road.

The bay itself is enticing - and user-friendly.

We found the home of the laundry tub.

“Didn’t you bring a trailer?”

It turned out that although we had the dimensions of the cupboard below the tub, the owners hadn’t bothered to mention that the bench top was 2.2m long. Not only that, but they were leaving later that afternoon and everything had to be moved out by then.

What a conundrum.

We managed to get the bench and its attached tub into the car by sliding it right up to the front windscreen between the seats, but there was no way we could fit in the cupboard.

Fortunately, the owners decided that they could put it on their trailer and meet me with it at Rai Valley at about 5pm.

So off we went. About four hours after leaving Nelson, we arrived at Tirimoana.

Some time later I made the round trip from there to Rai Valley, arriving back at about 6pm, victorious.

Now it’s Monday.

One of my new tasks is a newsletter for the art society and I spent the morning finishing and dispatching the first. Here it is.

By the time I’d done that, we had a man up a tree with a chainsaw.

His offsider was managing the chipper.

By the end of the day we’ll have a clear space for the earthworks to begin.

Glad I have all that off my chest - I feel much better now.

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