Queen Elizabeth II has been a constant in my life, and for millions of others around the world. She was Queen of New Zealand and is on our currency, mentioned in our passports. I played God Save the Queen on the piano to open a concert when I was a teenager (before I learned our own national anthem) and I can still play it by heart. I saw her when she was here in the 70s. I think it must have been 1977, when my family and I travelled to a city north of us, to see her and the Duke in a park in a bay. Afterwards, we wandered down to the nearby port, to marvel at the beautiful Royal Yacht Britannia in port. The Queen had an important role in New Zealand, as the relationship of the Maori people is with the Crown, not just the NZ government. Together, Māori and the Crown signed a Treaty in 1840 that saw us become a country – a very different relationship for NZ’s indigenous people than those of many other countries (though still complicated). And in the 1990s, she personally signed into legislation (the only piece of legislation in NZ signed specifically by her, not her representative) an apology to one of the Maori tribes, when a settlement was made between them and the Crown. She was 96 when she died; as a result I’m not sad. Instead, I’m glad she didn’t have a long period of illness, and went peacefully. That’s all any of us, royal or not, can hope for.
I am ruing the one that got away. After a winter and early spring full of storms and gloom, Friday was a beautiful day. I decided to grab my camera, and head to the Botannical Gardens, to see if I could snap some pictures of tui in the flowering kowhai. I positioned myself under a tall kowhai amassed in yellow flowers, and watched the tui – five or six of them – flitting from branch to branch, sucking the nectar from the flowers. I snapped away, turned my attention to some magnificent magnolia flowers and rhododendrons, then headed home. Later, I reviewed my pics on the computer, instead of first transferring them. There was one, a close up (thanks to my zoom lens) of a tui, upside down, with its beak in a kowhai flower. It was stunning, the eye was in sharp focus, the greens and blues of the tui a standout against the backdrop of pure, glorious, yellow. But as I went to copy it across to my computer, disaster struck. It has happened before, but never on this scale. To make the long story short, I lost all my photographs of the morning. I’ve since repaired and reformatted the chip, but I’m not sure if I can trust it. So now, I only have the memory of maybe the best photo I’ve ever taken of a tui. It still makes me smile. But I can’t brag about it – maybe it had to be seen to be believed, and I was the only one who saw it. To show what you’re missing, here is a shot of kowhai flowers from the same tree, and an uncooperative tui behind a bunch of flowers. I went back the next morning, but there was a bully tui chasing the others away. and this is the best shot I got. Still, the tree itself is gorgeous, isn’t it? And this is a small part of a tree that was covered in blooms. Yellow; the true colour of spring in Wellington.
Last but not least, I’m starting another blog! Yes, as if I don’t have enough already! For the record, there’s my x365 blog (which I’ve made private now that my name can be linked to it), my alphablog that I wrote before I started A Separate Life, my travelalphablog, this one of course, my 2018 daily blog, and my No Kidding blog elsewhere. I do love a good blogging project, and it’s been four years since I had a new one. It’s not original. Prompted by Dona’s year of daily blogs, and inspired again recently by Jess’s lovely post about The Book of Daily Delights, I thought I might start a blog noting things that make me happy. Hopefully it will delight you in turn. I probably won’t post every day, maybe once a week. But I intend to give each day a daily delight. Here’s the link to Mali’s Daily Delights.
A Separate Life 