Autumn: The season of complicated emotions

The arrival of autumn is often a shock to the system, not so much because it is a surprise, but because I had been hoping that summer would hang on just a little longer. That’s when I have complicated emotions about where I live, a lost summer, and not travelling in NZ enough to really enjoy summer. It’s the season when we look at projects we wanted to do, and see them unfinished, or worse, even unstarted! It’s the season when we realise that the year is one quarter over already, and yet New Year’s only seems as if it were yesterday. But once I have managed to reconcile those feelings, there are more things I love about autumn. I’ve written about them before (and there may be some repetition), but here are five favourites:

• Seeing the changing colours. We don’t get a lot here in evergreen Wellington, but there are plenty of deciduous trees in gardens, and as their leaves turn, we get to enjoy the changing beauty of nature. Today we were driving down the street, and a single orange leaf was floating straight towards us, reminding us of the season.
• It’s a gorgeous season in my house. Our house looks so good when the sun streams in; it brings light to all the rooms, and the rimu wood floors and ceilings glow a glorious warm golden hue. In summer, we end up having curtains and blinds closed on the western side of the house, as it heats up too quickly, too much, and we have no way to cool the house afterwards. So we try to avoid getting heat in. But at this time of year, when it is chilly outside (as it has been the last week or so), welcoming the sun in feels happy and joyous.
• Sleeping is so much more comfortable. We have a heavier cover, the light is a little later (though not quite so much after daylight saving ended), and it’s colder in the mornings, so snuggling in bed is just lovely!
• Exercise is easier. I don’t have to worry too much about sunscreen when I go on my walks around the neighbourhood hills. Likewise, it’s cool enough to wear some kind of jacket with pockets, meaning I can easily carry my phone (important for my audiobooks/music etc), keys, tissues etc. (I have a good portable snap-on pocket holder for the summer, but my new phone doesn’t quite fit.) And the weather is calmer too, and I’m more likely to exercise outside. (I hate walking in the wind for various reasons.)
• Apples and spices are perfect at this time of year – some of my favourite flavours.

Read Full Post »

Monday Miscellany

We got home, and there were little green sprouts budding all over our oak tree just outside our kitchen window. (One of the advantages of living on a hill – we get to look straight into the tops of trees and enjoy their foliage). It seems that they’re turning into leaves as I watch them. Spring has supposedly arrived. Which means that today is cloudy, with gale force winds. The winds are what I hate about spring.

Sadly, being away at the wrong time meant that I missed the annual tulip display at the Botannical Gardens (that is surely being destroyed by the wind as I type), and the kowhai flowers – though I’m still hopeful of catching some of them if the winds drop.

I’ve been under the weather. Caught a cold/cough when I was away. (Two negative covid tests). Seemed to be the only one who was so inflicted, but it has knocked me about. Aching chest and stomach muscles after coughing so much. Almost three weeks on, I’m starting to feel better. I’m one of the few people I know who haven’t had covid, but this is a reminder why I don’t want to.

Some minor weight loss is encouraging. Minor because there is so much more to go. But encouraging because it has been continuing for the last four months.

Post-travel updates are almost always boring. Apologies!

Read Full Post »

Monday Miscellany

Every so often, when I’ve gone a few weeks with very few if any comments on my posts, I contemplate why I’m still blogging. Then lo and behold, one or two old time fellow bloggers, ones I met when I started back in 2006, pop up and make my day. And keep me going for a bit longer. Thanks, guys.

Times have changed. When I was a kid, I only knew the name of a native bird as a fantail. Today at lunch, my husband and I were sitting at the dining table when he cried out and pointed, “piwakawaka!” Yes, just behind me, in the air above our deck, a piwakawaka or fantail was flitting about chasing flying insects. The fact we use the Maori names of our native birds as a matter of course these days is a great joy to me.

I’m still going through photos from our trip. There are so many that make me smile. The classics are good, but sometimes finding interesting little details when I zoom in on my screen as I edit them make the effort worth while. It is truly amazing what our cameras and phones can pick up, without us even knowing it unless we edit and zoom and enhance them later. Even though I may not ever print these photos, I am informed, thrilled, and grateful for the fact that when I lighten the shadowy areas I can often see an unusual or particularly detailed part of a particular animal, or that I can zoom into an interesting growth on a tree, or on examination find something funny or unexpected behind a subject. Memories are great, but the new discoveries I didn’t know were there are really special too, weeks after our return. We spent a lot on our trip. But we didn’t just pay for that month we were away. We got value in the months of anticipation, and the rewards we continue to get now.

I am very thankful too for shops that give refunds easily. I bought two lampshades on Friday. I’ve been meaning to do change the shades on some lamps for ages, and was convinced the new shapes would look good. They did not. Sigh. So back they went, and the refund – even though they were bought on sale – was provided without difficulty. Perfect service!

Finally, another rant about unrealistic age issues in movies. I saw The Miracle Club yesterday. It has some great actors – Maggie Smith, Kathy Bates, and Laura Linney. As the movie progresses, we see that Kathy Bates’ and Laura Linney’s characters were supposedly young together, played together, and were best friends. That felt and looked wrong, and my friend agreed. At lunch after the movie we googled their respective ages. Kathy Bates is 75 and Laura Linney is 59. 59 is not the same as 75, even if movie producers/casting directors etc want us to believe it is. Two or three years difference would have been fine – even five. But they seem to think that once you’re in your late 50s, you are “old” and that old covers anything from 50-something to death. Argh! It wasn’t just the women either. Maggie Smith’s “husband” in the film was played by an actor 14 years her junior, and that was obvious too. Why don’t they cast people according to the age of the characters, give or take a few years? Grrr.

Read Full Post »

Monday Miscellany: Supermarket Musings

I made a quick trip to the supermarket this afternoon, preparing for a visit this evening from a young relative heading back to the South Island. It was a little chaotic – I should have gone half an hour earlier, but caught the out-of-school rush from the three nearby secondary schools. But it may also have been because there is a game in an hour at the nearby stadium.

The game is one of the FIFA Women’s World Cup games. They are being held jointly in New Zealand and Australia, two relatively low population countries, where football is not a major sports code. But they are breaking ticket sales records, and it has been great to see people supporting all the teams. New Zealand opened its campaign in style. The team beat Norway, making it our first ever (men or women) World Cup victory. It was an exciting game – I hadn’t intended watching, but turned on the replay, and for once was entertained by football. So were other people, and ticket sales for Wellington’s game skyrocketed after that first game. Which might explain why there were so many people on the street wearing beanies and wrapped up walking towards the stadium, and why the supermarket was so busy.

It might also explain why, for the first time ever (I think), I saw a big guy with a high-vis vest emblazoned with “Security” standing near the chocolate section, watching a group of teenage girls. I wondered if he is there every day. Or maybe again he’s there because people are buying snacks for the game. An unsolved supermarket mystery.

It was also expensive. I’d heard that kumara (sweet potatoes) were ridiculously expensive at the moment, as a result of floods during the growing season months ago, but I decided to risk it. I got a bit of a shock at the checkout though – one large kumara was over $8! (That’s about US$5/GB4/Euro4.5) That’s a good reason to make it the hero of the meal, instead of meat. I’m looking forward to trying a new kumara/pumpkin/lentil curry recipe.

There were a lot more people wearing masks at the supermarket today. I wonder if that is reflective simply of more winter viruses, or of higher COVID infections at the moment. I have a friend who has developed an awful post-COVID rash, and described it as her “face melting.” She ended up at the Emergency Dept at the hospital the other day, and said she was the first case they’d seen here, though it is more common in Europe. (She’d recently returned from France). Yet another example of why COVID is not over, and the nasty side effects it can deliver.

Read Full Post »

Monday Miscellany: Travel Version

Approximately 39 hours ago, the Husband and I returned home after a month long holiday in southern Africa. We were sleep deprived after travelling for about 26 hours (flight delays in Johannesburg and then Sydney added to the length of the trip), and our bodies are still about 8-9 hours out of sync with their location! (A ten hour time difference, when experts say it takes about a day per hour to adjust, causes some mighty jet-lag.) I’m not sure why we do this – we often travel in May, then return for the bulk of the winter. And right now it is cold and rainy outside. But we are still buzzing from the awesome trip we had.

I have many gbs of photos to trawl through, although I did quite a lot of that while I was away, posting on Fbk and Instagram (where you can find me as (at)travellingmali). Cameras with wifi, phones that take great pics themselves, and Snapseed, my favourite photo editing app on my phone, allowed me to edit photos very quickly and upload them. I tried to be restrained. I was, actually! And I was buoyed too by the fact that so many people seemed to enjoy them. I’d just followed (on social media) my sister-in-law who had travelled to several countries in Europe, and loved seeing her pics. Maybe it’s because of covid. After four years, we have been starved of international travel, whether that is in person, or virtual vicarious travel following our friends and family.

I’ll write more about it here, with some photos too. I’ll try to supplement the photos with the stories behind them, so those who’ve seen the pics won’t get too bored! But first, I need to back them all up!

We were paranoid before we left about catching covid. One country insisted on seeing vaccination certificates, one experience (a four day train trip) also insisted on a covid declaration before boarding, and even required us to agree they could tell us to get off at any time. The last thing we wanted was to get it a few days before flying. But we’re home now, did a test last night, and we’re both fine. We ate in a lot of restaurants – many were open air, but many too were enclosed, because there was a bitter cold snap in Cape Town and the winelands. Most of our activities were outdoors, and so risk was low. We barely wore masks, except on flights and in airports. It was lovely to feel such freedom – I even forgot sometimes that masks were still a thing!

We heard some sad tales about covid in South Africa and Zimbabwe – family members lost, herbal remedies being pushed to vulnerable people, and the extreme difficulties that it caused in the tourism industry. Things are picking up now for them all, and I hope that they will continue to recover.

I was of course reminded again how lucky we are. In Zimbabwe, the unemployment rate is over 70%. Yet without fail, the people there welcomed us, were the friendliest, happiest people I’ve seen working in tourism anywhere. Even the woman doing airport security checks was singing happily! Yet inflation is so high, everything seemed to be priced in US dollars (which did not work in our favour).

In South Africa it is better, but still high. They have, of course, the inevitable immigrants from Zimbabwe looking for work, as well as locals. We had an engaging taxi driver (twice) who had moved from Zimbabwe, and informed us of his hopes to leave Africa, maybe move to Australia to work there. There are people advertising their skills (plumbing, electricians, labourers etc) at particular points on the roadside, hoping for casual day work. Life is not easy.

Then there are the power blackouts, known as load-shedding. We drove into Johannesburg one evening at rush hour – around 6 pm – when the power was out. No traffic lights in parts of the city of around 8 million people (if you include Pretoria, it goes up to over 14 million)! Whilst we were largely unaffected – hotels, restaurants, safari lodges, and even winery cottages had generators or solar power or both – the local population find it difficult. Three times a day they lose power for up to four hours each time. We experienced it one night at a guesthouse. The power was out when we arrived, so even the doorbell didn’t work (and the security gate was unlocked). It went out again at 11 pm, supposed to come on about 1 am, but didn’t until after 3 am. It was hot, and of course there were no fans or air-conditioning or lights. Our room had an oil lamp. It was like going back to the 1800s. Local people find it difficult too. They have to cook when the power is on, so that they have something to eat at mealtimes when the power is off. They can’t store food in refrigerators, so have to shop almost daily. That means they can’t buy in bulk, can’t buy when products are cheap and store them, can’t even store fresh milk when the temperatures are high. It gets very expensive for them. (Update: Almost as soon as I published this, there was an announcement that load-shedding may start to reduce. I hope that will be a reality for them.)

Finally, South Africa is both a great tourism destination, and a difficult place to be. We were constantly aware that we were the privileged white people, served by the local indigenous Africans. We were so aware of apartheid and its hangover, I wondered how white South Africans feel there. They take their privilege for granted, for example they talk about the ready availability of “services” which to us simply meant cheap, exploited, labour. (Though as travellers, we too appreciated the ability to get our washing done in bulk at local laundries.) We felt less comfortable in a town we love in the wine region when we noticed the poor housing areas creeping up the hills behind it. Yet we equally felt like country bumpkins in an upmarket hotel in Johannesburg before we left. We were in our safari gear, having flown in from Kruger Park, and were surrounded by the elegant dressers, wealthy shoppers, and the clearly burgeoning middle and upper-middle classes of local Africans. I hope that means there is hope for South Africa. They have a wonderful country, filled with natural resources, amazing landscapes and animals, and talented and committed people. If you ever get the chance, go. You won’t regret it.

Read Full Post »