Steven and Mary

It was the weather that finally did it. Really, that city is only fit for penguins and masochists.

They were over it, had reached a stage in life when, although not retired, there was no need to be holed up in a big house on Wellington’s south coast watching the rain and seawater soup drive horizontal past the picture window. Friends had lived in Masterton, had often talked about the distinct seasons, the lovely evenings with the sun setting on the verandah, glass of the local in hand. Sounds like us, they thought. Cheap houses, too – we could put some aside for later. Goodbye, then, to those ‘nothing’ days, farewell the indeterminate gloom, hello summer, autumn, winter and spring.

Thirty degree summer days are bone dry, not a humid fug like you’d get in Auckland, and when they take the washing off the line the towels are crisp and crunchy like poppadoms. To them the winter frosts are so pretty and the cold is forgiven because a nice day will come and they can light the log fire tonight and be snug behind the curtains. Spring bulbs flower along the rural roadsides, bright yellow in the noonday sun. And clear autumn evenings when a million silver stars wink at them, saying “good decision”.

Chris and Lizzie

The Skytower recedes slowly in the rear-view mirror and green fields lie ahead. Manukau, Takanini, Drury, Bombay, the motorway exits tick quickly by and will soon be replaced by the rolling hills of northern Waikato and the Hauraki Plain. A few hundred kilometers to drive, seven or so hours to a new life with no plans, nothing organised aside from a small rural property which will be a home of some sort, for now at least.

Crazy. Everybody told him so. High paying job, nice villa in a nice part of town, kids at the nice leafy school up the street – why chuck it all in? But even at that distance the Wairarapa has a magnetic attraction impossible to repel. Is it the luscious landscape, the big sky for thinking big thoughts? Or perhaps the gentle pace and gentler people? It’s certainly the clean air for the boys to breathe, the pretty little rural school for them to learn important things at, things you don’t learn at city schools, like why the firewood shed is inhabited by huhu grubs.

The Hendersons

It’s funny how they moaned when they were here as kids. Nothing to do, they complained. Masterhole they called it, Cardytown, Greydom. No shopping, no clubs, no fun. Can’t wait to get out of the place.

But one by one they’re returning. Back to our new place, or to buy a block right near where we farmed back then. Just for a little while, she said, I’m sick of travelling. It won’t be for long, he assured, I just need to make a few dollars, buy a house in town. And the youngest one, she tried flatting in Christchurch but didn’t last – too noisy, too fast.

The winged one has nested, found a good bloke – her high school sweetheart! – and got settled, milking cows at Parkvale (we will be grandparents in five and a half months). Her brother has built a house – just out of Mauriceville – and is happy there, alone for now, with his dogs. And the young one, she tried city life again but she’s back at home, leaving a trail of broken hearted young men no doubt. Maybe one will follow her here.

Jane

She’d often noticed that there’s a certain bend on the downhill side where the whole valley opens up before your eyes like an oil-on-canvas landscape. And how it always seems to be bathed in sunshine while everything behind her is gritty and grey. And how much she was beginning to resent that haul back over that hill, tick tock, by the clock, every Monday at dawn.

I’d love to get away from all that ‘corporate wife’ stuff, she thought, give the children a provincial upbringing, not have to fuss about the house so much. But I’ll need to put a very good case. Decent schools? Check. Our current property suitable? Yep. Social possibilities? Well, it’ll be different, but there’ll be as many as we need. Proximity to the extended family? They’ll love to visit.

Would you mind the commute, honey? Not at all darling, not at all.

(First published in Wairarapa Lifestyle magazine, Winter 2010)

Two words. Woo hoo!

It was perfect. Just how I wanted it to be. Music was very definitely in the house last night.

Judging by the enthusiasm with which the concept was received a couple of months ago; the enthusiasm with which Jess Chambers‘ performance was received last night; and the enthusiastic emails I’ve received today, the old-fashioned ’salon recital’ could be making a comeback. I said it was an experiment (although someone did point out that I also called it the ‘inaugural’ Ahiaruhe house concert) and I can confidently say that the experiment was a success. There was some luck on my side though.

I was lucky that Jess was keen to entertain my left-of-centre suggestion in the first place. I’d have understood if she hadn’t been – it’s a bit of a hike over the hill and back, the audience number is limited by the size of the room, and it could be an intimidating setting for someone used to bigger spaces. I got around the first issue by offering to put her and her partner Peter up for the night and feeding them good farm produce and their favourite beer; I solved the second by charging a little more for entry than I was originally intending; and avoided the third by not sending her any pictures of the room before she got here.

The weather was also likely to give me grief  – this house can be very noisy if it’s raining heavily or blowing hard, and getting in the front door can be a mission in a northerly. But we got lucky with that too – it was a beautiful, dead calm autumn evening and the room was as quiet as a church. And warm, thankfully, as this house can be mightily cold in a southerly snap.

Lucky also to have a supply of great friends and acquaintances who jumped at the chance to attend, some coming from as far away as Wellington and Pukerua Bay as well as from around the Wairarapa. As much as I’ve claimed that I set it up because I wanted to hear Jess in such a setting, providing music for people has always been a bit of a pastime of mine, albeit previously in the form of cassetted recording tape or plastic disks of data (sshh, don’t tell). So sitting in that room last night with 40-odd familiar people who were showing that they were thoroughly enjoying the show – including a wife who hadn’t sat down all day until then – I felt like the luckiest guy in the world.

The performance was magical. The intimate setting suited Jess’ understated presence perfectly. Peter Hill was the ideal accompanist on guitars and mandolin. The audience was wonderfully attentive and hung on every note, and were generous with their applause. And Jess was funny and engaging and sang her beautifully-crafted songs with passion and precision. It seemed all over far too quickly.

So, any thoughts about who to get for the next one?

P.S. See Karl du Fresne’s review of the show here http://karldufresne.blogspot.com/2010/04/concert-in-wairarapa.html

I’ve been proved wrong – again.

So many gigs I’ve attended in recent times have been spoiled by inconsiderate patrons blabbing their way through the performance that I’ve been considering giving up attending live music altogether. Too damn frustrating. Yes, I’m getting on a bit in years. Yes, I’m a bit sensitive to these things (only one sound at a time – please!). And yes, the onus has to be – at least in part – on the performer to win over the crowd and make them want to listen. But I still don’t understand the folk who pay good money at the door and then chatter all night, oblivious to what they’re (presumably) there for. I just don’t get it.

However, at the San Francisco Bath House last Friday were The Mountain Goats and a crowd which was as one. “Sshhh” was hissed and the singer smiled. “Quiet” was whispered and the audience chuckled. Respect. I really didn’t think it was possible – even the big ones recently (Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams) had talkers and hecklers, right next to or behind me of course. Every other gig I’ve been to at the SFBH has been tainted by chin-waggers – except, actually, now that I think about it, Loudon Wainwright. And John Darnielle of the Goats reminded me very much of Loudon – big presence, messed-up mind, acoustic guitar, autobiographical songs. The audience for the Goats was clearly a group of fans, and they paid their money and they turned up and they listened and indulged in a bit of banter and they got their money’s worth. And some.

Anyway, I’ve been ruminating (sorry) on the Goats’ gig as I prepare for a (booked out) house concert I’ve organised for this weekend. Frustrated, annoyed, exasperated by recent events at local (and other) gigs where attendees have been just plain rude and have spoiled others’ enjoyment, I’ve got the wonderful APRA-winning singer-songwriter Jess Chambers and her multi-instrumentalist mate Peter Hill playing right here in my lounge for a group of like-minded music lovers. There will be quality music, there will be responsible imbibations, some little nibbles at interval, and quietness – apart, of course, from the artists and the applause and the chatter at half time and before and after. At least that’s how I envisage it playing out. If it does, then my faith will be restored – until I’m proved right again at the next public gig.

If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by work or life, or even if you’re not, check this out. Astonishing!

El Loco de la Catedral from James Rogan on Vimeo.

Gardening doesn’t come naturally to me. I was born in the middle of London and raised between there and a tiny house in central Wellington.  Although my very resourceful mother coaxed a family-load of vegetables and herbs from a few square feet of dirt in Tinakori Road, the urge to till the soil never rubbed off on either of her sons – or her cockney husband, for that matter.

Ironic, then, that I should end up with 25 acres of perfectly good growing land, but maybe not surprising that I can manage only a pocket-handkerchief vege plot.

This fact was pointed out to me by a recent vistor who questioned why it is that I have things growing in big pots on the deck (she’s always asking pointed questions). I told her, truthfully, that it was because I already had the pots and I was sick of them lying around sprouting weeds. She didn’t believe me. Then I agreed with her that maybe I’m living an urban lifestyle in a rural environment.

But I’ve been thinking about that, and I’m not sure that we live much differently from many of our farmer neighbours. They have flat screen TVs and espresso machines. They have candle-lit dinner parties and welcome their pet dog inside (although not necessarily at the same time). Crikey, some of them even have European cars. And they don’t all have sprawling vege gardens or kill their own meat.

My little plot – and the offending terracotta pots – is just the right size for me to tend and for my family to pick from. It’s usually got some lettuce, some rocket, chillies, chives, a few spring onions, parsley, coriander when it’s not seeding, and my favourite nadine potatoes. In the cooler months I grow leeks, broccoli, and lettuce. We also planted some fruit trees the winter before last and the nashi tree had half a dozen sensationally sweet pears a few weeks ago. There’s a heritage apple and a quince, pear and, I think, plum, plus a fig and a walnut tree. Oh, and the essential bay, nearly cut off in its infancy by territorial hares.

And my little plot always features tomatoes in the summer. Until recently I’ve grown a few heritage varieties, and always liked the “Black From Tula” from Kings’ seeds. This year I discovered a Supertom which had had the Tula grafted on to it, and what a revelation that’s been! One $8 plant has kept us going all season with sweet, dark fruit, plucked ripe and still warm from the summer sun. (An enduring memory of a trip to Italy is calling in to a rural  roadside café, asking for a salami and tomato sandwich, and the patron ducking out the back to pick the tomato.) But the tomatoes in the pots were a letdown. Maybe they were feeling too urban?

I’ve come to really value my humble plantings, silly as they may look in the expanse that could be occupied – perhaps like me, a city boy transplanted into the country.

I slept last night with the windows wide open, not because it was particularly hot, but because for the first time in a while it was deadly silent. Not a breath of wind, no animals baying or baa-ing or moo-ing or barking, no children dispatching animated aliens in the den, no haymaking or direct-drilling machinery in the neighbouring paddocks, no wife listening to late-night radio and fretting about today’s lessons. No, all those things were in abeyance, so I took myself off to the big-windowed guest room, threw open the double-hungs, wrapped up warm and listened. To nothing.

Everyone imagines, of course, that it’s quiet in the country. It’s not. The country is actually a workplace, with the workers using the tools of industry to produce their goods. Around here we’ve got the lot – sheep, beef, dairy, cropping, olives, wine … Separate lambs from their mothers, there’s a helluva din. Put a hundred young bulls in a paddock – bedlam. Graze the milkers a bit hard and they start protesting. When the birds are feeding, the gas guns boom. And if a frost is looming there’s no respite from the helicopters or wind machines.

All this noise has been known get on an ex-townie’s wick – but not mine. I enjoy the coming and going of tractors next door, the stock truck rumbling down the road, the plovers screeching as they dive-bomb the magpies. Because I know that here, unlike in the city, there are nights – and sometimes days – that you can hear a farm gate being closed 2kms away. And dawns, like this morning’s, that are filled only with the sound of song from the native birds, slowly returning to the neighbourhood as we all plant a few more trees.

It’s been home for nearly ten years now, but that sound of silence out here in the Wairarapa hinterland is still a luxury worth all the inconveniences of a rural lifestyle.

Whatever was in that milkshake-sized paper cup that Lucinda Williams sipped from at the Wellington Town Hall last night, it helped avoid almost certain disaster. In a show of two halves, the legendary Louisiana-born songstress eventually snatched victory from the jaws of defeat after early sound problems threatened to derail her first show downunder in a decade and a half.

Quite why Auckland acoustic duo The Bads made the journey south to “open” for Miss Williams I’m not sure – they were restricted to 15 minutes of pleasant country-pop offerings while the crowd found their seats. Looking for all the world like a Gillian Welch and David Rawlings setup (Brett Adams with tiny guitar and lightning fingers) they really were an offering only – almost a sacrifice, as it turned out.

Hardly had The Bads – who were very good – unplugged, than Williams’ band sauntered on stage and began a noodling sort-of jam that suggested a quick sound-check before the lady herself took the microphone. Forty minutes later they were still there, not a word spoken, twin-guitars screeching in to the voluminous town hall theatre. It transpired that at Lucinda’s suggestion, their aftershow jams should be recorded for posterity and released as an album and that this was their chance to profile themselves as The Buick Six, a band in its own right. Really, it was an unnecessary intrusion into the evening, not helped by a rather LA attitude and a PA volume that would be hard to come down from.

A much needed beverage at the interval and we were settled back in our seats at 9.10 pm, just in time for the band to reappear, along with a biker’s moll standing at the microphone. Head-to-toe black (normally-blonde hair included), boots, chains, the works – it took a while to realise that this wasn’t one of the stage crew but the diva herself! Launching into the first song looking a bit uncomfortable, the reason became apparent when she aborted the next, claiming “echoey shit” going on in her ears and ten minutes worth of stopping and starting didn’t really solve the ear bud monitoring problem. A good-natured crowd assured Lu that all was well out front, if not in her head, so why not just get on with it? Lots of rushing around on stage, protestations to the monitor sound team side-of-stage, assurances sought from the audience that we were happy with the sound we were getting, and the show stuttered to a start.

The beauty of live music – especially heavily-amplified rock music – is that things have the potential to go very wrong, particularly when you’re dealing with lots of technology and fragile artists like Miss Williams. As with another recent visitor, Ryan Adams, Williams has a history of spitting the dummy when the cables have some kinks or the stars above the venue aren’t quite lined up correctly. Heart in mouth, I was waiting for her to melt down last night, but song by song and sip by sip she climbed back in to the show and started dishing up some treasures from a dozen or so albums going back exactly 30 years.

Another distraction the poor girl had to contend with was her own band. Occasionally I got the strong impression that the backing band, guitarists in particular, thought that they were actually the main attraction here, such was their complete lack of deference to the reason for their presence. Talking among themselves while playing behind her, constantly gesturing to the sound guys, strutting around the stage like  peacocks, it was like there were two shows going on. And while I’m having a moan about the band, what is it with these guys who feel the need for a fresh guitar for every song? There was so much activity on stage between songs that it was like a hamburger eating competition! And a guitar technician coming and going dressed in a suit and tie?!? Geddouddahere!

By half way through the set the paper cup genie had worked her magic and Lu was noticeably into the night. The band was starting to get in behind a bit, the scrabbling on the sound desk had calmed down, and things were ticking along nicely. Rather alarmingly, however, the back catalogue is now such that Miss Williams felt the need to regularly refer to sheets of music on a stand in front of her – a little premature aging perhaps? Well, she is 56 …

Gripes with the band’s ‘attitude’ aside – and I’ll exclude the terrific Stetson-topped drummer from such criticism – the two-hour show propelled itself along to a satisfactory conclusion, and the ‘encore’ section (really, is such pretense necessary?) was a tour de force with a mixture of solo acoustic gems and a searing performance of “Unsuffer Me” from the ‘West’ album. Band dismissed, Williams ended with some gracious words and a rather tired solo rendition of her breakthrough song from 1988, “Passionate Kisses”. Obligatory standing ovation ensued.

Whether or not we see the three-time Grammy winner back on our shores, this show was a timely reminder that persistence is everything, that self-belief (however fragile) can get you places, and that a propensity for bad choices of both men and stimulants can provide excellent material for songs. And if you’ve got a voice like Lu’s to put those songs out into the room, a little magic can be conjured up – with the help of a waxed paper cup.

Listening to Matinee Idle today, and Phil mentioned not being able to get in to a show by a visiting British musician Jez Lowe at … Carterton’s “Lounge” bar! Thanks Phil, but please don’t encourage everyone to come over here – it’s nice and quiet, just how I like it!

Have you heard the joke?

I was at a party the other night and someone asked me what I did for a living. I said “I’m a web designer”.

“Oh, how interesting!” they replied. Then: “Actually, you might be able to help me – I’ve been having trouble with my email …. ”

It’s no joke – it happens all the time. Why is it that anyone who works anywhere near the internet is automatically an expert in email? Well, the answer is quite simple – there are no experts in email.

Email is actually the scourge of the internet. It’s hopelessly unreliable, it’s insecure, about 95% of all email is spam using up huge resources in person-hours, dollars and carbon … And those of us who work in web-related businesses are obliged to write off hours every month either fixing our own email, that of our clients, or that of various friends and colleagues. That’s if we can fix it.

I reverted to sending invoices by snail mail a few months back because too much was going missing. I soon got sick of it, of course, and by coincidence none’s gone AWOL in recent times – that I know of, anyway. But if I’ve learned anything over the last year or so it’s that email is not to be trusted or taken for granted on any level. I know I have frustrated clients, and I do my best to keep their email running, but it’s not a set-and-forget thing – like most things in this world, a little maintenance is required to keep it ticking along. And the cost in hours of that maintenance – either my hours or my client’s – is growing by the month. Somehow we’re going to have to share the pain.

Email? It’s no joke. It’s a pain in the proverbial.