It has been a happening week in my life ... you know what one of those is like! ... but it has been, almost entirely, a week-or-so of joyous and positive happenings, so I'm writing them all down to remind me that times like this do happen in one's life ...
The big event, of course, was the launch of Paul's new CD in Berlin. The reaction has been glorious! Dear Emily (inspired by the poetry of Emily Dickinson) may even out-sell his Echoes of a Winter Journey, which spent months and months at the top of the Dussmann sales list ... Anyone wanting a record of beautiful piano music, ideal for dreaming and relaxing to, with candles guttering and fire glittering (or, indeed, to play!) ... go to
https://www.hankinsonmusic.com/?fbclid=IwAR13Q0gyriRpdRoa6kO9H8173ehC1DuBbI3rDq3uQguY1mOCzS43QC8zU7I
The 'family's' last publications were brother John's Blood Book (2018)
and my Victorian Vocalists (2017)
So we're keeping up the task of educating and entertaining the world ...
But back on the bottom of the world ... back at
there have been lively happenings too. The horses have been amazing well-behaved ... that's Mikie, Mr B and Rocky (L to R) ...
And here is big bad Johnny and old Boofie the race-winner
Then, on the other side of the trees, there are the aged ladies: Wilma, Sally, Meryl, Anna, Floss and Flip (or is it Flop?) ...
and, just to make up the dozen, down at Motukarara there is the little yearling filly we share with friends Frank and John ... Emily. Of course!
If the horses, however, have been exemplary ... this week all hell let loose in the peacock tribe. It is clearly the peak of the mating season, and since we reduced the available harem size to just two hens, the seven remaining cocks have become excruciatingly and, I suppose, competitively, vocal. The worst culprit had chosen his 'spot' -- out of a whole 35 acres -- right outside my study window ... and serenaded me with a cry like 20 virgins being simultaneously disembowelled every ten minutes ..
Call Nigel, the cockcatcher ... fresh from his triumph on the front patio ...
But Mr Shriekcock was canny. He had a missing feather, through which he had a rear view glimpse of what was going on behind him, and Nigel's efforts to catch him in a rugby tackle missed, each time, by a millimetre. Until Wendy recalled the maxim 'the way to a Mormon's heart is via his stomach'. A scatter of kitty biscuits on the door mat, and Mr Shriekcock dropped his guard at the sight of food. Down he stalked, and wallop! Nigel leaped from behind my Nana's old cabintrunk and plaqued him. Now, you can see in the photo above that a cock, once captured, usually goes quiescent. Not Mr Shriekcock, he squirmed, he squawked, he got up to 100 virgins' worth of decibels, he shat, he pecked, and feathers flew everywhere. But he lost. Bundled into the back of the horsefloat, like a Black Maria, he was trundled off down the drive to ... his new home ...
Gerolstein was down to six boys (temporarily a little cowed, after the capture of their captain) and two girls. One girl was keeping Hoppy company in the depths of the haystack
and the other was off through the fence, in the neighbours' hay paddock, undoubtedly plotting a hatch ... yum! eggs for breakfast!
But no. Yesterday morning I flung open my doors to be greeted with sad news. There was to be a burial (my job) before breakfast. Hoppy's hen had died. That's what they do. They just go into a corner and fade away. The haystack seems to have been nominated hospital.
Oh dear. Just when we had the numbers more or less right. Now we have 6 boys and ONE girl. I'm afraid she will have to be christened Bicyclette. But our attitude to her present presumed batch of eggs has now changed. I think we shall let her hatch them. One? Two? Six? How many will survive ... Peacockworld Problems. And, meanwhile, Hoppy stays, balanced on his one leg, in his corner of the barn, and hopes that the other boys, who have bully propensities, leave him alone. They had better, or ... Ni-gel!
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| Hoppy |
Big boy, Socks (who arrived to stay May 2018), has his early morning scout, scamper and rabbit-catch each morning till 10am after which he is shut inside while the girls go out .. I met him down in the front paddock yesterday guarding a rabbit hole. His mission was successful.
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| Socks, who wandered in a few years back. And stayed. |
But you mustn't think Gerolstein in run ENTIRELY for the pets. The humans need looking after, too. Especially the elderly one. And I've had a rough last few months. And am not exactly in pristine state. Witness the photo above, with little Emily, where I am starting to, vaguely, resemble a pyramid perched on a pair of pants. I have nothing against pyramids, and I have no wish to resemble myself as a 30-something year old
or even as a sixty year old
But I do NOT want to be pale and lingering, I do not want to be more 'handicapped' than I have been since the stroke, nine years ago, the effects of which I have almost taken under my belt. Well, literally, for the immobility rather forced on me by the stroke are partially responsible for the extra 25kg put on since my last (post-stroke) rehab effort in 2014...
Anyway, enough of that. This winter, I began to suffer from very extensive oedema. I had to buy special shoes, support stockings, I could no longer paddle in the sea, I was very unsteady on my once admirable legs, I needed my stick ...
Then one night, in my little flat, I collapsed ... cast on the floor ... TIA? I know all about those ... It seemed I was falling apart. Back in New Zealand, I hastened to the doctor. And, promptly, had another collapse ... I checked my Will, and warned my brother to get himself out to New Zealand soon ...
A week later, I am sitting at my desk, having just fried myself burning up the mountainous bonfire of pine branches from last week's magnus pinus collapsus. My ankles are as slim as a Japanese geisha's ... all oedema gone! And I didn't have a TIA or even two. Plus, on top of that, my liver, put in nightly peril for twenty years, passed the unbloodied and unscarred test! (Just, but he passed!). Seems that there is frog all wrong with me, IF...
My problems of the winter were largely cured by a simple change of medication. I guess I'd been taking the same seven daily tablets (for BP mainly, but also cholesterol and post-stroke bloodthinners) for a long time. It was time for a review. And the review did it! New doctor (super!), new pills (confusing, why all white?) ... old instructions: we've all heard it before: more exercise, less wine ... I am presently trying to calculate how much wine = 1 kilometre .... and looking at the 4.30pm glass freshly poured beside me and thinking, how many metres are YOU ..?
But the best part is simply knowing, in my head, that I am not going to be 'Tied to a Bed in an empty room, like Andromeda tied to the rock'. That am not at the head of the line for another stroke. That my circulation is OK, that I don't need diuretics ... and if I get off my arse and get out of the house, and stop behaving like an invalid, then I'll be altogether less of one ... I'll try, my Gods, I'll try! But encouragement always helps!
So good news on the personal and professional fronts, if not perfect on the Pets front ... but then there is GEROLSTEIN. My Summer Palace, and Wendy's all year round home. It is a truly beautiful little (35 acres) farmlet. I loathe the ghastly, sneerish expression 'lifestyle block' (which I think is 0-10 acres, and implies incompetence). This was, a decade ago, a full-on harness racing farm. 30 plus horses, most in training. My stroke put me out of my small place in the team, Wendy's arthritis didn't help her, and disillusion with the lack-of-honesty and the elitist organisation of harness racing in New Zealand, led us to, over the 2010s, run our operation down.
But Wendy is unstoppable. She has turned the place into a glorious collection of trees and flowers ... where the eleven resident ex-racehorses and their peacock and pussycat pals live a life of luxury. And, chuckle, so do I!
There's a story round Gerolstein most days, but today its HAY!!!!!! We got a huge crop last year. It wasn't the greatest hay, but there were 96 bales of it, and if it was more like a meal at the Chick Inn than at the French Pan Tree, the horses got fat and shiny .... so this year we thought we'd go for a wee bit less ... just the back two paddocks: total maybe 5 acres. Neil arrived Friday, fifteenth year in a row, with the usual array of machinery ...
O my goodness, that's lovely stuff!
What? 55 bales ...! Yay! We wont be paying for winter feed this year.
Of course, Gerolstein is a farm. But it also has a nice little house on it which is my Summer Palace. And which is the headquarters of my Musical-Theatrical-Historical operation (see the approximate Wikipedia article on me). Well, it is not only the racing activities here which are being run down, but also the Musical-Theatrical-Hoarding side. I sold the bulk of my huge mus.th collection (probably, at that time, the most comprehensive in the world) to Professor Ward of Harvard, some time back, and I've tried to divest myself of the remainder, including quite a few remarkable gems, over recent years.
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| The Girl Behind the Counter: costume designs |
Anyway, the point of this rambling is to say that ... at last ... I've found someone(s) who values-treasures-will preserve this remarkable roomful of stuff. The today world's greatest collectors/librarians are flying in to li'l old Sefton, NZ, from the USA, this weekend with two empty suitcases. Well, you all had your chance ...
To be continued, hopefully December will be a wonderful month for all of us ...
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| 18 years ago I transplanted a tiny seedling ... for ten years it struggled against wind, weather and hungry horses. But ... it survived! And prospered ... |
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