'Where are you, and what are you doing' reads the Christmas message from Dean.on the back..
What indeed. All dead.
Dean's Bar, Tangiers.
Another world. Another time.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
At the very bottom of the box .. another world ..
.
'Where are you, and what are you doing' reads the Christmas message from Dean.on the back..
What indeed. All dead.
Dean's Bar, Tangiers.
Another world. Another time.
'Where are you, and what are you doing' reads the Christmas message from Dean.on the back..
What indeed. All dead.
Dean's Bar, Tangiers.
Another world. Another time.
Digging deeper I find ...
and, goodness me, what is this. It looks like a meeting of a cell of wartime miscreants, plotting the downfall of the Empire.
What I think it is, is a gathering in the 1940s or early '50s, of the Society of Australian Writers at Dolphin Square, Pimlico, London. It is attached to photos of Hugh Hastings, Catherine Gaskin, Dymphna Cusak and a delicious-looking, too-writerish-to-be-true, wannabe (maybe he was, oh heck he was!) called Ralph W Peterson. Oh that sweater! Oh, that Colman moustache ...!
There's also one of Henry Handel Richardson, but I think she might not have been a current member,
Anyway, I think it is a historical document, and .. is that Ngaio Marsh in the specs and woolly hat? No, can't be ..
La Lutte éternelle: a ballet by Schwetzoff
Oh dear. When you start opening old boxes and files ..
Lots and lots of photos of ballet dancers. Mostly unlabelled, but here and there one is named. Irina Baronova. Bronislawa Nijinska. Georges Skibine. Tamara Grigorieva. Sono Osato as Beauty (or is it Reality). Loads of Tamara Toumanovas. It's Colonel de Basil's Ballets Russes in their Australian season of 1939.
This one is clearly labelled. An unnamed ballet (I see it was La lutte eternelle) choreographed by Igor Schwetzoff (Schwezoff) with music taken from the works of Schumann. And the artists are Slava Toumine, Nina Verchinina, Paul Petroff, Yura Skibine and Oleg Tupine.
Action photos, posed press photos, somebody's happy snaps, a Christmas Card (of himself) from Skibine ..
Now, I know nothing and care nothing for ballet. But there must be a balletic equivalent of me, somewhere, to whom the contents of this file would mean a great deal. He or she had better get in touch.
Lots and lots of photos of ballet dancers. Mostly unlabelled, but here and there one is named. Irina Baronova. Bronislawa Nijinska. Georges Skibine. Tamara Grigorieva. Sono Osato as Beauty (or is it Reality). Loads of Tamara Toumanovas. It's Colonel de Basil's Ballets Russes in their Australian season of 1939.
This one is clearly labelled. An unnamed ballet (I see it was La lutte eternelle) choreographed by Igor Schwetzoff (Schwezoff) with music taken from the works of Schumann. And the artists are Slava Toumine, Nina Verchinina, Paul Petroff, Yura Skibine and Oleg Tupine.
Action photos, posed press photos, somebody's happy snaps, a Christmas Card (of himself) from Skibine ..
Now, I know nothing and care nothing for ballet. But there must be a balletic equivalent of me, somewhere, to whom the contents of this file would mean a great deal. He or she had better get in touch.
A future star of page makes his stage debut ...
.
Well, I said I'd find a picture to jolly this page up, but I never thought this would surface ...
This is a photo of the cast of a little play called "Dream Angus", produced by Brian Douglas (Standard IV teacher) and directed by Brian Gallas (age 9) at Hataitai School, Wellington, New Zealand in 1955.
No prizes for guessing who appropriated the leading role. Teacher's pet, who nabbed himself the job -- already -- of casting director as well as stage director. I think I was supposed to be Bonnie Prince Charlie in my mother's pleated tartan skirt.
I wonder what became of Rina Brilleman, Judy Price, Katherine Steel and the romantic David Dunkley who, chuckle, always got good parts from this caster. I don't remember if he was any good, but he was -- American! Which was about as romantic and Martian as you got in 1955 Wellington.
Ah me, half a century ago and more..
Well, I said I'd find a picture to jolly this page up, but I never thought this would surface ...
This is a photo of the cast of a little play called "Dream Angus", produced by Brian Douglas (Standard IV teacher) and directed by Brian Gallas (age 9) at Hataitai School, Wellington, New Zealand in 1955.
No prizes for guessing who appropriated the leading role. Teacher's pet, who nabbed himself the job -- already -- of casting director as well as stage director. I think I was supposed to be Bonnie Prince Charlie in my mother's pleated tartan skirt.
I wonder what became of Rina Brilleman, Judy Price, Katherine Steel and the romantic David Dunkley who, chuckle, always got good parts from this caster. I don't remember if he was any good, but he was -- American! Which was about as romantic and Martian as you got in 1955 Wellington.
Ah me, half a century ago and more..
Friday, June 3, 2011
Number 38, or Take me Back to the Yarra Valley!
While the Promethean eagle has been tearing at my shoulder, while I have been suffering equally poignantly from the almost-as-painful experience of alcohol withdrawal (well, semi-withdrawal) and the affres of mal du pays for the Continent of Europe, while I have been frustrated by the inability to type, for the first time since the age of four, at a speed to keep up with my brain, to turn over in bed or to lift a bottle of milk from the frig without pain, and while I have been frozen by the temperatures of New Zealand in the autumnal months …
A little and lovely bit of joy has nevertheless come my way.
My New Zealand racing season has been thin. Worse than my French one, which seems to be over. Five horses in training here, and since my return to Canterbury in October – in large part to see them run – just five starts. Fritzl was the joy boy, with his four starts for a win and a second, but since February the dear wee boy has given us all sorts of health scares, from a tendon (he too!) to an abcess, and he won’t be back on track for a while.
But, across the water, in Australia, young Livia degerolstein continues to fly the Gerolsteiner flag.
After her qualification for the Vicbred Superseries, she ran at Melton and at Geelong and both times hit races that did not suit her. Livia’s trump card is that storming finish from the rear, so when she gets in a race where an unchallenged leader strolls round at a (fine-worthy) dull pace and only really runs a race for the last half or quarter, there’s little chance of her taking the biscuit. She came second at Geelong, thanks to an enterprising drive by Graeme, in spite of that.
And then she went back to Melton for the Vicbred semifinals. I was in two minds. Did I want her to qualify for a rich, classic final she could surely not win? Well, she went out at enormous odds, dropped characteristically to the rear, and, finishing stoutly down the inside, found herself squeezed up by those on the outside, and placed 7th. The first six qualified, and there is no doubt that, with a clear run, she would have made it. As it was, she was named ‘first emergency’, and Graeme nominated her for another race, for the probable event of ‘no scratchings’.
Well, there were no scratchings, and Livia went not to the glamour Group One race, but to Yarra again. I was quite relieved. At Yarra we had a good chance. In fact, I thought, we’d probably be favourite, and should win. The other top favourites, after all, were horses who hadn’t made the Vicbred finals, and Riviera Kiss and Elegantly had both been among Livia’s recent victims.
But, curiously, Way2Bet wasn’t on our side that day, and the punters also looked elsewhere. Everyone talked the other horses, and Livia went out paying $5. And that in spite of the fact that Graeme had ‘put the boy on’: his top driver son, Gavin.
Needless to say, Livia dropped straight to the rear from her outside draw, as the grey, Dufflecoat Jet Lag, rolled to the front. Riviera Kiss was on the leader’s elbow, and Elegantly covered up in the middle, as the well-liked colt Jefferson City improved three wide round the final turn. Livia cruised along in his wake, and as soon as they hit the straight, she just pulled out and left them for dead. Gavin hardly had to rustle her up: she just upped her stride, stuck out the red nose roll, hit the front well before the post, and waltzed home two lengths – which could have been several more – to the good.
Her easiest win yet! Number four for Livia, and number 38 for me … goodness, with only one horse racing I MAY still make it to 40 this year!
Oh, by the way, the Vicbred Final? It was won by Bella’s Delight, which beat Livia half a head for second place in the heats. That heat’s winner, Aussie Made Lombo, fiished third. I think we drew the hot heat!
Alas, no pictures. You don’t want photos of me in my present state, and getting pictures of Australian races is a no-no ..
I’ll jolly up this page with pictures of Gerolstein and the horses soon ..
A little and lovely bit of joy has nevertheless come my way.
My New Zealand racing season has been thin. Worse than my French one, which seems to be over. Five horses in training here, and since my return to Canterbury in October – in large part to see them run – just five starts. Fritzl was the joy boy, with his four starts for a win and a second, but since February the dear wee boy has given us all sorts of health scares, from a tendon (he too!) to an abcess, and he won’t be back on track for a while.
But, across the water, in Australia, young Livia degerolstein continues to fly the Gerolsteiner flag.
After her qualification for the Vicbred Superseries, she ran at Melton and at Geelong and both times hit races that did not suit her. Livia’s trump card is that storming finish from the rear, so when she gets in a race where an unchallenged leader strolls round at a (fine-worthy) dull pace and only really runs a race for the last half or quarter, there’s little chance of her taking the biscuit. She came second at Geelong, thanks to an enterprising drive by Graeme, in spite of that.
And then she went back to Melton for the Vicbred semifinals. I was in two minds. Did I want her to qualify for a rich, classic final she could surely not win? Well, she went out at enormous odds, dropped characteristically to the rear, and, finishing stoutly down the inside, found herself squeezed up by those on the outside, and placed 7th. The first six qualified, and there is no doubt that, with a clear run, she would have made it. As it was, she was named ‘first emergency’, and Graeme nominated her for another race, for the probable event of ‘no scratchings’.
Well, there were no scratchings, and Livia went not to the glamour Group One race, but to Yarra again. I was quite relieved. At Yarra we had a good chance. In fact, I thought, we’d probably be favourite, and should win. The other top favourites, after all, were horses who hadn’t made the Vicbred finals, and Riviera Kiss and Elegantly had both been among Livia’s recent victims.
But, curiously, Way2Bet wasn’t on our side that day, and the punters also looked elsewhere. Everyone talked the other horses, and Livia went out paying $5. And that in spite of the fact that Graeme had ‘put the boy on’: his top driver son, Gavin.
Needless to say, Livia dropped straight to the rear from her outside draw, as the grey, Dufflecoat Jet Lag, rolled to the front. Riviera Kiss was on the leader’s elbow, and Elegantly covered up in the middle, as the well-liked colt Jefferson City improved three wide round the final turn. Livia cruised along in his wake, and as soon as they hit the straight, she just pulled out and left them for dead. Gavin hardly had to rustle her up: she just upped her stride, stuck out the red nose roll, hit the front well before the post, and waltzed home two lengths – which could have been several more – to the good.
Her easiest win yet! Number four for Livia, and number 38 for me … goodness, with only one horse racing I MAY still make it to 40 this year!
Oh, by the way, the Vicbred Final? It was won by Bella’s Delight, which beat Livia half a head for second place in the heats. That heat’s winner, Aussie Made Lombo, fiished third. I think we drew the hot heat!
Alas, no pictures. You don’t want photos of me in my present state, and getting pictures of Australian races is a no-no ..
I’ll jolly up this page with pictures of Gerolstein and the horses soon ..
Recovering from a stroke. Or not. In fifty painful and expensive lessons.
I see its two months already since I ‘came out’ and admitted that I’d had a stroke. You might have thought that, given my measured optimism in April, I’d be on the high road to recovery now, and planning to head for Europe. Not So.
There have been hiccups. Side effects. Sequels. Pain and misery. Apparently, other ills. And, in some ways, I feel worse off now than then. Mentally as well as physical.
Part of my problem is that nobody has been able to tell me – black on white -- precisely what has happened to me, what is happening to me, and what will/can happen in the future. And, above all, what to do about it.
I’ve seen doctor, physiotherapists (two), osteopath, acupuncturists (two), masseuse, .. and I still don’t know what to do. Do they? We do this, it doesn’t work, so we do that, it doesn’t work, we do that … is my situation so very difficult? Perhaps it is.
One thing that seems clear is – yes, I had a classic stroke with classic effects – the maimed right arm, the spoiled speech, feelings of exhaustion – which should be well on the way to mended now. But they aren’t.
Oh yes, I can type now ... at about 60-70 percent. Thank goodness. When I’m not exhausted, that is. But my speech is still fallible, and, above all, I cannot use my right arm for anything more strenuous than typing. It is virtually frozen, and to try to move it out to the side, or behind my back is sickeningly painful and physically impossible. Why now? when I could wield a spade (gently), pluck a weed, brush my teeth, shave my head in April. Why now?
Well, it appears that, about 5 or 6 weeks ago, while asleep in bed, I developed a Frozen Shoulder. Don’t ask me how or why, and if its connected with the stroke or not. I awoke thinking I’d had a fifth stroke. But medical person number 4 diagnosed it firmly as Frozen, and I went off for two fearsome injections of corticosteroids in the blindingly painful shoulder joint. The last was five days ago. I await to be magically cured. So far, the results are mitigated.
At Reflect of St Albans, the clinic, the lady ultra-sounding the joint announced that I had a torn shoulder tendon. By ‘torn’ she apparently meant torn away from the bone. When? How? Since I’ve been struck, I’ve advisedly used the arm very little except to do the often painful exercises prescribed by my medics. And my shoulder was perfectly able to do windmills and dry my back in April. So, I’ve torn a tendon while sleeping? Or was it like that before, and no-one noticed? If so, I can live with it disconnected. And why can’t I move my arm?
So, you see, I’ve gone from ‘I have had a stroke’, to ‘I have had a stroke, and a frozen shoulder, and a torn tendon’. But no-one thought to tell me that before. And what will they add to the list next?
You will understand that I’m now mistrustful … … sometimes I feel that my multiple (expensive) medics seem to be working against each other, or at very best not agreeing… unbelieving, unconfident in the opinions of anyone.
Well, I give it a fortnight. If I’m not showing serious progress by then, I’m going to say farewell to all but one of my advisors and take it from there. Because in a fortnight I’m going to Australia for ten days fresh air and sunshine, and some decisions are going to be made while I’m there. Like … is it time to go home? Am I sufficiently strong to go home?
Home? You can guess of which side of the world I’m thinking.
There have been hiccups. Side effects. Sequels. Pain and misery. Apparently, other ills. And, in some ways, I feel worse off now than then. Mentally as well as physical.
Part of my problem is that nobody has been able to tell me – black on white -- precisely what has happened to me, what is happening to me, and what will/can happen in the future. And, above all, what to do about it.
I’ve seen doctor, physiotherapists (two), osteopath, acupuncturists (two), masseuse, .. and I still don’t know what to do. Do they? We do this, it doesn’t work, so we do that, it doesn’t work, we do that … is my situation so very difficult? Perhaps it is.
One thing that seems clear is – yes, I had a classic stroke with classic effects – the maimed right arm, the spoiled speech, feelings of exhaustion – which should be well on the way to mended now. But they aren’t.
Oh yes, I can type now ... at about 60-70 percent. Thank goodness. When I’m not exhausted, that is. But my speech is still fallible, and, above all, I cannot use my right arm for anything more strenuous than typing. It is virtually frozen, and to try to move it out to the side, or behind my back is sickeningly painful and physically impossible. Why now? when I could wield a spade (gently), pluck a weed, brush my teeth, shave my head in April. Why now?
Well, it appears that, about 5 or 6 weeks ago, while asleep in bed, I developed a Frozen Shoulder. Don’t ask me how or why, and if its connected with the stroke or not. I awoke thinking I’d had a fifth stroke. But medical person number 4 diagnosed it firmly as Frozen, and I went off for two fearsome injections of corticosteroids in the blindingly painful shoulder joint. The last was five days ago. I await to be magically cured. So far, the results are mitigated.
At Reflect of St Albans, the clinic, the lady ultra-sounding the joint announced that I had a torn shoulder tendon. By ‘torn’ she apparently meant torn away from the bone. When? How? Since I’ve been struck, I’ve advisedly used the arm very little except to do the often painful exercises prescribed by my medics. And my shoulder was perfectly able to do windmills and dry my back in April. So, I’ve torn a tendon while sleeping? Or was it like that before, and no-one noticed? If so, I can live with it disconnected. And why can’t I move my arm?
So, you see, I’ve gone from ‘I have had a stroke’, to ‘I have had a stroke, and a frozen shoulder, and a torn tendon’. But no-one thought to tell me that before. And what will they add to the list next?
You will understand that I’m now mistrustful … … sometimes I feel that my multiple (expensive) medics seem to be working against each other, or at very best not agreeing… unbelieving, unconfident in the opinions of anyone.
Well, I give it a fortnight. If I’m not showing serious progress by then, I’m going to say farewell to all but one of my advisors and take it from there. Because in a fortnight I’m going to Australia for ten days fresh air and sunshine, and some decisions are going to be made while I’m there. Like … is it time to go home? Am I sufficiently strong to go home?
Home? You can guess of which side of the world I’m thinking.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Gerald Bordman .. RIP, my old friend.
My dear friend Gerry died in Philadelphia today. He was 79, which wasn't bad because he'd never expected .. given his medical history ... to make it to such an age.
I suppose someone will be writing obituaries about him for the New York Times and other more seriously academic journals ... well, they may even ask me, but my recollections of Gerry would be perhaps a little personal and irreligious for a learned journal. And, anyway, neither of us had a huge penchant for being 'learned', which was quite a good thing, given the subject of which he chose to revolutionise the historical recording ... closely followed by his first and most enduring disciple: me.
His The American Musical Theatre was directly responsible for my The British Musical Theatre and the dozen tomes that followed it. So, you could say he changed my life.
This isn't the sort of photo you usually see of Gerry. He'll usually be black-and-white, stiff and rather embarrassed looking, So I hope some of the obituarists find this. I took it. And I declare it non-copyright. It was at my neighbour's wedding, on the ramparts at St Paul de Vence and - oh, Ian must have taken it, that's my wrist with the glass of champagne behind his shoulder.
I'll write some more when it's all sunk in properly. Funny, last time we spoke -- about six weeks ago -- across the world, it was he who was worrying about my health. The stroke, and all. Then suddenly he wasn't answering his phone ...
Exit stage centre, you might say. His book remains, and will always remain the best chronicle of the American Musical Theatre.
A fitting memorial. And one or two of us are left with a different kind of memorial as well ... a dear, lovely, generous man ..
I suppose someone will be writing obituaries about him for the New York Times and other more seriously academic journals ... well, they may even ask me, but my recollections of Gerry would be perhaps a little personal and irreligious for a learned journal. And, anyway, neither of us had a huge penchant for being 'learned', which was quite a good thing, given the subject of which he chose to revolutionise the historical recording ... closely followed by his first and most enduring disciple: me.
His The American Musical Theatre was directly responsible for my The British Musical Theatre and the dozen tomes that followed it. So, you could say he changed my life.
This isn't the sort of photo you usually see of Gerry. He'll usually be black-and-white, stiff and rather embarrassed looking, So I hope some of the obituarists find this. I took it. And I declare it non-copyright. It was at my neighbour's wedding, on the ramparts at St Paul de Vence and - oh, Ian must have taken it, that's my wrist with the glass of champagne behind his shoulder.
I'll write some more when it's all sunk in properly. Funny, last time we spoke -- about six weeks ago -- across the world, it was he who was worrying about my health. The stroke, and all. Then suddenly he wasn't answering his phone ...
Exit stage centre, you might say. His book remains, and will always remain the best chronicle of the American Musical Theatre.
A fitting memorial. And one or two of us are left with a different kind of memorial as well ... a dear, lovely, generous man ..
Friday, April 29, 2011
It's Autumn in Gerolstein
.
Since its impossible to get race photos from Australian race tracks, I give you instead the view from my window .. yes, it's chilly autumn at Gerolstein..
Since its impossible to get race photos from Australian race tracks, I give you instead the view from my window .. yes, it's chilly autumn at Gerolstein..
Way2Bet: a very prescient tipster or, 'Livia keeps it up'
I published an article, this week, in the New Zealand Harness Racing Weekly, detailing little Livia’s history and her splendid recent exploits. How we’d gone to Yarra Valley, last start, to avoid racing Aussie Made Lombo (Victoria’s top filly, 15 wins already!) and her dauphines in the Oaks, and how we’d duly won. So…
This week Yarra was hosting the first heat (of five) of the prestigious Vicbred Superseries. Since we’d paid the entry fee, we decided ‘why not go’? The biggest guns might not go to Yarra, they might wait for the heats at Mildura or Shepperton. We might sneak a fourth and get into the semi-finals, or even eventually and marvellously even the final: theoretically the top ten or twelve fillies in the state..
Wednesday, the acceptances came out:
No1 Livia de Gerolstein, No 2 Aussie Made Lombo …
Way2Bet wrote:
‘Terrific first heat of the Vicbred Super Series for the 3yo fillies to start the program where AUSSIE MADE LOMBO (2) is sure to go around well into the red. She has an outstanding record of 15 wins from 27 starts and the only time she has finished out of the money was last start when sixth in the Victoria Oaks Final behind Bettor Cover Lover after enduring a tough trip. She should cruise straight to the lead here and will have little trouble in disposing of these. Her only real danger will be BELLA’S DELIGHT (7). She is a tough type, as indicated by her gutsy death seat success at Ballarat four back in the Prendergast Memorial Oaks Trial. She too comes off the Victoria Oaks series, finishing a game second to AUSSIE MADE LOMBO (2) in her heat before running a great race in the Final when fifth, beaten only 8m by Bettor Cover Lover. She will have to sit parked today and although it is doubtful she can run past AUSSIE MADE LOMBO (2), she looks a moral to run second. The two key ones battling it out for third spot will be the well drawn and improving LIVIA DEGEROLSTEIN (1), and the honest RIVIERA KISS (6), who has been meeting some smart types of late on the provincials…’
Terrific, yeah. For some. But at least he gave us a place chance..
Well, he was right. Aussie Made Lombo made straight for the front, with Livia right behind her. Bella’s Delight duly sat parked, without unhappily putting any pressure on the leader, who, unchallenged, ran along the 1200 metres into the straight in a fair 1min 31secs. In the last 200 metres, Livia made a gallant effort up the passing lane, but she could not get closer than half a length to the cruising favourite, and in the end she was edged for second by a slightly disappointing Bella’s Delight, who seemed to have settled for second from the outset. Well, I guess we would have signed for third! But we tried. And I’m sure we momentarily got into second ..
I’m greedy now. Oh! how I wanted to be second! But we finished a length behind arguably the best Victorian filly of the 3 year-old generation, so how not be pleased? … even if they went no faster than last week.
So Way2Bet got it right again … and, while Lively Moth, Milliara Lombo and Rhodium Castle go to Mildura to battle out Heat 2, Livia lives to fight another day. And probably a semi-final. Hopefully not, this time, against Aussie Made Lombo!
This week Yarra was hosting the first heat (of five) of the prestigious Vicbred Superseries. Since we’d paid the entry fee, we decided ‘why not go’? The biggest guns might not go to Yarra, they might wait for the heats at Mildura or Shepperton. We might sneak a fourth and get into the semi-finals, or even eventually and marvellously even the final: theoretically the top ten or twelve fillies in the state..
Wednesday, the acceptances came out:
No1 Livia de Gerolstein, No 2 Aussie Made Lombo …
Way2Bet wrote:
‘Terrific first heat of the Vicbred Super Series for the 3yo fillies to start the program where AUSSIE MADE LOMBO (2) is sure to go around well into the red. She has an outstanding record of 15 wins from 27 starts and the only time she has finished out of the money was last start when sixth in the Victoria Oaks Final behind Bettor Cover Lover after enduring a tough trip. She should cruise straight to the lead here and will have little trouble in disposing of these. Her only real danger will be BELLA’S DELIGHT (7). She is a tough type, as indicated by her gutsy death seat success at Ballarat four back in the Prendergast Memorial Oaks Trial. She too comes off the Victoria Oaks series, finishing a game second to AUSSIE MADE LOMBO (2) in her heat before running a great race in the Final when fifth, beaten only 8m by Bettor Cover Lover. She will have to sit parked today and although it is doubtful she can run past AUSSIE MADE LOMBO (2), she looks a moral to run second. The two key ones battling it out for third spot will be the well drawn and improving LIVIA DEGEROLSTEIN (1), and the honest RIVIERA KISS (6), who has been meeting some smart types of late on the provincials…’
Terrific, yeah. For some. But at least he gave us a place chance..
Well, he was right. Aussie Made Lombo made straight for the front, with Livia right behind her. Bella’s Delight duly sat parked, without unhappily putting any pressure on the leader, who, unchallenged, ran along the 1200 metres into the straight in a fair 1min 31secs. In the last 200 metres, Livia made a gallant effort up the passing lane, but she could not get closer than half a length to the cruising favourite, and in the end she was edged for second by a slightly disappointing Bella’s Delight, who seemed to have settled for second from the outset. Well, I guess we would have signed for third! But we tried. And I’m sure we momentarily got into second ..
I’m greedy now. Oh! how I wanted to be second! But we finished a length behind arguably the best Victorian filly of the 3 year-old generation, so how not be pleased? … even if they went no faster than last week.
So Way2Bet got it right again … and, while Lively Moth, Milliara Lombo and Rhodium Castle go to Mildura to battle out Heat 2, Livia lives to fight another day. And probably a semi-final. Hopefully not, this time, against Aussie Made Lombo!
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Our Animals, by request
.
This is a blog ‘By Special Request’
With my recent lack of right-handed volubility, my state of health and horses who win have been the only topics to have got a look in here ..
‘What about the pets’? Okay, here they are ..
The kitties first.
Minnie, looking slim, fit and lazy, curled up on the John Siddeley couch ..
Chiqui checking out the comfort of the hay barn until its time to head for Wendy’s bed
Mr Peacock perching on the water tank. Last year, while I was back in Berlin, he disappeared for the winter. We’re feeding him many delicacies this year in the hope he will stay..
The horses? Well, here are the babies. Thomas and Anna, the Berlin babes, have been weaned from their mothers and introduced to the joys of a halter and a coat. Used to hooning around a 4-acre paddock, they aren’t altogether happy about spending time in the crush learning to lead and tie up!
And the newest addition to our team of boarders, little Rocky, brother to Patti, and like Thomas, a son of P FortySeven ..
And it looks as if we may have yet another member to add to the team. This big feller has taken up residence in the creek behind my house .. I wonder if he too likes Whiskas cat biscuits
This is a blog ‘By Special Request’
With my recent lack of right-handed volubility, my state of health and horses who win have been the only topics to have got a look in here ..
‘What about the pets’? Okay, here they are ..
The kitties first.
Minnie, looking slim, fit and lazy, curled up on the John Siddeley couch ..
Chiqui checking out the comfort of the hay barn until its time to head for Wendy’s bed
Mr Peacock perching on the water tank. Last year, while I was back in Berlin, he disappeared for the winter. We’re feeding him many delicacies this year in the hope he will stay..
The horses? Well, here are the babies. Thomas and Anna, the Berlin babes, have been weaned from their mothers and introduced to the joys of a halter and a coat. Used to hooning around a 4-acre paddock, they aren’t altogether happy about spending time in the crush learning to lead and tie up!
And the newest addition to our team of boarders, little Rocky, brother to Patti, and like Thomas, a son of P FortySeven ..
And it looks as if we may have yet another member to add to the team. This big feller has taken up residence in the creek behind my house .. I wonder if he too likes Whiskas cat biscuits
Friday, April 8, 2011
Number Thirty-Seven!
.
“Some above average fillies engaged here with the pick of them being the widely drawn, but in-form LIVIA DEGEROLSTEIN (7). She was doing her best work late for a narrow 2nd to Scottish Glamour at Tabcorp Pk 8 days ago and is sure to be pelting home once more with a bit of luck from the wide draw. IT TAKES COURAGE (3) is the likely leader and will give you a sight over the short course. CALANDA GIRL LOMBO (1) is now back in the draw and will be dangerous in this with a cheap run on the pegs. MY NANNA FAYE (5), MONDAYITIS (6), LIFE SAVINGS (8) and the Jayne Davies-prepared debutante SAMANTHA SPARKLE (4), a daughter of Bettors Delight who has trialled ok in the lead-up to this are all in with a shot..”
So spoke the Way2Bet website – Aussie racing’s best (well, only, really) form guide - of last night’s last race at Yarra Valley …
Flattering, but we do hate being made favourite.
Well, we had our wish. She didn’t go out favourite. Somebody (probably the commentator, who seemed obsessed by her) plunged on Samantha Sparkle. who went out at a bit better than even money. Livia was 3-1.
Well, the commentator was wrong with his tipping and Way2Bet (as frequently) was right.
Livia dropped to the rear, from her outside draw, got interfered with by an ill-gaited out-the-back horse called Mondayitis, and Graeme decided ‘better get out of here’. He pulled Livia three wide and midfield ... and there she sat for a whole exhausting lap. Could she do that and run on?
Oh, yes. Into the straight and the bright red nose roll flashed as she pulled out her trademark home-run sprint, duly – as Way2Bet had it -- pelting past the pacemaker, It Takes Courage, 50m out, for a narrow, but comfortable victory. Much to the discomfort of the commentator who hopefully called Samantha Sparkle in first (she was an OK 3rd after having the trail all the way!), and much to the delight of her owners, watching on telly, thanks to NZ Trackside, on the other side of the Tasman. And she even tickled the famous 2 minute-mile (2.00.9), in spite of running about 50m extra, thanks to her wide berth in transit. Phew! What a wee dazzler.
So, I got my win number 37, and the way things are going I very well may make it to the fabled 40 in 2011. Which will be a decided help in my cure .. I slept like a babe, after the race (Interdominion Final? What Interdominion Final?) and awoke with altogether less aches and pains. A win a week would be just what the doctor, literally, ordered!
PS No photo. Yet. Tracking down the Victorian race photographers is trickier than mailing NZ Race Images. But I’ll keep trying!
In the meanwhile here is our wee girl with Kim, who visited her while in Victoria.
“Some above average fillies engaged here with the pick of them being the widely drawn, but in-form LIVIA DEGEROLSTEIN (7). She was doing her best work late for a narrow 2nd to Scottish Glamour at Tabcorp Pk 8 days ago and is sure to be pelting home once more with a bit of luck from the wide draw. IT TAKES COURAGE (3) is the likely leader and will give you a sight over the short course. CALANDA GIRL LOMBO (1) is now back in the draw and will be dangerous in this with a cheap run on the pegs. MY NANNA FAYE (5), MONDAYITIS (6), LIFE SAVINGS (8) and the Jayne Davies-prepared debutante SAMANTHA SPARKLE (4), a daughter of Bettors Delight who has trialled ok in the lead-up to this are all in with a shot..”
So spoke the Way2Bet website – Aussie racing’s best (well, only, really) form guide - of last night’s last race at Yarra Valley …
Flattering, but we do hate being made favourite.
Well, we had our wish. She didn’t go out favourite. Somebody (probably the commentator, who seemed obsessed by her) plunged on Samantha Sparkle. who went out at a bit better than even money. Livia was 3-1.
Well, the commentator was wrong with his tipping and Way2Bet (as frequently) was right.
Livia dropped to the rear, from her outside draw, got interfered with by an ill-gaited out-the-back horse called Mondayitis, and Graeme decided ‘better get out of here’. He pulled Livia three wide and midfield ... and there she sat for a whole exhausting lap. Could she do that and run on?
Oh, yes. Into the straight and the bright red nose roll flashed as she pulled out her trademark home-run sprint, duly – as Way2Bet had it -- pelting past the pacemaker, It Takes Courage, 50m out, for a narrow, but comfortable victory. Much to the discomfort of the commentator who hopefully called Samantha Sparkle in first (she was an OK 3rd after having the trail all the way!), and much to the delight of her owners, watching on telly, thanks to NZ Trackside, on the other side of the Tasman. And she even tickled the famous 2 minute-mile (2.00.9), in spite of running about 50m extra, thanks to her wide berth in transit. Phew! What a wee dazzler.
So, I got my win number 37, and the way things are going I very well may make it to the fabled 40 in 2011. Which will be a decided help in my cure .. I slept like a babe, after the race (Interdominion Final? What Interdominion Final?) and awoke with altogether less aches and pains. A win a week would be just what the doctor, literally, ordered!
PS No photo. Yet. Tracking down the Victorian race photographers is trickier than mailing NZ Race Images. But I’ll keep trying!
In the meanwhile here is our wee girl with Kim, who visited her while in Victoria.
Monday, April 4, 2011
I have suffered a stroke...
.
Yes, the reason that the blog has been dormant for two months is that on 12 February 2011, just three days short of my officially becoming ‘elderly’, I suffered a series of what the French call ‘cerebral incidents’.
I was ambulanced to Christchurch Hospital – arm withered and speech awry – after the first, suffered two more while lying in the ‘waiting room’, and the granddaddy of the group during the night, in the ward.
Yes, the ward. Not my scene. I am into private rooms. I do not wish to share my misfortune with others, and I certainly do not wish to share theirs.
So, it was out with my Ellen Terry act (such cut glass, un-slurred English you never heard), fling aside the walking frame, and put on a convincing imitation of a laddie who had merely gone through a bumpy TIA ... I had shepherded Ian through enough of them to know what they’re like .. rather than a stroke.
I was released after one more night, my lovely Geraldine fetched me and ferried me home, and so I passed my 65th birthday – just! – in the comforts of Gerolstein, with Wendy and Kim.
The effort and the act told on me, of course. The eight weeks since have been a calvary of aches and pains and above all, frustrations. I ought to give details – for nowhere, no-how, could I find out what I should be feeling, what remedies I should be taking, and whether I should be resting to let the ‘hole in my brain’ heal or exercising to force life back into my affected limbs ..
But, a week after I came home, Christchurch suffered its earthquake, and my personal earthquake obviously took its place of importance in the scheme of things. For other people.
Now I have been visited by the ladies of the Stroke Foundation and understand things a little better. And I have been given exercises. Volumes of exercises. So many exercises that I simply don’t read them all. I carry on, mostly, doing this my way …
What has happened to me? Well. It is a stroke and not a TIA, and the right side of my body is affected. Principally my arm and shoulder, which I was initially unable to lift, but which I have bullied back into some sort of usability.
I could neither write my name, nor lift the right hand to the level of the keyboard to type, nor move the powerless fingers to find or tap a key. It’s coming gradually. Even yesterday I could not have typed this piece without exhausting my back and shoulder, and making hundreds of maddening ‘erreurs de frappe’ with the aching, stretching hand and fingers. I can sign a cheque again, I can print legibly, but cursive writing is harder. I can scrub a pot, lift (wonkily) a kettle, pick up things like coins, shave myself rather feebly, brush my teeth, drive a car, and – the big test – lift the arm to pat and brush a horse. How much more will come, we shall see, but the typing is the thing that matters to me..
My face was not good. The effects of the old Bell’s Palsy increased. My mouth and eye drooped nastily, I bit my cheek when chewing, at the first tiredeness my speech became worse than slurred. I took the same cure as I did 30 years go. Acupuncture, from my new friend, Brett. And I will continue to take it. The face now shows no signs of damage, the speech only fails when I am very tired.
Tired. Ay, there’s the rub. Power, energy, strength … those things cannot be faked or forced. I will have to wait before being able to spend more than a few hours in a row without lying down. That is just how it is.
There are other rubs. Rules which are laid down. Are they valid, or are they just a way for Them – the famous Them -- to impose their version of Health Hygiene on you? Two glasses of wine per day max. No smoking. No salt. No sex …
I leave it to you to imagine to which rules I adhere faithfully, and which not.
Whose life is it anyway?
So, here I am. On the mend. Will I mend wholly? How much will I mend?
And will my new sort-of Hygienic Life be any fun?
My friends will help. Some have already found their way out here from earthquake-torn Christchurch …
And my equine friends, too. They have well chosen their moment to perform ..
From the hospital ward, I heard my little Fritzl run second at Waikouaiti … and from my armchair, I watched him win his first race, so tantalisingly near, 15 mins drive away at Rangiora.
I roused myself and went to the track soon after to watch D’Arcy run his first real race – fifth, but breaking the NZ record .
And, on the other side of the ocean, lovely little Livia ran two smashing races in Victoria: coming from last to mow ‘em down to win at Maryborough, and the following week storming home for 2nd at Melton.
I should have been leaving for Berlin this week.
I won’t be of course. I will have to spend much of the winter marooned in New Zealand.
Tonight, at the Bar jeder vernunft, Berlin, my very favourite artist and my very fondest friend, ‘Montmorensy’, launches his new record, ‘Writ in water’. And I am not there …
All the pals will be – Kevin, PGB and Uwe, Olli, joli Thomas, Thomas and Wolfgang, Anna, Mirza and Hannes -- only I will be missing..
All because of a damned stroke.
Yes, the reason that the blog has been dormant for two months is that on 12 February 2011, just three days short of my officially becoming ‘elderly’, I suffered a series of what the French call ‘cerebral incidents’.
I was ambulanced to Christchurch Hospital – arm withered and speech awry – after the first, suffered two more while lying in the ‘waiting room’, and the granddaddy of the group during the night, in the ward.
Yes, the ward. Not my scene. I am into private rooms. I do not wish to share my misfortune with others, and I certainly do not wish to share theirs.
So, it was out with my Ellen Terry act (such cut glass, un-slurred English you never heard), fling aside the walking frame, and put on a convincing imitation of a laddie who had merely gone through a bumpy TIA ... I had shepherded Ian through enough of them to know what they’re like .. rather than a stroke.
I was released after one more night, my lovely Geraldine fetched me and ferried me home, and so I passed my 65th birthday – just! – in the comforts of Gerolstein, with Wendy and Kim.
The effort and the act told on me, of course. The eight weeks since have been a calvary of aches and pains and above all, frustrations. I ought to give details – for nowhere, no-how, could I find out what I should be feeling, what remedies I should be taking, and whether I should be resting to let the ‘hole in my brain’ heal or exercising to force life back into my affected limbs ..
But, a week after I came home, Christchurch suffered its earthquake, and my personal earthquake obviously took its place of importance in the scheme of things. For other people.
Now I have been visited by the ladies of the Stroke Foundation and understand things a little better. And I have been given exercises. Volumes of exercises. So many exercises that I simply don’t read them all. I carry on, mostly, doing this my way …
What has happened to me? Well. It is a stroke and not a TIA, and the right side of my body is affected. Principally my arm and shoulder, which I was initially unable to lift, but which I have bullied back into some sort of usability.
I could neither write my name, nor lift the right hand to the level of the keyboard to type, nor move the powerless fingers to find or tap a key. It’s coming gradually. Even yesterday I could not have typed this piece without exhausting my back and shoulder, and making hundreds of maddening ‘erreurs de frappe’ with the aching, stretching hand and fingers. I can sign a cheque again, I can print legibly, but cursive writing is harder. I can scrub a pot, lift (wonkily) a kettle, pick up things like coins, shave myself rather feebly, brush my teeth, drive a car, and – the big test – lift the arm to pat and brush a horse. How much more will come, we shall see, but the typing is the thing that matters to me..
My face was not good. The effects of the old Bell’s Palsy increased. My mouth and eye drooped nastily, I bit my cheek when chewing, at the first tiredeness my speech became worse than slurred. I took the same cure as I did 30 years go. Acupuncture, from my new friend, Brett. And I will continue to take it. The face now shows no signs of damage, the speech only fails when I am very tired.
Tired. Ay, there’s the rub. Power, energy, strength … those things cannot be faked or forced. I will have to wait before being able to spend more than a few hours in a row without lying down. That is just how it is.
There are other rubs. Rules which are laid down. Are they valid, or are they just a way for Them – the famous Them -- to impose their version of Health Hygiene on you? Two glasses of wine per day max. No smoking. No salt. No sex …
I leave it to you to imagine to which rules I adhere faithfully, and which not.
Whose life is it anyway?
So, here I am. On the mend. Will I mend wholly? How much will I mend?
And will my new sort-of Hygienic Life be any fun?
My friends will help. Some have already found their way out here from earthquake-torn Christchurch …
And my equine friends, too. They have well chosen their moment to perform ..
From the hospital ward, I heard my little Fritzl run second at Waikouaiti … and from my armchair, I watched him win his first race, so tantalisingly near, 15 mins drive away at Rangiora.
I roused myself and went to the track soon after to watch D’Arcy run his first real race – fifth, but breaking the NZ record .
And, on the other side of the ocean, lovely little Livia ran two smashing races in Victoria: coming from last to mow ‘em down to win at Maryborough, and the following week storming home for 2nd at Melton.
I should have been leaving for Berlin this week.
I won’t be of course. I will have to spend much of the winter marooned in New Zealand.
Tonight, at the Bar jeder vernunft, Berlin, my very favourite artist and my very fondest friend, ‘Montmorensy’, launches his new record, ‘Writ in water’. And I am not there …
All the pals will be – Kevin, PGB and Uwe, Olli, joli Thomas, Thomas and Wolfgang, Anna, Mirza and Hannes -- only I will be missing..
All because of a damned stroke.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Thinking back: that very first win ...
Dreaming on about that fortieth win as a race-horse owner, got me thinking back to the very first of the 34 triumphs to date. I looked in my diary and there it was. June 1999.
"It was six o’clock in the June morning, South of France time. The sun shattered in at the window and into my eyes, and I woke up knowing half-consciously that there was something I had to do. Of course, Davey Crockett. Marlborough Day Two. Check the web. He’d given us a splendidly close third (I didnt know till later just HOW close) on Day One. Could he have come somewhere again?
I slid out of bed and hurried on naked feet (OK the rest of me was just as naked, but the world was asleep and, if it wasn’t, it wasn’t at my place) over the big red terracotta tiles of the passage into the living room where the old computer with its new Internet installation sat, rather vulgarly, where once had throned a more elegantly traditional phone.
French phone service and, above all French Internet service, is not - to put it in sweet English - good. In fact, its usually either bottom-of-the-class slow or just plain stubborn-won’t-ish. But for some reason, today everything clicked through in the few moments it took me to fill and turn on the kettle...
Click. Hrnz.co.nz. Click Results. Click Marlborough HRC. Click .. the trot...
Have you ever read a book where the heroine (for reasons best not gone into) suddenly goes off like the luncheon whistle at the local factory? Yes, I’m afraid I did. It was nessun dorma at Les Arabanes that morning. They heard me three flats away. And they knew right away what must have happened.
Davey Crockett had won. We had won our first race as owners.
It took me a while, though, to find out more than the bare facts and figures. Mike Grainger posted me a copy of that best-seller (well, it ought to be) the Harness Racing Weekly in which half a page was devoted to Davey’s exploits, and in which - and I didn’t realise the hugeness of the honour at the time - he was nominated one of the three “Runs of the Week”, but it wasn’t till months later when I returned to New Zealand and bought the video of the race from the TAB that I realised how much he had deserved it. It was quite a run..
Our horse had won a race. Won a race. Won a race ...
"It was six o’clock in the June morning, South of France time. The sun shattered in at the window and into my eyes, and I woke up knowing half-consciously that there was something I had to do. Of course, Davey Crockett. Marlborough Day Two. Check the web. He’d given us a splendidly close third (I didnt know till later just HOW close) on Day One. Could he have come somewhere again?
I slid out of bed and hurried on naked feet (OK the rest of me was just as naked, but the world was asleep and, if it wasn’t, it wasn’t at my place) over the big red terracotta tiles of the passage into the living room where the old computer with its new Internet installation sat, rather vulgarly, where once had throned a more elegantly traditional phone.
French phone service and, above all French Internet service, is not - to put it in sweet English - good. In fact, its usually either bottom-of-the-class slow or just plain stubborn-won’t-ish. But for some reason, today everything clicked through in the few moments it took me to fill and turn on the kettle...
Click. Hrnz.co.nz. Click Results. Click Marlborough HRC. Click .. the trot...
Have you ever read a book where the heroine (for reasons best not gone into) suddenly goes off like the luncheon whistle at the local factory? Yes, I’m afraid I did. It was nessun dorma at Les Arabanes that morning. They heard me three flats away. And they knew right away what must have happened.
Davey Crockett had won. We had won our first race as owners.
It took me a while, though, to find out more than the bare facts and figures. Mike Grainger posted me a copy of that best-seller (well, it ought to be) the Harness Racing Weekly in which half a page was devoted to Davey’s exploits, and in which - and I didn’t realise the hugeness of the honour at the time - he was nominated one of the three “Runs of the Week”, but it wasn’t till months later when I returned to New Zealand and bought the video of the race from the TAB that I realised how much he had deserved it. It was quite a run..
Our horse had won a race. Won a race. Won a race ...
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Out with the old year ...
and in with the new.
Will it be any different? What will it bring ..? Something nice – really nice -- would be most welcome ..
I wish … oh no, therein lies disaster! I know what I wish, but to write it down …
2010 will go down in my memory very largely for my time in Berlin, with its extravagant highs and occasional distressing lows, but most particularly because of the very dear bunch of new friends that I made there ..
As for Gerolstein, little changes here – well, we wouldn’t want it to – except that, during the winter, our Horse Hotel got vigorously under way and as of mid-January 2011, we have eleven ‘boarders’ occupying our paddocks, alongside our little group of racehorses. My international team of racehorses actually had a pretty fair year, and I notched up five wins – Elena one and Seppl two, in New Zealand, Tenor one in France, and Livia one in Australia. Since I now have Fritzl, D’Arcy, Lucie and, later, the rising Agnes to add to that quartet, on the racetracks of the new season, 2011 will hopefully be even more successful. Let’s hope, by this time next year, I’ll have broken through the barrier of 40 wins!
More unusually, we have had visitors. First Kazu from Japan, and now Lisa and Vera from Germany, with Kim from Germany to follow, have come to us through the Farm Helpers in New Zealand scheme. If the young people the scheme sends out seem to have negligible farm or horse experience, and – I suspect -- some of them a rather different idea of what ‘work’ means to that we have!, we have so far found our own particular ‘workers’ both nice people and willing helpers ..
The special visit of the post-Christmas season, however, was that of my very, very old friend Denis and his partner, George. Denis and I go back more than half a century, to our very early college days as twelve year-olds, and throughout our years at college we were inseparable chums and … rivals! In all our studies and in music, throughout our school years at Nelson College, it was almost invariably Kurt and Dennis, first and second: in one order or the other!
Of course, the old school magazines came out and memories were tested for veracity .. I was quite sure that I had never come top of the class (the scientists with their 100pc in maths etc always beat us, the humanities boys), but there it was in black and white. Fifth form .. first Kurt, second Denis ..
The first-year school photo came out too and we tried to put names to faces. I’m afraid we have forgotten almost all our schoolmates who did not excel – there’s Kember who became Captain of the All Blacks, there’s Keightley who was always going to be a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist, there are Harrison, Glasgow, Wadsworth, Wells, Oliver, Dickinson, Horrocks and ummmm .. I wonder where they are now?
I wonder if any of them made it to entries in Wikipedia and Grove and so forth, as Denis and I did, or whether the ‘humanities’ boys came out on top in the end!
Form 3P1 Nelson College, year of ... 1958?
Oh, Denis, by the way (we are on the opposite ends of the second row in the photo), is these days Dr Denis A Smalley, international celebrity in the world of electronic music. We both ended up in music .. but in rather different areas!
On the horsey front, Seppl and Tenor, sadly are out of action with small injuries, but dear old Elena has been up there spitting fire .. two fine thirds and a fourth in her last five starts! At six years of age, she is running the best races of her life. Yesterday, we took her to the trials, and she steamed home for second behind a much more highly qualified horse, the grey Will Play.
The previous evening, at 11.45pm NZ time (alas!) little Livia made her seasonal appearance in Melbourne ... up against three of Victoria’s top fillies! She couldn’t foot it with the first two, but she ran on stoutly for third place, and it is evident that she will give us lots of consistent grand fun this year.
Our next bit of excitement may, however, come from Fritzl (above). Remember Fritzl – the other half of the ‘Little Boys’ double act with Seppl? Well, Fritzl raced the last two years for my friends Mike and Sue, but now, by a combination of circumstances and earthquakes, he has come home. I am now his owner, and Wendy his trainer, and he has just made his first appearances for us at the workouts. First time, he was second behind last year’s Breeder’s Crown juvenile champion, and yesterday he cruised round Motukarara Racecourse at the head of his field, and stayed there. And I was so chuffed, I forgot to click the camera!
So Fritzl will go to the real races this week, along with Elena ... and I, for the first time in years, will have three horses -- and D'Arcy makes four -- racing at once!
Fingers crossed… because all four of them are racing with a chance!
Will it be any different? What will it bring ..? Something nice – really nice -- would be most welcome ..
I wish … oh no, therein lies disaster! I know what I wish, but to write it down …
2010 will go down in my memory very largely for my time in Berlin, with its extravagant highs and occasional distressing lows, but most particularly because of the very dear bunch of new friends that I made there ..
As for Gerolstein, little changes here – well, we wouldn’t want it to – except that, during the winter, our Horse Hotel got vigorously under way and as of mid-January 2011, we have eleven ‘boarders’ occupying our paddocks, alongside our little group of racehorses. My international team of racehorses actually had a pretty fair year, and I notched up five wins – Elena one and Seppl two, in New Zealand, Tenor one in France, and Livia one in Australia. Since I now have Fritzl, D’Arcy, Lucie and, later, the rising Agnes to add to that quartet, on the racetracks of the new season, 2011 will hopefully be even more successful. Let’s hope, by this time next year, I’ll have broken through the barrier of 40 wins!
More unusually, we have had visitors. First Kazu from Japan, and now Lisa and Vera from Germany, with Kim from Germany to follow, have come to us through the Farm Helpers in New Zealand scheme. If the young people the scheme sends out seem to have negligible farm or horse experience, and – I suspect -- some of them a rather different idea of what ‘work’ means to that we have!, we have so far found our own particular ‘workers’ both nice people and willing helpers ..
The special visit of the post-Christmas season, however, was that of my very, very old friend Denis and his partner, George. Denis and I go back more than half a century, to our very early college days as twelve year-olds, and throughout our years at college we were inseparable chums and … rivals! In all our studies and in music, throughout our school years at Nelson College, it was almost invariably Kurt and Dennis, first and second: in one order or the other!
Of course, the old school magazines came out and memories were tested for veracity .. I was quite sure that I had never come top of the class (the scientists with their 100pc in maths etc always beat us, the humanities boys), but there it was in black and white. Fifth form .. first Kurt, second Denis ..
The first-year school photo came out too and we tried to put names to faces. I’m afraid we have forgotten almost all our schoolmates who did not excel – there’s Kember who became Captain of the All Blacks, there’s Keightley who was always going to be a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist, there are Harrison, Glasgow, Wadsworth, Wells, Oliver, Dickinson, Horrocks and ummmm .. I wonder where they are now?
I wonder if any of them made it to entries in Wikipedia and Grove and so forth, as Denis and I did, or whether the ‘humanities’ boys came out on top in the end!
Form 3P1 Nelson College, year of ... 1958?
Oh, Denis, by the way (we are on the opposite ends of the second row in the photo), is these days Dr Denis A Smalley, international celebrity in the world of electronic music. We both ended up in music .. but in rather different areas!
On the horsey front, Seppl and Tenor, sadly are out of action with small injuries, but dear old Elena has been up there spitting fire .. two fine thirds and a fourth in her last five starts! At six years of age, she is running the best races of her life. Yesterday, we took her to the trials, and she steamed home for second behind a much more highly qualified horse, the grey Will Play.
The previous evening, at 11.45pm NZ time (alas!) little Livia made her seasonal appearance in Melbourne ... up against three of Victoria’s top fillies! She couldn’t foot it with the first two, but she ran on stoutly for third place, and it is evident that she will give us lots of consistent grand fun this year.
Our next bit of excitement may, however, come from Fritzl (above). Remember Fritzl – the other half of the ‘Little Boys’ double act with Seppl? Well, Fritzl raced the last two years for my friends Mike and Sue, but now, by a combination of circumstances and earthquakes, he has come home. I am now his owner, and Wendy his trainer, and he has just made his first appearances for us at the workouts. First time, he was second behind last year’s Breeder’s Crown juvenile champion, and yesterday he cruised round Motukarara Racecourse at the head of his field, and stayed there. And I was so chuffed, I forgot to click the camera!
So Fritzl will go to the real races this week, along with Elena ... and I, for the first time in years, will have three horses -- and D'Arcy makes four -- racing at once!
Fingers crossed… because all four of them are racing with a chance!
Sunday, December 19, 2010
D'Arcy's Début
-
It is three years now since Jack and I started our ‘Eurokiwi’ adventure in New Zealand, by breeding both my trotting mares, Gwen and her daughter La Grande-Duchesse, to the outstanding French stallion Love You.
The result, as I’ve recounted from their babyhood on, is the two now two year-old trotters, D’Arcy de Gerolstein (boy) and Lucie de Gerolstein (girl), both of which have been for some time in the care of trainer Murray Edmonds at Motukarara.
Two year-old trotters are not thick on the ground in New Zealand as early as December of the year and only a handful has so far been seen in action at the various workouts and trials, but today that number was swelled by … our D’Arcy!
And so, on a stifling Canterbury morning, my eyes heavy with hayfever, I revved up red Ted and made my way through the hundreds of red lights between Sefton and Addington Raceway. There he was, as I walked through the door of the vast, echoing hangar that does duty as stabling at Addington: no longer the little pony with the bandage on his knee, quietly standing in the shadow of the showier Lucie,
but a fine tall adolescent colt, yelling his head off in a voice which sounded as if it had barely broken. Little D’Arcy, little no more. But not exactly grown up, either!
The point of the day’s exercise was not ‘a race’: D’Arcy and his stablemate, the little filly Martini, were at the track simply to get their first experience of something like race conditions -- their first mobile start, to start with! – and their heat comprised just four inexperienced horses: another two year-old (a Monarchy filly), and, rather oddly, a four year-old.
I was decidedly proud of our little colt as he trotted round in his warm-up laps – fazed only by a large yellow grooming machine which overtook him on the inside and caused him to lose his stride …
When the ‘race proper’ began, Murray eased D’Arcy a couple of lengths back from the mobile arm. The Monarchy filly showed plenty of ringcraft, nosing up to the grill and going out clearly in front of the field, with Martini in second and D’Arcy settled in a couple of lengths back, trotting nicely, in third. All three babes were behaving impeccably! With half a kilometre of the 1950m to go, Murray took our boy off the rail and – as they came round the final bend -- gently moved him forward. Into the straight, and the wee lad kept on coming, passing the two fillies nicely with the finish line approaching. Having got to the front, however, he must have spotted a big question mark? OK, so what am I supposed to do now? He gawped about, put in a rough stride, and Murray had to call his mind back to his job, as he passed the line ahead of his two companions…
Mission accomplished, in a respectable 2mins 46 secs, with the last half in 63 and the last quarter in 30.6. And a sentimental mission accomplished, too – the first appearance on any New Zealand racetrack of one of the progeny of Love You could be counted a ‘winning’ one.
So, on from there we go! Because we have barely started yet. There is much hard work and much, much refining to do. When he next comes to the track, the refinements will have begun to set in. The pedicured feet, the new shoes .. for a first glimpse of something more like ‘racing’ as opposed to ‘running’ .. and I will bring my soft-boiled-egg racing colours and I shall have previously cornered the commentator – who did very well with the Gerolstein bit which has tripped many in its time – to explain that D’Arcy with an apostrophe is pronounced just the same as Darcy without one.
A new adventure begins …
It is three years now since Jack and I started our ‘Eurokiwi’ adventure in New Zealand, by breeding both my trotting mares, Gwen and her daughter La Grande-Duchesse, to the outstanding French stallion Love You.
The result, as I’ve recounted from their babyhood on, is the two now two year-old trotters, D’Arcy de Gerolstein (boy) and Lucie de Gerolstein (girl), both of which have been for some time in the care of trainer Murray Edmonds at Motukarara.
Two year-old trotters are not thick on the ground in New Zealand as early as December of the year and only a handful has so far been seen in action at the various workouts and trials, but today that number was swelled by … our D’Arcy!
And so, on a stifling Canterbury morning, my eyes heavy with hayfever, I revved up red Ted and made my way through the hundreds of red lights between Sefton and Addington Raceway. There he was, as I walked through the door of the vast, echoing hangar that does duty as stabling at Addington: no longer the little pony with the bandage on his knee, quietly standing in the shadow of the showier Lucie,
but a fine tall adolescent colt, yelling his head off in a voice which sounded as if it had barely broken. Little D’Arcy, little no more. But not exactly grown up, either!
The point of the day’s exercise was not ‘a race’: D’Arcy and his stablemate, the little filly Martini, were at the track simply to get their first experience of something like race conditions -- their first mobile start, to start with! – and their heat comprised just four inexperienced horses: another two year-old (a Monarchy filly), and, rather oddly, a four year-old.
I was decidedly proud of our little colt as he trotted round in his warm-up laps – fazed only by a large yellow grooming machine which overtook him on the inside and caused him to lose his stride …
When the ‘race proper’ began, Murray eased D’Arcy a couple of lengths back from the mobile arm. The Monarchy filly showed plenty of ringcraft, nosing up to the grill and going out clearly in front of the field, with Martini in second and D’Arcy settled in a couple of lengths back, trotting nicely, in third. All three babes were behaving impeccably! With half a kilometre of the 1950m to go, Murray took our boy off the rail and – as they came round the final bend -- gently moved him forward. Into the straight, and the wee lad kept on coming, passing the two fillies nicely with the finish line approaching. Having got to the front, however, he must have spotted a big question mark? OK, so what am I supposed to do now? He gawped about, put in a rough stride, and Murray had to call his mind back to his job, as he passed the line ahead of his two companions…
Mission accomplished, in a respectable 2mins 46 secs, with the last half in 63 and the last quarter in 30.6. And a sentimental mission accomplished, too – the first appearance on any New Zealand racetrack of one of the progeny of Love You could be counted a ‘winning’ one.
So, on from there we go! Because we have barely started yet. There is much hard work and much, much refining to do. When he next comes to the track, the refinements will have begun to set in. The pedicured feet, the new shoes .. for a first glimpse of something more like ‘racing’ as opposed to ‘running’ .. and I will bring my soft-boiled-egg racing colours and I shall have previously cornered the commentator – who did very well with the Gerolstein bit which has tripped many in its time – to explain that D’Arcy with an apostrophe is pronounced just the same as Darcy without one.
A new adventure begins …
Monday, November 29, 2010
November in Gerolstein
.
Spring gives place to summer, and Gerolstein is a blaze of colour ... the gardens which Wendy tended during the winter are now bursting with flowers, the rose bushes heavy with blooms, and our friend the peacock adds his bit to this crazy rainbow of colours as he strides across the lawn, usually in search of a vacant fence post on which to perch…
The babies are born, and frolicking in the paddocks... comical Thomas, of course, frolics highest …
the mares are reinseminated, and hopefully all four in foal .. the sunshine beats down … that dreadful breed, the New Zealand shoddy workman, has done its worst and been sent on its way … the earthquake commission stays resolutely silent … and once our reliable fencers, tree-trimmers and road-menders have been, hopefully that will be it for the year.
As for the racing game, yes, we have been off to the races, and this last fortnight the lovely Elena – in foal, all being well, to Royal Mattjesty -- has given us a pair of thrills with a dashing front-running fourth at Timaru, and a very fine, solid finish for third in a sixteen-horse field (she was 14th favourite!) at Geraldine.
Little sister Agnes (below) has made her first appearances on our home track,
and the final member of my NZ racing team, Fritzl, yesterday visited the beach for the first time in the hands of Lawrence (McCormick), now ‘by appointment’ the race-day driver of my horses here.
Off the property, and away from the sporting field, I made my visit to NASDA and spent a day with the young men and women of the second and third years classes during what was the last week of their term. We had an enjoyable and, I hope, instructive time as I put them through their paces before saying ‘goodbye’ to the graduating students, and ‘see you soon’ to the about-to-be-third-years, with whom I shall have another and more advanced session once the new term starts, in 2011.
Needless to say, I saw some interesting talent. And, no, I’m not putting the ‘results’ down here. They have gone, privately, to the school’s principal with whom I shall rendez-vous over the holidays to chat some and to plot future doings …
However, not all is sunny, winning, pregnant and well. Dear mother has been severely unwell and in hospital, and I myself am locked in battles with bureaucracy. To wit, the British pensions department (I am due mine in February), who simply don’t answer letters or questions, and the US Visa department, who insist that I fly to Auckland to be ‘interviewed’, before getting a stamp to allow me to change planes, or even dock, aboard my ship, in their country. The world has gone mad. Why don’t they just look me up on Wikipedia? That’s what their President would do…
And then there is the FDC (I should be sued for ‘disrepute’ if I de-acronymed), commonly known as the stipendiary stewards of the NZ Harness Racing Organisation. I hear their ranks are to be severely revamped. Good. Let’s hope their ‘rules’ and code of behaviour are too. For the present ones are so ridiculous as to inspire not one ounce of respect.
Oh … Ship? Yes, I have found one. And though I’m bound to repeat that flight from New Zealand to Berlin in April, I shall return south in August on the comfortable waves, in the owner’s cabin of the French cargo ship, Manet … ah! civilised travel again.
And now its outside, to shovel some civilised horse manure and pull some weeds. Whilst back in Berlin Paul is preparing for the launch of his record, PGB is rehearsing his new musical, Thomas Z has just opened his, Thomas H is zinging between stage and screen, Olli is off on tour in Russia and Vienna, and Kevin is launched upon a new journalistic job and completing his history of gay pornography..
And I? I am pulling weeds in the southern sunshine. I know they are all much younger than I, but sometimes I wonder if I did right to withdraw from the world of artistic action so completely. Well, come April I will be back … and come April, Berlin will no longer be shivering in the snow…
For now, I pull weeds.
Spring gives place to summer, and Gerolstein is a blaze of colour ... the gardens which Wendy tended during the winter are now bursting with flowers, the rose bushes heavy with blooms, and our friend the peacock adds his bit to this crazy rainbow of colours as he strides across the lawn, usually in search of a vacant fence post on which to perch…
The babies are born, and frolicking in the paddocks... comical Thomas, of course, frolics highest …
the mares are reinseminated, and hopefully all four in foal .. the sunshine beats down … that dreadful breed, the New Zealand shoddy workman, has done its worst and been sent on its way … the earthquake commission stays resolutely silent … and once our reliable fencers, tree-trimmers and road-menders have been, hopefully that will be it for the year.
As for the racing game, yes, we have been off to the races, and this last fortnight the lovely Elena – in foal, all being well, to Royal Mattjesty -- has given us a pair of thrills with a dashing front-running fourth at Timaru, and a very fine, solid finish for third in a sixteen-horse field (she was 14th favourite!) at Geraldine.
Little sister Agnes (below) has made her first appearances on our home track,
and the final member of my NZ racing team, Fritzl, yesterday visited the beach for the first time in the hands of Lawrence (McCormick), now ‘by appointment’ the race-day driver of my horses here.
Off the property, and away from the sporting field, I made my visit to NASDA and spent a day with the young men and women of the second and third years classes during what was the last week of their term. We had an enjoyable and, I hope, instructive time as I put them through their paces before saying ‘goodbye’ to the graduating students, and ‘see you soon’ to the about-to-be-third-years, with whom I shall have another and more advanced session once the new term starts, in 2011.
Needless to say, I saw some interesting talent. And, no, I’m not putting the ‘results’ down here. They have gone, privately, to the school’s principal with whom I shall rendez-vous over the holidays to chat some and to plot future doings …
However, not all is sunny, winning, pregnant and well. Dear mother has been severely unwell and in hospital, and I myself am locked in battles with bureaucracy. To wit, the British pensions department (I am due mine in February), who simply don’t answer letters or questions, and the US Visa department, who insist that I fly to Auckland to be ‘interviewed’, before getting a stamp to allow me to change planes, or even dock, aboard my ship, in their country. The world has gone mad. Why don’t they just look me up on Wikipedia? That’s what their President would do…
And then there is the FDC (I should be sued for ‘disrepute’ if I de-acronymed), commonly known as the stipendiary stewards of the NZ Harness Racing Organisation. I hear their ranks are to be severely revamped. Good. Let’s hope their ‘rules’ and code of behaviour are too. For the present ones are so ridiculous as to inspire not one ounce of respect.
Oh … Ship? Yes, I have found one. And though I’m bound to repeat that flight from New Zealand to Berlin in April, I shall return south in August on the comfortable waves, in the owner’s cabin of the French cargo ship, Manet … ah! civilised travel again.
And now its outside, to shovel some civilised horse manure and pull some weeds. Whilst back in Berlin Paul is preparing for the launch of his record, PGB is rehearsing his new musical, Thomas Z has just opened his, Thomas H is zinging between stage and screen, Olli is off on tour in Russia and Vienna, and Kevin is launched upon a new journalistic job and completing his history of gay pornography..
And I? I am pulling weeds in the southern sunshine. I know they are all much younger than I, but sometimes I wonder if I did right to withdraw from the world of artistic action so completely. Well, come April I will be back … and come April, Berlin will no longer be shivering in the snow…
For now, I pull weeds.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
"Curtains" for Kander and Ebb
In forty years of attending musicals all round the world, I have been to the theatre in Christchurch just five times. Last night was the fifth. Back at the old Theatre Royal where, in 1968, I sang Madama Butterfly with the New Zealand Opera.
The piece of the evening was entitled Curtains, and the once well-known names of Messrs Kander, Ebb, Peter Stone and Rupert Holmes were attached to it. I am told it has run for more than two years on Broadway, which doesn’t speak very well for the taste and brainpower of Broadway. Curtains is a weak concoction of theatrical clichés, borrowed from ancient here and there, which bases itself on the oldest cliché in the book: a show about a show. This one is so evidently put together with an eye to being ‘commercial’, that the writers –- in their devout commercialness -- have omitted to include wit, humour, style and melody, and left themselves only with a series of achingly old-hat items, such as a pale burlesque of Oklahoma!, set amongst a parade of copycat ‘period’ dances and songs and of cardboard characterisations.
Is this to what Broadway has come? No wonder American producers rush to mount pop pasticcios and kiddie spectaculars. No wonder I and my colleagues and friends no longer make the pilgrimages to New York that we did in the seventies and the eighties. This is the sort of unimaginative pap that certain publishing houses, in the mid 20th century, used to turn out especially for country amateur groups. And this from the writers of such pieces as Chicago and Drood. Or, perhaps more pertinently (‘original book and concept by’), the man responsible for imposing Sugar, My One and Only and Titanic on us.
We have had the stunning City of Angels, we have had the delightful Something’s Afoot, and we have had the splendid Drood in the realm of ‘murder mystery musicals’ … why do we have to have Curtains which does – or tries to do – something of the same with so very much less skill and sophistication?
If the show itself is poor stuff, the performance – by the final year students of NASDA, New Zealand’s premier musical theatre institution -- was splendid. The five leading players made the most both of the lines they were given and of the songs and dances of the unmemorable score.
James Norris made a delightfully Huckleberry Houndish detective, laid back and lovable, gently and ganglingly comical, and both attractive and effective in song and dance. If the book provided little suspense in his predictable love affair with his Niki (Stephanie Wood) and even less in his tracking down of the oh-so-obvious murderer, he nevertheless managed to keep the character doodling along very firmly at the centre of affairs, himself as the focal point of the show, and the audience actually interested in what was going on. Quite a feat.
Alexandra McKellar as the heavy lady sang strongly and pointed her one-liners with swingeing vigour, Abigail King as the leading lady showed up with a most delightfully flowing singing voice, Miss Wood’s ingénue (the character most deprived of decent material) was all an ingénue should be, and Simon Paenga displayed a splendidly ringing baritone voice in the rather limp part of the show-within-a-show’s composer. Some of the evening’s best moments came, however, in the performance of the concerted music. These pieces were so well sung that one could momentarily stop saying to oneself: ‘oh yes, that’s a copy of 42nd Street, that’s a copy of…’ and just lean back and enjoy the singing.
Next week, I get to meet these young people properly and to spend a little time working with them. I am looking forward to that very much …
We shall spend our time together, I hope, on some rather better stuff than Curtains.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Gerolstein in Spring
.
A month now I’ve been back at Gerolstein…
A whole springtime month, filled with the usual kind of spring cleaning, and of course the springtime arrival of the year’s quotient of foals..
The spring cleaning this year has been a little different from the usual … the earthquake left us with no water (temporarily), no sewage, and problems with various drains which, alas, New Zealand workmen seem congenitally unable to work out. Yet still expect to be paid for their failures.
In spite of these little problems, Gerolstein in the spring time greeted me looking as lovely as ever ... one of the first things did was go out and photograph the place, to send to my friends in autumnal Berlin …
The outstanding event of spring is always, however, the ‘little strangers’. It was Sally who foaled the first this year (sire: P-Forty Seven) .. a beautiful little bright boy, whose birth was duly celebrated with pink champagne and who, thus, simply had – for obvious reasons -- to be christened ‘Thomas’ in honour of the two Thomases of Berlin. Thomas is now four weeks old and a joy. He doesn’t walk or run like most foals do ... he bounces. He leaps. And when I tried to photograph him with his mother, he growled and scowled: ‘protecting mother from the paparazzi’ I labelled the resultant picture. Unfortunately, when it was published, my caption was replaced with something less imaginative.
Duchess foaled exactly one week later. And two weeks early. The reason was undoubtedly the size of her Love You foal … Anna was so tall and leggy that for the first day she had enormous trouble getting to her feet to feed. We had to go out every hour and encourage her. Her struggles unfortunately caused ‘bedsores’ and grazes on her legs, so Anna had her first visit from the vet, and now sports a big protective bandage. But, within a few days, her strength grew sufficiently to allow her to sit and stand reasonably elegantly, and to hoon around the paddock with mother..
Gerolstein has a third foal this year, for one of our boarders, Gracie, also produced – with a certain amount of difficulty -- a tiny bundle which doesn’t seem yet to have been given a name. The little filly has had a difficult start to life, but seems to be coming along all right …
The racing scene has been a little less joyous. Elena has run twice: once rather well (5th) and once not so well, and doesn’t seem to be able to recapture the flair of her first run of the season. But maybe she has other things on her mind. Elena has always been the cluckiest lady on the farm and, since I promised her a baby if she won a race – which she has – this week she will be put in foal to Royal Mattjesty. She will run out her racing career as a slightly pregnant lady, and next year she will be able hopefully to cluck over a baby of her own.
With spring, too, our lovely pet peacock has returned from his winter wanderings, and I was woken this morning by his counter-tenorial vocalisms. His favourite perch is the railing outside my bedroom window .. how not, then, be reminded of the song of the immortal Montmorensy about the crow who sang ‘art, art, art’ ..’outside my window’?
‘No, no, I want to sleep some more, please go! .. ‘Looked through my window, couldn’t see the crow, though I could see the day, fine, shining and mine to share…’
Yes, there it is. The day. And the farm … and a heap of farmerish things to do .. so off I go…
A month now I’ve been back at Gerolstein…
A whole springtime month, filled with the usual kind of spring cleaning, and of course the springtime arrival of the year’s quotient of foals..
The spring cleaning this year has been a little different from the usual … the earthquake left us with no water (temporarily), no sewage, and problems with various drains which, alas, New Zealand workmen seem congenitally unable to work out. Yet still expect to be paid for their failures.
In spite of these little problems, Gerolstein in the spring time greeted me looking as lovely as ever ... one of the first things did was go out and photograph the place, to send to my friends in autumnal Berlin …
The outstanding event of spring is always, however, the ‘little strangers’. It was Sally who foaled the first this year (sire: P-Forty Seven) .. a beautiful little bright boy, whose birth was duly celebrated with pink champagne and who, thus, simply had – for obvious reasons -- to be christened ‘Thomas’ in honour of the two Thomases of Berlin. Thomas is now four weeks old and a joy. He doesn’t walk or run like most foals do ... he bounces. He leaps. And when I tried to photograph him with his mother, he growled and scowled: ‘protecting mother from the paparazzi’ I labelled the resultant picture. Unfortunately, when it was published, my caption was replaced with something less imaginative.
Duchess foaled exactly one week later. And two weeks early. The reason was undoubtedly the size of her Love You foal … Anna was so tall and leggy that for the first day she had enormous trouble getting to her feet to feed. We had to go out every hour and encourage her. Her struggles unfortunately caused ‘bedsores’ and grazes on her legs, so Anna had her first visit from the vet, and now sports a big protective bandage. But, within a few days, her strength grew sufficiently to allow her to sit and stand reasonably elegantly, and to hoon around the paddock with mother..
Gerolstein has a third foal this year, for one of our boarders, Gracie, also produced – with a certain amount of difficulty -- a tiny bundle which doesn’t seem yet to have been given a name. The little filly has had a difficult start to life, but seems to be coming along all right …
The racing scene has been a little less joyous. Elena has run twice: once rather well (5th) and once not so well, and doesn’t seem to be able to recapture the flair of her first run of the season. But maybe she has other things on her mind. Elena has always been the cluckiest lady on the farm and, since I promised her a baby if she won a race – which she has – this week she will be put in foal to Royal Mattjesty. She will run out her racing career as a slightly pregnant lady, and next year she will be able hopefully to cluck over a baby of her own.
With spring, too, our lovely pet peacock has returned from his winter wanderings, and I was woken this morning by his counter-tenorial vocalisms. His favourite perch is the railing outside my bedroom window .. how not, then, be reminded of the song of the immortal Montmorensy about the crow who sang ‘art, art, art’ ..’outside my window’?
‘No, no, I want to sleep some more, please go! .. ‘Looked through my window, couldn’t see the crow, though I could see the day, fine, shining and mine to share…’
Yes, there it is. The day. And the farm … and a heap of farmerish things to do .. so off I go…
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
What did I do? I flew...!
Silent scream.
I have flown from Berlin, Germany, to Christchurch, New Zealand. It took me 42 hours from door to door. It was (with occasional remission) the worst piece of any kind of travel I have suffered – including pirates off Somalia -- in my entire life. And yet – with special reference to my aural ‘handicap’ -- we did everything that we could to ensure that things would go smoothly.
Hollow laugh. Start with, being a foreigner in Germany trying to book a return trip, Berlin-Christchurch-Berlin? Already you are in trouble.
The internet is flooded nowadays with people trying to sell you airtickets. The fact that some of those airtickets, or combinations of airtickets don’t exist or are impracticable doesn’t matter. The websites involved are also, it seems, responsible to no-one. Not you, nor the airlines whose tickets they sell.
Being a novice at all this, I sought the help of Uwe, who directed us towards a German firm named Opodo. Now Opodo may be all very well for Germans living in Germany wanting to travel round Germany. For a foreigner, they are a nightmare. Uwe and I found a sane flight, filled in the vast amount of detail required (most of it only so Opodo can subsequently send you unstoppable German-language junk mail), and entered my extra curly platinum debit card details. ‘Accepted’. All was well.
Until I got back to my flat, to find an email from the dreaded Opodo, changing its mind. ‘Not Accepted’. Posh platinum cards are not acceptable if they don’t have a German-address holder.
I try again. But the flights I had selected had now vanished, and I had to choose another set. Ah! Air New Zealand! And Air New Zealand all the way from Tegel to Christchurch! Perfect: I shall be able to check in – luggageless -- at Tegel for the whole flight, pick up my four boarding cards, and relax through the whole horrid affair. Booked. Using PGB’s German credit card. All was well.
No it wasn’t. Dining next evening with Kevin, I related my booking story, the horrors of Opodo and the Air NZ solution. ‘But Air NZ don’t fly from Tegel’. I fly to the computer, manage to find a customer service email for the airline and fire off my questions. ‘No’, they admit, they don’t fly from Tegel. I will be on British Midlands. I never fly British Midlands: they are late, unpleasant and unhelpful. I have been bamboozled. And as for check-in all the way through?: only if I turn up at British Midland three hours before the flight.
So, in spite of Kevin’s caveat that the desk wouldn’t be open three hours early, I did. Four hours, actually. 9am Friday. It was just as well that I did. There is no Air New Zealand desk at Tegel. Nor apparently is there a BMI one. It took me fifty minutes of asking every functionary in sight before I was finally directed to window B24, where Frln Khalid happily checked me in for the whole flight. Berlin-Heathrow-LA-Auckland-Christchurch. How come no-one told me about B24 before?
Much as I like Tegel airport, as an airport, it is not a place to spend three idle hours, so I took Kevin’s advice, checked through the first of the many security blocks I would encounter in the next two days, and found a nice bar serving nice cognac, which seemed just the thing for frazzled nerves at 10.30am. And I waited. And waited. This was BMI, you see. Masquerading as Air NZ, but BMI. So it was, of course, running late. My two hour ‘pad’ at Heathrow was disappearing.
Well, by dint of running for fifteen minutes, and in spite of more security checks, I made it to the Air NZ Transfer desk, Heathrow, with ¾ hour to spare before take-off. All would be well. But it wasn’t. ‘You have your ETSA?’ asked the lady. My what? Some sort of new American visa that you have to have, nowadays, to change planes in the most hideous airport in the world. No, I didn’t. There was a machine on the counter where you could get this famous visa – for it’s a self-service on-line affair, how ridiculous! – but I was 1 minute 30 seconds too late. Why was I late? because their bloody stupid BMI-ANZ flight was late. And, no, Air New Zealand couldn’t help because – haha! – I had been so wicked as to book via an agent (an agent surely accredited by them?) who should of course have told me about ETSA, but if they didn’t it’s not their fault …
There was, however, another Air New Zealand flight going via Hong Kong later in the day. If there were space, they would shift me to that. Halleluia! But, no, it couldn’t be done now: I had to wait till the desk opened for the next shift … So I did. And I got Terry who, hurrah!, spoke clear distinct English, reorganised my tickets via Hong Kong for me, and promised to get the lady from the next shift (arggggh!) to phone Wendy and tell her of the changed arrangements. All was well.
And only five hours had been added to my journey. I spent those hours in the company of another large cognac, two pints of Guinness and an airport ham and cheese toasted sandwich with fat and soggy chips, served to me by a most attentive young man, and I plunged in search of oblivion into a fat Terry Pratchett.
The next leg was vaguely anguish-free. On a ‘full plane, no aisle seats available’ I had a delicious empty aisle seat alongside me, and with the help of imovane, I managed a couple of hours doze. But I worried: would Terry’s colleague get the message through to Wendy? So when we stopped at Hong Kong, I went to the Air New Zealand desk and (explaining my phone handicap) asked again if someone could ring or text. The girls at the Hong Kong desk were miraculous. The looked after me, shepherded me to the plane, as if I were 100pc deaf, and even arranged for me to be shifted to a nice seat up-front, with extra leg room,..
Disaster. Up front is baby row. Four babies. Three delightful. The fourth a hyperactive, grizzly, whingey, plain female child of two or three. Next to me. At about hour three I shrieked at it (in French) to stop kicking me, and its baleful mother took it temporarily on her knee. But then I had to cope with the curtain into business class. Every time an attendant whisked through, it walloped my trying-to-doze-off leg ... or even my face .. soon any chance of sleep had fled. And I’d finished the Pratchett. Calvary to Auckland.
I fled that plane with horror in my heart – I am booked to return the same way in April! - and headed for the Domestic Terminal. Straight to the Assistance desk. If Wendy hadn’t heard from Terry’s colleague or the Hong Kong brigade, she’d just about be at the airport wondering where I was. But one more try. The lass at the desk was a champion: made the call in my presence, and left a clear and precise message .. All was well.
How many times had I said that since I started this hideous marathon? Only to be proven every time wrong?
But, this time, all was well. In spite of the fact that I was sat, for my last leg home, alongside ... guess what! ... a 7-week old baby! (Is there a case for flights for pensioners only?).
Christchurch airport – still under messy reconstruction – Wendy arriving to find me the precise second I emerged .. and then we were on our way to Gerolstein. The nightmare was over.
So here I sit, still battling with my jetlag and thinking on what I have learned:
(1) Do not book international flights, with connections, on the internet
(2) Do not expect to be able to use even the flashest credit or debit card in Germany. It may (a) be refused or (b) involve you in vast percentage ‘fees’
(3) Do not travel to, through or anywhere near – not on any pretext -- the United States of America. (If I can change my return ticket I shall).
(4) Go by ship. I have already written to the shipping line.
PS Wendy’s phone registered several incomprehensible incoming calls, maybe from Heathrow and Hong Kong, but it was Shakira (?) in Auckland who saved the day. Thank you, Auckland.
I have flown from Berlin, Germany, to Christchurch, New Zealand. It took me 42 hours from door to door. It was (with occasional remission) the worst piece of any kind of travel I have suffered – including pirates off Somalia -- in my entire life. And yet – with special reference to my aural ‘handicap’ -- we did everything that we could to ensure that things would go smoothly.
Hollow laugh. Start with, being a foreigner in Germany trying to book a return trip, Berlin-Christchurch-Berlin? Already you are in trouble.
The internet is flooded nowadays with people trying to sell you airtickets. The fact that some of those airtickets, or combinations of airtickets don’t exist or are impracticable doesn’t matter. The websites involved are also, it seems, responsible to no-one. Not you, nor the airlines whose tickets they sell.
Being a novice at all this, I sought the help of Uwe, who directed us towards a German firm named Opodo. Now Opodo may be all very well for Germans living in Germany wanting to travel round Germany. For a foreigner, they are a nightmare. Uwe and I found a sane flight, filled in the vast amount of detail required (most of it only so Opodo can subsequently send you unstoppable German-language junk mail), and entered my extra curly platinum debit card details. ‘Accepted’. All was well.
Until I got back to my flat, to find an email from the dreaded Opodo, changing its mind. ‘Not Accepted’. Posh platinum cards are not acceptable if they don’t have a German-address holder.
I try again. But the flights I had selected had now vanished, and I had to choose another set. Ah! Air New Zealand! And Air New Zealand all the way from Tegel to Christchurch! Perfect: I shall be able to check in – luggageless -- at Tegel for the whole flight, pick up my four boarding cards, and relax through the whole horrid affair. Booked. Using PGB’s German credit card. All was well.
No it wasn’t. Dining next evening with Kevin, I related my booking story, the horrors of Opodo and the Air NZ solution. ‘But Air NZ don’t fly from Tegel’. I fly to the computer, manage to find a customer service email for the airline and fire off my questions. ‘No’, they admit, they don’t fly from Tegel. I will be on British Midlands. I never fly British Midlands: they are late, unpleasant and unhelpful. I have been bamboozled. And as for check-in all the way through?: only if I turn up at British Midland three hours before the flight.
So, in spite of Kevin’s caveat that the desk wouldn’t be open three hours early, I did. Four hours, actually. 9am Friday. It was just as well that I did. There is no Air New Zealand desk at Tegel. Nor apparently is there a BMI one. It took me fifty minutes of asking every functionary in sight before I was finally directed to window B24, where Frln Khalid happily checked me in for the whole flight. Berlin-Heathrow-LA-Auckland-Christchurch. How come no-one told me about B24 before?
Much as I like Tegel airport, as an airport, it is not a place to spend three idle hours, so I took Kevin’s advice, checked through the first of the many security blocks I would encounter in the next two days, and found a nice bar serving nice cognac, which seemed just the thing for frazzled nerves at 10.30am. And I waited. And waited. This was BMI, you see. Masquerading as Air NZ, but BMI. So it was, of course, running late. My two hour ‘pad’ at Heathrow was disappearing.
Well, by dint of running for fifteen minutes, and in spite of more security checks, I made it to the Air NZ Transfer desk, Heathrow, with ¾ hour to spare before take-off. All would be well. But it wasn’t. ‘You have your ETSA?’ asked the lady. My what? Some sort of new American visa that you have to have, nowadays, to change planes in the most hideous airport in the world. No, I didn’t. There was a machine on the counter where you could get this famous visa – for it’s a self-service on-line affair, how ridiculous! – but I was 1 minute 30 seconds too late. Why was I late? because their bloody stupid BMI-ANZ flight was late. And, no, Air New Zealand couldn’t help because – haha! – I had been so wicked as to book via an agent (an agent surely accredited by them?) who should of course have told me about ETSA, but if they didn’t it’s not their fault …
There was, however, another Air New Zealand flight going via Hong Kong later in the day. If there were space, they would shift me to that. Halleluia! But, no, it couldn’t be done now: I had to wait till the desk opened for the next shift … So I did. And I got Terry who, hurrah!, spoke clear distinct English, reorganised my tickets via Hong Kong for me, and promised to get the lady from the next shift (arggggh!) to phone Wendy and tell her of the changed arrangements. All was well.
And only five hours had been added to my journey. I spent those hours in the company of another large cognac, two pints of Guinness and an airport ham and cheese toasted sandwich with fat and soggy chips, served to me by a most attentive young man, and I plunged in search of oblivion into a fat Terry Pratchett.
The next leg was vaguely anguish-free. On a ‘full plane, no aisle seats available’ I had a delicious empty aisle seat alongside me, and with the help of imovane, I managed a couple of hours doze. But I worried: would Terry’s colleague get the message through to Wendy? So when we stopped at Hong Kong, I went to the Air New Zealand desk and (explaining my phone handicap) asked again if someone could ring or text. The girls at the Hong Kong desk were miraculous. The looked after me, shepherded me to the plane, as if I were 100pc deaf, and even arranged for me to be shifted to a nice seat up-front, with extra leg room,..
Disaster. Up front is baby row. Four babies. Three delightful. The fourth a hyperactive, grizzly, whingey, plain female child of two or three. Next to me. At about hour three I shrieked at it (in French) to stop kicking me, and its baleful mother took it temporarily on her knee. But then I had to cope with the curtain into business class. Every time an attendant whisked through, it walloped my trying-to-doze-off leg ... or even my face .. soon any chance of sleep had fled. And I’d finished the Pratchett. Calvary to Auckland.
I fled that plane with horror in my heart – I am booked to return the same way in April! - and headed for the Domestic Terminal. Straight to the Assistance desk. If Wendy hadn’t heard from Terry’s colleague or the Hong Kong brigade, she’d just about be at the airport wondering where I was. But one more try. The lass at the desk was a champion: made the call in my presence, and left a clear and precise message .. All was well.
How many times had I said that since I started this hideous marathon? Only to be proven every time wrong?
But, this time, all was well. In spite of the fact that I was sat, for my last leg home, alongside ... guess what! ... a 7-week old baby! (Is there a case for flights for pensioners only?).
Christchurch airport – still under messy reconstruction – Wendy arriving to find me the precise second I emerged .. and then we were on our way to Gerolstein. The nightmare was over.
So here I sit, still battling with my jetlag and thinking on what I have learned:
(1) Do not book international flights, with connections, on the internet
(2) Do not expect to be able to use even the flashest credit or debit card in Germany. It may (a) be refused or (b) involve you in vast percentage ‘fees’
(3) Do not travel to, through or anywhere near – not on any pretext -- the United States of America. (If I can change my return ticket I shall).
(4) Go by ship. I have already written to the shipping line.
PS Wendy’s phone registered several incomprehensible incoming calls, maybe from Heathrow and Hong Kong, but it was Shakira (?) in Auckland who saved the day. Thank you, Auckland.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Serious Fun, or The Dinner Party of the Season
.
The Berlin season rose to its utmost height on Sunday. The occasion? ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Kurt!’, a banquet hosted by those celebrated Berlin characters Herrn Thomas Hermanns and Wolfgang Macht, at their lakeside Gross Glienecke ‘Seehaus’, for ‘Kurt Gänzl, renowned world traveller, lover of music and horses’.
The guests?: me, as (blush) ‘guest of honour’, and my dearest Berlin buddies. There were PGB and Uwe, mein jolly Zaufke -- two top composers at one table, how the bons mots flew! -- our glowing newlyweds, Hannes and Mirza, and, of course, darling Ollie, that utterly indispensable man, without whom Berlin for me simply wouldn’t be Berlin.
Only Kevin, detained by the Meistersingers at the Komische Oper, and Paul, on the eve of his Humboldt University concert, were scratchings. Alas, even Gänzl cannot compete with Wagner and Schumann.
Getting to the boys’ ‘country retreat’ at Gross Glienecke involved a U-Bahn, two different buses and a walk. We were lucky in having Thomas Z as a guide, lucky that Berlin buses always seem to run ping! on time, and unlucky in that it rained!
But we arrived safely if damply, popped into slippers (who says you can’t wear slippers at a formal dinner?), sipped our first champagne, and ah ….!
‘Ah!’ also goes for the modestly named ‘lakehouse’, with its plummeting lawns and the ‘lake’ of the title at the bottom of the garden. It is a wonderfully beautiful ‘retreat’ which I look forward to seeing, next season, when it is bathed in sunshine…
Our ‘Operettic’ dinner was ‘à la hauteur’ of everything else. After a delicious fig amuse-gueule, we launched into Course one, subtitled ‘Künneke’: a first-class Havelländer fish soup with pike dumpling (and heaps of fennel!), accompanied by a Lösslehm rieseling. I wonder, did I let out my predilection for fish soup some champagne-stained evening?
Then onto ‘Offenbach’: the softest and tastiest of ‘Kalbskarré’, served with ratatouille and lentils … I clearly must have ‘talked’ at some stage about my favourite food … and a delicious light Bourgogne from Auxerre.
And then it was time for dessert, and the Viennese Operette: ‘Strauss’ was represented by Apfelstrudel ... just like grandmother used to make! ... and a sip of Mirabelle…
My famously small appetite was utterly forgotten, as I gourmandised my way gleefully through all the goodies, drenched in a golden glow of the kind of happy, convivial friendship that, for so many years, had had to be a missing element in my life. Goodness! only now, hours later, do I realise … I can give all those guys twenty to forty years! But I certainly didn’t feel like that. They certainly don’t make me feel like that!
Dinner done, the pink champagne flowed once more … Thomas and I are kindred souls when it comes to pink champagne … and Vera-Ellen resurfaced in the conversation, along with – for heaven’s sake .. the silly old song ‘I Believe’, and far too late in the evening der Zaufke and I somehow (it must have been my fault) ended up at the piano giving an extraordinarily approximate version of ‘Once Nearly Was Mine’…
Needless to say, midnight past, the buses and the U-Bahn were not to be considered, and our little team cruised back down the Herrenstrasse towards central Berlin in a comfortable super-sized taxi … a warm and wise young hand holding mine somehow summed up the whole beautiful evening. ‘The Triumph of Friendship’, someone mediaeval called it.
Thank you, Thomas and Wolfgang. Thank you my beautiful Berlin buddies. My momentary blues of that awful wet August weekend are all gone and, yes, of course.. my return ticket to Berlin is already booked. For just as soon as it stops raining, and der Frühling zurück kommt!
The Berlin season rose to its utmost height on Sunday. The occasion? ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Kurt!’, a banquet hosted by those celebrated Berlin characters Herrn Thomas Hermanns and Wolfgang Macht, at their lakeside Gross Glienecke ‘Seehaus’, for ‘Kurt Gänzl, renowned world traveller, lover of music and horses’.
The guests?: me, as (blush) ‘guest of honour’, and my dearest Berlin buddies. There were PGB and Uwe, mein jolly Zaufke -- two top composers at one table, how the bons mots flew! -- our glowing newlyweds, Hannes and Mirza, and, of course, darling Ollie, that utterly indispensable man, without whom Berlin for me simply wouldn’t be Berlin.
Only Kevin, detained by the Meistersingers at the Komische Oper, and Paul, on the eve of his Humboldt University concert, were scratchings. Alas, even Gänzl cannot compete with Wagner and Schumann.
Getting to the boys’ ‘country retreat’ at Gross Glienecke involved a U-Bahn, two different buses and a walk. We were lucky in having Thomas Z as a guide, lucky that Berlin buses always seem to run ping! on time, and unlucky in that it rained!
But we arrived safely if damply, popped into slippers (who says you can’t wear slippers at a formal dinner?), sipped our first champagne, and ah ….!
‘Ah!’ also goes for the modestly named ‘lakehouse’, with its plummeting lawns and the ‘lake’ of the title at the bottom of the garden. It is a wonderfully beautiful ‘retreat’ which I look forward to seeing, next season, when it is bathed in sunshine…
Our ‘Operettic’ dinner was ‘à la hauteur’ of everything else. After a delicious fig amuse-gueule, we launched into Course one, subtitled ‘Künneke’: a first-class Havelländer fish soup with pike dumpling (and heaps of fennel!), accompanied by a Lösslehm rieseling. I wonder, did I let out my predilection for fish soup some champagne-stained evening?
Then onto ‘Offenbach’: the softest and tastiest of ‘Kalbskarré’, served with ratatouille and lentils … I clearly must have ‘talked’ at some stage about my favourite food … and a delicious light Bourgogne from Auxerre.
And then it was time for dessert, and the Viennese Operette: ‘Strauss’ was represented by Apfelstrudel ... just like grandmother used to make! ... and a sip of Mirabelle…
My famously small appetite was utterly forgotten, as I gourmandised my way gleefully through all the goodies, drenched in a golden glow of the kind of happy, convivial friendship that, for so many years, had had to be a missing element in my life. Goodness! only now, hours later, do I realise … I can give all those guys twenty to forty years! But I certainly didn’t feel like that. They certainly don’t make me feel like that!
Dinner done, the pink champagne flowed once more … Thomas and I are kindred souls when it comes to pink champagne … and Vera-Ellen resurfaced in the conversation, along with – for heaven’s sake .. the silly old song ‘I Believe’, and far too late in the evening der Zaufke and I somehow (it must have been my fault) ended up at the piano giving an extraordinarily approximate version of ‘Once Nearly Was Mine’…
Needless to say, midnight past, the buses and the U-Bahn were not to be considered, and our little team cruised back down the Herrenstrasse towards central Berlin in a comfortable super-sized taxi … a warm and wise young hand holding mine somehow summed up the whole beautiful evening. ‘The Triumph of Friendship’, someone mediaeval called it.
Thank you, Thomas and Wolfgang. Thank you my beautiful Berlin buddies. My momentary blues of that awful wet August weekend are all gone and, yes, of course.. my return ticket to Berlin is already booked. For just as soon as it stops raining, and der Frühling zurück kommt!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)