The stupendously silly season

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I should be waiting a little longer before writing this, until the stupendously silly season is over, but if I do there will be too much to say, because there has been too, too much to do..…

In a week or so, everything .. please. please, everything .. that is happening in the beleaguered land of Gerolstein will be over, and we shall be able to enjoy our ‘summer’ (if and when it happens) in the peace and calm of our lovely rural surroundings. But, for the moment .. (silent howl)

It started with the bathroom. If I had known what was coming, I would never have dared the bathroom. But I did. And – give or take a few final and decorative touches - it’s done. Yesterday a lady came to ‘vitroglaze’ the shower room, tonight it will be dry .. and I shall be able to inaugurate my Monsoon dump shower. It had better be a stunner.
The operation is, I think, wholly successful. The room has come out exactly as I imagined and wanted it. The tradesmen have been every one a gem, the thanks for which must go to Richard the Revamper: he may be extraordinarily expensive, but he is extraordinarily good, and we all know, to coin a cliché .. ‘you gets what you pays for’.



So, the bathroom done, and bedroom two metamorphosed into a delightful dressing room, we now move to the replacement of half the bedroom ceiling, and on Friday the roofers begin the entire re-roofing of the house. I can’t even think about that one. Please the Lord they don’t make a mess …



The saga of the trees ended happily. After the disastrous episode of getting fifty pine trees topped of ten to fifteen metres of huge frizzly spires – an exercise which cost us broken fences, smashed gates, ruined hay, a wrecked electric fence system (still not working) – I called in a classy firm by name Roseworks: and in a day and a half those young lads with their chainsaws and a bobcat had turned a mass of tangled, broken boles and branches into a neat pile of shaven tree-trunks (size a, to be sold), another of size b, to be cut up and used for the winter’s fires, and a third, large one of rubbishy bits (to be burned) .. all that remains now for me to do, in person, is pick up the thousands of pine cones lying in the paddock so that they do not damage horses feet or farm machines!



Today? Ah, today the haymaker arrived at 7am to mow, and any minute now I shall be turfed out of here by Spiderman who is coming to spray the houses, inside and out, in a usually very successful bug protection exercise. Tomorrow the men from Daikin come to instal Wendy’s heat pump, Friday it’s the roofer, the vet to ensure that Duchess is in foal, and also probably the man to grade etc our 500 metres of driveway..



And somewhere in there, are horses. They too have been active. D’Arcy continues his ‘finishing school’ at Motukarara, Lucie will follow him there very soon: she is very much a handful (I hesitate to say ‘her mother’s daughter’ given the notoriety of her mother) and has a cavalier disregard for fences. That is to say, she doesn't stop when she gets to one .. she goes over, under it, or straight through it. Ping. Mikie has the cart back on for the first time today. Elena has had a wee freshener and goes to the workouts on Saturday. And over in Australia very little Livia, only just turned two, is about to do the same! Amazing! An early two-year-old! And in France, Tenor has been to Caen (in spite of a blodge of muddy heel) and qualified comfortably…



Duchess (once scanned and, I pray, found pregnant) and Douchelette and dear Sally will move into the hay paddock as soon as we are baled which will be somewhat of a relief, as Douchelette seems to have inherited the female family traits and shows all signs of being a very lively lassie. A nice 4 acre paddock should keep her occupied!

My quiet spring. My lazy summer. To get a breather, I have booked a wee trip to see Barry and Rosie in Sydney in January..

But it’s a long way to January. Still, maybe after this week – after the baling, the spraying, the roofing, the building and all the rest -- life at Gerolstein will be able to relax back into its normal routine

Festive season? No way. Festive, for us, will be a bottle or two of bubbly on the terrace, in country silence, looking out at our horses and our gardens..
We’ll have earned it.

Good Heavens, ma'am ...

What are you doing in my family photo box?




It's evidently a Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium .. that's Dinah Shore and Alan Jones .. the rubicond chappie is Prince Littler ..and that's Gracie Fields's left shoulder and coif..

Ian must have collected this for one of his books..

Silent spring

While I've been tapping away, evening is falling....

And Wendy has headed for the garden again....

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It was going to be a quiet spring

It’s not.

The bathroom, which will not be (has not been) finished on time in spite of the brave efforts of all the ‘house’ tradesmen and Richard the Revamper, thanks to the dilatoriness of the glassmakers, has of course been the Big Thing. But hopefully, in another five days, they will be all done and I will be able to revel in my lovely new waterworld.
Of course, having the bathroom done brought in a builder, who noticed that my bedroom ceiling was sagging, which brought in someone who confirmed it had been rained on, which brought in an insurance lady who said that, actually, the whole house needed re-roofing. So in fourteen days time -- and, amazingly for here, I have found a roofer who commits to it! -- that will start to happen.
Careless of all possibilities – roof, ceiling, works to come – I and a few bits of furniture have moved back to camp out into my soon-to-be-beautiful bedroom, and even if I have to sleep with a crash helmet on, I’m not moving!
Of course, now that the bathroom and bedroom are so incipiently swell.. I’m looking a metre down the corridor at what could make me a nice dressing room..
Well, who needs a second bedroom? No-one ever comes to stay!

New Zealand’s other tradesmen run true to Kiwi form. The man who was supposed to remake my drive hasn’t been heard from in six weeks, so today I pulled the plug. The man who is supposed to do the trees is equally incommunicado. Of course, they all want to be paid in five minutes (or in advance) when they do come.. The ‘contractors’ must all be awfully rich, here, the way they treat the folk who pay. Not me. no more.

On the horse front – and what other front is there? -- Duchess is being lined up for her insemination. When she had her pre-service check-up, Douchelette (one month old this week) came into the crush with her and, amazingly, eventually permitted us a first pat or three … her baby fur has gone, alas, and she now looks as if she’s been brylcreemed. Bt still beautiful.



Elena has been to the races again, at Timaru, and did better, but can still do much better. In a decidedly fast run race (they broke the two-minute mile) she started well and finished well, but got a bit lost in the middle stages. She missed the 5th prize of $125 by a nose!



D’Arcy has been bundled (literally) into Murray’s float to go off to Motukarara and his ‘finishing school’, where Fritzl and Seppl are already in training.. He was a bit bemused by the moving (edible?) room …



Ténor goes to qualify in France on Thursday, and today little Aussie Livia got her name registered and was entered for Australia’s rich Breeder’s Crown series. Well, one can dream! Livia, alas, will be Livia Degerolstein, as Australia is stingy with the number of letters and spaces you are allowed, and won’t permit cases, or apostrophes. The Victorian authorities rang me up today to ask what the name meant! Do you think they might have thought it was rude? Doesn’t everyone know where Gerolstein is?

But hey! At last most of our horses are doing something!

Which means it has no chance of being a quiet spring. And what about summer!

A room with a loo

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We are getting there .. today the utilities were installed..

Richard Revamp has almost kept to his promise to be on time...

But the folks making the opaque glass walls for the shower are going to nut him. Apparently they work at a leisurely pace. At their price, I'm rather surprised..



Oh, how I long to get my bedroom and nightlife back in order!

Horse progress

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Well, the day has been and gone. Elena went to the races. We haven’t come home from Ashburton jubilantly bearing a prize – Elena finished 11th – but with some motives for satisfaction. The result isn’t as bad as it sounds.
Firstly, she behaved. She went away well from her second line draw (see pic, she’s the yellow one) and, even though they went a cracking pace over the first half mile she went along with them. However, up front, there was a deal of cat-and-mouse going on, and during one of the sudden slowings of the pace, Elena .. tightly enclosed on the rails in the large field … got squashed for space, ennerved and ran out for a few strides. She made the ground back, but .. she wasn’t comfortable in there. And her hood had come adrift. Into the straight she was still in the middle of the field, and she trucked on past one or two of the fading ones and being passed by the fast finishers from the rear…
John, the driver, said she had done fine, and she will doubtless do better next time. But we have begun. After all this time, we have at least begun.



Back at home (where the bathroom and bedroom had been painted in our absence), it was time to turn the spotlight on baby D’Arcy. He is scheduled to leave us for his ‘finishing school’ at Motukarara this week, so it was time to teach him to walk into the barn. This is not a simple thing. Babies (a) don’t want to go ‘in’ places and (b) they have never experienced concrete under their feet. Last year it took ¾ hour and the threat of a mighty 4x2 to get little Mikie in, and finally we had bodily to winch him in.



So D’Arcy was walked down the racetrack, round the corner, up to the barn where big Boofie was acting as bait and .. wonder of wonders -- he simply walked straight in!
So he got his photo taken ‘on concrete’ (which he quickly discovered isn’t too much fun to scrape with your unshod hoofs) and I was in wonderment as to how he has grown since he was that wee boy with the bandage on his knee, just one year ago!

Kurt's Folly and the Cup

While the New Zealand Cup was running... life didn't stop! The tiles are down in the Best Bathroom Ever, and the man has been measuring up the glass walls... Progress photos are rather difficult to take, as my lens isn;t up to it... but these are the two ends .. the green waterseal will be covered with opaque beige glass panels..
well, wait for the next instalment and you will see




As for Cup Day, well my tipping wasn't so bad after all. A super win for Monkey King in the Cup, an ALMOST for Running on Time in the big trot, a fourth for Explosive Turk, a superb second for Fake Chance, and the day finished in glory when dear Raggy simply murdered a fine field in the last race. And when I went to my archive, I don't even have a picture of him .. not even as a baby .. with which to decorate this post.

Hey lads, it's the Coop!

Well, here we are at New Zealand’s biggest harness racing week of the year. Most of the best horses in New Zealand will be up against each other this week, starting with Tuesday…

If I say that, hopefully, we will be starting on Thursday, I don’t mean we’ll be part of it. Only once, ever, with dear little Dodo (Master Ado) have I had a horse run in The Cup Meeting. While all the tenors are fighting it out in Christchurch, we are going to shimmy 50 kilometres south to Ashburton, to give Elena her first race day start in slightly less town-hall company. Unfortunately, some of the big guns have the same idea, but hey .. you have to race!

Anyway, Tuesday the big boys will be up and I thought I might try to give you some tips. As with everything, except musical and theatrical history, my heart gets in the way of my head, so I’ll just give you my list of ‘I would love them to win and if I ever was a bettor (which I ain’t) I would back..’s.

Race one: De Gaulle .. a great man and a very nice horse owned by very nice people
Race four: Fake Chance for a place. The superstar favourite, who should be in the Cup, has ruined this race for the second echelon
Race six: torn between Running on Time, potentially one of the very best trotters in NZ, and The Fat Controller who is the uncle of our Duchess…
Race eight: Kotare Mach. Hot favourite, but we love the Kotares (our one is just across there in the paddock)
Race nine: Ronnie Coute .. GO RONNIE! (another relation)
Race 10: the cup. They unfairly denied Special Ops a start, so I’ll be cheering for the Monkey King. But anyone can win (and I pick Australia 1-2-3) as long as – and I have most of the right-thinking racing world with me in this -- its not that toxicomane called Changeover
Race eleven: sneaky outsider tip of the day: Passion and Glory (a little bird…)
Race twelve: Oh! Raggy! The ‘family’ horse… could he? might he? Cross your fingers for Raglan. (Alas he’s up against another horse I love called Second Wind, so maybe its quinella time)

And cheers for M J Fulham, Biella Star, Explosive Turk and all the other pals… but please, don’t spoil the Cup Carnival for me on Day One: no Changeover

4th November again already..

..
Three years today.
It feels like ten.



All my love,
Kurt

The birth of a bathroom

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It's happening
Now it looks like a room at least..

Ladies' Day

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My house may be full of men – workmen – but 28 October was definitely ladies’ day.

Duchess giving birth .. and, yes, little Douche is a girl.



And to top it all off, Elena got it right today and ran her best trial to date. She was drawn at the outside of the mobile gate, number seven of eleven starters, but John (Dunn) the driver urged her forward at the start, and continued to urge her on until, as they came past the winning post the first time, she was sitting parked outside the leader. A leader, may it be said, wearing the fearsome blue with white stars of the top-notch Purdon stable.



And she stayed there. As they came into the home straight, she was still there, having a go at the two Purdon horses, and she just kept on coming. I believe she even ht the front inside the last 50 metres. But then a horse named Flash Move, which had sat behind her, in the perfect spot, throughout, turned up its wick and dove past her to win by a fast finishing length. On the line, another fast finisher nosed her into third.
It was a grand run. She’d been three wide for more than half a lap, stuck in the unloved parked place for all the rest, all the old problems of steering had largely disappeared, and best of all she had fought on keenly at the end without John having to drive her out.
As for the competition, well she beat home both of the Purdon horses, and Flash Move went out last Friday at Addington for its first race as a pacer … favourite! So, obviously it’s well thought of. We shall see. And Elena? Well, hopefully 12 November, at Ashburton, will be the occasion of her long awaited race debut. She’s earned it!

Born with the dawn

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It hasn’t been a very bloggable October.
The weather has been pretty drear, and of excitement there has been very little…
Of course, the horses have done their bit..
D’Arcy and Lucie have been slowly and gently learning their lessons… learning what confinement, leading, brushing, coats, people, handling and so forth are all about. D’Arcy has been a fine pupil, Lucie a little less trusting thus a little less confident.
They have been growing-up pals, but now – owing to D’Arcy’s male propensities -- they have to be separated. Still, when it’s his turn in the crush, she comes to say hello..



Elena has been a couple of times to the trials with not wholly satisfying results, so we jiggle with her preparation and we try again..

However, today 27-28 October, things have leaped into action..
Yesterday one boss, one lecky, one plumber, and one and a half builders descended on my house. The bathroom disappeared into a skip in record time, and the hot water cylinder walked out the French doors… the only hiccough was that the new cylinder failed to arrive on schedule (this is New Zealand where punctuality is unknown) so I have no hot water until it does. And now that all is ‘unmade’, for the next month I am going to watch my new super-bathroom arise from the ‘ashes’..



And to celebrate the occasion, Duchess has given birth. At 5h45 this morning, as I slogged out through the chilly megadew to check her out, I noticed she was lying. She got up to greet me, and I could see instantly that she was no longer battleship-size. And alongside her on the grass, a little head…
Welcome to Gerolstein little feller! Or is it a girl. Too dawnish to do the ‘one hole or two’ test. I have christened baby Douche de Gerolstein in honour of the new bathroom. I think, if he’s a boy it may have to be Duc de Gerolstein ..
Baby photos being one of the reasons anyone has babies, here are the first of what will doubtless over the next days be many..

Such is Fame...

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Do you know that in Europe there is publicity for our little New Zealandish farm just everywhere!?

A whole window in a big department store in the heart of Berlin (where I took this photo)

It appears they've even named a town, and a beer, and a cycle team after us...

Such is fame

A Bit of a Surprise

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Lucie's latest lesson. On with the gear and ..oy! .. the bit. Her facial expressions as she tries to work out how best to get rid of this thing that stops her chewing the rails simply had to be recorded!

Maddeningly Masport

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Summer is icumen in and all the jolly little barbecues are getting ready to sizzle. And I looked out at our poor, greasy, dirty old thing, entwined amongst several-year-old branches of wisteria (that’s how long its been there) and thought… ‘one day…’



Then, on Friday morning, a rare event: some of that dreaded advertising stuff succeeded in getting past xtra’s usually efficient spam-blocker and on to my email. Mitre 10 Mega-hardware, down the road, had docked a rather better machine than I’d been vaguely considering by $50, just for the weekend. And it was a Masport: a reputed New Zealand brand whose logburner and lawnmower I already (reasonably) happily own.
So I went out and I brought one home. And if you think that’s the end of the story, I assure you it’s only the very beginning.
The next evening, we unpacked the three big boxes, carefully put all nuts and washers and suchlike safely into a big fruitbowl, and opened the assembly instructions. Immediate chaos. The text of the booklet seemed to bear very little relation to the pieces to hand. We didn’t have nearly enough washers, and there were several unidentified pieces, which we put to one side. But worse, much, much worse, were the verbal instructions. We’ve all read bad manuals: this one is the worst ever. Masport can in no way be a New Zealand firm. This nonsense is definitely translated by a mentally deficient non-English speaker from some Asiatic language. Or perhaps by an Internet auto-translating machine. It explains nothing, identifies nothing, describes things in a language I don’t recognise (do you know what phenolic means? I worked out nyloc, but how to recognise it?), it gives instructions in the wrong order, and instructions for impossible feats ..
Wendy and I opened a bottle of wine and settled down to beating the odds. We eventually got in the ‘two of plain legs’ and ‘two of axle legs’ (‘of’ incorrectly used it the manualist’s favourite word), though I alone wouldn’t have been able to, tried to guess what a ‘cylinder hook’ was and where it went (it didn’t seem to have a use anyway) and two hours and two bottles later, with bruised hands and scraped knuckles from trying to insert washers and nuts in places where only a midget’s hand could fit, we gave up for the night. Putting the handle on the hood was just too much. Why can’t they sell the damn’ hood with its handle ON?
I retired to my computer and tried to register the warranty for the Masport Misfit. It takes quite a while and it won’t accept your ‘form’ if you don’t fill in certain marked areas. One of these was ‘serial number’ (another was ‘phone number’, Masport is seriously unfriendly to we deaf folk who don’t have such things). I think Masport’s website must have been created by the same man who wrote the manual.
By 9pm, I felt like dismantling the wretched piece of machinery and dumping it on Mitre 10’s doorstep at midnight.
Instead, I howled off my frustration by e-mail to the Masport Customer Service department. And suddenly things began to improve. One by one, a young lady named Kim began to set things to right. I don’t know how many emails we’ve exchanged now, but each time we ‘speak’ another frustration vanishes. I won’t say the thing is, finally,100 percent assembled as it should be (and I hold the manual writer 100% responsible if it blows up at first lighting), but at least we have a barbecue… oh, and by the way, the Masport 4 model, guess what, DOESN’T HAVE A SERIAL NUMBER!




Masport needs seriously to get its act together. I won’t be buying another of its products until I am assured that it is a New Zealand firm, with New Zealand employees, manuals written by someone with at least a pass in School Cert English (and Engineering?) and a website set up by someone feeling and competent ... and while they are at it they should make Kim managing director. Or at least head of personnel or advertising. And get her to write the manual, too, as she obviously understands these things. Thanks, Kim.

PS The machine is scheduled to make its debut tomorrow night when a small slice of the Canterbury theatre world comes to visit .. If you read in the paper that half of New Zealand’s top talent was wiped out by an explosion at Sefton, you can blame the (?) Japanese author of the maddening Masport manual.

Lucie's lesson on line

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Day two at school for D'Arcy and Lucie.
The day's new adventure was to learn to walk, on the lead, behind the jogger..
D'Arcy had to go first, because propinquity with his pretty niece has to be kept to a minimum. It took him a little while to get the jist of the thing: for a couple of paddock-laps he tried to play tug-of-war with me and my tractor, but he soon settled and when he had done a couple of model laps, Wendy trundled him down the alleyway to Yard Number One, specially set up for feisty young boys.



Safely installed, he was given the benefit of a bit of worldly wisdom from one of our Elder Statesmen



And before long, he was hooning proprietorially round his new kingdom and apparently not even thinking about fillies



We thought that Lucie, who gives an air of being a little more apprehensive than D'Arcy, would probably go less well, and need a soft and gentle lesson. Nothing of the kind! As the tractor moved slowly off, I waited for the customary first protesting tug ... but it never came. She walked nearly all the way, with just the odd little hop and skip when we went over a bump. A splendid first effort .. Wendy had no need to walk alongside her, and so was able to film the (as you can hear, decidedly windy) proceedings



Bringing up babies can be tough, but these two (so far!) are proving pleasing pupils!

Bathroom!

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Oh Lord! It's much much more expensive than I intended...
But what the hell, I'm only going to do it once in my life..
And its nothing to do with the fact that Mr Richard Revamp Design is cuter than its safe to be...

The Language of the Flowers

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On 15 February 1996, Ian and I planted a magnolia tree in our garden at Fernenland, St Arnaud, to mark my fiftieth birthday.

Not too many years later, when we quit Fernenland for Gerolstein, we took the commemorative plant along. But it never seemed to thrive, and for ten years and more it gave us just a display of leaves and occasionally a shrivelled frostbitten floral bud..

Finally, now, with my 64th birthday hovering in the near future, the tree has burst into flower ..

I wonder if it's trying to tell me something,,

What a Difference a Year Makes

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Not even a year. Here are D'Arcy and Lucie (still glued to their mothers) in December of 2008...




And here they are on 1 October 2009.
D'Arcy has changed enormously (he was, of course, only a month old in his 'hospital' picture), and has grown into probably the best-looking of all Gwen's babies. Let's hope that Beauty Does as Beauty is!
Lucie, who has the Sundon blood inherited from her mother, is rather finer than her uncle. She is also a Girl. And thus she hasn't done the boyish burst of yearish-old growing that D'Arcy has. But she's still as stunning as she was when a wee thing...
It's evident that Love You throws splendid babes..
And in a month or so we'll have another around the place!

Babes Behind Bars!

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No, it’s not what you think. I’m talking horses. As usual.
It’s that time of year when those little bundles of long legs (and monstrous knees) that came into our lives 10-12 months ago take their first lessons in practical horseship.
Yesterday, Lucie and D’Arcy were hitched to the railings inside the crush, their warm coats removed, and…
A good springtime brushing such as they have never had before.. soft winter hair flying with every stroke of the brush, enough of it to stuff a large cushion! And, amazingly, neither protested..



Every foal we’ve ever had from the ‘Robinson’ breed – from Duchess through Boris and Wanda to Fritzl and Seppl, has always protested.. but not these two! What a nice surprise!
Then, on to feet. They have to learn to let their feet be picked up so that they can be inspected and their hoofs tidied and trimmed. Once again, they were fine. D’Arcy’s trim was quite a long one, but he stayed calm and only tried a few times to nip Wendy’s back..
Lucie was a little less sure but still far better than average. Phew!



Next, the famous wormer. Most horses make a frightful fuss over taking wormers. Lucie’s mother was the worst: she’d put up a ten minute battle rather than take anything by mouth. These days she’s less neurotic, and its down to five minutes, but Lucie ... well, as of today she’s the wormer champion. Although, after having taken the stuff she wasn’t at all impressed with its flavour…



D’Arcy, in his turn, discovered that lead ropes aren’t only for leading, they have other attractions. Like, a substitute for chewing gum! Well, I suppose a boy has to have some bad habits..



Lesson number one done, covers back on, and back to the paddock..
Rather more separate paddocks than before.
For D’Arcy has realised that he is male, and that Lucie (his niece, and anyway 2 months older than him!) is a Woman …

Tomorrow, lesson two…