Indelible Freckles

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E Day Plus 5

From the correspondence of D F Mamea, Esquire, newly of Northland.

The Kitten makes the best of her circumstances.
The Kitten makes the best of her circumstances.

Dearest Lovely Wife

Dave the Chimney Sweep arrived and went to put a temporary fix on the burner when he straightened and looked at me: Sorry, mate, he said, but it’s so buggered it’s unsafe to use.

He has thus uplifted the wood burner and most of the flue to rebuild in his workshop, and The Boy and I are now without heating.

I’ve told The Boy an old flatting trick of wearing as much of your wardrobe as you can to keep warm. (I refrained from telling him the other old flatting trick of heating the house by turning on all the hobs on your stovetop and turning the oven on high and leaving the ovendoor open.) We shall rearrange living and sleeping arrangements: he shall move his sleeping gear into one of the bedrooms (he’s been enjoying sleeping in the expanse of the great hall which is furnished with only two easy chairs and a most-kindly-lent 40-inch flat screen); I shall move my sleeping gear into the study; and the remaining bedroom shall become the new and temporary lounge with the easy chairs and flat screen. We’ll downsize our living spaces to maximise heat retention.

It’ll be fun. For the first week.

 

d

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E Day Plus 4

From the correspondence of D F Mamea, Esquire, newly of Northland.

Fowl Aer residents.
Fowl Aer residents.

Dearest Lovely Wife

The Dog and The Puppy didn’t finish their dinner from last night so I only topped up their bowls for breakfast. I’m a little worried about their lack of appetite but they were still reasonably active. The Boy took them for a walk and there were no complaints (from the dogs) (or the boy). Their food supply shall be adjusted, their behaviour and waistlines closely monitored.

The Kitten doesn’t like her SPCA food. Only minutes earlier, I heard her sullenly chew a single mouthful of it before leaving the house. Another animal to keep an eye on.

There are still ten ex-Laingholm chickens in the Green Zone, plus the inherited guinea fowl and bantam. They seem settled as they hoovered up their food. I hereby dub their chicken house Fowl Aer.

Dave the Chimney Sweep had a look at the reluctant and smoky wood burner this morning. This needs more than a sweep, mate. He said it needed to be removed completely and overhauled: the baffles were buckled and rotted out, the flue had split, and a couple of other things I didn’t hear because my mind was screaming, It’s winter! The nights are cold in winter! Since being without a burner was not an option, he’s due back first thing tomorrow morning to put in a temporary fix that will keep the fire useable for the next few months.

The Boy and I tried a nearby takeaway (‘nearby’ being fifteen minutes drive from the fortress). There was a fetid tinge to the smell of cooking oil in the air that didn’t bode well. Our fish and chips were edible: The Boy give it a 7, on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is terrible and 10 is excellent; I gave the food a 4 for being edible and filling.

The Puppy rests between patrols.
The Puppy rests between patrols.

All warmed by full stomachs, the dogs and I did a perimeter check in the dark. They do like the opportunity to walk and sniff. I’m less apprehensive than the first couple of times I did it. The idea of walking through a forest at night isn’t sound when you think about it. But walking through a forest you’re increasingly familiar with is different — there’s much less likelihood of getting lost or being jumped by ninjas (and if the latter, this being private property, I can walk the perimeter strapped).

 

d

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E Day Plus 3

From the correspondence of D F Mamea, Esquire, newly of Northland.

The new Fortress Mamea's first egg.
The new Fortress Mamea’s first egg.

Dearest Lovely Wife

I thought a situational report (henceforth sitrep) would be helpful, informative, and an aid to my ailing moment-to-moment memory.

The alarm went off at 0555 and I immediately turned it off. I had purposely set it for 0555 the night before, thinking I-don’t-know-what (yes I do: thinking that farm-type people get up at 0555 or thereabouts [not thinking further that Those People probably go to sleep a lot earlier than the 2330 time I went to bed and set the alarm for the coming morning]). After a few rumbles of paws on the verandah I roused and said hello to The Dog and The Puppy. They were boisterous in their morning greetings — it’s one of the things I love about dogs: every absence, no matter how short or long, is ended by effusive and licky reunions — and I gave them breakfast.

The morning perimeter check commenced soon after, the dogs and I starting with the chicken run (henceforth Green Zone). Yesterday, on the dusk perimeter check, two of the girls — Dumb White Chicken and Not Dottie — had presumably used the decrepit chicken tractor to fly out of the Jerusalem cherry-free Green Zone; Dumb was successfully coaxed back into the safe zone and eventually returned to the chicken house; unfortunately Not Dottie was Not Interested. This morning, the adopted guinea fowl, Giselle, was out of the chicken run completely, and Not Dottie had been joined outside the Green Zone by Dumb White Chicken and Clint. I dragged the chicken tractor into the centre of the Green Zone so that it could no longer provide means of escape.

The nesting boxes have yet to be discovered by the chickens but one egg was on the floor in the hay — at least one of the chickens, it would seem, has settled into their new environs.

As for the rest of the property:
— the horse troughs are all full;
— goddamn there’s a lot of Jerusalem cherry in The Wood awaiting our attentions;
— The Puppy dived and jumped and played in a large puddle of muddy water which strengthens the case for her being part water dog;
— there’s plenty of firewood in The Wood — will need to drag out and place in the woodshed to dry out before cutting with either the skilsaw (currently in Laingholm) or a brand spanking chainsaw (which I shall call “Mother”).

Here ends the first report. Don’t know how regular these will be, but if I can be persistent they should provide some kind of log of things needing doing, and things done (it’s also been a good springboard for my to-do list for the upcoming town trip).

Yours, always

d

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Exodus

Chicken sermon.

It’s time to come clean.

Fortress Mamea is not an actual fortress. I have described various parts of it with fortress-like words (like armoury) — all of the parts exist… but in a real-world Kiwi quarter-acre section and house kind of way. (Hey, what did you expect? I’m a writer.)

And the reason for this moment of truth is that the inhabitants of Fortress Mamea are leaving West Auckland and moving north where — with, as always, the Goddess’ indulgence — a new home has been established.

Located in the rolling hills outside of Whangarei, the new, more substantial and redoubtable Fortress Mamea is over fourteen acres of land, bounded on three sides by a moat stream, and includes:

The Wood
There’s acres of this stuff. Ideal, one might say, for paintball adventures…

So, yeah.

More space. Less excuses.

New chapter.

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KINGSWOOD: a workshop

Kingswood logo

Last weekend, the wonderful people at Titirangi Theatre granted the script and I a one-day workshop in which the script was read, scenes were stood up, and a number of passages blocked out for a semi-public (The Goddess joined us specifically) reading at day’s end.

Praise be to:

  • workshop director — and Titirangi Theatre president — Duncan Milne;
  • and the very game and generous Ian Harvey, Colin Mak, Patricia Wichman and Sandra Zvenyika who read aloud, questioned, acted and offered.

I am not worthy.

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Good Sick

Pic courtesy www.maristmy575.com

I had a typical 1970s Pacific Islander upbringing: every Sunday began with getting up at what felt like first cock’s crow to attend a church service, followed by Sunday school, followed by an interminable wait for the adults to finish their networking and whatever, then get home for to’ona’i.

…Damn those Sunday mornings felt like forever. Still, my parents — bless their jandalled feet — would, on the way home, sometimes stop by a Kentucky or Homestead outlet to pick up some fried chicken to add to the to’ona’i staples of rice, sapa sui, corned beef, taro, palusami and potato salad.

This tradition continued after the Mamea children fled the nest. One Sunday every month, we returned to the family home for to’ona’i, us wage- and salary-earners bringing KFC, fish ‘n’ chips and ice cream while my mother prepared the usual staples. In order to deflect parental interrogations of our lifestyles and lack of family-starting, we kids introduced a new tradition: a family viewing of an action film chosen for its satisfyingly high body count and Old Testament-style morals.

Post-meal, my siblings and I would spread out around the sitting room, half-watching the video*, and moaning to each other about how full we felt. We didn’t call it overeating. Whatever descriptions we attempted were rarely prefixed with ‘over-’ or had the words ‘too much‘; the word ‘nausea’ didn’t enter our minds, either.

We worked with simple, humble ‘sick’.

There was a spectrum to the Mamea post-to’ona’i sick: at one end was ‘bad sick’ which sometimes necessitated sudden yet discreet visits to the toilet; and at the other end was ‘good sick’ where it was acknowledged that that last piece of chicken may have been a bridge too far but so long as we didn’t move or twitch, the discomfort was manageable.

I’ve no idea how it informs my writing.

But now you know there is such a thing as good sick.

 

* And half-watching our mother exhorting the hero on the telly to Kill them! Kill them all!

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The Puppy

The Northland litter.
The Northland litter at rest.

A few weeks back, The Goddess and I travelled north to select a future successor to The Dog. There was a litter of twelve puppies from which to choose, and we had first dibs — a privilege bestowed upon us by the Horsewoman, purveyor of the cavalry element and co-conspirator with The Goddess of all schemes equine. Securing a successor sounds ruthless on first listen but part of life is death, and life is hard to imagine without the companionship of a dog.

Choosing a puppy was more difficult than expected. Each candidate had to be assessed for colour, aptitude, energy — oh, who the heck am I kidding? They were all cute. They were all cuddly. They could all have come back to Fortress Mamea with us, their mother and owner be damned.

Luckily, The Goddess remembered a checklist drawn up earlier, when we weren’t surrounded by playful, yippy bundles of joy: female, calm, of good character, and with excellent references. The Horsewoman suggested a couple of candidates that fit the criteria, and the rest was pretty much a coin-toss.

Meet The Puppy:

The Puppy, Apr15

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GOODBYE MY FELENI: Home Cafe, Apia

Closing night audience heads into the theatre.
Closing night audience heads into the theatre.

Gosh it’s warm here.

With many thanks to the Apia High Commission, I was able to attend the last two nights of Goodbye My Feleni‘s season in Samoa. Yep.

It took a village, of course:

  • the actors — Sakura Siaosi Seumanutafa, George Randolph Tuiletufuga, Myka Stanley, Tonumaipe’a J Aiolupotea, Iosefa Enari, Joshua E G Aiono, and Anthony Sileli O’Byrne;
  • the directors Fiona Collins and Gaea Asolelei To’alepai;
  • the production was driven by Sophie Vickers for the Apia High Commission, overseen by High Commissioner Jacqui Frizzell, and supported by Mary Hughes and fellow high commission people;
  • and the awesome people at Home Cafe — Frank the Island’s Most Aws’ Barista, Loia the Chef, Setu the Bouncer, Jay the Friendly Taxi Driver, and Marianne the Bar Manager.

I’m chuffed: that Feleni has been shared overseas again; and that the play has enabled me to visit my parents’ birth country.

The cast of the Apia season with local RSA admirers.
The cast of the Apia season with local RSA admirers.
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GOODBYE MY FELENI: toe alu

Reinforcements for the Maori Battalion aboard the HMT Batory, 1940. (Courtesy of Australian War Memorial via Wikipedia.)

Yes, it’s on again: Goodbye My Feleni will be playing at Home Cafe, Malifa, Samoa, Monday 20 – Friday 24 April 2015, 7:30pm each night. This production is directed by Fiona Collins and Gaea Asolelei To’alepai.

Tickets are free — they are available from the New Zealand High Commission, Beach Road, Apia or telephone +68 1 21 711.

This season is part of the 2015 ANZAC Day Programme for Samoa and is courtesy of Hekama Creative and New Zealand Foreign Affairs and Trade.

(Translation of toe alu — Samoan, meaning “go again”.)

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