Capital 36 by Capital

CAPITAL TA L E S O F T H E C I T Y

GOING ON A BEER HUNT NOVEMBER 2016

TREETOP DREAM

ISSUE 36

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AUCKLAND AUCKLAND WELLINGTON WELLINGTON

100 Years of Summer Fashion in New Zealand

26 November 2016 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 19 February 2017

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MADE IN WELLINGTON W

THE COVER: Spring turns into summer.

ellington has a new mayor – congratulations Justin Lester – and a refreshed council, and we cast more votes in this election, with a 48% turnout. It would seem that a real contest between candidates helps to engage voters. Even this increase, though, left us with a worryingly low level of participation in the local elections, and we can’t count on so many mayoral candidates with such different platforms every time. Perhaps a joint approach to improving voting numbers would be something the region’s councils could work on together, in an amalgamated sort of way. That is, after those easy decisions about the Basin Reserve, the airport and the town hall have all been made. Our team of beer experts sampled more than 120 craft brews to give you the results for our annual beer tasting . We’ve chosen the very best of them in this issue for you to taste and compare notes on. You might want also to keep an eye out around the region for Capital Magazine’s handy Beer Guide map, especially produced to help you find the way to the many cool and crafty beer destinations. Our food writers Nicci and Jordan Shearer have also joined the party with a great beer and food combo dish. Tā Moko artist Taryn Beri talks enthusiastically to Michelle Duff about her work and how quickly her enthusiasm for tā moko changed her life. Treehouses: we scoured the region for subjects for this month’s photo essay. Once a staple of a New Zealand childhood on the quarter acre section, a treehouse is now an uncommon feature of life in the suburbs. In my childhood, we, or more accurately my brothers, built our treehuts. We gloried in one that was twostoried; that we had room only to crouch on the lower floor didn’t seem to us a drawback. Now, we find, it is more often that parents and grandparents do the building. Looking outwards a little, Melody Thomas documents the flight of the godwit that arrives here in spring from Alaska; and then, looking to Europe, we have a bit of a Berlin focus going on. In this issue our occasional columnist Vanessa Ellingham looks at the harsh realities of life in Berlin for refugees; and John Bishop looks on Berlin as a tourist and is not enamoured of its Prussian flavour. Do let us know what you have enjoyed and, perhaps, what you have liked less in this issue.

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C O N TA C T U S Phone +64 4 385 1426 Email editor@capitalmag.co.nz Website www.capitalmag.co.nz Facebook facebook.com/CapitalMagazineWellington Twitter @CapitalMagWelly Instagram @capitalmag Post Box 9202, Marion Square, Wellington 6141 Deliveries 31–41 Pirie St, Mt Victoria, Wellington, 6011 ISSN 2324-4836 Produced by Capital Publishing Ltd

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The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher. Although all material is checked for accuracy, no liability is assumed by the publisher for any losses due to the use of material in this magazine. Copyright ©. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the prior written permission of Capital Publishing Ltd.

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CONTRIBUTORS

S TA F F Alison Franks Managing editor editor@capitalmag.co.nz Campaign coordinators Lyndsey O’Reilly lyndsey@capitalmag.co.nz Haleigh Trower haleigh@capitalmag.co.nz Michael Benton michael@capitalmag.co.nz Griff Bristed griff@capitalmag.co.nz Head Factotum John Bristed john@capitalmag.co.nz Art direction Shalee Fitzsimmons shalee@capitalmag.co.nz Design Rhett Goodley- design@capitalmag.co.nz Hornblow Accounts Tod Harfield accounts@capitalmag.co.nz Craig Beardsworth

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Gus Bristed

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VA N E S S A E L L I N G HA M Journ a li st Vanessa is a Kiwi freelance journalist and editor based in Berlin. She runs a blog for a volunteer organisation that just won an intercultural innovation award from the United Nations for its work welcoming Berlin’s newcomers, including refugees.

JESS HILL D e si g n er Jess is a videographer, designer, music enthusiast and recent graduate of Victoria Uni. She’s been working at Capital for two years, creating videos, editing footage, assisting on shoots and sipping coffee in between.

STOCKISTS Pick up your Capital in New World, Countdown and Pak’n’ Save supermarkets, Moore Wilson's, Unity Books, Commonsense Organics, Magnetix, City Cards & Mags, Take Note, Whitcoulls, Wellington Airport, Interislander and other discerning region-wide outlets. Ask for Capital magazine by name. Distribution: john@capitalmag.co.nz.

SUBMISSIONS We welcome freelance art, photo and story submissions. However we cannot reply personally to unsuccessful pitches.

IAN APPERLEY Writer Ian Apperley is a freelance writer and prolific Wellington blogger. He blogs on local Council issues, writes for the National Business Review, and produces Peninsula News. He lives in Strathmore Park with his wife, three dogs, and five chickens.

SARAH BURTON Ph oto g r aph er Sarah is a talented lass who loves to capture the characters that interest her. She loves delving into the ever-varied culture of New Zealand as well as exploring further afield. Check out her work on Instagram @throwsomelight

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CONTENTS

10 LETTERS 12 CHATTER 14 NEWS BRIEFS

NEW PRODUCTS

A blue sky theme for spring

TALES OF THE CIT Y

TARYN IT UP Taryn Beri is one of a new wave of female tā moko artists taking the traditional art form forward

Royal NZ Ballet assistant costumier Hank Cubitt sews his story

WHAT THE FLO CK

TREETOP DREAM Three tree dwellers reveal their homes among the canopy

The godwit flies into view this month

CULTURE Art, dance, film, theatre, design – we have our finger on the Wellington pulse

AN AFGHAN ADRIFT Vanessa Ellingham meets one of the many refugees settling in Germany

THE VOICE OF THE CRICKET From playing a biscuit tin guitar to a Beijing residency – Daniel Beban talks music

FASHION BRIEFS

LIFESTYLE BRIEFS

SUBLIME Fruity jewels good enough to eat

CONTENTS

GREEK TO ME Joelle Thomson makes her way through a box of Grecian wines

EDIBLES Bite-size foodie news

LIQUID BRIEFS

A G E A N D B E AU T Y

Mid-century furniture, ῾80s cookbooks and art fills the 37sqm of Erica van Zon’s 1920s apartment

SHEARERS’ TABLE Tuck your napkin in and feast on beer-poached chicken

SO LONG, NAN Vivienne Apperley died aged 91. Her grandson remembers a remarkable woman

BY THE BO OK

TURNING GHOSTS INTO CASH John Bishop tries to remember his trip to Berlin

WHAT WOULD DEIRDRE D O? A problem shared...

Literary titbits

FULL OF BEANS

GOING ON A BEER HUNT We’ve tasted all the beer and lived to tell the tale. Behold the 2016 Capital beer guide

FOUND IN TRANSL ATION Poet and translator Marco Sonzogni talks about losing a friend – and nearly losing his own life

98 TORQUE TALK Subaru is an environmentalist’s dream and a speedster’s fantasy

100

BABY BABY

102

CALENDAR

LETTERS

LIGHT ON INSTALLATION I went to the LUX light festival mentioned in your recent issue, October, #35. What a disappointment. Although it is not a patch on the Sydney light festival, in recent years it has been a pleasant, although not particularly impressive, night-time stroll with a few friends around the city, finishing with a drink at a convenient spot. This year was barely believable, a short time inside a building and completely underwhelming. What is going on? In the dark, Wellington (name supplied)

ARTS CLARIT Y I applaud the call from Tim Brown, in your recent issue October, #35, p28, for arts funding and the allocation of gambling money to be reviewed. The murky funding arrangements do us no favour. It is also essential that the creative vitality of Wellington and the region is retained and enhanced. Each region should be encouraged to play to its strengths, not to compete against each other for scarce funds. A Smith, Auckland

OH SO FISHY The salmon pink cover on your September magazine (#34), so severely criticised by your letter writer in the current issue, was fun in my opinion. The leggy lady prompted me to take out two subscriptions as presents. I liked the articles also. N Grayson, Johnsonville Ed: Thank you, we appreciate all support.

ROLL OUT THE AIRPORT Professor Grant Guilfordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s column (September, #34) was a very useful outline of some of the likely benefits of extending the airport runway. Of course the benefits are not absolutely certain but nothing is achieved without risk and usually some cost to individuals but providing an overall community benefit. It seems now that NIMBYism is the predominant belief. It seems easier to find people who want to say no to projects than to support them. T Osborne, Karori

Letters to editor@capitalmag.co.nz with subject line Letters to Ed or scan our QR code to email the editor directly.

RD E R S E C TCI H OA N THT EE A

HERE HAIR

ABSOBLOOMINGL U T E LY White blooms of plankton east of New Zealand suggest that the ocean is responding to climate change, according to a researcher at Victoria University. Master’s student Bella Duncan has investigated the appearance of coccolithophores in areas of the ocean too far south for such blooms to occur normally. As oceans warm, the algae grow and turn the ocean surface milky white. Duncan travelled to the sub-Antarctic to take core samples of the ocean floor. “Our results show that during that last warm period, when the ocean was about one to two degrees warmer than present, sediments on the seabed were mainly made up of coccoliths.”

TONY MCMURD O Where do you get your hair cut/styled? Willis York.

FORMIDABLE FRENCH

Describe your style in two words. Different and fun.

The Alliance Française will be leading the charge on “Beaujolais Day” when the French people of Wellington celebrate the arrival of this year’s Beaujolais Nouveau on 18 November at CQ hotel. This will be a day late, strictly speaking. Traditionally the new red wines were released to markets in France and around the world on the third Thursday of November. It used to be accompanied by heavy marketing around the world, and “races” to get the young Beaujolais to target destinations. The current practise is to release the wine at 12.01 a.m.

Best teenage hair-related faux pas... I was a hippie when I was a teenager. I frizzed it one time. It was just a mess. My hair tip is... Enjoy what you’ve got. Time spent doing hair in the morning (in minutes)… Less than a minute.

C HAT T E R

WELLY WORDS HAND OF GOD A Wellyworder recently introduced her fouryear-old to soccer. Since it’s a contact sport she was extra vigilant during the first game, watching his every move on the field to make sure he was safe. The only time he looked upset was half-way through the second half, when a heated exchange took place with another four-year-old. Turns out the subject wasn’t the off side rule but rather a theological disagreement about Heaven. Yes, Heaven. That could’ve got Messi, for sure.

CHEESY GRIN The appointment with the dentist is one people often don’t look forward. A Wellyworder has found a dentist who inadvertently makes visits much more enjoyable by delivering innocent malapropisms. He reports this year he’s been told he has ”the tightest cheeks I’ve ever seen”. His dentist’s first language is not English – he’s still working out whether to point out to him the double meanings, or just ....grin and bare it.

A.I BYE BYE After using the new TXT-a-Park system on Cuba St one Wellington resident received a text message, apparently from the parking machine, which said, “thinking of you.” In response to which his companion who was looking after the cell phone at the time texted “F*** Off.” Whereupon the appalled phone owner sent a heartfelt apology in case there was an insulted being at the other end of the line. It seems whether you are a real-life parking warden or not, you can’t catch a break in this city.

IT'S COOL TO KORERO Ok, it’s almost warm enough to crack open the summer wardrobe... Where are my shorts? Kei hea taku tarau poto?

OP SHOP OPPORTUNIT Y If you thought you’d scoured every last square centimetre of the city’s second-hand stores, think again. Te Omanga Hospice has just opened its new charity shop – an entire warehouse of treasures – at 41 Fitzherbert St in Petone. Specialising in vintage, retro and the unusual, they’re promising fresh stock daily, with all proceeds going towards patient care. There’s even dedicated parking.

ECO-FRIENDLY XMAS “We wish you a sustainable Christmas” doesn’t have quite the same ring as more traditional yuletide greetings but it could catch on if the Sustainability Trust has anything to do with it. They’re holding a Twilight Christmas Market on 25 November and a festive Kids’ Workshop on the 26th. Both events will focus on using sustainable ideas to spread Christmas joy. sustaintrust.org.nz

NEWS BRIEFS

M AY O R A L WHO’ S WHO It’s been musical chairs at the region’s city councils following the local-body elections. K Gurunathan snatched the top job at Kapiti Coast District Council from incumbent mayor Ross Church. In Porirua City, Mike Tana succeeded Nick Leggett, who this year ran for mayor of Wellington City. Leggett lost out to Councillor Justin Lester, who succeeded Celia-Wade Brown, who did not run. Upper Hutt’s Wayne Guppy, Hutt City’s Ray Wallace, Masterton’s Lyn Patterson and Carterton’s John Booth all held onto their mayoral seats. Phew!

IMAGINE THAT!

TRACK STARS

HARD-HIT TING REVIEW

As brains are starting to power down ahead of the holiday season, Victoria University is preparing a creative wake-up call. Its inaugural Creativity Week (21–25 November) features a five-day programme for staff and students, plus public lectures and other mind-expanding events. International guests include David Gauntlett, Professor of Creativity and Design at the University of Westminster, whose best known for his collaborations with LEGO. He’ll be expounding the virtues of play and creativity at Rutherford House on 22 November.

A further 1,000 seats have been added to peak services on the Hutt Valley and Kapiti train lines, making the daily commute that little bit more comfortable. The upgrade caps off a $430-million project to refurbish 83 two-car units. Passenger numbers have been on the rise since the first improved cars were introduced on the Wairarapa line in 2007. GWRC Public Transport Team Leader Paul Swain says simply, “When there is a comfortable, reliable and punctual service, more people use public transport.”

Following poor publicity and a social-media storm over the handling of Wellington Lions player Losi Filipo’s assault charges, Wellington Rugby has committed to setting up a review of its protocols and practices. The organisation has yet to appoint anyone to lead the review, and has declined to make any further comment until the entire process is completed.

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NEWS BRIEFS

C HA I N REACTION After observing the New Zealand Fire Service’s urban searchand-rescue teams, Massey industrial-design student Oskar Edgar has designed a cordless chainsaw that cuts through concrete in 10–15 minutes (rather than the standard 2–3 hours). “It’s still a concept but there’s been serious interest from the Fire Service and international rescue teams to see it move to the next stages of development.” The 22-year-old displays a model of the chainsaw at Exposure (5–19 November), the annual exhibition from Massey’s College of Creative Arts, with 300-plus displays of final-year projects in multiple fields, as various as industrial and spatial design and textiles and photography.

CHARIOT AWAITS

FULL CREDIT, TEAM

CONSERVE AND PROTECT

A new app, created in Petone, is reinventing carpooling in the capital. Chariot is a secure, cashless service that matches everyday car-users with passengers who are heading along the same route. Rather than a driver being paid, the expenses of a trip – fuel, car maintenance etc – are calculated before the journey and divided among everyone. A small fee also goes to Chariot – pretty simple, really. You can register as a driver or passenger by downloading the Chariot app now.

Hutt City Council has once again received an excellent credit rating (AA long-term and A-1+ short-term) from Standard and Poor’s, one of the world’s leading providers of credit ratings. Council CFO Brent Kibblewhite says it’s “a big vote of confidence” for the council, which is currently working on a Hutt City Events Centre and a new community hub in Stokes Valley.

WWF has been flooded with entries from across the country for the 2016 Conservation Innovation Awards. Wellington contributions have been amongst the most popular on the interactive website where users can make suggestions about ideas and vote for their favourites. Angus Hulme-Moir plans to develop better protection for our shrinking lizard population, while Paul Stanley Ward dreams of using Facebook’s peoplepower to help make New Zealand predator-free. Three grants of $25,000 will be awarded at a ceremony in Wellington on 8 November.

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NEW PRODUCTS

BLUE SKIES 1. Arabesque shirt – $250 – Wilson Trollope 2. Aura bath towel in blue – $45 – Moore Wilson’s 3. Rie crew cobalt socks – $22 –Tea Pea 4. David Fussenegger Austria Cloud blanket in jade – $178 – Tea Pea 5. Down to the Woods feather clusters – $7 – Tea Pea 6. Manganese blue watercolour paint – $25 – Gordon Harris 7. Bonnie & Neil brush strokes plate – $85 – Small Acorns 8. Bonnie & Neil botany cushion – $85 – Small Acorns 9. Duck bag – $40 – Let Liv 10. Shampoo smoothie soap – from $6 – Wellington Apothecary 11. Mountain stone ring holder – $13 – Trade Aid 12. Studio velvet cyan cushion – $150 –Martha’s Furnishing Fabrics

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SECTION HEADER

TA L E S O F T H E C I T Y

THE PEOPLE WAT C H E R WRITTEN BY SARAH LANG | PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANNA BRIGGS

C OFFEE Flat white, Mojo

VEGE MARKET Newtown Farmers Market

SHOP

Second Treasures, Southern Landfill

PHILOSOPHY Reuse

PL ANT Bonsai

Tailor HANK CUBITT brings his jaunty style to the ballet.

ank’s Spanx. That’s what Hank Cubitt calls the cotton undies he sews for himself. He also makes nearly all his own outerwear. But he’s sacrificed his sewing room to make room for son Juno, 8 months, who joins daughter Milly, 5, and their mother Rachael Ouwerkerk at home in Ngaio. “I’ve gone all suburban. Me!” Apart from the occasional embellishment of baby vomit, Cubitt is impeccably dressed while out and about. His blackrimmed glasses, tweed waistcoat, single stud earring and liberally applied hair gel give him a distinctive look. He calls it “snappy casual”. You might remember him as the proprietor of his Willis Street shop, House of Hank: Innovative Menswear (1999–2006, RIP), with its window displays of immaculately styled and sometimes outrageous outfits. “I loved meeting the capital’s different characters.” He spent three years running Wellington Hatters in Woodward Street, then joined the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s wardrobe department as assistant costumier, in charge of the menswear. “It’s a great challenge,” he says of evoking past eras with wildly various styles and fabrics, as per the costume designer’s drawings. It’s about upkeep too. “The costumes get a flogging.” Very delicate materials can’t be washed after every performance, so he wields a spray bottle filled with vodka. “It gets rid of the perspiration smell. I stole the idea from a touring Russian ballet. Initially I thought they were drinking it.” Cubitt, 48, has lived in Wellington nearly all his life. He now travels with the ballet as touring wardrobe manager. “China was my favourite for its size, grandeur and the

sheer pace of change. We take our sewing machines, dryers, everything. We’re a travelling circus.” Having made the outfits for last year’s acclaimed production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the costumiers are refitting them to different dancers for four reprise performances this month. Cubitt watches rehearsals to get a feel for each show. “They’re incredible endurance athletes.” Working from the ballet’s HQ on Courtenay Place, he gets his flat white with two sugars downstairs at Mojo St James, and often has lunch at Satay Village on Ghuznee Street, watching the world go by. “I’m a people-watcher.” He indulges this hobby at the Newtown fruit-and-vege market on Saturdays. “It has cheaper, fresher produce, and more diverse people than other markets. We eat rotis and watch people haggling over 50 cents for bok choy.” Cubitt also grows vegetables, flowers, and a prized collection of potted bonsai. He recently picked up 10 plant pots for 50c at what he calls The Dump Shop – the Second Treasures recycling shop at the Southern Landfill. “They have anything you need for next to nothing.” In the weekend, the family gets outside whenever it’s sunny, sometimes getting fish and hand-cut chips at Seaview Takeaways in Lyall Bay. “And you can’t beat the waterfront now that summer’s nearly here.” Closer to home, he often heads to Johnsonville’s Twiglands Garden Centre and its cafe Herbs. “Ah, coffee and plants. You can’t beat that combo.” The Royal New Zealand Ballet performs A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the St James, 25–27 November.

CULTURE

TRICK OF LIGHT The Crystal Chain Gang – aka Martinborough glass artists and couple Leanne Williams and Jim Dennison – are working furiously to finish the centrepiece of The Dowse exhibition Solo (18 November to 2 April). Light At The End Of The Tunnel (working title) is a cut-glass and crystal chandelier that will fade from black to clear under a spotlight in the middle of the darkened gallery, creating dramatic shadows. The biennial exhibition – a snapshot of Wellington’s contemporary-art practice – also features work by four other artists, including Neil Pardington’s photographs of scientific collections in museums.

ALL GROWN UP

TEA TIME

ART SMARTS

Time to clink champagne flutes. For 21 years, BATS Theatre’s annual commission STAB has allowed theatre groups to stage a production with ambitious or experimental elements. The 21st STAB commission (10–26 November) has the PlayGround Collective adapt Nick Hayes’ graphic novel The Rime of the Modern Mariner, about a seaman stranded in the North Pacific gyre’s swirling plastic trash. The collective is encouraging us to join Wellington’s Public Beach CleanUps (19 November and 10 December).

Who else saw the racing teapots at CubaDupa? Have a go, with teapots mounted on radio-controlled toy vehicles. Capital! Steampunk, a steampunk-enthusiast group that attends festivals in Victorian-era dress, brings its teapot racing to Wellington Museum’s first Steampunk Weekend (26–27 November). Try a tea duel: opponents dunk five biscuits in a cup of tea, eating them at the last possible moment before they fall apart.

Internationally exhibited painter Tony Lane wants youth to get educational opportunities – and perhaps consider a career in art. The Auckland artist, who lived here for 28 years, is exhibiting a rug and three oil paintings at ARTBOURNE (3–6 November) Wellesley College’s art exhibition and sale to support its scholarship programme. The 70 artists, including Stanley Palmer and Michel Tuffery, share the proceeds. www.artbourne.org.nz

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CULTURE

IN HER FOOTSTEPS For six weeks late last year, New Zealand School of Dance student Sophie Arbuckle toured Europe with the Royal New Zealand Ballet, which needed extra dancers for their production Giselle. “I particularly loved Rome.” This month Arbuckle performs in the New Zealand School of Dance’s Graduation Season (Te Whaea, 16–26 November), with nightly performances of eight classical and contemporary works – including premieres – from leading choreographers. The 19-yearold is currently auditioning for dance companies including the RNZB. Her mother Fiona Arbuckle, a dance administrator, also danced with the RNZB as a student.

SOUND MEETS SCREEN

AB OUT TIME

FREQUENT FLIER

The infamous shower scene from Hitchcock film Psycho was originally going to run without music, but composer Bernard Herrmann insisted on the now-iconic “stabbing chords”. In A Symphonic Night at the Movies (Michael Fowler Centre, 26 November), the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra plays Psycho’s full orchestral soundtrack while the film plays on the big screen. Hamish McKeich, just named the NZSO’s associate conductor for 2017, will synchronise the music very carefully. “I’ll have to get that shower scene just right!”

Adam Manterys, a 40-something from Berhampore, manages the Department of Internal Affairs’ graphic-design and web team. “I’m also an avant-rock multi-instrumentalist under the recording name Chocolate Rocket.” He’s waited years, sometimes decades, to see certain music films on the big screen. “So I had to make it happen myself.” In partnership with the Paramount, Manterys has set up the first Music Film Festival (28 October to 13 November). Sixteen cult and modern-day films span documentary to filmed concerts, Shihad to Spinal Tap.

Opera singer Frederick Jones, who completed an Advanced Vocal Studies MA (with Distinction) in Wales this year, returned home in July after making the semi-finals of the Australian Singing Competition. In September the tenor won the $4,000 Dame Malvina Major Foundation Wellington Aria competition. Jones, 25, flies to Brisbane in November for a month’s scholarship at the National Opera School.

Spectacular scenery, gourmet food and warm rural hospitality. An exhilarating three-day walk that’s second to none. Vouchers available – a perfect gift for Christmas.

www.toracoastalwalk.nz

CULTURE DIRECTORY

C AT WAL K T O C O V E R

N E W Z EALAN D S CHO O L O F DA N C E G RADUAT IO N S EAS O N

Direct from the Fashion and Textile Museum in London, Catwalk to Cover provides a fascinating behind-the-scenes insight into the creative worlds of the fashion shows of London, Paris, Milan and New York. Entry by donation.

A highlight of the dance calendar, Graduation Season presents performances by classical ballet and contemporary dance students launching professional careers. An exhilarating evening featuring a number of premieres and the work of acclaimed choreographers from NZ and abroad.

26 Nov 2016 – 12 Feb 2017 9am – 4pm, Expressions Whirinaki 836 Fergusson Drive, Upper Hutt www.expressions.org.nz

Photo Credit: Hosanna Ball & Song Teng. Photographed by Stephen A’Court.

Te Whaea, 11 Hutchinson Rd 16 – 26 November 2016 nzschoolofdance.ac.nz

J ET HRO T ULL After a sensational sold-out performance two years ago, Ian Anderson returns with his stellar band, and fresh interactive video backdrop, to play one show only. Featuring many hits including Aqualung, Living in The Past, Locomotive Breath etc., JETHRO TULL play the entire show. Don’t miss it! Michael Fowler Centre 20 April 2017, 7.30pm Ticketek.co.nz 04 384 3840

HAY D E N CH I S H O L M TR IO

L L O YD CO LE (UK )

EAT THE FILM @ THE ROXY CINEMA

Live at St Andrew’s on the Terrace Hayden Chisholm, saxophonist, composer and multiinstrumentalist based in Cologne/Germany returns home to New Zealand to team up with Wellingtonians Paul Dyne (bass) and Norman Meehan (piano) supporting the release of Hayden Chisholm’s CD set, Cusp of Oblivion.

The release of a Lloyd Cole career retrospective box set was the catalyst for an acclaimed series of live concerts around Europe showcasing Cole’s songs between 1983 and 1996.

CoCo At The Roxy is celebrating its upcoming Paua & Pohutakawa themed menu with an extra special Eat The Film immersive dining experience. Kick back and relax in the luxurious comfort of The Roxy’s cinema space as a sumptuous summer menu is served alongside a classic Kiwiana film. The ultimate food/film buff experience!

Friday, 25 Nov, 7:30pm St Andrew’s Door Sales: $25 / $15 / students $5

Now Wellington gets its turn with the English singer/songwriter performing material from his Commotions albums Rattlesnakes, Easy Pieces and Mainstream, along with tracks from his first four solo albums.

Tue 6th Dec 04 388 5555 coco@cocoattheroxy.co.nz www.roxycinema.co.nz

Paramount Theatre 29 January 8pm Ticketek.co.nz 22

ENTRY CHARGES APPLY Cindy Sherman is a Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art touring exhibition

Major supporters

City Gallery Wellington is part of Experience Wellington. Principal funder: Wellington City Council.

Cindy Sherman Untitled #462 (detail) 2007–8, collection Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (purchased 2011, with funds from Tim Fairfax AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation). Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York. © The artist.

F E AT U R E

Ta r y n it up P H OTO G R A P H Y BY A N N A B R I G G S

Wellingtonian Taryn Beri is one of a new wave of female tā moko artists taking the traditional art form forward. She talks to MICHELLE DUFF about her practice.

he marae seemed quieter than usual. Taryn Beri’s heart pounded, but the tattoo gun was steady in her hand. She brought it closer to the woman’s lips; then with one quick, downward dot of ink, her career as a tā moko artist was begun. Taryn, who was then a tā moko apprentice to expert Mark Kopua, hadn’t expected to be tattooing that day on the East Coast marae. “Out of the blue he just told me to do this woman’s lips, which I had observed him do several times before. It was only because he trusted me to do it that I did it, I just did what I was told,” Taryn recalls. “That was part of his teaching style, to just throw you in the deep end and make you swim. It was scary, especially with everyone watching.” Today, Taryn is an established tā moko artist working out of Toi Wahine HQ in Porirua, a studio collaboration of female Māori artists, and travelling nationwide to practise her craft. She is one of a new wave of female tā moko artists who are taking the traditional art form forward, drawing on ancient knowledge to ensure the cultural practice is carried through to the next generation. She is also one of a few female practitioners nationwide to do moko kauae, or female chin tattoo, which has seen a revival in recent years. The once common rite-of-passage for young Māori women is becoming increasingly popular, with MP Nanaia Mahuta becoming the first politician to wear one in parliament earlier this year. “I’m doing more every year,” Taryn says. “The reason I have confidence is because of my mentor, because he did so many and I was able to assist and be part of that kaupapa. So now it’s comfortable for me.”

However, it is a huge responsibility, she says. “There’s a really tight bond formed between me and my clients, and the trust they have in you is huge. It feels like you’ve got a newborn baby in front of you, the amount of trust that has to be there during that experience. It’s such a special privilege.” For the women she tattoos, it’s a strong visual commitment to their culture. “It symbolises a connection with our ancestors who also wore moko kauae, and to our ancient origins as people, and the ancient origins of the practice,” she says. “It is also about aesthetic beauty – a Māori version of beauty pre-colonisation. So in that way, it also about decolonisation and reclaiming our identity as beautiful strong unapologetic Māori.” Traditionally, tā moko was chiselled on to the wearer’s skin using a tool called an uhi, with ink smudged into the carved lines. The designs represented social status and whakapapa, or family heritage, with the belief that the receiver visits a spiritual realm during the moko process where they encounter their ancestors, returning a new person. For Māori women, Michael King notes in book Moko, it marked their transition to adulthood. Taryn, 31, spent her own formative years in Wellington, attending Wellington Girls’ College and Wellington High School. Her iwi Ngāti Toa has its marae, Hongoeka and Takapūwāhia, in Porirua. By age 22, Taryn had a well set up life – a job as a graphic designer with a Māori mental health organisation, a boyfriend, a flat in town. This was all turned upside down with a visit to Porirua’s Māori Art Market in 2007, where she came across tohunga tā moko Mark Kopua and his apprentice at the time. “That was the

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first time I saw a young female involved in moko, and it made a big impression on me,” Taryn says. “I decided to take a new path.” Within months she had moved to Gisborne to attend Toihaukura, School of Māori Visual Arts, at Eastern Institute of Technology, and was putting “processes in place” so she would be selected as Kopua’s new apprentice. She spent the next three years living with him on the East Coast and travelling to marae around the country. As a young artist, Taryn was inspired by groundbreaking female moko artists like Julie PaamaPengelly and Christine Harvey. “For a long time they were the only ones, then a few more came along and now I’m in the newest batch,” she says. “I think it’s awesome. The number of women just continues to grow.” Taryn opened her first private practice in Otaki in 2012, moving into Toi Wahine when it opened in December. She now lives in Plimmerton, juggling her work around raising her two-year-old daughter. Her inspiration lies in the people she meets. Like most traditional practitioners, Taryn draws straight on to the skin, following the contours of the body. She does not tattoo pictures that others bring to her; for her, the body is the canvas and must be considered in the design. (This makes sense when you consider the organic origin of Māori patterns, which are curvilinear in design and represent elements of nature.) Taryn will create each individual moko based on the story that person wants

to tell. It will often incorporate ancestry, significant life events, family, love, personal truths, and death. “Because it’s such an intimate process, I’ll meet someone for the first time and they’ll tell me their life story, it goes there straight away. It’s not a shallow profession, it feels meaningful and the connection you have with your clients and their stories and their trust is all part of the work,” Taryn says. “The design is drawn from the visual language that is moko. It’s just like an alphabet. What I’m doing is just a modern version of an ancient practice.” She is one of a contingent of 15 tā moko artists who will travel to the Traditional Tattoo and World Culture Festival in Spain in May next year, to represent Māori. For Taryn and these artists, cultural integrity is of utmost importance. It involves a respect for ancestors, a knowledge of what makes them Māori, and a love for family and place, or whenua. “I think it will be quite powerful, because we’re going to be saying, ‘We’re Māori, and this is part of our culture, it’s not just an aesthetic tattoo design’.” Taryn has no problems tattooing non-Māori, which she sees as an opportunity for cultural exchange – but she does take issue with tattooists who have no idea of or connection with the culture appropriating Māori designs. “It’s not even moko then, it’s just a tattoo design. Only cultural tattooists who live within their culture and practise it can bring that level of integrity.”

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ABROAD

A n Afg h a n adrift BY VA N E S SA E L L I N G H A M

A German class is the best place I know to meet fellow newcomers to Berlin, to have a whinge about how hard it is to sort out visa paperwork, swap job websites and chat about which nightclubs stay open the latest.

t’s where I meet Mohamad*, a refugee from Afghanistan. We’re both new here – we have that in common. But that’s about it. For a start, Mohamad is trying to learn German and English at the same time, and struggling with both of them. He’s also looking for a place to live, but the language barrier, lack of funds and paperwork are all stacked against him. He uses his iPad to type in what he wants to tell me and then waits for me to read it on the translator. Do I know of any rooms going? This is what everyone is always asking at this meet-up, desperate to get out of the shelters where they live with hundreds of others and find their first shared flat, so they can start getting into regular life with other young Berliners. Months later I learn Mohamad isn’t living in mass accommodation. He’s been living on the street. I tell him I don’t know of any flats right now but I know some websites where he can search for them. Then he holds up an index finger to halt the conversation; he has something important to tell me. He types into the translator: I was on the BBC. He loads up the video where the BBC has chronicled his arrival in Europe. It’s a story about the growing number of refugees who are arriving in Norway via its border with Russia, way up in the Arctic Circle. The reporter explains that border guards have banned refugees from crossing on foot, so they purchase children’s bicycles and cross the last 120 metres by bike.

On the screen I watch lanky Mohamad on a kid’s bike, his knees almost up to his chin, wading across the border with his feet paddling along the ground. He’s wearing the same headband holding back his glossy black hair, and a sports jacket that looks too thin for the Arctic, especially next to the padded one the border policeman is wearing. Present-day Mohamad grins at me with glee. He arrived in October 2015 and immediately made it on to the BBC. I can only imagine how proud he was to show his family back home. Travelling north from Afghanistan to the far northeast of Russia, then down through Norway to Germany and Berlin, he has probably taken the most inefficient route possible. But he’s made it. For the past year I’ve been working with Give Something Back to Berlin, a volunteer organisation that works to welcome the city’s latest arrivals of all kinds – expats, refugees, anybody new – to help them find a community in their new city. Every Wednesday evening we run a free German conversation group, aimed mainly at refugees but everyone’s welcome. Sometimes up to 100 people show up. I’ve been going along as a fellow student, getting my butt kicked every week by young Syrian guys who have quickly surpassed my German skills and can’t wait to gloat. It’s fun. Mohamad adds me as a friend on Facebook, and we chat a little that night about where we come from and how we’re finding life here in Berlin.

ABROAD

The next day when I log in, there are eight messages waiting for me from Mohamad, but they’re all pictures. He seems to have used an app that takes photos of me from Facebook and transposes them into powerful situations. In one picture my graduation photo is being hung in a museum like the Mona Lisa. In another, my tipsy teenage self is hamming it up on a billboard, looming large over a motorway. The most impressive one sees me presiding over a futuristic city, like something out of Blade Runner. It is both hilarious and terrifying. I try not to be mad at Mohamad. If you haven’t grown up with the rules of dating in a Western society, then I reckon his is a pretty decent shot at a romantic gesture. Except I’m not interested. When I explain, his response is so straightforward it cannot be dumbed-down by the translator. “I have great respect for yourself and your husband. I only wish to find a kind girl like you so I marry her. I promise I do not Photoshop your photos. Sorry if I upset you.” Well that was back in June. Mohamad and I don’t talk so much now. I guess we just reached the end of translatable conversation. But I know one of my colleagues has been checking in with him on his housing situation. Two weeks ago I heard that Mohamad was in hospital. He’d tried to take his own life. A lot of the refugees who arrived here in the last year are young guys like Mohamad. Physically strong, ambitious, often naïve: all qualities that will serve them well on the dangerous trip to Europe. These guys often go ahead of their families, hoping to be reunited later on. For many, this is their first experience of living away from home and learning to take care of themselves. Add that to the demanding bureaucracy a refugee must wrap his young head around and then the months-long processing times, waited out in mass accommodation where boredom, anxiety and mental illness run rife. It’d be overwhelming for any of us. But the odds are particularly stacked against Mohamad. As his first port of call in Europe was Norway, not Germany, and additionally because he is not Syrian (and therefore not a top priority), Mohamad cannot get access to German support services. Never mind that Afghanis are also fleeing war, just like their Syrian counterparts. Mohamad’s been living on the street here for months, outside the system, and getting very lonely. It’s all become too much.

I know so many refugee guys here who have made it all the way to Europe, then through the hell of bureaucracy, and somehow, miraculously, still thrive: Nebras is launching a community organisation and his brother gives tours that link German and Syrian history; budding writer Waael has regular speaking engagements; Zain’s charming personality helped him score a flat in Berlin’s trendiest neighbourhood. Over the past year Berlin has been home to the Syrian concert pianist who won the prestigious Beethoven Prize and a teenage Olympic swimmer who, less than a year before Rio, helped rescue fellow refugees on the sinking dinghy that brought her to Europe. But for every refugee success story you see on the news, there are thousands of others struggling right behind them. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. If my own family and friends back in New Zealand became part of a wave of refugees, who’s to say who would float and who would sink. Shouldn’t we all be able to get by ok? In September John Key chastised members of the United Nations General Assembly for not doing more to help Syrian refugees, while boasting about our “emergency Syrian refugee resettlement programme”. When refugee friends here ask me just how many refugees end up in New Zealand and I explain the quota system, they can hardly believe what they’re hearing: we have a quota of 750 refugees per year, but last year we offered an additional 600 places just for Syrians (spread over three years, because they’re not in a hurry or anything). “You mean you have this tiny, set number, and you’re so far away from everything that you’re able to stick to it?” Well, you can’t walk to New Zealand. “And you didn’t think about making that number a little bit bigger?” Well we did, we increased it to 1,000 places, starting from 2018. This is totally shameful. More than one million refugees arrived in Germany last year. If New Zealand wanted to welcome people at the same rate, we’d have to increase our quota to more than 50,000 refugees. But clearly, we don’t. Refugees deserve our support, whether they’re success stories or not. Which isn’t to say Mohamad isn’t a success story. He’s since gotten out of hospital and is in touch with a support network that’s helping him find a flat. And besides, he’s already been on the BBC. In April 2016 Give Something Back to Berlin won the Intercultural Innovation Award from the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and BMW Group. More information at gsbtb.org *Name has been changed.

CULTURE DIRECTORY

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IN S PIRARE IN CO N CERT T IDIN G S O F J O Y Christmas brings heaps of memories and emotions as we share time with our friends and family. This concert will provide the audience with familiar carols and secular tunes, some new selections, and a chance to join in singing with Inspirare. Altissime, from Marsden College, will be performing at this concert.

John Walsh, Darcy Nicholas, Star Gossage, Kelcy Taratoa, Ngataiharuru Taepa and Samantha McKay. The title of this ground breaking exhibition, Mau Ahua, alludes to the strongly held Maori belief that portraiture could capture the spiritual essence of a person: when placed in a Maori cultural context portraiture often became highly spiritual.

Sun 11 Dec, 7:30pm St. Andrew’s on the Terrace www.eventfinda.co.nz and Door sales

New Zealand Portrait Gallery Shed 11, Queens wharf 4th Nov – 19th Feb nzportraitgallery.org.nz

Exposure Exhibition

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5–19 November 2016 10am–4pm daily

M AU AHUA Portraits by five contemporary Maori artists.

12 November, 4pm and 7pm Tickets at eventfinda.co.nz

W HAT T H E F L O C K

Miss Godwit Name: Bar-tailed godwit. Māori name: Kuaka. Status: Native, at risk. Habitat: To the uninitiated, kuaka might not look like much, but their migratory behaviour is truly remarkable. After breeding in Alaska, bar-tailed godwit perform the longest nonstop flight of any non-seabird – travelling more than 11,000km to New Zealand over eight or nine days. From September approximately 90,000 birds arrive and distribute themselves widely throughout our harbours and estuaries, most of them leaving again in March, while those that are not yet breeding (which they do in their fourth year) remain behind. Look for them: The wonderful species map at ebird.org identifies numerous godwit hotspots that aren’t too far away – including some along Petone’s waterfront esplanade, at Pauatahanui Inlet, in Wairarapa’s Moana Wetlands

Park and at the Waikanae Estuary. Look for a large, long-legged wader with a long, tapering and slightly upturned black-tipped bill. For most of the New Zealand summer, the birds display plumage with mottled brownish grey upperparts, a prominent eye stripe, and a white rump and upper tail barred with dark brown. At the end of summer, supplemental plumage makes the pale parts of the adult male turn red. There are a couple of great places to be a godwit-lover in other parts of the country – in Miranda (on the Firth of Thames) crowds of bird-lovers gather every spring to welcome the birds as they arrive, and in Christchurch the Christ Church Cathedral bells used to ring for 30 minutes, a tradition which has been taken over by St Paul’s Anglican Church in Papanui. Call: Not very vocal in New Zealand, but listen out for a rapid tititi or their short kuwit alarm call.

Feeds on: Polychaetes (from Wikipedia: “a paraphyletic class of annelid worms, generally marine” – who knew?), and small shellfish and crustaceans. Did you know? As well as kuaka, Māori gave godwits a variety of other names describing different ages and plumages, this richness of language suggesting they were once a valuable food source. Red-breasted birds are kura; older, presumably less tasty birds, which are darker grey, are rakakao, hakakao or kaka; and karoro describes the birds during pre-migratory feeding when the breast assimilates huge amounts of fat. The English name appears to be Anglo Saxon from “god” (or good) and “with”, also meaning good to eat. If it were human it would be: unassuming at first encounter, but later revealed to be a high-stamina endurance machine. Someone like Wellington’s now-retired long-distance running queen Melissa Moon, or ultra-marathon runner Fiona Hayvice.

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F E AT U R E

T h e vo i c e o f t h e c r i c ke t

Daniel Beban is a musician and sound artist who you might have seen playing his biscuit tin guitar in Orchestra of Spheres, or making weird and wonderful noises with one of his many other musical projects (Imbogodom, Slakes, U M U, Sign of the Hag). He also runs creative music space Pyramid Club and works as a sound engineer. MELODY THOMAS catches up with Beban, who is on a threemonth artists’ residency in China. Nî hăo Dan! Where are you now? The residency is run through the Red Gate Gallery in Beijing, one of the longest-established contemporary art galleries in the city. I’m actually based about 15km out of the centre of town in a “village” called Fei Jia Cun. It’s an area mostly of migrant workers from different provinces, and it’s really poor and run down so there’s a bunch of local artists who have begun renting studios out here in recent years because the rent is cheap.

I first came to China en route to Europe in 2002. I travelled through the real backwaters of China, in Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu. I hardly stayed in a city the whole time. There’s something very intoxicating about the place, it’s hard to say what exactly. I guess partly it’s that it is very different to home, and being an outsider it’s easy to be amazed by the things most people see as completely normal. I like how much of life is lived out in public here, like 100 people out dancing together in the evening, or old guys gambling on park benches. It was a very different place when I first travelled here, especially in rural areas. It’s amazing how quickly China has changed. Just down the road from me now at the supermarket you can buy bottles of Tuatara APA! And there’s fancy cafes and craft beer places all over the city. That would have been totally unthinkable 15 years ago.

How are you filling your days? I’m working on a piece that’s inspired by singing crickets. According to Chinese custom, at this time of year, autumn, crickets are singing sad, lonely songs. The insects were kept by concubines of the Emperor, who often led lonely, solitary lives. The melancholic songs of the crickets kept them company in autumn and I guess keeping another creature captive alleviated their own sense of captivity somehow. I came across an interesting market in the west of Beijing where people sell singing crickets. They have a very cool, rudimentary tool for listening closely to each cricket, which is a plastic pipe with the ends of plastic bottles stuck to it as sound funnels. You can see people listening through these sound funnels to choose the singer they like the best. This idea seems quite unusual and powerful to me, so I’m working on an installation that will somehow use this idea.

What do you miss about home? What does Beijing have that Wellington could benefit from? I miss the musicians that I play with regularly – it’s a special place for music. Also the obvious things – the southerlies, the rain, haha, and drinking water from the tap, the little things you take for granted. Beijing is very flat, so it’s great for cycling and, although the traffic is pretty crazy, there are bike lanes everywhere. There’s so much use of public space. There are lots of older people out and about using the parks and hanging in the alleys, it’s a very cool, chilled out atmosphere. And things are cheap!

You’ve spent time in China before? Can you tell us about your relationship with the place?

F E AT U R E

CULTURE

CAPTURING THE SPIRIT

CHOREO CAPITAL

FUNNY FELLAS

Nineteenth-century Māori believed portraits could capture people’s spiritual essence, and paintings of their ancestors began to line wharenui walls, courtesy of European artists. In recent decades, Island Bay artist John Walsh has inspired Māori portrait artists to take the paintbrush back from Pakeha. His dreamlike depiction of a young Māori woman, After Italy, anchors Mau Ahua, the NZ Portrait Gallery’s first national survey of portraits by contemporary Māori artists (4 November to 14 February).

Over the past two months, three up-and-coming Pacific choreographers have devised original works, supported by mentors from the Pacific Dance Choreographic Laboratory. Lower Hutt’s Selina Alefosi, longtime artistic director of O Mata (Tokelauan) Dance Group, is devising a work called Whatupaepae, about the eponymous concept of Tokelauan women sharing food gathered by men. She and the other Wellington choreographer, Filoi Vaila’au, talk about their works-in-progress at Whitireia Performance Centre (4.30pm, 5 November). They’ll be performed next year, after more refining.

Self-confessed Lower Hutt bogan Patch Lambert (above) is one of five finalists in the Billy T Award for New Zealand’s best up-andcoming comedian. The other Wellingtonians are Samoan New Zealander Li'i Alaimoana, who works at the Ministry of Justice, and philosophy graduate Ray O’Leary. Each gets a solo show at the New Zealand International Comedy Festival next May, when the winner will be chosen.

acclaimed Maori Art Event

TOI MAORI ART MARKET RETURNS - featuring high quality work by leading contemporary Maori artists. See the artists at work and hear their stories. • Art Market Gallery • Artists Studio • Toi Maori Theatre • Ta Moko Studio Te Wharewaka o Poneke, Wellington Waterfront. Saturday 10th December 9am-5pm & Sunday 11th December 9am-4pm 36

Pictured: Resin Series – Tautau form by Rangi Kipa.

New Zealand’s internationally

CULTURE

SOUNDZ OF SUCCESS

SHAKING THINGS UP

BEHIND THE SCENES

At 22, Wellington composer, violinist and pianist Salina Fisher is the youngestever winner of New Zealand’s premier classical composition prize, the $3,000 SOUNZ Contemporary Award – and the youngest woman ever nominated. Her winning composition Rainphase will be performed next year by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. “It was inspired by the beauty and chaos of Wellington rain.” Fisher plays violin for the National Youth Orchestra, and was its 2015 Composerin-Residence.

This year, Auckland theatre wunderkind Kip Chapman said that Circa Theatre is “not good enough for Wellington” and “should pull its socks up”. Chapman, who prizes innovative theatre, was recently in town as WOW’s associate producer and is back bringing hit play Hudson and Halls Live! to the Hannah Playhouse, from 18 November. Co-creator, writer and director, he plays Peter Hudson, whose 1976–86 TV cooking show with David Halls made the Kiwi couple famous.

See some of the films deemed inappropriate for earlier generations at Ngā Taonga’s programme Censored: 100 Years of Film Censorship in New Zealand (16–26 November). Fancy Battleship Potemkin (1925), a Soviet drama about a naval mutiny and massacre? Or The Wild One (1953), the original biker-outlaw film, starring Marlon Brando? To get all “meta”, there are also docos about censorship’s history, and a discussion about censorship in the digital age.

TOI MAORI ART MARKET 2016 presents

Tuwhare The poems by Hone Tuwhare set to music by recording artists from NZ Aotearoa. Featuring performances by: • Don McGlashan • Warren Maxwell • Amiria Grenell • Goldenhorse • Te Kupu • Whirimako Black • strawpeople • New Zealand Trio • WAI • Hone Hurihanganui • Horomona Horo w Paddy Free • Kirsten Te Rito • Charlotte Yates This production was originally commissioned and premiered by the New Zealand Festival in 2006.

Friday December 9th, 7.30pm, The Opera House Wellington Tickets available online from Ticketek www.ticketek.com

ENOUGH POWER IN ONE HOUR TO MEET THE EARTH'S ENERGY NEEDS FOR ONE YEAR Imagine converting that energy to power the world. The sun is a phenomenal energy source. Plentiful, sustainable and clean, solar is the hot favourite energy of the future. So why isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t solar our main energy source right now? One issue is cost. Conventional solar cells use silicon. And turning silicon into a functional solar cell is still relatively expensive. If that cost can be brought down, solar has a high chance of achieving its potential as an energy source. Researchers at Victoria University of Wellington are investigating new materials that can be used to create next-generation solar cells, for less. Polymers that conduct electricity can be turned into ink, printed in sheets and applied to almost any surface, where they collect and convert the sunâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s energy for daily use. This technology could slash the cost of solar for homeowners. At the moment, polymer solar cells are less efficient at converting energy than silicon, but by making them cheaply the future for solar is bright. If every New Zealand rooftop, for example, was coated with polymer solar material, the sun could provide all of our energy needs, for good.

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CULTURE

LIFE D R AW I N G S

SELFIE QUEEN

By Sarah Lang

Jamie McCaskill, the Lower Hutt man behind Māori theatre company Tikapa Productions, writes, directs and produces plays that draw from his life experiences. Not in Our Neighbourhood, a 2016 New Zealand Festival play about surviving domestic violence, was inspired by his work at a women’s refuge. His youth work at Johnsonville’s Challenge 2000 inspired the 2012 play Manawa about two prison cellmates. And his time as a fisherman in hometown Thames inspired his new play The Biggest, about ageing drinking buddies haplessly entering a fishing competition. “It’s a mainstream Māori comedy,” McCaskill tells us. “Think Roger Hall meets Billy T James.” A crowdfunding campaign raised $10,685 towards staging it at the Hannah Playhouse this month. Also an actor, composer, singer and guitarist, the fatherof-two spent two years with internationally touring showband Modern Māori Quartet. Now he’s formed five-man showband Māori Side Steps. “We’re the Quartet’s hori cousins doing funny songs.” He’s written the script and music for web series Maori Side Steps, a fictionalised comedy about the eponymous showband trying to make it big. See Jemaine Clement “auditioning for the band” in a trailer on the Maori Side Steps’ Facebook page. The eight episodes will be released in early November.

What must New York-based, globally influential artist Cindy Sherman think of Donald Trump? We can only imagine, given her critique of society’s obsession with celebrity, narcissism, and female appearance. Using a tripod camera with a timer, she styles and photographs herself in various personas – from starlets to ageing socialites, housewives to clowns – to subvert notions of gender and identity. Expect 50 of these large-scale photographs, new photographic work, and a mural of a digital landscape made especially for City Gallery’s space at the exhibition Cindy Sherman (19 November to19 March). This touring exhibition from the Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art and Queensland Art Gallery is the first New Zealand showing of Sherman’s work in 35-plus years – and City Gallery is the only New Zealand venue. A very private individual, Sherman, 62, is flying into Wellington briefly (with no public appearances) to install her work. City Gallery curator Aaron Lister is excited. “Sherman makes you see the world differently. It was hard not to see the presidential debates through her lens of performance, masquerade and the grotesque.” When Lister saw the exhibition in Brisbane in May, he also saw visiting actress-turned-singer Molly Ringwald snapping a selfie in front of a Sherman photograph.

伀戀椀䌀栀漀挀漀氀愀琀

䴀攀最愀渀匀愀氀洀漀渀

䴀愀搀攀氀攀椀渀攀䌀栀愀爀氀攀猀

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F E AT U R E

Tr e e t o p dream

W R I TT E N BY M E LO DY T H O M AS P H OTO G R A P H Y BY TA M A R A J O N E S

Of all the adventurous activities beloved by the young, tree climbing has to be one of the best. The thrill of the climb, the precise science of balancing your weight evenly across two branches each too slender to hold your weight alone – and that final, glorious push through the canopy out to the tipity top of the world. From that exalted position it probably wasn’t long until you began to imagine ways to make your roost more permanent. A lucky few would inherit proper, four-walled tree houses, while many more of us settled for an earthbound fort, or maybe a couple of boards half-secured across two limbs. But the desire would never really leave us – as evidenced by the current surge of treetop hotels and treehouse design-and-build businesses around the world. Capital paid a visit to a few lucky Wellingtonians living the treetop dream.

F E AT U R E

Hamish B ow e n L o we r H u t t

When my son Matthew said he wanted a treehouse, I asked my father who’s a builder if he had any spare timber. I was assuming a simple platform would have been good enough, but it’s become very elaborate. It’s got a round door styled on The Hobbit and a little letterbox and a leadlight in the front. Some of the wood we used was from an old boat that my father had bought and was doing up, so it’s quite good treated timber, marine prime. Hopefully it’ll last a while. Whenever a kid comes to our house the first thing they’ll do is run and go into the treehouse, but then once they’re in there it’s “Ok well what do we do now?” A five- or six-year-old can stand up in it easily but the others are on their knees, so we might put an old mat up there, then some beanbags to make it more comfortable. The other thought was that we might create a flying fox down from it to another tree.

Over the summer Matthew was talking about having a sleepover with his mate in there but they never quite got round to it – the weather wasn’t good and they thought it’d be too cold, so it hasn’t happened yet. I’m always worried a homeless person is going to come along and make it their home. I had a bloke come past one time when I was building and he said I was an idiot to do it – that kids never use them and they’re an eyesore and all this sort of stuff. Because it’s visible from the street he thought he could come and tell me I was wasting my time. Another time a woman came past who had owned this house (not the people we bought it from) and she said she’d planted the tree as a little sapling, that she remembered when she planted it her son used to be able to jump over it and now it’s this massive tree with a treehouse in it.

F E AT U R E

William Chapman (14) L owe r H u t t

No-one really taught me [how to build]. I liked making stuff out of Lego, then after Lego I started doing small things with wood, then one day I said to Dad, “Hey can we build a tree hut?” My dad helped me build the platform connecting the tree and the fence, and then I built two other platforms lower down, and a sort of bridge connecting the two. I’m gonna put in a roof-type bit on the third platform and maybe give it a wall as well. I go down there and work on it whenever I can, if the weather’s good. I did put a few nails in certain places so I could suspend a tarp over it, but it’s not the most efficient thing. We have a neighbour, Devon, and he comes over and we build it together and play in it. It’s a little bush area. There’s a stream, so we just muck around and talk and climb the tree it’s attached to – it’s a good climbing tree. And we bring down food so we can have lunch down there. We get lots of tuis and wood pigeons down there, and then blackbirds and sparrows.

And ducks and ducklings in the spring. There is a rope ladder to get up, but a lot of people found it hard to climb, so Mum came up with this great idea and was like, “Hey you could put the slide on it.” So we did. I go up the rope ladder and down the slide. I’m running out of space a bit, but my little sister Belinda, she’s eight, she came up with an idea for a spot where we could build another platform. Then there’d be two separate tree huts and we might connect them with a bridge or something. I have an older sister as well. She’s 16, but she’s more of an indoor sort of “wow, look at my new shoes” kind of girl. If you want to [build a treehouse] then before you get straight into it, go online and find some ideas. When my sister said, “We should build a treehouse here,” I thought, “It’s never gonna work,” and then I remembered some stuff I looked up online and realised if I used that technique that’d definitely work, so do a bit of research before you build.

F E AT U R E

D a ve Owles Mahina Bay

I made the treehouse a year or two ago. It’s actually not in a tree – it’s amongst trees, and it’s got bits cut out of it so trees can grow round it. I wanted to put a spa pool in that spot but my other half – I think she had nightmares about following me up the staircase and ladder in my spa attire. So a tree fort it is. The only things I bought new were the four house piles that hold it down, and the two rails it sits on. Everything else is donated, or was stuff I already had. My neighbour up above is Geoff the Havana Coffee man – he gave us the round and stained glass windows; my mate Stuart from the next bay round gave me the framed door and the big window at the front; my plumber friend Graham gave me the roofing iron; and Larry to the south of us donated the building paper.

I have an ex-army Unimog truck that was used to film Lord of the Rings. I turned it into a 19-seat off-road bus and did wilderness tours around Wellington, mostly for the cruise ships… but I’m currently taking a break from it. I replaced the Unimog’s flat deck, which was damaged, so the old one is now the fort floor, complete with the military chain fittings that would have been used to secure weapons in its military days. My daughters Nina and Rosie were 10 and 12 when it was built. They go out and hang there sometimes when they’ve got friends around, but I think I like it as much as they do. You can see it when you drive round the bays coming back from Eastbourne, up on the point. It has the best view of anywhere on the property. It’s really inspirational, a great place for a bit of peace and quiet.

Open Day Friday 4 November 10am to 2pm

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FASH ION B R I E F S

WEAR AND TEAR From a heavily embellished dress covered in 30 metres of lace, to a coral-beaded corset and even underwear, Annelise Moen and Ashleigh McTaggart are promoting the beauty of handcrafted high fashion while calling attention to the erosion of nature. “We wanted to bring high fashion to NZ, using the coastlines as inspiration,” explains Ashleigh. While they’re not the kinds of clothes you would throw on in the morning, the avant-garde designs are a starting point. “From there, people can be inspired to make their own more wearable versions.” The graduating students will present their collection, Nature of Couture, on 12 November as part of Massey University’s Exposure Fashion Show.

GRAND OPENING Topshop is ready for its big reveal and customers should expect a party atmosphere at the opening on 3 November. Group Managing Director Jamie Whiting promises the same retail experience you’d find in London or New York: “Two floors of fashion with thousands of new styles on opening day, as well as dedicated beauty, shoe, denim and accessory departments.” The British fashion giant joins a collection of international brands putting down roots in the capital. At 256 Lambton Quay, “Topshop will heighten that global retail experience,” says Whiting.

SECOND THOUGHTS Landfill has seen enough textile waste to last it a lifetime, so don’t just dump last year’s looks in the bin. A number of stores around the city are on the lookout for quality, pre-loved summer fashion. Encore, Secondo and Recycle Boutique have all made it their business to make sure sustainable clothing culture stays on-trend. It’s about being kind to the planet as well as your wallet. Tip: They especially love designer Kiwi labels like Karen Walker and Workshop.

MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN Moths, skulls, stardust, howling wolves and unicorns; there’s a dreamy delicacy to Lilly & Sophie Design’s bespoke fashions. The label is named for a team of twins, who are celebrating the slow-fashion movement. “We create fashion with integrity,” says Lilly. The sisters studied design at Massey University, Wellington, and use woodblock and screen printing, bead work and hand-stitching to customise their mainly silk and cotton collection. Stocked online at lillyandsophiedesign. co.nz and at Sweet Janes in Newtown.

See an impressive assortment of yarns, fabrics, haberdashery and domestic sewing machines. Ask about our many craft and sewing classes – run year round. Our skilled staff are here to solve your problems and help you do what you love.

Shop 3, Kilbirnie Plaza, 22 Bay Road, Kilbirnie / Ph : 04 387 4505 / sewingdirect.co.nz / jo@sewingdirect.co.nz

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Sublime

Pomegranite Left to right Elke Surge ring, blue laced agate – $199 – WORLD Out ring – Karl Fritsch – Solo, 18 November, The Dowse Lucky ladybird ring – $550 – Steph Lusted Spider ring, garnets – $1,230 – Steph Lusted Feather ring – $11 – Trade Aid Woodlands vine ring – $175 – Steph Lusted Coloured stone ring – $8 – Trade Aid

PHOTOGRAPHY BY COURTNEY HOWLEY ASSISTED BY JESS HILL Ripe jewels, seedless gems & juicy metals.

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Pa buy ya Aluminum jewels – Karl Fritsch – Solo, 18 November, The Dowse Chrysalis ring, garnet – $480 – Steph Lusted Meadowlark heart jewel ring – $259 – Service Depot Coral geo circle – $8 – Trade Aid Woodland leaf ring – $230 – Steph Lusted Geometric ring – $395 – WORLD Amber droplet – $495 – WORLD Fang bangle – $320 – Service Depot

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Grape loot Black rose ring – Karl Fritsch – Solo, 18 November, The Dowse Serpent stacker ring – $130 – Service Depot Medieval Passion ring, wide band – $200 – Steph Lusted Carvacious carved resin ring – $45 – Made It Royal Owl ring, amethyst – $995 – Steph Lusted Chrysalis ring, peridot – $480 – Steph Lusted Velo upcycled bicycle inner tube cuffs – from $28 – Made It

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Fashion fruit Smash Palace upcycled china ring – $45 – Made It Medieval Passion ring, narrow band – $175 – Steph Lusted Intertwined ring – $23 – Trade Aid Woodlands mini leaves ring – $150 – Steph Lusted Smiley – Karl Fritsch – Solo, 18 November, The Dowse Oval white ring – $25 – Trade Aid

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LIFESTYLE BRIEFS

A STITCH IN TIME In 2014, Wellingtonians packed the mini-museum Nairn Street Cottage (Wellington’s oldest) to make poppies for the National Army Museum’s cascading-poppy “waterfall”. Textile artist Anna Hicks, who taught participants to stitch, crochet or knit the poppies, turned the leftovers into a dress that was exhibited there. She’s back running an upcycling workshop (13 November), teaching a basic cross-stitch to turn coffee sacks into items like pincushions or drawstring bags. The former WOW finalist, who teaches stitching classes encourages “slow fashion. Taking time to make meaningful things.”

PETA RABBITS ON

MASTER YOUR MIND

TINKER TAILOR

The irrepressible and unabashed Peta Mathias serves up a panoply of theatrical delights – and possibly frights – in her latest live event at the Southward Theatre, Paraparaumu, on 18 November. She’ll unleash her inner agony aunt for some loving onstage therapy, test her vocal chords on Edith Piaf ditties, and read from her amusingly titled new memoir Never Put All Your Eggs In One Bastard, among other risqué and riotous items. Book at ticketdirect.co.nz. After all, variety shows are the spice of life.

Research has linked meditation to increased immunity, lower blood pressure and restored emotional balance. It’s even been shown to improve the symptoms of psoriasis. But we don’t need science to tell us how relaxing it can be to switch off for a while in a peaceful setting, eat nutritious food and think about nothing. Otaki’s native forest sets the scene for a weekend of relaxation at the Waihoanga Retreat Centre on the Kapiti Coast, 25–27 November.

It’s generally agreed you shouldn’t mess with a good thing, but here’s one exception. Sara Quilter at Tailor Skincare has teamed up with two other Wellington ladies to create lovely and luxurious locally made gifts for the holidays. Tailor beauty products are paired with Libertine Blends in the Masque and Tea Set; while the Apothecary Set was created in collaboration with Paige Jarman Designs. If you know a fan of handmade ceramics, limited-edition teas or quality skincare, spread the love.

SUE DASLER POTTERY

OPEN EVERY DAY TILL CHRISTMAS. 64 KINGSFORD SMITH STREET, LYALL BAY.

1 Grey Street, Wellington CBD

teapea.co.nz

22 Ganges Road, Khandallah

EDIBLES

EXPLOSIVE B I C YC L E You may have heard of cold brew coffee. How about infusing it with nitro? Gassing the cold brew with nitrogen allows it to be poured like beer from a tap, and gives it a creamy texture similar to a Guinness, without milk. David Hargreaves of Crocky’s Cold Brew discovered the nitro technique while in New York City and had his mind blown. He has brought the idea home with him and will be pedalling around Wellington’s water front from the beginning of November on his customised cold-brew bicycle. You can catch them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @crockyscoldbrew if you want to find out where he is.

FO ODIES AT THE MOVIES

FEEL GO OD LUNCH

THE ORIGINALS

Summer is being welcomed in by Coco at the Roxy on 6 December with Eat The Film. A screening of a New Zealand film (undecided at time of writing) will be accompanied by Coco’s new (also Kiwi-inspired) summer menu. It will feature delicacies such as mussel fritters and Kingston cheese rolls served along with appropriate drinks at critical moments in the film. The food and beverages are selected to enhance the experience. A previous highlight was serving a pig’s ear at a screening of Reservoir Dogs at the moment on film that a cast member lost an ear.

Wellington coffee empire L’Affare has got right behind the Eat My Lunch charity, which for $12–15 delivers a tasty lunch right to the offices of hungry city workers. The feel-nice kicker is that every lunch bought from Eat My Lunch means a lunch delivered to a child at a low-decile school in the Wellington region. L’Affare has built a commercial kitchen at their huge new roastery in King St especially so that EML, which is rocking in Auckland and Hamilton, can run its Wellington operation from there.

Colourful, familiar retro images from Crown Lynn’s pottery range have been used on eco-friendly takeaway coffee cups. Emporio coffee brand has supplied them to their cafes around Wellington. Crown Lynn was founded in 1854 near Auckland. Emporio was one of Wellington’s original four coffee roasters owned by Miriam and Erica Heycoop who founded the business in 2000.

EDIBLES

GOOD EXPERIENCES The Felix hospitality awards have returned to Wellington, with finalists announced in 15 different categories. The industry now votes for the winners, who will be announced as we go to print. Finalists include Justin Mckenzie of CGR Merchant & Co, Stephen Morris of Avida and Ruth Pretty in the Outstanding Hospitality Personality category. In the running for best cafe are Nikau, Memphis Belle and Ti Kouka. Restaurant Association chief executive Marisa Bidois says these awards “provide consumers with valuable insights on the best places to visit”.

SWEET CAKE N’ BAKE

MOTHER BREWS AGAIN

IT ’S ONLY COMMONSENSE

A new “cake and shakes” shop opened in Cuba St last month. It is a spinoff from the popular Sweet Bakery and Cakery in the Marsden Village, Karori. The new shop features a design-yourown-shakes section, where customers can “craft their own flavour of milkshake, selecting the flavour, the sauce and even mix-ins of their favourite chocolate bar or biscuit”. Owner Grace Kreft says she is very excited and that the “Sweet style is all about fun”.

At the only internationally recognised brewing awards in New Zealand, Sprig and Fern once again flew their banner high, taking out best in class for their Best Bitter in the British Ale category as well as eight other medals. Tracy Banner, who has been dubbed the “mother of NZ brewing” said she was “thrilled” and that it was a testament to the entire team. There were 948 beer entries from 98 breweries in NZ, Australia, Germany and the US.

Organic food has now graced the streets of our city for 25 years. Jim Kebbell and Marion Wood opened the first Commonsense Organics store in 1991 at 263 Wakefield St. Fast forward a couple of decades, and the team now boasts six stores, including one in Auckland. In celebration they have collaborated with the Wellington Chocolate Factory to create a Commonsense Organics bar. Organic Marlborough sea salt adds complexity to the rich 70% dark chocolate.

LIQUID BRIEFS

Greek to me BY J O E L L E T H O M S O N

ho would have thought that a glass of wine and a plate of pickled octopus from a Greek landlady in Grass Street in the ‘90s could leave such a lingering impression? It returned powerfully last month when a box of Greek wines landed on my doorstep in Wellington. As the Greek economy goes down, its wine reputation rises, and nowhere more so than in Australia – home to one of the biggest Greek populations on earth outside of Athens. Greek wine is off the usual drinking radar for New Zealanders. There is precious little available in this country, but it is growing. Greek vino is on trend in London and New York right now, and it’s unsurprising that New Zealanders should follow suit, albeit in small volumes. Non-mainstream wine importers such as David Prescott are bringing it into this country. The owner of Taste Greece in Auckland, he’s a friend of a friend, and asked if I would write about a bunch of Greek wines that he has rustled up. They duly arrived by courier, and I unpacked a bottle of retsina, along with some wines with intimidatingly long, consonant-heavy names that are best written – and thought about – phonetically. But first, the retsina. It is the Greek wine best known to many Kiwis. It is also a relic of wine antiquity, its production documented for at least 2,000 years. Today, it is no longer aged in amphorae with Aleppo pine resin. It is made like any other white (or pink) wine, except that small pieces of resin from the Pinus helepensis are added for flavour. The latest Oxford Companion to Wine says that poor quality retsinas were the final nail in the coffin of Greek wine in the 1970s. Change is now afoot, but it is not being led by resin-flavoured wines. The new wave of Greece’s wines is made from grape varieties that are extremely old and bear exotic names such as assyrtiko, aghiorghitiko, rhoditis, mavro, mavrodaphne and xinamavro, among the 371 grape varieties that are indigenous to that country and from which wine is produced commercially today. Their names are tricky to pronounce but their flavours are easy to enjoy. Greece makes much more wine than New Zealand. Its current tally is 110,000 hectares of vines. This is approximately three times the acreage in this country, and it is spread over a far more diverse range of climates, from Crete in the Mediterranean south to Macedonia in the north where the high-acid red grape Xinamavro grows. Wines made from this red grape resemble pinot noir, except that they taste more savoury.

The big hearty reds and the full-bodied whites of the Greek islands are making the biggest splash into wine glasses globally, the star white, in my view, being Assyrtiko. Think of it as a cross between a big rich chardonnay, a crisp refreshing chenin blanc and an apricot-skin-flavoured viognier, but in a bone-dry style that immediately brought to my mind, lemon-doused freshly-pickled squid. Evidence suggests wine was made in Greece in the 7th century BC, which puts it at the vanguard of winemaking on Earth. About 70% of the wine made in Greece today is white, and it includes international grape varieties such as sauvignon blanc. The reds are also often blended with international rock stars such as cabernet sauvignon, apparently to give “street cred” and recognisability to wines whose names can be intimidating and unfamiliar. If only their labels were written phonetically, but when things get strange, there’s always Google to turn to. In my view, however, the most interesting and best Greek wines are made entirely from the country’s own grape varieties, such as xinamavro – a high-acid black grape grown mostly in the north and also in the foothills of Mount Olympus. Xinamavro can age extremely well, and it was a key ingredient in one of the best wines of the box that Prescott sent to me last month. See page 63 for pickled octopus recipe.

TOP T WO GREEK WINES 2014 Santo Wines Santorini Assyrtiko $29.99, 13% ABV  Assyrtiko is a Greek white grape that originates on the volcanic island of Santorini and is used mostly to make dry, full-bodied, fresh, zesty wines, such as this tangy white. 18/20 2011 Cavino Nemea Reserve $20, 13% ABV This red comes from Nemea in the Peloponnese Peninsula, on the southern Greek mainland. It is made wholly from the red grape agiorgitiko, and is dry and full-bodied with high acidity (which adds freshness), pronounced flavours of red fruit and smoked mushrooms, and a velvety smoothness. 18.5/20 Post script Wellington’s Greek store is A Taste of Greece in Kilbirnie. Owner Helen Neonakis does not sell wine, but she does buy Greek wine to use in the baking she sells in store.

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LIQUID BRIEFS

PICKLED O CTOPUS Take 200 grams of fresh octopus (frozen squid will do the trick but fresh is best); cut flesh into similarly sized pieces, say 2 centimetres each. Place in a pot on the stove top, along with a pinch of fresh, finely chopped garlic and about 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar (white wine works well, especially riesling or sauvignon blanc). Turn up the heat till it comes to a simmer and the octopus turns pink. Cool the liquid, douse with fresh lemon juice, and add a dash of olive oil and fresh parsley. Serve with assyrtiko or your favourite fresh white wine – preferably an unoaked style (rather than chardonnay).

NEW OWNERS

BEARD GROWN YEAST?

FRESH WINE, AT A RISK

Regional Wines & Spirits was sold in October to Dale Henderson from the Merchant of Taupo and Scenic Cellars. Henderson’s family also owns the Hamilton Beer & Wine Company, which is run by his brother, Geoff. The new owners say the combined purchasing power of these stores will allow Regional Wines & Spirits to operate on lower margins in some areas, so that store stalwarts can expect to see a range of wines at great value.

We weren’t even sure that this (beard grown yeast) was a thing. However Alice Galletly’s new book How to Have a Beer informs us of exactly that. A last-minute decision to drink a beer and then blog about it every single day for a year has resulted in a book on the ins and outs of the world’s most popular drink, available from late November. Awa Press.

Wellington yacht Blink won line honours from the mainly South Island fleet in the annual Wineworks wine race from Marlborough to Wellington. The race was completed in mid-October in strong winds and high seas. Blink won in record time, bringing Rapaura Springs’ sauvignon blanc in to the capital. The wine race is based on the “Beaujolais Nouveau” where French sailors dashed across the channel to England in a race to get there first and so receive the best price.

Wellington’s Best Garden Bar 63

FO OD DIRECTORY

Edible Christmas Christmas is one of the joyous times of the year, when we look forward to a certain amount of over-indulgence. We have gathered a few gift ideas ideas here, for easy interesting and quirky presents to delight the foodies amongst you. Available now at all good retailers

Artisan NZ products Delicious Care Packages Gourmet Antipasto Platter Christmas Treat Boxes Delivered Chilled Nation wide www.angeldelivery.co.nz or call Natalie on 0800 826 435

Wellington roasted coffee for people who make great stuff

90 Abel Smith St, Te Aro

emporio.co.nz

Luxury Juices, Celebrate Christmas in Style.

At Moore Wilsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, Ontrays Food Emporium or online at www.arahi.nz 64

A N T I PA S T O P L AT T E R S We can provide a standard or custom made antipasto platter available to order for any occasion from family gatherings to corporate functions!

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MEDIFOODS. co. nz

13 november at 10am

S H E A R E R S ' TA B L E

Beer-poached c h i c ke n with bacon and thyme crumb BY N I K K I & J O R DA N S H E A R E R

Food and wine matches have long been around, and now we see restaurants matching food with craft beers. Wellington has a growing number of bars specialising in serving quality craft beers, with local brews up front and centre. Garage Project is one local brewery, with a brewing team that is willing to take risks, have a bit of fun and try anything once.

INGREDIENTS 2 chicken breasts, skinless and sliced in half 1 x bay leaf 330ml beer (we used Garage Project) 500ml unsalted chicken stock 125g unsalted butter 1 leek, trimmed, sliced in half, washed and sliced thinly 2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed 250g brown mushrooms, stems removed, washed and sliced Salt 6 rashers streaky bacon, chopped ⅓ cup flour 2 tsp dijon mustard 3 Tbsp finely chopped thyme 3 Tbsp sour cream Salt and pepper 1 slice wholemeal bread, chopped into coarse crumbs crispy shallots ¼ cup parmesan cheese, grated

Like us really! For this recipe we were looking for a beer with crisp, malty flavours and a low bitterness level. Garage Project’s “Beer” fitted this brief perfectly. The flavour of the beer is pronounced, but the chicken stock and sour cream offer a perfect flavour balance. Bacon and mushrooms are a combo made in heaven, providing a creamy comforting deliciousness!

METHOD 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

In a large, high-sided pan add the beer, stock and bay leaf and bring to a simmer. Add the chicken breasts, cover the pan and poach on a gentle heat for 10–15 minutes until the chicken is just cooked through. Turn off the heat and allow chicken to cool in the liquid. When cool enough to handle, remove chicken from liquid and set aside. Pour leftover liquid into a large jug. Melt 50g of the butter in the same pan over medium heat. Add the leeks and saute until soft but not coloured. Add the garlic for the last 2 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Add another 25g butter to the pan and saute mushrooms with a generous sprinkling of salt. Cook for approximately 10 minutes or until the moisture has evaporated. Remove with slotted spoon and set aside with the leeks. Add the bacon to the pan and cook until just starting to brown. Set aside 1 Tbsp bacon for the crumb. Put leeks, mushrooms and bacon back into the pan, add the last 50g of the butter and stir until melted. Sprinkle in the flour and stir to make a smooth paste.

Slowly pour the reserved stock into the paste, stirring until it is

8. 9.

Stir in mustard, 2 Tbsp thyme, and sour cream. Season with salt and pepper. In a small fry pan add 15g butter and bread crumbs. Stir over medium heat until bread is golden. Take off heat and mix together with crispy shallots, reserved bacon and thyme.

smooth, and fairly thick. You may not need to use all the liquid.

10. Return the chicken breasts into the hot sauce in pan and coat well. 11. Sprinkle each breast with parmesan cheese and then bacon and thyme crumb before serving.

BEER GUIDE

Going on a beer hunt Summer brings with it an endless array of excuses to enjoy the many fine beers on offer in Aotearoa. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nothing like a golden pale ale enjoyed on the sand as the sun sinks, or a dark, rich brew downed under the stars at a backyard barbecue. New Zealand-brewed beers continue to become more complex and diverse, so here we present our up-to-date annual guide to the best on offer, as judged by a select panel of those in the know. While the following isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t an exhaustive list, the highest-ranked of the 122 beers judged are sure to keep your taste buds surprised, refreshed and satisfied over the coming months. Savour the chocolatey notes, tropical aromas, grassy hops and piny palates, and possibly discover a new favourite.

Lo o k o u t fo r ou r fr ee

m m er be er gu id

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BEER GUIDE

Convenor and Judges David Wood

Denise Garland

Dan Hargraves

Bar manager at Hashigo Zake and former President of the Society of Beer Advocates.

Denise is a Radio NZ journalist and beer blogger, and an experienced judge at the National Homebrew Competition.

Bar Manager at Little Beer Quarter and long time bar ninja hailing from Leeds Yorkshire.

Dominic Kelly

Annika Naschitzi

Simon Edwards

Kieran Haslett-Moore Former Regional Wines and Spirits beer seller, and North End head brewer, Kieran is a regular judge at the Brewers Guild of New Zealand Beer Awards and the National Homebrew Competition.

Founder and owner of Craft beer bar Hashigo Zake and beer distributor Beer without Borders.

Brewing is in Annikaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s blood. She grew up a brewerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s daughter in Berlin, and now has continued the family occupation by establishing the Tiamana nano-brewery in Mt Cook.

Brewer at Blackdog Brewing Co.

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WELLINGTON, PORIRUA, PALMERSTON NORTH

The To p S i x This year I convened a panel of judges selected from the capital’s bar people, brewers, journalists and beer distributors to judge their way through 122 beers. For the first time, I didn’t participate in the judging (something that needs to be made clear in light of the fact that two of my beers made the top six). Instead, I concentrated on organising the logistics of sending 122 beers out blind, running two tables so that no brewer judged their own beers. Of the 122 beers entered, 49 were awarded three points or more out of five, gaining a mention in this survey. The diversity of beer on offer has continued to increase since last year, with barrel-aged and sour beers making up a significant category, and two barrel-aged beers making it into the top six. Gone, I’m happy to say, are the days when we had to choose from lager, draught and dark. Cheers! Kieran Haslett-Moore

North End Amber

Renaissance Elemental Porter

Situated in Waikanae on the Kapiti Coast, North End Brewing Co specialises in English and Belgian-style brewing, with the odd foray into hoppier territory. Amber is its new world take on a best bitter and it pours a brilliant amber with a great head. Aroma sings caramel, toffee and earthy hops. On the palate there is a great balance of biscuit-like malt, marmalade hops and a firm bitter finish. Great balance makes it very drinkable.

Renaissance brews world-class beers in Blenheim in the middle of wine country. Elemental Porter is a classic, robust porter, pouring inky black with a tan head. Complex aromas of coffee and cocoa lead into a flawless palate of milk chocolate, sweet malt and an espresso finish. Super complex and perfectly formed.

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BEER GUIDE

North End Super Alpha

8 Wired Superconductor

8 Wired Gypsy Funk

North End, situated on the coast, designed this Pacific pale ale to be the ultimate beach beer, saying it is the perfect antidote to a mouthful of sea water. Super Alpha pours clear golden with a white head. Bright tropical hops and a hint of spice give way to a crisp, clean palate with zesty hops and a clean, sweet malt. An exercise in balance.

8 Wired is settling in to its new home in Warkworth, having moved up from Blenheim several years ago. Their assertive double IPA pours clear gold with a great lacy head. Sweet citrus hop aromas lead into a clean palate packed with tangy citrus and tropical hop character, all backed up with an awesome sweet malt backbone. Firmly bitter but big enough to carry the hops.

8 Wired still has the biggest barrel programme in New Zealand, although several brewers are rivalling it. Gypsy Funk is a dryhopped, barrel-aged sour beer that pours a clear gold with a pillowy white head. Vanilla, oak and wild spice lead into a palate packed with integrated lime, oak and spice. Dry, elegant and complex.

Te Aro Barrel Aged Chocolate Imperial Stout The newest brewery to feature in the top six, Te Aro has been staking out a reputation for barrel-aged beers with interesting fermentation characters. This imperial stout benefits from some wild yeast fermentation in the barrel, and pours pitch black with a healthy tan head. A cocktail of aromas including blackberry, grape, cocoa and oaky spice leads into a palate full of dry cocoa, forest fruit, warming alcohol and a long, rich finish.

BEER GUIDE

The rest WHEAT/SAISON

4.5

SOURS/BARREL BEERS

Typically: Wheats can take a range of forms, from hoppy modern versions that combine tart wheat with fruity hops and sometimes spicy yeast characters to traditional bananaand-clove-laced German-style versions. Saisons are dry, spicy farmhouse ales.

4 3.5 3

Typically: Brewed with wild yeasts and bacteria, sour beers exhibit varying levels of tart acidity with lean malt character and sometimes fruit notes. Barrelaged versions often combine these characters with oaky vanilla notes and sometimes flavours of the wine or spirit that was in the barrel originally.

Black Dog Blizzard Hazy, straw-coloured with a fluffy head. A zesty floral aroma with a hint of cloves leads to dry, refreshing palate.

PILSNER Typically: Crisp clean and palegolden hued, with clean hop aromas that sometimes take on a big fruity hop character.

Te Aro Barrel Aged Rhubarb Weiss Pours a hazy gold. Vanilla, barrel spice and lime juice make for an awesome combo.

8 Wired Modern Times Â˝ Way to Whangarei Straw-coloured with a zesty, fruity aroma and some spice notes. Super dry and refreshing on the palate.

8 Wired Feijoa Pours a brilliant gold. Positively broadcasts aromas of feijoa on the palate. A clean acidity carries the fruit character.

Behemoth Hopped Up on Pils Pours a hazy gold with a great head. Passionfruit and melon with a firm, bitter finish. North End Pilsner Bright golden with a fluffy head. Intense lemon zest aroma gives way to a resiny, zesty, piny palate. Good George Pilsner Bright golden beer with a vinous sauvignon blanc-like aroma. Super fruity and only lightly bitter. Galbraithâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Czech Pilsner Great golden colour with a great head. Grassy hops sing out on the aroma with cereal malt flavours and savoury hops on the palate.

Moa Sour Blanc Pours a hazy yellow. Aromas of aged hop and farmyard funk lead to a restrained palate.

ENGLISH ALE Typically: Malt accented with caramel and toffee flavours and aromas backed up by earthy hop notes and fruity yeast character. Three Boys IPA A nice light shade of copper. Aromas of earthy hops and citrus give way to a lean palate with a firm, bitter finish. Wigram Tornado Pours a clear amber. Aromas of fruit and toffee lead to a jammy palate of raspberry and malt-loaf flavours.

Moa Sour Grapes Pours hazy with a good head. Aromas of lemon and grape give way to a dry, minerally finish. Garage Project White Mischief Pours the colour of homemade lemonade. Huge aroma of peach essence leads to a fun and fruity refreshing palate.

PACIFIC PALE ALE/XPA/ SESSION/LOW ABV (ALCOHOL BY VOLUME)

Typically: Highly drinkable lower ABV versions of hopforward pales and India pale ales, usually aromatic and zesty without being alcoholic. Panhead Quickchange XPA Pours super clear with a big vinous, fruity aroma. Dry and crisp on the palate. Renaissance Boonies XPA Pours a brilliant gold. A fruity aroma includes some savoury notes, well balanced on the palate with nice supporting malt. Renaissance Empathy Pale golden with aromas of pineapple and tropical fruit. A lean body but well balanced for the low ABV. Good George Sparkling Pours a brilliant gold with an aroma of pineapple juice. On the palate, dusty tropical notes lead to an approachable bitter finish. Behemoth Tasty Beverage Pours a hazy gold. Aromas of citrus give way to a hop-accented palate and a dry finish. Hop Federation XPA Aromas of passionfruit and mango lead to a palate with a hint of butterscotch and an assertive bitter finish.

BEER GUIDE

Wigram Spruce Pours a deep amber with a huge rosewater and herb aroma. Some woody resin notes on the palate and a dry finish.

Funk Estate Doozy Pours a deep gold with an assertive piny aroma, leading to a dry palate with some bitter, grassy hop notes.

Typically: Pale ales combine pale malt character with sometimes overt fruity hop characters.

Behemoth Dump the Trump Pours a bright gold with a big vinous passionfruit aroma, leading to a palate that balances overripe fruit character and sweet malt.

Behemoth Chur Pours deep golden with an assertive aroma of orange blossom and juicy, fresh stonefruit, all backed up by some nice, rich malt.

Hallertau Dammerung Pours pitch black with a huge aroma of jaffa and roast malt. Chocolate-dipped orange slices dominate the palate with a bitter cocoa finish.

North End Fieldway APA Pours a clear gold with a big, piny, tropical hop aroma, leading to a rich, malty body with mango hop flavour.

Parrotdog Woodrose Pours a brilliant shade of old gold with aromas of mango, vanilla and fruit compote, leading to an assertive, earthy, bitter finish.

PALE ALE

Te Aro Obligatory Pale Ale Pours a rich shade of copper with a fruity aroma that combines yeast character and hop hit. Panhead Supercharger Brilliantly clear gold with an earthy, sherbety hop aroma and a dry, bitter palate.

IMPERIAL IPA Typically: A version of IPA that takes the style and increases the alcoholic strength, hop character and malt body to create an intense hoppy beer that retains the drinkability of standard strength IPAs. Parrotdog Kowhai Pours a brilliant, clear gold. Aromas of capsicum, tangy lemon and wild fruit lead to a warming palate and a firm, bitter finish. Behemoth In Ya Face Pours a clear gold with citrus, savoury notes and earthy hops, leading into a sweet, malt palate.

Hop Federation Red IPA Pours a bright shade of crimson with aromas of caramel and citrus, leading to a full, bitter finish.

Renaissance MPA Aromas of earthy, tangy hops lead to a savoury palate with some nice malt character and a long, firm, bitter finish.

Panhead Johnny Octane Deep red with a toasty, berry, fruit-laced aroma. A tropical fruit flavour and a full, rich, malty finish. Galbraithâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Santana Crystal clear with a lychee and grapefruit aroma, leading to a caramel and fruit-salad palate.

IPA GOLDEN, RED AND BL ACK Typically: A stronger type of pale ale that combines assertive hop aroma, flavour and bitterness with balancing malt character. Red and black versions include toffee, caramel and or roasty dark chocolate malt flavours with the citrus and tropical fruit hop notes.

FL AVOURED

Hallertau Maximus Pours a brilliant gold with an earthy, savoury hop character in the aroma with a hint of citrus and a sweet malt finish.

Typically: Beer flavoured by spices, fruit, coffee, chocolate, tea, oak barrels or smoke. Three Boys Coconut Milk Stout Pours pitch black with a huge Bounty Bar aroma of coconut, chocolate and roast, leading to a lovely, sweet-backed palate and a lean finish.

Parrotdog Rata Pours amber with an aroma of pine and caramel leading to a sweet, malt palate and a firm, bitter finish. 75

Mussel Inn Captain Cooker Pours a deep copper with a light Turkish delight note and an austere, dry palate.

DARK L AGER/ PORTER/STOUT/ IMPERIAL STOUT Typically: Aromas and flavours of dark chocolate and espresso with rich malt backbones and sometimes a decent hop hit. Wigram Dunkel Pours a dark shade of red. A toasted aroma leads to a clean rye-bread-flavoured palate and a sweet finish. North End Iron Sands Pours pitch black with a warming aroma of roast and dark chocolate and a nutty, smooth palate. Sunshine Czar Bomb Pours a very dark brown. Aromas of caramel lead to a velvety palate of chocolate and toffee. Te Aro Barrel Aged Stout Pours pitch black with a complex aroma of warming alcohol, plums, wild spice and dark chocolate. Rich and satisfying in the palate. Black Dog Pango Kuri Pours deep brown with citrus hop notes and an interesting combo of tangerine and light roast.

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N O S TA L G IA

So long, Nan BY I A N A P P E R L E Y

Vivienne Apperley was my grandmother. She lived in Wellington her entire ninety-one years until she passed away recently. She saw World War II, trained over a thousand students of the piano, raised a family of three sons, and welcomed many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. For her entire life she embodied what many of us strive for today: a simple life, a better world, less technology, healthy food, keeping moving to stay alive. And she had a deep wisdom, acquired over the decades.

ivienne was raised to be not only a musician but also a woman of influence â&#x20AC;&#x201C; she was certainly not afraid to stand up and speak out. She was the product of her familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s values, and she has left a strong heritage to those of us who remain. She was raised in Daniell Street, Newtown, during a time of turmoil and change in the world and in Wellington. Her father worked on constructing the airport and the Johnsonville motorway, and was embroiled in the 1951 waterfront strike, which brought threats to her family and had the security service of the time tapping the household phone. She learned how to handle huge

opposition head on without losing grace or respect. In her dealings with the City Council in later years she was a force to be reckoned with â&#x20AC;&#x201C; polite, well informed and very determined to see things done right for her neighbourhood. I remember the food she cooked when I was a child. Sunday meals were a treat. The family would be packed around the lunch or dinner table, and the food would pile out from the kitchen: soups to start, casseroles, roasts, desserts to finish. No one ever went away hungry and nothing was wasted. Leftovers came home with us or went into a giant deep freeze. It was pure, wholesome,

N O S TA L G IA

and simple food. It was nourishing to the soul. She was a baker of great skill. Afternoon tea would consist of hot pikelets, biscuits of various kinds, cakes, and other delicacies. My grandparents always had a vegetable garden, as did my father – a simple thing that none of us seem to have time for these days. Every kind of vegetable came out of her garden, or the glass house, and the property in Otaki Street, Miramar, had a huge, old black grape vine. Add to that roses, flower beds, and orchids. We dream of having an urban farm with chickens, bees, and other animals; this was the natural way of things for my grandmother. The family had a farm at Dry Creek in the Hutt Valley, and Miramar became a spillover home for waifs, strays, and orphans. She raised nine dogs, many lambs, and at one stage a calf. Every week my brothers and I went to learn the piano from Nan. The walk to her house was a ritual. She had a small leather seat that we would sink into while the preceding pupil finished, and it didn’t pay to be late. I can still smell the leather, the cooking smells, the warmth of the Wednesday afternoon sun on my back, being told to keep my hands in the correct position. I was stubborn then, but Nan didn’t seem to mind. I flatly refused to sit any music exams, ever. She accepted that and taught me anyway. She taught me the gift of music, something which has persisted my entire life. She gave that same gift to over a thousand others. During the War years, the Great Depression, and subsequently she lived in a way that we strive to achieve today. Everything got recycled, including plastic bags. There was no entertainment in those days, so you made your own. She learned to garden, give time to others, and be part of the community. She was an accomplished knitter. You’d be measured up and a week later a jersey would magically appear. Perhaps out of habits learnt in wartime, she would buy up bargains when she saw them. Every spare cupboard in the house was full of wool. Arthritis dogged her in later years but she never stopped playing the piano. As children, we would visit her and my grandfather in Otaki. They had a caravan at the park near the beach. Days were spent exploring the sand dunes, playing pool, and walking, before being fed and put to bed.

In later years they would buy a small cottage in Otaki. The caravan was given pride of place in the back yard, and the gardens, again, were magnificent. After my grandfather passed away in the flower garden, with his Alsatian, Sam, guarding him, the house was sold. Nan’s years of wisdom helped me through some particularly bad times – the loss of a job, heartbreak, other personal challenges. She never judged. She never took sides. She just listened. It wasn’t just me. With ten grandchildren she was a constant support. In later years I would watch her holding her great-grandchildren, and it was clear the love she gave and the pleasure she gained from those moments. She had a central role in our ordinary life, which revolved around school, biking to Rongotai College from Miramar come rain or shine, oilskin optional. Piano lessons on a Wednesday, lunch or dinner on a Sunday, to which we would walk. Afternoon teas. Weekends in Otaki. Stacking firewood, helping in the gardens, walking the dogs, fishing at Breaker Bay, climbing mountains in the Kawekas. Nan loved Wellington. The Council drove her nuts but she doggedly, and politely, persisted with them. She had a leak in her garage when it rained, which appeared to come from Wellington City Council land. She built a relationship with a Council Officer that persisted for nearly twenty years; she called them every time it happened and he came to look every time. She passed away suddenly and peacefully in July. A graceful exit for a graceful woman. I find it fascinating that we today admire a lifestyle such as hers, but seem unable to live it. We want to be self-sufficient, have our own gardens, care for animals, support our community, make a difference to people’s lives, leave a legacy, but we seem unable to do so. We are consumers, filling our lives with busyness and technology. We have forgotten how to be a village, something that for Nan came as second nature. An original Wellingtonian, Vivienne had a large impact on thousands of people from the family, to the community, her students, and the city. Her legacy will endure. As a mentor, Nan was exemplary. Her grace, backbone, and humility were a lesson to all of us.

Fine print, small print, or “mouseprint” is less noticeable print smaller than the more obvious larger print it accompanies that advertises or otherwise describes or partially describes a commercial product or service.[1] The larger print that is used in conjunction with fine print by the merchant often has the effect of deceiving the consumer into believing the offer is more advantageous than it really is, via a legal technicality which requires full disclosure of all (even unfavorable) terms or conditions, but does not specify the manner (size, typeface, coloring, etc.) of disclosure. There is strong evidence that suggests the fine print is not read by the majority of consumers.[2]Fine print may say the opposite of what the larger print says. For example, if the larger print says “pre-approved” the fine print might say “subject to approval.” [3] Especially in pharmaceutical advertisements, fine print may accompany a warning message, but this message is often neutralized by the more eye-catching positive images and pleasant background music (eye candy). Sometimes television advertisements flash text fine print in camouflagic colors, and for notoriously brief periods of time, making it difficult or impossible for the viewer to rea Fine print, small print, or “mouseprint” is less noticeable print smaller than the more obvious larger print it accompanies that advertises or otherwise describes or partially describes a commercial product or service.[1] The larger print that is used in conjunction with fine print by the merchant often has the effect of deceiving the consumer into believing the offer is more advantageous than it really is, via a legal technicality which requires full disclosure of all (even unfavorable) terms or conditions, but does not specify the manner (size, typeface, coloring, etc.) of disclosure. There is strong evidence that suggests the fine print is not read by the majority of consumers.[2]Fine print may say the opposite of what the larger print says. For example, if the larger print says “pre-approved” the fine print might say “subject to approval.” [3] Especially in pharmaceutical advertisements, fine print may accompany a warning message, but this message is often neutralized by the more eye-catching positive images and pleasant background music (eye candy). Sometimes television a colors, and for notoriously brief periods of time, making it difficult or impossible for the viewer to rea Fine print, small print, or “mouseprint” is less noticeable print smaller than the more obvious larger print it accompanies that advertises or otherwise describes or partially describes a commercial product or service.[1] The larger print that is used in conjunction with fine print by the merchant often has the effect of deceiving the consumer into believing the offer is more advantageous than it really is, via a legal technicality which requires full disclosure of all (even unfavorable) terms or conditions, but does not specify the manner (size, typeface, coloring, etc.) of disclosure. There is strong evidence that suggests the fine print is not read by the majority of consumers.[2]Fine print may say the opposite of what the larger print says. For example, if the larger print says “pre-approved” the fine print might say “subject to approval.” [3] Especially in pharmaceutical advertisements, fine print may accompany a warning message, but this message is often neutralized by the more eye-catching positive images and pleasant background music (eye candy). Sometimes television advertisements flash text fine print in camouflagic colors, and for notoriously brief periods of time, making it difficult or impossible for the viewer to reaine print, small print, or “mouseprint” is less noticeable print smaller than the more obvious larger print it accompanies that advertises or otherwise describes or partially describes a commercial product or service.[1] The larger print that is used in conjunction with fine print by the merchant often has the effect of deceiving the consumer into believing the offer is more advantageous than it really is, via a legal technicality which requires full disclosure of all (even unfavorable) terms or conditions, but does not specify the manner (size, typeface, coloring, etc.) of disclosure. There is strong evidence that suggests the fine print is not read by the majority of consumers.[2]Fine print may say the opposite of what the larger print says. For example, if the larger print says “pre-approved” the fine print might say “subject to approval.” [3] Especially in pharmaceutical advertisements, fine print may accompany a warning message, but this message is often neutralized by the more eye-catching positive images and pleasant background music (eye candy). Sometimes television advertisements flash text fine print in camouflagic colors, and for notoriously brief periods of time, making it difficult or impossible for the viewer to rea Fine print, small print, or “mouseprint” is less noticeable print smaller than the more obvious larger print it accompanies that advertises or otherwise describes or partially describes a commercial product or service.[1] The larger print that is used in conjunction with fine print by the merchant often has the effect of deceiving the consumer into believing the offer is more advantageous than it really is, via a legal technicality which requires full disclosure of all (even unfavorable) terms or conditions, but does not specify the manner (size, typeface, coloring, etc.) of disclosure. There is strong evidence that suggests the fine print is not read by the majority of consumers.[2] Fine print may say the opposite of what the larger print says. For example, if the larger print says “pre-approved” the fine print might say “subject to approval.” [3] Especially in pharmaceutical advertisements, fine print may accompany a warning message, but this message is often neutralized by the more eye-catching positive images and pleasant background music (eye candy). Sometimes television a colors, and for notoriously brief periods of time, making it difficult or impossible for the viewer to rea Fine print, small print, or “mouseprint” is less noticeable print smaller than the more obvious larger print it accompanies that advertises or otherwise describes or partially describes a commercial product or service.[1] The larger print that is used in conjunction with fine print by the merchant often has the effect of deceiving the consumer into believing the offer is more advantageous than it really is, via a legal technicality which requires full disclosure of all (even unfavorable) terms or conditions, but does not specify the manner (size, typeface, coloring, etc.) of disclosure. There is strong evidence that suggests the fine print is not read by the majority of consumers.[2]Fine print may say the opposite of what the larger print says. For example, if the larger print says “pre-approved” the fine print might say “subject to approval.” [3] Especially in pharmaceutical advertisements, fine print may accompany a warning message, but this message is often neutralized by the more eye-catching positive images and pleasant background music (eye candy). Sometimes television advertisements flash text fine print in camouflagic colors, and for notoriously brief periods of time, making it difficult or impossible for the viewer to rea

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BY THE BOOK

AN EXHIBITION OF YO U R S E L F Kapiti Coast author Tina Makereti has won the New Zealand Society of Authors Peter & Dianne Beatson Fellowship, awarded annually to a mid-career or senior writer for a project with high literary merit and national significance. She’ll use the $7,000 to finish a novel about a young Māori man exhibited in London’s Egyptian Hall in the 1840s. “The book’s completely fictional, but it was quite common to exhibit indigenous people in London then.” Makereti talks alongside other authors at LitCrawl Wellington session What I’ve Been Reading (12 November, Minerva).

B O OKSHELVES ARE BACK

LIBRARY LOVIN’

THE MEEHAN-ING OF JAZZ

There’s been grumbling aplenty about the suggestion that New Zealanders don’t consider local fiction enjoyable, as mentioned in the NZ Book Council's report “Reading Attitudes and Behaviours”. However, the report’s authors Dr Paula Morris and Catherine Robertson (profiled in issue #33) offer hope for bookshelves in danger of becoming firewood. “None of the younger readers liked e-readers – all preferred physical books.” The main reason was wanting a break from screens.

Wellingtonians claimed five of six top spots in the Public Libraries of New Zealand’s nationwide competition Libraries Change Lives. After judges selected the top short stories, the public voted on them through Facebook. Susan Williams, a media-design student, won the adult category and prizes worth $750, with Kaushiki Roy second. In the youth category Samantha Romijn won prizes worth $350, with Hariklia Nicola and Hannah Adam Shah second and third.

Wellington jazz pianist, composer, writer and teacher Norman Meehan interviewed 39 New Zealand musicians for his new book New Zealand Jazz Life (VUP, $40). The survey of the national jazz scene was photographed by the late Tony Whincup. The launch on 25 November (at St Andrew’s on The Terrace) will be followed by a ticketed concert with Meehan on piano, Hayden Chisholm on saxophone and Paul Dyne on bass.

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FULL OF BEANS W R I T T E N BY A L E X S C O T T P H O T O G R A P H Y BY A N N A B R I G G S You’ll know if you read our Money column a couple of months ago (#33, p. 51) that Wellington’s large-aslife and twice-as-natural self-styled coffee baron Geoff Marsland did more in his first 18 years than many have done in a lifetime. Now, the workaholic extrovert who doesn’t do anything by the book has written his own. Coffee-U-Feel is all about how Marsland’s unconventional approach to life morphed into a coffee empire, Havana. “It’s a bit of an autobiography of my life. But the brand takes over because the brand is bigger than me,” he says. He asked writer and cartoonist Tom Scott to edit it, and the two got on like a coffee house on fire. “We had a real connection. We’re both hyperactive. Well, I’m more hyperactive than him. I met him about something else and I said, ‘I’ve written this book,’ and he read it and went, ‘Wow. I want to do this!’” Marsland admits the early incarnation of the book needed a bit of fine tuning, so, together, they went back to the beginning. “Tom said, ‘Let’s start from scratch’. So he interviewed me again and all the stuff came out about my childhood, which everyone says is the most interesting bit.” Not one to do anything by halves, Marsland’s launching his baby twice, at Unity Books on 22 November, and with an 11am book signing at Moore Wilson’s on Saturday the 26th.

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o surprises that the term “athleisure” was coined in America, and was defined as “casual clothing designed to be worn both for exercising and for general use”. In other words, wearing workout gear far beyond the gym. “Athleisure is about comfort and functionality,” says Chris Hutchison of the casual, wear-anywhere style of dressing that’s rooted in leggings, polo tops and sneakers. The 26-year-old should know: last year he bought the golf shop at the Miramar Golf Course, re-branding it as the Golf Studio, expanding the coaching programme and changing the way we think about golf clothing. “People want clothes that can take them from the course to a cafe or the supermarket. We’re the only Wellington stockist of the Swedish brand Cross Sportswear, who have a very cool range of leggings, hoodies, polo tops and wetweather gear.” Another label arriving next year is the TravisMathew range of

athleisure, beloved by stars such as Justin Timberlake and Mark Wahlberg. The golf pro, who moved to Wellington from Scotland with his father’s job when he was 18, is also fussy when it comes to golf clubs, stocking premium and quality brands that fit well with the Golf Studio’s philosophy. “We’re all about selling the clubs that are right for you, which can depend on a whole lot of factors, such as your height and your swing. We specialise in custom fitting the clubs to you and do this for no extra charge. We also offer a full comprehensive repair service. No job is too small or too big.” A key part of our re-branded business is the coaching programme, which is led by Renee Fowler and fellow professional Andrew Fok and, along with Hutchison, includes one of the capital’s largest junior coaching programmes where students from local colleges such as Scots, Wellington College, Rongotai, St Pats, Queen Margaret and Samuel Marsden are led through their paces. The trio also run corporate, individu-

al and beginner sessions which are regularly booked up two to three weeks in advance. “Thankfully, we have an indoor coaching area for when Wellington’s weather turns nasty. Plus we’re in the process of adding a putting studio.” A complete overhaul of the premises has resulted in a minimalist, whitewashed space with polished concrete floors and floating macrocarpa shelves that wouldn’t look out of place in an interior design magazine. “I was after a clean, streamlined space that reflects our brand and the service we provide.” Ah, the “S” word. For Hutchison, who first picked up golf seriously at the age of 11, the motivation for buying the shop where he’s worked since 2012 was to build more individual relationships with his customers. “It’s our shared passion for the game that drives us. We are all about building and maintaining our relationships with our customers to help them with all aspects of their game.”

BY THE BOOK

Found in translation P H OTO G R A P H Y BY A N N A B R I G G S

Italian poet and literary translator Marco Sonzogni talks to SARAH LANG about losing a friend – and nearly losing his own life.

he late, great Irish poet Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) stares sternly from a framed black-and-white photograph perched on a desk overlooking Kelburn Parade. The sixth-floor office belongs to Marco Sonzogni, a jauntily dressed poet, literary translator, and Victoria University’s senior lecturer in Italian. Sonzogni isn’t just a Heaney fan. They were friends and collaborators, with Sonzogni spending 10 years translating 300 of Heaney’s poems into Italian. His book Poesie – Heaney’s Selected Poems (1966–2013), which features those translations and accompanying commentary, was released to acclaim in Italy earlier this year. Sonzogni, 45, grew up in the tiny Italian village of Cergnago. “It was all rice fields and cornfields and combines. Heaney’s poem Tractors symbolised my childhood, so I met him on the page first.” Two years after moving to Ireland for postgraduate study, he attended a literary event celebrating WB Yeats, partly because the other great Irish poet was reading. “I introduced myself on the way back from the gents. It was a life-changing encounter.” Soon afterwards, Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Sonzogni translated his Nobel lecture Crediting Poetry into Italian. They bonded over poetry and translation – Heaney was a translator too – and became friends in Dublin. Heaney’s trust bolstered the self-belief of the young academic coping with uncertain short-term contracts. Dublin colleagues looked shocked when Heaney walked into a lecture that Sonzogni was giving. At that lecture, Sonzogni met Julia Maria Seemann, a German-born language student. He took the Victoria University job in

2005, and she joined him a year later. By that time, Sonzogni had begun translating Heaney’s poems into Italian. It was a good fit. “We’re both country boys who know the smell of soil.” The project continued, with a correspondence progressing from letters to faxes to emails and the odd text message. Sonzogni finished the translations in early 2013, Heaney writing the book’s preface and gifting a previously unpublished poem. In August, Heaney emailed his friend, asking for feedback on some of his own translations. Sonzogni had just replied when the phone rang. Heaney had died suddenly, aged 74. “The world stopped for me,” Sonzogni says. Meanwhile, foreign translations of Heaney’s work stopped until his estate was formed and his publishers took stock. Sonzogni flew to London and back in four days to meet Heaney’s publisher Faber & Faber. Shortly after returning, he suffered a bilateral pulmonary embolism (blockage of a lung artery). “A niggling pain in my side became severe overnight. I coughed and spat blood.” Not realising his life was in danger, he went to his GP, who rushed him to Wellington Hospital.” He pulled through. “My doctor there was Irish, so it felt like Seamus was looking out for me.” Sonzogni, who is unashamed of what some would call sentimentality, often asks himself what Heaney would do. “Sometimes when I have doubts or fears, I look at his photo. Or when I do something naughty, I think he’s looking at me reproachfully. Seamus taught me to be the best possible person you can be with what you have.”

Sonzogni is warm, animated, amusing, digressive and unguarded. He’s got what Italians call gusto, and would be a great dinner-party guest. “I’m Italian, so there’s an occasional hotheadedness. My blood is thick – medically thick, you know! Hence the clots.” He also admits to “a little workaholism”, writing and translating from around 9pm until around 1.30am at his Brooklyn home. “I can function fine on five hours’ sleep.” Wife Julia, now a yoga and meditation instructor, has got him onto both practices. Teaching, research, writing academic articles and admin take up most of his time. An advocate of small classes, he tailors his classes in Italian language, literature and culture to individual students, from first-year through to postgraduate level. “I’m privileged to have young, vibrant minds teaching me just as much.” Translation informs his teaching, and vice versa. “Translation is a conversation that connects people. I see teaching as a translation too: you receive knowledge and, if it stops with you, if it’s self-centred, it’s useless. Our responsibility is to pass it on.” His mother, father and grandmother were all teachers, and so is his brother. “It’s a calling, I guess.” From 2011 to 2015, Sonzogni was the director of the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation at Victoria, bringing some of the world’s best translators and translation scholars to New Zealand. This month, with a group of colleagues, he’s organising the university’s inaugural Creativity Week (21–25 November), with public events featuring international and national speakers and performers. The headline act is a how-to-be-creative lecture by British creativity professor and Lego consultant David Gauntlett at 6pm on 22 November, at Rutherford House. Sonzogni considers himself a poet first and foremost. He wrote his first poem as a teenager after glimpsing a girl waitressing at a bar. “She didn’t pay the slightest notice to me. There it started and ended.” But it started a lifetime of writing poetry. He’s published five poetry collections in Italy, and is working on his sixth, all in Italian. “It’s Italian I feel in my body, and it’s a creative obligation to my native tongue and traditions.” He’ll read his poetry alongside others at LitCrawl Wellington session, Polylingual Spree, on 12 November. The pull to translate poetry by other writers comes partly from a desire to open windows into other cultures. “Translating poetry requires a huge amount of reading and

knowledge of the source language and culture. I’ve devoted 25 years to studying Seamus Heaney and Italian poet and Nobel Laureate Eugenio Montale [1896–1981].” He’s currently translating (into Italian from English) Heaney’s posthumously published translation of Virgil’s Aeneid Book VI, written in Latin. How’s that for an ode to translation? While some talk of translating the spirit not the letter of the words, this award-winning translator ensures the words remain the poet’s own. “As a Heaney poem goes, remember the giver.” He kept this in mind when translating Holocaust survivor Primo Levi’s poetry into English (with US translator Harry Thomas). Sonzogni has also translated the work of Swiss-Italian poets from Italian to English, and is working on a new translation in partnership with the Swiss Arts Council. Sonzogni grew up near the Swiss border, with a gift for languages. He spoke the local dialect with his father, and his mother taught Greek and Latin. He learned those languages, then studied English, Russian, Italian and Linguistics at the University of Pavia. At 21, he tossed up between a scholarship to St Petersburg to study Russian, and one to Dublin to study English. “My grasp of English was better.” After a master’s and PhD, he entered academia. After 12 years in his “cultural home” of Ireland, Sonzogni learned his teaching fellowship was ending, briefly looked at jobs online and spotted one at Victoria. “There was a 24 hour-window before applications closed.” After a phone interview with bad reception but a good outcome, he said yes quickly. “I didn’t overthink it. I knew where New Zealand was and I knew of Edmund Hillary, Katherine Mansfield, Allen Curnow and of course the All Blacks, who I now follow as closely as [soccer team] Inter Milan. I said ‘I'll discover the rest’. My mum said, ‘But New Zealand’s the last stop before the South Pole!’ It is far.” He goes back usually each year to visit his parents, brother and friends. They were proud when, in 2013, Sonzogni received Italy’s Order of Merit for services to culture. “Moving here was the best possible decision,” says Sonzogni, who’s since edited two New Zealand short-story anthologies. “Wellington is such a walkable, creative city, and New Zealand has given me the freedom to think, write and teach in a country that’s peaceful, open and tolerant. These are gifts in today’s world – never to be taken for granted.”

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W R I T T E N BY S H A RO N ST E P H E N S O N P H OTO G R A P H Y BY A N N A B R I G G S

From its carefully curated interior to its familiar façade, this Wellington apartment is steeped in history.

he one-bedroom apartment is filled with MidCentury modern furniture and collectables, lovingly curated by artist Erica and her partner Brett Wood, a psychologist who works in HR. From the 1950s sofa she recently had re-upholstered in a peacock blue textured fabric to the six vintage school chairs found on the side of the road near her parents’ Auckland home, all the couple’s furniture comes with a past. “We’re drawn to Mid-Century pieces because of the craftsmanship and the way they hold up to the ravages of time,” says Erica. “Things were certainly built to last back then.” The same could be said about Blythswood, the historic apartment building where Erica and Brett have lived since 2010, although the property is currently listed as earthquake-prone. Built in 1928, the 34 apartments, which wrap around the corner of Willis and Aro Streets, are believed to have been originally constructed for elderly people wanting independent living. Since then, the roll-call of residents has included Helen Clark, Shihad’s Jon Toogood, and historian and author Tony Simpson (a current resident) among many others. Erica and Brett found the apartment when they moved here from Auckland in 2010 for Brett’s job. They’ve never left. “We love its proximity to the city,” says Erica of the second-floor rented apartment. She has established her

own studio at Blythswood, and it’s just a seven-minute to walk to Toi Pōneke Arts Centre where Erica works part-time as an administrator (she also teaches Fine Arts to first-year art students at Massey). The couple rented the apartment unfurnished and shipped their furniture down from Auckland, the bulk of it bought at Mixt Art & Design, a retro shop in Kingsland. This includes the sofa and two Mid-Century armchairs which Erica intends to have re-covered. In the meantime, a cushion made from a tea-towel featuring a graphic black and white design, the work of artist friend Sam Mitchell, hides some wear and tear. The Scandinavian-inspired wooden coffee table was a gift, and Erica is hoping to have it sanded and re-finished. But the art is the real star of the show. Step through the door of the 37sqm apartment and your eyes dart around the room, not knowing where to settle. Most of the apartment’s eclectic collection was gifted or swapped for Erica’s work. One such acquisition is the vibrant artwork above the TV by local artist Kate Woods, which marries manual painting techniques and digital photography in a large collage that is heavy on blue. “I know Kate from our Auckland days but she also now lives in Wellington. I swapped this with her for a Psycho film poster I made.” A framed poster advertising Julian Dashper’s first

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ever show, in 1981, was a gift from mutual friends of the late artist. Julian, who died in 2009, was one of Erica’s tutors at AUT and later a good friend. He was widely regarded as one of New Zealand’s best contemporary artists. Above the dining room table a bright pink light is the work of artist Jade Townsend, who completed the sprayed vinyl artwork during a residency in China, while the terracotta discs hanging from the living room wall were a birthday present from artist Richard Orjis who created them during a residency in Whanganui. Dominating the light-filled living room is a large ῾60s display cabinet that Brett found. It comes with a drinks cabinet (“Very Mad Men,” jokes Erica) and is the perfect place to display their many treasures, among them a vintage wooden jigsaw Erica picked up in an op-shop and a heavy, hand-painted ceramic piece by Auckland artist Tessa Laird, entitled Bungle in the Jungle. The unit also houses Erica’s growing collection of ῾80s cookbooks. “I found a few in a Whanganui opshop and fell in love with the photography and styling. They were pretty much ahead of their time! And then friends started finding other ῾80s cookbooks they gifted to me, so now it’s become a thing. They might be a little ironic but they’re also a lot of fun.” Adjacent to the living area is the kitchen which, with its view across Blythswood's gardens, is a favourite spot. The vintage mobile kitchen storage unit came from The General Store, a popular Aro Street upcycling shop only a few doors away. It provides extra bench space when it’s needed and is the perfect spot for their beloved Le Creuset pot and the spoils of Brett’s craft beer brewing sessions. Little has been changed in the bedroom and bathroom, particularly the latter, where the windows still sport the original glister glass. It’s such historic features that Erica loves most about the apartment, so much that she’s even utilised the glister glass patterns in her work. Serendipitously, Blythswood, and one of its former residents, is also the inspiration behind Erica’s latest exhibition, in the Solo 2016 show at The Dowse which opens on 18 November (Erica is one of six artists featured). Her 31 works are entitled Coffee Perhaps, a term pulled from a 1949 invitation to a show at New Zealand’s first modernist art gallery in Bond Street, run by this country’s first dealer gallerist, Helen Hitchings. Helen, it turns out, lived at Blythswood from 1981 to 2002. “I was told Helen had lived here but didn’t really think much of it until Te Papa staged an exhibition not

only of photographs of her and the gallery, but also of some of the work she sold. I was inspired to do an exhibition that paid homage to Helen and to Blythswood.” The exhibition includes pottery, hand-beaded screens, photos printed onto silk scarves and a nest of tables made from recycled timber from the Whanganui Hospital. There’s a glass beaded work based on Blythswood’s bricks and even a photographic piece dedicated to Helen’s cat, Mitzi. Erica, who has completed artist residencies in China and Whanganui, has been working on the exhibition since July 2015, mainly from her Blythswood studio which used to be a hobby room for the original elderly residents. In fact, the Hobby Room tag still hangs on the door. She’s also been known to work from the sofa of her apartment, particularly when she needs to do fiddly work like hand-sewing thousands of beads onto fabric. Erica has always been artistic, and says her parents, who emigrated from the Netherlands in 1971, instilled in her a love of creativity. “Mum is a nurse and Dad is an engineer, but they always made things with me and my older brother Mark (now working for Starbucks HQ in Seattle). I was taught how to sew when I was five and was always playing with watercolours.” She played the cello from an early age and it was a close run thing whether she’d become a musician or an artist. Art won out and Erica completed the four-year Visual Arts degree at AUT, majoring in sculpture. That was followed by work at a Texas art museum, a year in the Netherlands visiting relatives and two in Melbourne. In 2006 she returned to New Zealand to complete a master’s at Elam. Erica has no plans to drift back north, saying Wellington’s artistic community is incredibly supportive. “Plus I don’t see us leaving Blythswood anytime soon. We love the location and the other residents and it’s just a really cool place to be.” Solo, is a biennial exhibition at The Dowse that showcases and supports local artists by actively commissioning and presenting new work. The series provides a snapshot of contemporary art practice in Wellington right here, right now. Solo 2016 features the work of six artists including Erica, the Crystal Chain Gang (Leanne Williams and Jim Dennison), Karl Fritsch, Neil Pardington and Jordana Bragg.

ABROAD

Tu r n i n g g h o s t s into cash P H OTO G R A P H Y BY SA R A H B U RTO N

In Germany’s capital to attend a conference, JOHN BISHOP is confronted by a city that is trying to both sell its past and forget it.

ourists come to Berlin to see sights like Checkpoint Charlie, the notorious Berlin Wall crossing point, little realising that most of the wall has been pulled down and the checkpoint they see is a commercial fake. The wall that made the city famous has been fallen for almost as long as it was up, but it’s still an important part of the tourist industry. And tourism is Berlin’s most important business, ahead of the arts, construction and government. The stony grandeur here does not compare with the opulence of Versailles or the decadence of the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, or even Buckingham Palace, which was

considered a poor outhouse of a place in the 19th century by snobby European royalty. But there are architectural attractions worth noting. The House of World’s Cultures, an imaginatively designed art museum is known as “the pregnant oyster”. The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, which suffered much devastation in the war, but now has a brand new skyscraper next to it, is the “lipstick and compact”. The angular Czech Embassy building is a “UFO”. Chancellor Merkel’s office (the Chancellery is 12 times the size of the White House) with its round windows, a cubic form in

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a postmodernist style, is the “elephant loo”. At its heart, Berlin is a Prussian city, where discipline and duty have always trumped luxury and enjoyment. Today, Berlin is quite a poor city. Not that there are beggars on the street; that’s not allowed. The carefully compiled German statistics of wealth put Berlin below Frankfurt, Hamburg, Bonn, Cologne and Munich. Berliners have their quirks. One is a black sense of humour, another quick-wittedness. Other Germans fear their directness and the acidic barbs that constitute humour in a city that has seen so much hardship, death and despair. Berliners respect no one, but they love beer and food. A pickle served with ham or beef is called a “gardener’s sausage”. Never laugh at Berliners’ love for currywurst, a local delicacy. It’s a grilled sausage (usually beef or veal, mixed with pork), with a tomato-based onion and curry sauce poured over it. Curry powder to taste is then shaken over the mixture. In small doses, it’s tasty; stronger and larger, it’s a bowel cleanser. For Berliners, it’s a late-night snack and pick-me-up after drinking. There’s even a museum devoted to currywurst, and vendors are everywhere. While the wall dividing the city is all but gone, one feature of the old East German regime that remains is the red man and the green man in the traffic lights telling pedestrians to stop or go. The graphics were invented in the East of the city and copied in the West. When unification took place, there was strong support for keeping the East German originals. The stocky man with a hat is said to be modelled on Erich Honecker who was the communist ruler of the German Democratic Republic from 1971 to the fall of the wall in 1989. Another much-debated memorial is to the victims of the Holocaust. It consists of 2,711 rectangular blocks of concrete, each a different size, arranged on a 19,000sqm

Checkpoint Charlie The uniformed guards are not soldiers and one of them is Italian. The guardhouse is a replica, and

area one block south of the Brandenburg Gate. Erected in the early 2000s, each concrete block was sprayed with anti-graffiti paint, supplied by a subsidiary of the huge Degussa manufacturing and chemical company. It was later revealed that in World War II Degussa made Zyklon B, the gas used in concentration camps to kill Jews and others. Then it emerged that the Berlin authorities knew this at the time the contract was awarded. One outcome of the subsequent storm of controversy is that Degussa now cleans and refreshes the paint each year, free of charge. I enjoyed Berlin, but the pleasure was not in viewing historical grandeur (as in London, Paris or Vienna), or in discovering history. The entrance to the Hitler bunker has now been removed, although the tour guides will stand where it was and tell you why you can’t see it any longer. It is a city which is over its history: imperial, Nazi, communist. Now it is just a large government town, pleasant enough in summer, but frigid in winter, making its past into a tourist experience. You can visit the Spy Museum, which provides an insight into the lives of spies and spying. The Hitler bunker is no more, but there is a whole new government centre. The Philharmonic is world renowned, and the theatre is bold and edgy. Unfortunately, the cuisine is only average overall. The best meal I had was in a French restaurant run by a Kiwi. There are plenty of statutes of Frederick the Great (Old Fritz as he is known, the former King of Prussia), and you can stride down the Friedrichstrasse and Unter den Linden and through the Brandenburg Gate to find a Starbucks opposite the Hotel Adlon, where Michael Jackson dangled his baby. It costs 50 cents to use the loo in Starbucks and such places. For me, Berlin is an intriguing city that falls just short of being really memorable.

in real life it was several metres further forward and blocking the cross street. The fresh-faced Russian soldier is a Belgian actor. To pose with the “guards” for a photo costs three euros; you can have your passport stamped for five. The displays

around the area vary in quality. Some provide excellent photographic accounts. The souvenir shops will sell you a piece of broken concrete “from the Wall” for several euros, and some are even nicely mounted for display purposes.

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W h a t wo u l d D e i r d r e d o? W I T H D E I R D R E TA R R A N T

JUST COPE I work with a group of foreigners who often chat to each other in their own language. I often feel left out. Is it rude of them to not talk in English? Or should I just let them get on with it? Monolinguist, Miramar They are speaking their own languages and that seems totally fine – we are a very English-centric country so most of the time they probably feel as you do. Get on with work and talk to them in English. You could learn their language too.

FAMILY MENACE My partner’s brother leads a very different life with lots of drugs and friends of very dubious habits. He needs a place to live and my partner feels we must have him to stay. I am very uncomfortable around him and don’t want to agree. Does family have to come first? Scaredycat, Te Aro I would normally say family first and feel you should be open and make the effort

to help; but try to set some parameters before arrival regarding friends, length of stay, contribution, ongoing plans and how current residents may feel or be affected. Tricky, but sounds as though he needs someone to stand by him and that should be his family. Give it a go but sort the exit strategy “if...” first with both your partner and his brother.

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY My partner’s family want us to sign financial agreements. I don’t know how much money he has but his family have more than I grew up with. I don’t really mind but feel annoyed, as do my family, at the clear inference that I am probably only interested in his money. Is this now the normal thing to do? What should I do? Money-grubber (not), Hataitai Not an area of expertise or experience for me. I thought these agreements were formal and made when marriage or a legal union took place but be aware that in this day and age the definition of a relationship can be very broad. You are partners by choice and

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they are out of line at this stage, surely? Also, it is between you two and not their business. Enjoy the relationship and avoid getting entangled.

KEEP THEM INNO CENT Why don’t parents follow the ratings provided on films? I seem to be the only parent who takes any notice as to what my teenagers see, and am constantly dealing with the cry that “everyone else is allowed”, which seems to be true. Should I stop worrying, given that they can find pretty much whatever they want online, anyway? Upholding Standards, Karori Stick to your guns in terms of discussing ratings. Your children need to learn to respect opinions and then decide for themselves when they are old enough. They are guidelines and there will be differences of opinion. That’s life! I do feel there is a bit of “Don’t sweat the small stuff ” in this. If you’ve got a burning question for Deirdre, email angel@capitalmag.co.nz with Capital Angel in the subject line.

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A b oy r a c e r fo r g e n t l e m e n W R I T T E N BY RO G E R WA L K E R | P H OTO G R A P H Y BY R H E TT G O O D L E Y - H O R N B LOW

he fastest I ever drove was in a road version of the Saker race car. Designed and built in Feilding, the Saker is a Kiwi success story. They’re now built under licence in the Netherlands where they’ve been top performers in amateur racing classes. I had to race a top dressing plane taking off. It was for AA Torque, a TV programme, and the cameraman had the bright idea that I race the plane to the end of the runway while he filmed. I managed to beat the aeroplane to the end of the strip. But at 260kmh the pumping adrenaline turned my mouth into a camel’s bottom, dry enough to make my tongue stick to my gums, with cardiac overtones. The point of this story is that the Saker’s engine was an insanely tweaked Subaru motor. Interestingly, Subaru is not only the name of the car division of Fuji Heavy Industries, but also the Japanese name of the constellation of stars the ancient Greeks called Pleiades and the Māori know as Matariki. One of the seven stars in the cluster is said to be invisible, and when you look, you’ll see the Subaru logo has only six stars. Subaru stresses environmental responsibility including “end of life” disposal of their vehicles. More than 97% of the components are recyclable. Extraordinarily, Subaru’s US assembly plant is designated a “wildlife habitat”, and a few years ago won the United States Environmental Protection Agency Gold award. In technical terms, Subaru is best known for its horizontally opposed engine in which the pistons lie flat, each side of the motor, and “box” away from each other. The top-end 12-cylinder Ferrari Boxer uses this format. It’s a more expensive layout than the usual picket fence of upright cylinders, but it helps Subaru lower their cars’ centres of gravity – both to conquer Mr Corner, and to provide thrills for enthusiastic drivers. Which reminds me… when I was at university, I admit to having had a surplus of testosterone and a slightly bogan period. My pride and joy was a 100E Escort. It was a hoot to

thrash about in, especially in the wet. One Friday night my friend Howard and I were running late for the movies in Auckland. I spotted a carpark on the other side of Mt Eden Road and, with steering wheel twirling and accelerator stomping, did a full-power slide through 180 degrees to finish perfectly into the spot. Just as well for Howard the lavatories were just inside the Empire’s entrance. Fast-forward to this month’s brand new beauty, the Subaru WRX Premium. I thoroughly enjoyed driving this one. A four-door sports car this good for $54,900 seems all right to me. Its 2.0 litre 4-cylinder turbo engine produces 197Kw of power (that’s more than 260hp for older readers) and 350Nm of torque. Its remarkable acceleration pushes your glasses into your eyeballs and its braking pulls them off. It has the sporty ride you would expect a WRX to have, but the sophisticated suspension soaks up bumps beautifully. It’s bigger, more refined, and safer than its predecessor, and though it’s grown up in almost 25 years as one of the world’s great rally cars it still retains its larrikin DNA. Like all Subarus from the past 20 years it’s permanently in four-wheel drive. There are four exhausts lurking at the back, and Dunlop Sport tyres at each corner to signal its intent. Paddle shifting in manual transmission mode is lightning fast. Both the exterior look and the interior finishes are very pleasing, featuring quality materials and excellent fit and finish. Their luggage having been swallowed by the WRX’s enormous boot, the family will love riding in it. And when Dad behind the wheel wants to relive his youth, the family will be comforted to know that there’s every electronic safety feature I could think of, all built in. I had Naoya from Armstrong’s as my passenger for part of my drive; unlike my old Escort, this Subaru is so competent and accomplished there was no risk of a bladder accident. I simply couldn’t scare him.

B A B Y, B A B Y

Let the Sunshine In BY M E LO DY T H O M A S I am a summer baby. Born in summer, raised barefoot and sun-bleached, with nearly all of my fondest memories set in and around stuffy tents, on hot-sand beaches and with an arm making waves out the car window on the way to the bach. My siblings, too, were all born in summer. And my first-born. I thought I had seen all the joy the season had to offer until my first summer with a new baby – the smell of sunscreen on soft new skin, cleaning sand from roly-poly creases, gummy smiles shining out from under floppy-brimmed hats. To me there is no such thing as too hot, or too sandy or too salty. So it was with some anxiety that I realised my second was going to be born in winter. I am not a happy person when weather leaves me housebound, plus the few things I do love about the season – lying in bed with rain on the roof, drinking mulled wine, sitting in front of a fire – are all things I don’t get to do very much anymore. Add to my already intense weatherimposed claustrophobia a small child with energy to be spent and a newborn too fragile to brave a Wellington southerly and you’ve a recipe for tears all round. But not all of my concerns were so reasonable. I was also convinced that a baby born in this freezing, sunless time of year could only be depressive and clingy. We are a product of our environments and so, my hormone-addled brain told me, as our summer babe had been a ray of sunshine in our lives, so would our winter one be a wet blanket hanging heavy on a sagging washing line. I hoped that my anxieties would lessen over time, but the further into my pregnancy I got the more sure I became that things were not going to go well. I found myself cursing the day I became pregnant, only to be consumed with guilt as I remembered our previous miscarriage, and how much we had wanted this baby. On top of everything else I was convinced the baby was picking up on all of my stress, that the foundations of its life were toxic, and that I had failed as its mother before I even had a chance to start. In retrospect I was almost certainly suffering from something close to antenatal depression, and while I did look into it at the time I couldn’t definitively say that I was feeling worse

more than I was feeling good, and so I just continued to teeter along on the brink, relying heavily on the support systems around me to get through. And luckily for me, these symptoms didn’t last. When our little guy finally arrived on a wet day in the middle of May, I sat in my room at Wellington Hospital watching the rain hit the window as tears streamed down my cheeks. But they were tears of relief; he was just so perfect. Those first six weeks were not easy. Our newest addition was a shocking sleeper, was generally unsettled when he was awake and threw up huge amounts after nearly every feed. With his sister I remember the hugeness of our new existence coming on slowly, like a fog rolling in off the sea, but this time the earth seemed to fall away suddenly. As one monotonous, exhausting day rolled into the next I mourned for the job I had had to leave, and the friends I never got to see, and the bloated, exhausted stranger I saw in the mirror. There were times I thought I might not make it through another night of relentless waking. But it was different from when I was pregnant in that all of my concerns and fears were grounded in reality. And then, after about eight weeks, we woke one morning to discover we were caring for a baby who didn’t need so much from us any more. From there things slowly got easier and easier, and now, with summer just around the corner, I feel I have hit my stride. I am so ready to take this little person out into the world and to delight in all of my favourite things anew as he delights in them for the very first time. They warn you about how difficult the adjustment is from one child to two, and in my experience it’s even harder than they say. But what you can never prepare yourself for is how the joy and love that already fills you up increases tenfold. That if you can just make it through that first cold, lonely winter, the love and warmth that fills your house will be more than enough to get you through all the winters ahead. Note: If any of the issues raised feel familiar to you or you think you might need help, please reach out to your midwife or GP, or call Healthline on 0800 611 116.

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