Auckland Writers and Readers Festival and Three Remarkable Women.

Bookworms were spoilt for choice at the  Auckland Writers and Readers Festival last weekend. So many seminars, panel discussions, events and lectures – so little time (and a tight budget).

I wished I had booked earlier, as I missed out on Eleanor Catton’s three-hour workshop on Character and Plot. As an aspiring novelist, I was keen to learn more about “strategies for creating compelling characters and surprising plots, and examining the relationship between character and plot in our own work”. It is an area I have become interested in since reading Stephen King’s “On Writing” which makes a convincing argument for creating a couple of magnificent characters who will take ownership of the plot with the author acting as a disciplined and solitary scribe.

If I lived in Auckland, I would have gone to the NZ Listener Gala Night True Stories told live. There I was the next morning, waiting to meet up with friends, with a total stranger regaling me with her enjoyment of the hilarious  seven-minute stories of a number of the festival’s most famous guest writers. It was 16 hours too late to tell me that the event was “not to be missed”.

I did make it to “Remarkable Women” chaired by the remarkable, informed and gracious Jolisa Gracewood.  She had a formidable task, as “arts and café society queen” Meme Churton warmed to her topic (herself), leaving little space for artist and autobiographer Jacqueline Fahey and academic Aorewa McLeod to enter the discussion. I would have liked to have known more about quirky Jacqueline’s thoughts on managing  creativity, hard artistic work, child-rearing and her marriage to renowned psychiatrist Fraser MacDonald.

Aorewa McLeod, through no fault of her own (there was so little air space left) offered up rare, articulate and erudite gems. Hers is the autobiography I am most keen to read. She managed to position herself in an historical period of social change. She described some of the challenges of being lesbian (not “gay”, she was quick to point out) during more judgmental periods of our history. While some of the issues she faced were directly related to her sexual orientation, some of the family relationship issues she touched on were universal. Gay or not, it seems that most of us cope with some level of dysfunction in our families. Aorewa’s humility and warmth, paradoxically, put her literary talent into brilliant focus.

All three writers had unusual – and remarkable – lives. (Isn’t every woman’s life unusual and remarkable, though, if you dig just a little?)  All three had spent time as university lecturers.  All three seemed to agree that the person who had the courage to point out the source of the family’s dysfunction generally found themselves on the wrong side of the entire family forever more. All three revealed to a packed auditorium what I considered to be quite private moments and reflections on intimate relationships.  Perhaps that was what was most remarkable – the willingness to put in print experiences that most of us share only with close friends.

Unity Books and Women’s Bookshop had massive displays of books for sale. I was unable to pick up a copy of Gerald Hensley’s latest book for Iggy, but went away with a purchase for myself – Kate Atkinson’s “Life after Life”, recommended by one of the bookshop staff as having good book club potential. But first I must finish “Eva Luna”, a book I have had for years, by Chilean writer Isabel Allende.

Mothers’ Day high tea

This is my mother June. She was guest of honour at our Mothers’ Day high tea yesterday.

June is nearly 87. She was a feminist before feminism was fashionable. She was insistent that I should be the first female on either side of our family to attend university because she saw having an education as offering choices. She has strong views, many of which are formed from listening to 1YA. (The radio station hasn’t been called 1YA officially for years, but that’s beside the point.) She researches topics and presents papers for her colleagues at U3A – the University of the Third Age. She is a generous hostess, who insists on putting food in front of anyone who visits.

June’s thinking is challenging and frequently ahead of her time. She was a Playcentre mother when the Playcentre movement was still considered somewhat suspect by her more conservative friends. They were sure that we would all turn out to be quite undisciplined because we were children who were offered choices – “freedom within boundaries”. Family comes first. My son turned up at her place unexpectedly and unkempt and covered in paint from his work – and June asked her guests at the smart luncheon party she was hosting to move over and make room for him to join them.  He has a voracious appetite, but June found a way to stretch the meal.

June has four children, six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren – all very different people. However, there’s a distinctive bit of June in every one of us. Yesterday, we celebrated Mothers’ Day at the apartment of June’s second granddaughter (and my daughter) Victoria.

I made chicken, herb and pistachio sandwiches, which were popular. I should have made more, as we ran out. Victoria’s bowls of macadamia and cashew nuts and red grapes were popular, too. In the background is a coffee set that my father brought back from Amsterdam over 50 years ago as a gift for June. No floral Royal Doulton for June. The coffee set still looks contemporary in Victoria’s apartment!

I made boiled fruit cake, scones with jam and cream and my extra-special super rich chocolate brownie topped with cream and raspberries. Okay, Ray McVinnie – I know you can’t eat camellias!

While none of my children or grandchildren live near, these glorious flowers from Sarah in the USA brought love and sunshine to our home for Mothers’ Day. A Skype with Sarah, Ana and Rafa today brought even more light and laughter!

 

 

 

 

Indulging in the fantasy of living the Baroque lifestyle

Reporting on last week’s lecture by Dr Annie Gray to the Waikato Decorative and Fine Arts Society in Hamilton is daunting – especially since Annie tells me she’s likely to read this post, which is an insubstantial recollection of a lecture so rich in highlights.
Annie – a UK food historian, consultant to stately homes and television personality – took us back to the Baroque period to experience the lifestyle of those who lived at that time. Explicit about the term “lifestyle”, she told us that poor people have a “life” and only the seriously rich have a “lifestyle”. Her lecture was on “how to get by if you are very rich indeed – preferably as someone with family money”. Taking the leap of imagination to picture myself as a seventeenth century somebody was hugely appealing.
First of all, we went on the real estate tour, with an examination of the merits and limitations of various stately homes. Baroque was the beginning of consumer culture, Annie told us – the period when Hampton Court Palace was built and when Versailles was “the ultimate model”. Baroque architectural style featured a “preponderance of angels” – somewhat at odds with my usual preference for minimalism, but oh! I could see myself as the lady of the house living in such magnificence. I was intrigued by the notion that the English had to create their own version of French style, to reflect Protestantism rather than Catholicism. Looks like the angels squeaked in, regardless.
Then there was Blenheim, where landscaper Capability Brown flooded over 40 rooms to make the lake.
As if the title of palace was insufficient, the Howard family named their home Castle Howard. According to my mother, we are (rather distantly!) related to the Howards, an infinitesimal claim to roots that go back to Castle Howard that fitted rather too  comfortably.
The lady of the house evidently had serious responsibilities. In a period that predated feminism by several centuries she was the property manager, the HR manager and had the taxing job of finding the perfect mate from the right estate for her beautiful daughter and who would not demand too much in the way of a dowry. I wonder what her husband spent his time doing?
As the lady of the house, my outfit would have had stays that fastened down the back of the bodice. Poor women’s stays fastened down the front – as they did not have a maid to help dress them. Annie dresses up in costumes of this period and assures us that they are quite comfortable – the perfect way to have a fashionable nipped in waistline.
Then there was the food (not at all conducive to nipped in waistlines) – hare pie, complete with the head of the hare, and luxurious piles of fruits in syrup. Now, instead of having just a knife with which to stab their food, the rich also had a fork, which made the serving of syrupy dishes so much less messy.
Working as a researcher and consultant, Annie helps those with historic sites maximise the potential of kitchens and dining areas. Over drinks the night after her lecture, Annie regaled me with relative ease with which she could skin a calf’s head as opposed to a boar’s head. She is one hands-on consultant! For those visiting the UK during 2013, there is a list of Annie’s lectures on her website (though some may not be open to the general public?). Attending one of Annie’s lectures could well be one of the most entertaining, informative, and very English experiences you could have during your visit.

The image above is from the internet. The picture is of Annie in costume we taken when she visited Kenilworth to train members of the tearoom catering team on techniques and recipes that would have been cooked at the castle at the time of Robert Dudley.

Hysteria – the movie

Our hero, Mortimer Granville (played by Hugh Dancy) flirts across the table with his boss’s daughter, Emily Dalrymple, prettily played by Felicity Jones.

My favourite character, Charlotte Dalrymple, feistily played by Maggie Gyllenhaal.

 

On the plus side:

–       luscious costumes on gorgeous looking people

–       some great laughs

–       an eye-opener in terms of how slow the world (or perhaps British culture) was to understand female sexuality

–       an eye-opener about how dismissive medical diagnoses were when they labelled women’s health issues as “hysteria” – a diagnosis still supported until relatively recent times.

On the minus side:

–       Was the movie trying to have a quid both ways by, on the one hand, casting joke characters as the women who sought relief and, on the other hand, defending women whose situation in the Victorian era was intolerable? Men have sought sexual relief since time immemorial. Those who do so are seen as studs, not contemptuous. There was something slightly sick about the movie.

In balance:

–       So glad I went! It’s worth sitting through the credits at the end to see the development of the Victorian development of the vibrator into modern sex toys. That’s where we really did laugh!

I had not previously realised that the ticklish topic of the vibrator was so well rooted in gender politics.

 

 

 

Sustainable futures

Dr Priya Kurian lecturing to Awatere Club members.

Monthly Awatere Club meetings introduce us to a range of topics delivered by experts in their field – areas of interest that we may not otherwise learn about. Topics this year included Dr Kirstine Moffat talking about “Stories of the New Zealand Piano” (great to see her book on this topic at Paper Plus a couple of days ago), Constable Lexlei Taylor inspiring us with her work with disadvantaged young people through the Big Brother, Big Sister programme, Graeme Polley talking about his work as an air crash investigator for insurance companies, and Ian McMichael talking about the widening role of pharmacists in delivering primary health care.

This month’s speaker was Dr Priya Kurian, University of Waikato, whose address was titled In Search of a Sustainable Future: A Feminist Narrative. By taking us through her own academic and professional journey, Dr Kurian introduced us to interlocking thoughts on the environment, gender, power, racism and bureaucracy. She described her inter-disciplinary work as “border crossing.

“When you come up against borders you see how they leak and seep into each other,” she said.

The website www.ashgate.com encapsulates her research themes more aptly than I am able to: Her “work opens up a path to understand, evaluate, and unpack the deep-rooted gender ideologies that shape understandings of and approaches to the environment and that, more broadly, influence political processes, power relations, and access to knowledge and resources.”

The University of Waikato website states: “Her research interests include environmental policy and politics; sustainable development; women, gender and development; public policy; race, gender and postcolonialism; science and technology politics; and media and politics.”

“As a social scientist I am committed to objective research – but all research is inherently subjective, shaped by our own values,” Dr Kurian says.

Dr Kurian took us through her own professional life, starting as a journalist with The Times of India in Mumbai. She was involved with writing about the Save the Narmada Movement, a grassroots group objecting to the development of a dam which would displace many marginalised people. In the face of the Movement’s protests, the World Bank withdrew funding for the project. (The project did go ahead, without World Bank input.) The project highlighted for Dr Kurian how public policies can destroy people’s lives, culture and land, through “the upholding of technical rationality and narrow economic values as a priority”. People’s culture must remain at the centre of development, she says.

A six month award to work in the USA led to her undertaking a Masters degree in political studies and PhD at the Purdue University. From there she was invited to work at the University of Waikato in 1996.

It was embarrassing to hear of Dr Kurian’s experience of racist treatment at bureaucratic level – jumping through hoops with the NZ Immigration Department to prove she had a working, everyday knowledge of English, with a degree in English Literature and a PhD from an American University apparently being insufficient evidence. With the abuse meted to her on a personal level, it’s a wonder she stayed. New Zealand boasts of egalitarianism. There is much that happens in our country to challenge this blithely stated assumption.

Dr Kurian touched briefly on the effect of nanotechnologies on our lives – the unknown and unpublicised dangers and promises – and went on to share some of her work with Shama:Hamilton Ethnic Women’s Centre Trust, a group that works to create societies that are socially, culturally and environmentally sustainable. Shama is a group that “challenges the pervasive barriers that ethnic women face”. It provides culturally appropriate support, advocacy and programmes to be a source of strength and empowerment for ethnic women.”