Andy Warhol exhibit at Te Papa Tongarewa - and our 10th swim!

Hi there

The Museum of New Zealand is called Te Papa Tongarewa (Our Place) and it is in Wellington.  I am a Friend of Te Papa and therefore privy to special exhibitions before the common peasants get in to see them.  And for free.    Oh, we privileged people are so rare on this earth, sigh .... 

There would have been well over a hundred exhibits, all to do with Warhol's friends, colleagues, celebrities and hangers-on.  Most of the exhibits came from the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh  (I knew there was a Pawnshop on the Corner in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania (look it up, youngsters), but I didn't figure on an Andy Warhol museum.   The Pittsburgh museum  have obviously had to shut up shop while the exhibits are in Wellington because we've no doubt cleaned them out..... no, we haven't, I'm only joking  - I spoke to the Pittsburgh curator and he assured me they still had loads of paintings, prints, etc at home.



I must say that the Queen looked quite attractive in the print Warhol did of her.  It was interesting to see his pics of himself, Judy Garland, Joan Crawford, Sylvester Stallone, etc, and to read about Studio 54.  I was a wee bit surprised to see that more often than not Warhol took other artists' pictures and turned them into screen prints. He even took a pic of a cow off a milk cartoon and screen printed that.  When the world thought portraiture was dead, he revitalised it, but in a way that some critics definitely did not like.

10th Swim today for May!:

I was shopping in Kilbirnie today and banged in to my friend, J,  in a charity shop.  How fortunate.  We decided to go for our 10th swim for May at Hataitai Beach.   Both of us had our old ratty swim costumes in our car boots and we were a bit embarrassed.   Still, it was quite nice in the water which was very flat.  When we got out we slapped each other a High-Ten.  Later in the afternoon, J sent me the below pic to commemorate the occasion

"The Key is Love" - Marie Osmond's book

Hi there

Yesterday, I went to the Miramar Library.  Yes, I'm forcing myself to go back there and not rely on my Kindle so much (very, very hard to do). 

I got out a book that was written by Marie Osmond (and her pal Marcia Wilkie).  Pub April 2013. 

When I saw the book on the shelf, when I took it down, when I got it checked out, I had no idea what the title was.  Both the library ISBN number sticker and the Wellington City Council Libraries' sticker were plastered on the spine of the book ... and the front cover. 

Because of the front cover sticker, the title now read "The Key ........ove".   It must be 'The Key of Love", I figured.   Oh, wait, perhaps, it was "The Key is a Dove".    Or "The Key is Above"?   Something about a glove?  

I looked at the spine.  The title read "The Key............", with the sticker blocking the last few words, so I wasn't any the wiser there.  This sort of thing happens often.  When my friends ask if  I've read a certain book, I sometimes have no idea because I've chosen a library book for it's cover and author only.  Titles are obscured a lot.

When I got home, I discovered from the frontpiece that the title was "The Key is Love".  I had been pretty close, but - as my one American reader would  no doubt tell me - ..... 'close but no cigar'.

It was a nice comforting book to read.  One part truly resounded with me.  Marie's mother was sick in hospital, struggling to talk and very weak (p.66).  Marie was upset for her.

Olive, Marie's mother, managed to write on a notepad:  "I love every breath I take."

Wow.   I have decided to try to live by this creed.  I am going to so enjoy the life that is ahead of me.  My full determination may only last a month, or a week, perhaps even an hour, but from here on in, I have decided that there will always be, at a minimum,  a little bit of enjoyment for life inside me.  Because I'm a retiree I probably haven't got that many years ahead, but, goodness, right now I truly am hell-bent on loving every damn breath I take.  Thanks, Olive.

9th Swim - but never in today's cold weather

Hi there

It's Tues morn 28 May as I type this.  And the Wellington temp today is said to go no higher than 8c.  Brrrrhhhh...  It's New Zealand's first real dose of winter.   The Desert Road  is with snow, as is the Rimutaka hill (thereby sort of cutting me off from my favourite holiday haunts 'cause I won't drive if there's the slightest hint of snow .... or hail .... or pounding rain .....   okay, okay, even if the forecast is heavy drizzle I chicken out).  I guess we can't complain because we had such a brilliant summer and Autumn  - sorry farmers, I know you were annoyed by the drought but, oh dear, I loved the weather.

The only time Wellington-proper has ever seen snow  was when I was in Las Vegas a while back.  An American who  knew I was from New Zealand told me at the time that he saw it on US news that a city in New Zealand was covered in snow and the people in that city had no idea how to drive in snow, most of them had never touched snow and they were at a loss of what to do.  He laughed heartily.   I poo-poohed the very thought that the city was mine.   What a shock I had when I got home to be shown photos by my friends of a snow-bound Wellington.

Anyway, J and I have now completed our 9th swim for May - day before yesterday.  It was nice and because we cut our swimming time down a fraction, I didn't freeze so much in the changing sheds.

Never Eat Marshmallows in Bed!

Hi there
I'm not truly on a diet.  I'm on more of a 'cut-down'.  I'm trying to stop eating potatoes and cheese sandwiches:  my two eating downfalls.  I'm not succeeding very well.  Yes, I've cut down on the potatoes, but in their place I seem to be eating more cheese sandwiches.  In the old days - two months ago - I would have one cheese sandwich a day.   Now, I'm eating three cheese sandwiches a day.  Obviously, my body's way of telling me I have to make up for the potatoe famine.

I also allow myself to eat a few marshmallows a couple of times a week.  I figure that marshmallows are puffy and lightweight so they can't have many fat grams, or calories, or heaviness .  Right?

I happily took half a dozen marshmallows to bed with me last night and commenced to watch the new tv series, 'Arrow'  (yeah, yeah, I'm a fantasy and SF freak, get over it).  When I woke up this morning,, I thought "Funnnny ... I'm sort of glued to the bottom sheet."

One marshmallow had escaped.  (Aside:  always count every single marshmallow before hopping into bed).

I peeled myself off the sheet to find sticky sugary pink everywhere!  Who knew one lone marshmallow could explode into so much of a mess.   Never buy jumbo-sized marshmallows, even if, in truth, you can get away with pretending that you're only eating six whereas - and I hate admitting this and don't you, my four readers, tell anyone - I'm really eating twelve!

I had to thoroughly wash two sheets, one nightie and my sticky messy pinky sugary body, all at four o'clock in the morning.

Marshmallows are off the menu for the foreseeable future.



I thought you might like to see the main crossroads in my suburb of Miramar, Wellington, New Zealand.   You can buy packets of marshmallows at the New World Supermarket just down the road - I advise you not to.

8th swim, Hataitai Beach

Hi there

J and I completed our eight swim for May at Hataitai Beach yesterday.  The trouble is we enjoy our swims so much that we egg each other on with "just another up-and-down, eh?"   Every time before stepping into the water, I say "I might only do one up-and-down today".....  It never works out that way.

The water in winter feels really great once we get over the initial plopping down into the sea but when we get out and we're in the changing shed, we start shaking and shivering, and our fingers and toes don't function very well, and we can't do up things, or pull things down over our shoulders.  For the next couple of hours we are so cold that we have to drink umpteen bowls of soup and cups of tea and with our hands wound tightly around the cup, bowl, or mug to get some sort of warmth into our fingers. 

More often than not, I go to Countdown supermarket straight after a swim, dressed up like an eskimo when other shoppers are in more lighter attire and I always seem to be hunting for something in  the cold food aisle - it suddenly feels like I'm in Alaska.  Poor (cold) me.

It's my fingers that feel the worst after a swim and, also, actually when I'm swimming.    I must see if I can get (don't laugh) some sort of waterproof (warm) gloves.

1) 'Wizard's Guide to Wellington' 2) Roxy Theatre exhibit

Hi there
My friend, A.J. (Ponder) who has just had published the children's book "The Wizard's Guide to Wellington" arrived at my house yesterday wearing a couple of badges advertising the book.  The book is about a couple of wizarding kids who go on an adventure around Wellington, New Zealand.  The book can be bought at Rona Bookshop and Art Gallery in Eastbourne or The children's Bookshop in Kilbirnie.  It can be ordered at the library.  A.J. intends to put out a "Wizard's Guide to London" in a couple of years.

A couple of days' ago A.J. and I trotted down to the Roxy Theatre in Miramar to have a nosy at what current exhibitions they had going.  Weta workers often exhibit items from their own personal collections that they have made themselves.  At the moment upstairs in the theatre there are a bunch of dwarf-ishy characters, as well as a companion book.

Fun at Hataitai Beach

Hi there

J and I got in our 7th - seventh! - swim at Hataitai Beach for May yesterday.   25 minutes.  It was truly lovely in the water.  The sea was as flat as a pancake.  There wasn't a breath of wind.  'Thong Man' was there - when will this geriatric guy ever wake up to the fact that a thong is not the right attire to wear at the beach in front of two female retirees (me and J)?  It just doesn't do anything for us!    Now, if Tom Cruise and Simon Baker were to turn up in just thongs and smiles, I would certainly perk up.

As my four readers know by now, when J and I swim in the winter we just sort of do baby strokes, swimming leisurely side-by-side talking about anything that takes our fancy.  We call it our 'committee meeting'. 

Yesterday, a Wellington City Council painter was working on the outside of the changing shed.  There is no window,  instead there's a window-size group of wooden slats high up on the wall to let air in.  As J and I were comfortably swimming away conducting our committee meeting I got to ruminating about the painting.

"Hey, I wonder if those slats on the shed are like venetian blinds?" I said to J.  "You know, if you slat them a certain way, you can see perfectly through them?  Oh, do you think the painter can see through them down into the women's changing room?"

"NO!" came a loud voice from way across the water.  The painter waved at us.

Oh dear.....  When did painter guys get perfect hearing?   And it wasn't as if we were even close to him.  We were swimming out as far as the third tree.(Usually I swim in line with the fourth tree).

We returned giggling hysterically to the changing sheds to get dressed, pretty cold, and with numb fingers and toes.    I said to J:  "Gosh, my fingers are so cold, I can't do up my bra."

A voice came wafting down through the slats.  "It's a good thing I can't see you...."

Haha.  The painter was such a cad!

 

The far bank at Hataitai Beach.  The tallest tree is the one I usually swim across the bay to and, then,  back again to the changing sheds.  Then repeat again, and again, etc.  It's lane-swimming without the lanes.

 

What a pity this starfish, yesterday, was all scrunched up by the time I got to my camera.  He was so beautiful too look at in true starfish form.