100 Not Out

Yes, amazing as it may seem, this is my 100^th blog!

On Saturday we drove out to a school hall in Lower Hutt for Nicola to take her silver medal social dance, as she’d been unable to take it earlier when the rest of the class did, due to a Wellington City Chorus singing commitment. There were only a handful of us there, taking various different levels of medals (we only recognised one other person from our class) – most of them at a more advanced standard than we’re at!

Nicola was ably led by our dance instructor, Michael, and rock’n’rolled, cha-cha-cha’d and waltzed around the floor. She’ll get the results and commentary when we go to our usual Thursday class later this week.

Afterwards we had a quick lunch at a restaurant in Lower Hutt, then headed back to Wellington to view some properties to rent in the afternoon. On Sunday we also went out, driving to Hataitai, Island Bay and Northland to look at three more houses. We were somewhat disappointed by the standard of the houses offered for rent, and have decided to look a bit more upmarket than we have been so far. The ones we’ve seen don’t appear to have been particularly well looked after – one in particular, where the owner proudly boasted that he’d lived there for 40 years. “And hasn’t seen fit to redecorate it in all that time” I said to myself, as we were put off by the mauve bath and avocado sink combination, both in a poor state of repair. It was unfortunate, as with a bit of modernisation these houses could be very desirable…but we’re not in the market for a “fixer-upper” at this stage. Anyway, we’ve identified some more to view that are better quality (we hope), and we’ll drive around to see those next weekend. All this is helping us get our bearings around Wellington and the suburbs, in particular the road systems where you have to plan which lane to be in two sets of lights from where you want to turn off!

We stopped off after viewing the Hataitai house and drove up to the summit of Mount Victoria – last time we went there we were on foot, and it was shortly after we’d arrived. It was a lovely sunny day so we took some more photos, and knew a bit more about what we were looking at this time.

Hataitai and Evans Bay

Song & Dance

Today is song and dance day. To start with, Nicola headed down to the Wellington West Plaza hotel for a breakfast, before crossing the road for rehearsals for this afternoon’s Sweet Adelines International Region 35 (that’s New Zealand to the rest of us) Annual Convention and Competition, which is taking place this weekend. The chorus competition is this afternoon – the quartets were held yesterday. The main focus of the competition, for the Wellington City Chorus, isn’t the position achieved (although winning would be nice, of course) but what marks they achieve, as this will affect whether they get an invite to the World Championships in Denver next year.

Meanwhile, I had a leisurely breakfast before wandering down to the dance studio in Vivian Street, to take my silver medal test. I met up with some of our gang from the intermediates class, and we all made our way through our routines with varying levels of self-perceived ability or otherwise. We’ll get the results tonight when we go to the social dance.

In the afternoon, I went along to see Nicola perform in the actual competition, and saw a couple of the other choirs that they were up against. In the end, the Wellington City Chorus came second with a score of 620, a result with which they were not best pleased. There will be a post-mortem on the result when she goes to practice tomorrow, so expect an update then.

We weren’t allowed to take any photos during the performance, so here’s one of Nicola in full war-paint:

In the evening we took a taxi down to the dance studio on Vivian Street for the Social Dance. There we met up with others from various other classes, some of whom we’d met before. The social dance was slightly less well-attended than previous ones we’ve been to, which helped in reducing the opportunities for bumping into fellow dancers…navigating around the dance-floor is one of the tricks that we haven’t really mastered yet! I received my silver medal, together with my scores and comment. As expected, the silver medal standard is higher than the bronze, so whilst I still got a “Highly commended”, my marks were down on the previous medal. As usual, there were helpful comments on my dancing, and a certificate.

Art Deco City

In the morning, we again drove down into town, parked up, and went for breakfast at Café Divine, where Nicola immediately ran in to one of her colleagues from the Wellington City Chorus. When I could drag her away we ordered cooked breakfasts, then headed along the road to the i-site to book ourselves on a guided walk around Napier at 10am.

Before the walk could begin, we had a look around the Napier Easter vintage car show. A whole bunch of cars (and the occasional truck) were parked in the Colonnade, so we took some pictures of them.

Ant Hill Mob Car

We set out on the walk, and our guide explained about how and why Napier is the Art Deco capital of the world. For the long version, read this, but the short version is that, after the earthquake in 1931, the city’s planners, along with the New Zealand government, decided to rebuild using the styles that had become fashionable since the mid-20s – what we now characterise as Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Stripped Classical, the Arts & Crafts style, and Spanish Mission style architecture…although at the time this was all lumped together under the banner “Modernist”. In only two years, the city centre was rebuilt. Also, several buildings which had been recently built at the time of the earthquake survived, and these are also part of the history of the town. Of the 164 buildings erected between 1920 and 1940, 140 are still there today.

Amongst the significant developments of the Art Deco style is the former Bank Of New Zealand building, now occupied by ASB. This is one of the few buildings to incorporate Maori designs into the decoration.

Maori fern and wave designs on the BNZ building

Other buildings show the continuing connection to the UK in New Zealand, such as this one that incorporates Liberty’s of London into its stained glass.

Whilst many of the original buildings still stand, a lot of the shop fronts and glass have been replaced. Fortunately some remain, such as this one, the Crown Of Thorns design:

Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a strong influence on the Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau movements; his trademark rose motif is found in many stained glass works, like this now sadly defunct music shop:

After the tour we watched a short film about the earthquake and subsequent rebuilding, then went out again to look at the the city with our new-found knowledge. In amongst the ordinary shops of the city, there are a fair few antique shops that specialise in 1930s artefacts and clothing. We wandered into a couple and found out that, amongst other things, those 1920s-style beaded dresses weigh a ton! They’re full of hand-stitched glass beads, and they hadn’t figured out how to make lightweight ones.

After a spot of lunch we then headed back towards Bay View (where we're staying)...to check out a vineyard there. More on that later.