United Kingdom

Avid followers of my Facebook feed (I fantasise that such people exist; indulge me) will have noticed that I have been checking in from venues outside of Wellington. Yes, we are on our travels in the Northern Hemisphere, where we are dividing our time between visiting families and having a holiday ourselves.

We landed in London’s Ye Olde Heathrowe Airporte at an ungodly hour on Wednesday morning, having been transported by Cathay Pacific from Hong Kong. Our journey was uneventful – the only notable observation was that New Zealand lounges are much nicer than Cathay Pacific’s lounge. We were greeted by Paul and Sacha, and, after a short delay to avail ourselves of UK-style SIM cards for our phones, we made our way back to Guildford. On our first day we didn’t want to exert ourselves too much so, after a short rest, we wandered down to the community café where Sacha volunteers, and had a light lunch. After lunch we went for a short walk around the wetlands area of the Wey Navigation.

The next day dawned sunny but not so warm. I was still in short trousers, hardy New Zealander that I am these days. We went to visit the RHS gardens at Wisley in the morning, before heading into Guildford town for a spot of lunch at Franco Manca, and a little light retail therapy – Marks and Spencer was calling – before heading home in the afternoon.  

On Friday, we had an appointment in London with Nicola’s friend, Alison. We managed to navigate our way through the crowds to Waterloo, and then walked along the South Bank, noting what had changed building-wise since we were last there (the walkie-talkie is now finished, and the cheesegrater and scalpel are new).  We met up with Alison in Bermondsey, and went to lunch at ultra-hip Flour & Grape. I had to draw on a goatee beard before they’d let me in. After a late lunch, we took the Thames Clipper back along the river, and just about managed to miss the Friday rush hour on the train back to Guildford.

On Saturday, the weather looked like it was taking a turn for the worse. Nevertheless, we pressed on with our plan to go for a picnic at Dapdune Wharf, the National Trust property where Sacha used to guide schoolchildren and Paul now drives the boat tour on Saturdays. The Cumming clan joined us with the exception of Eli, who was on a flight to Tel Aviv. As we opened up the picnic goods we noticed a slight smattering of rain. As we went on, it got more and more like actual rain, and after we’d had enough we rapidly packed up and decanted ourselves into the tea room for tea and cakes. This prompted us to recount our adventure in Clissold Park, which was the site of a picnic in the rain before we left to New Zealand. Inevitably, the cakes had been left out in the rain, and we sang MacArthur Park.

We couldn’t hang around, however; we had a further engagement in the evening in Chichester, so we were driven to the station and made our way south. In Chichester it was proper raining, and as I’d left my waterproof behind in Guildford, had to dive into a shop for an umbrella as soon as possible. We then rendezvoused with the rest of Nicola’s friends, who were due to go off on a walking tour the following day, covering three cathedrals – Chichester, Winchester and Salisbury – over five days. We went out for dinner at Carluccio’s, which was to the required standard, and had a breakfast the following morning at Bill’s, who seem to have discovered the art of making a little bit of food look like a lot more than it is through artful arrangement on a plate. Their smashed avocado (there go my dreams of home ownership) was somewhat soured, literally, through the overapplication of lime juice. Clearly, avocados aren’t being smashed to order at Bill’s.

After breakfast we saw the walkers off on their bus to their starting point – one of the Witterings, I forget which – and then headed towards the station ourselves, to get back to Guildford in time for Sunday lunch with Sacha and family. Unfortunately there was a bus replacement service for part of the way, so a journey that had taken us just over an hour to get down took over two hours to return.

Our flight to Cyprus was leaving at 7:15 on Monday morning, so we had booked a hotel near Heathrow for overnight. We took the bus to Heathrow and the shuttle to our hotel, and had an early night, as we were due to be up at 4:00 the following morning.

Just A Phase

The Comedy Festival is officially under way now, and we headed to BATS Theatre to see fave performer Hayley Sproull perform her latest work, Just A Phase. We last saw her giving us her thoughts about being quarter Māori in Vanilla Miraka, and previously as Miss Fletcher and a member of A Slightly Isolated Dog. It feels like we’ve known her for ages!

In this show, she documents the phases that she went through as a younger person, starting with her first school dance in Wellington’s Scots College, where she and her friends dressed as slutty schoolgirls, and received detention slips for “being slutty”. For some people this may have been seen as a bad thing, but her reaction was “Result!”

It was in said detention that she met her new best friend, and became a Goth. This was definitely not just a phase, this was what she had decided to be for the rest of her life. It was around this point that she did the “reveal” of some photos of her looks so far. As she had decided to become a Goth, she needed a quick costume change, from a rack at the back of the set, to all black clothing. She also related how she economised on clothing, gave some handy tips on uses for tights, and the impracticalities of being a Goth in summertime.

The next phase, definitely not just a phase, was Emo. A quick change, into signature skintight jeans, studded belt, and Converse trainers. This was a particularly difficult phase for her, as she was well-adjusted and well-brought up, and liked both her parents. She sang us a song in the style of My Chemical Romance in which she thanked her Dad for part-funding her previous shows, and her mum for forcing her to take those piano lessons.

A quick change into Political involved anything appropriated from another culture (Nepal is good for this), and a Free The Nipple t-shirt. This was definitely not a phase, and was who she was now. During this section she gave us the song “Imagine” – “No, not that one”, she told us, although it was similar in outlook. “Imagine a world without wars…except, Star Wars, and Storage Wars”, that kind of thing.

Hayley has always been a performer who lays herself bare for her art, and whilst discussing the Free The Nipple t-shirt, she divested herself of her bra, and, eventually her shirt. Standing on stage with her hands covering her boobs, she invited the audience to perform a Mexican Wave. “I’ll go last” she said, bravely. As the wave ascended around the left side of the auditorium, then crossed over the back and came down to the front right, she lifted her arms in the air. With exquisite timing, the lighting man cut all the lights. Then there was a noise of scrabbling about on stage, and a muttered “huh, didn’t think this bit through” as she donned her (wrong) t-shirt by the time the lights came up again.

Her final phase can best be described as “current”, and involves getting a standard long bob haircut, removing her nose ring, having a steady boyfriend and doing the weekly shop. She gave us a final song, in which she apologised to her mum for showing her boobs on stage, and generally finished up.

Afterwards we went for dinner at Hot Sauce, which was also very enjoyable. We’d taken the precaution of booking this time, largely to ensure that they weren’t shut. They do a Chinese-style tapas menu, with skewers, bao, dumplings etc, so good for snacking on, and also good for ordering more if you feel you didn’t get enough first time round.

Colour Me Cecily

It’s Thursday night, and normally we’d be off to Circa to sample one of their latest productions. What’s showing, I wonder? Well, there’s The Lie, or Seven Deadly Stunts. But wait, haven’t you seen those? What to do?

A quick squizz at the BATS Theatre website reveals that Colour Me Cecily is showing for four nights only. So we decided to go and see it.

Colour Me Cecily is a one-woman show, in the style of Penny Ashton – who brought us Olive Copperbottom and Promise And Promiscuity – in that she plays all the parts herself. These include herself, Cecily, who has newly arrived in Upper Hutt fresh from the UK, and freshly divorced. It’s the Eighties, and Upper Hutt in the Eighties is possibly even more ghastly than it is now. She soon makes friends with a bunch of local women, whose inevitable first question is “yea, but why didga come HERE?” Apparently an acquaintance had painted her a picture of idyllic life in Upper Hutt (I know!) and she had taken it at face value.

The play follows her introduction to Upper Hutt, and how she became a “Colour Me Beautiful” consultant. Along the way she discovers the joys of wine at the local pub (“do you have a chardonnay?” “We’ve got red or white”) and the New Zealand delicacy, pavellova. The show is punctuated throughout by appropriate music from the era – Wham!, Duran Duran, The Human League, A-Ha, and even Falco make an appearance.   

An entertaining hour or so of light-hearted comedy, poking fun at New Zealand stereotypes.  

Seven Deadly Stunts

Back to Circa for another Thursday night outing and this time it’s comedy magic duo David Ladderman and Lizzie Tollemache, aka Rollicking Entertainment. We saw them last year when they brought us Mr and Mrs Alexander: Sideshows and Psychics, so when we saw them on the schedule it was a no-brainer.

This week also sees the short-lived Wellington Night Noodle Markets, whereby various eateries set up mobile kitchens in Frank Kitts Park (not Waitangi Park) and sell foods of various Asian cuisines to the thronging hordes. And throng they did on the opening Thursday night, so we had to queue for a bit before getting pork belly and mushroom skewers from Hot Sauce, followed by chicken crepes from Mr. Circle. We had enough time left over to get to Circa Theatre and get a beverage before the show.

Seven Deadly Stunts opened on Wednesday, and this second night was a sell-out. We were in the second row, and firmly in the centre, so thought ourselves safe from being called out onto the stage to participate, as we had been last year. We got away with it! For reasons I can barely fathom, I don’t appear to have blogged about last year’s show, so I’ll just provide you with a quick update. David and Lizzie are fans of old-fashioned vaudeville, sideshow magic, and do tricks based on the old shows…whilst also providing us with some of the history and explanation of those shows and the people involved in them.

This year’s show does exactly what it says on the tin: they perform seven stunts, with a bit of explanation, audience participation, and comedy thrown in to help. As there’s no actual plot, it’s not like I’m revealing spoilers if I tell you what the stunts are, so here goes:

To begin with, we all stood up and played a game of upstairs, downstairs: this is basically heads or tails, and allowed, after eight rounds, one audience member to be selected as the “volunteer” for the next trick:

Russian Roulette: regrettably(!) the Health and Safety wonks won’t allow them to perform this trick with guns and live ammo any more, so instead they use industrial-strength staplers – the kind used by carpet-layers to, er, lay carpets. One was loaded with staples in front of the audience, then they were placed in a bag and jumbled up. The volunteer had to pick them out, one at a time, and staple David on various places on his hand, arm, and body. Obviously, as she picked each one out and it turned out to be empty, the chances of a loaded stapler increased. After five empty staplers had been discharged, David took the sixth one and stapled a flyer to a block of wood as a souvenir, and handed it to her.

Walking On Broken Glass: Next up, to the strains of Annie Lennox, Lizzie walked barefoot across some broken wine bottles that had been arranged on a tarpaulin on the stage. As she reached the end, she carefully cleaned the sole of each foot with a brush, to ensure no bits of glass remained. She then laid her face sideways on the broken glass, and David stood on the other side of her face.

Straitjacket: This one is literally straight out of Houdini: Lizzie was tied in a straitjacket, then wrapped in chains and padlocks. A screen was raised around her for the first part of the escape – from the chains – so we couldn’t see how it was done. The escape from the straitjacket, however, was performed in front of the audience with no screen. If you’ve ever seen Lethal Weapon 2, you’ll know how this is done.

Juggling Chainsaws: Sounds simple, doesn’t it? So, to make it a bit harder, instead of juggling three chainsaws, which are all the same size and shape, David decided to juggle three objects of different size and shape – a chainsaw, an apple, and a bowling ball. First, he positioned three stunt apples on the stage. To demonstrate that it was a proper bowling ball, he dropped the ball onto stunt apple #1 (it splattered satisfactorily). To prove it was a real chainsaw, he placed stunt apple #2 in his mouth, and chopped it in half with the chainsaw. If that’s not enough, whilst juggling the apple, bowling ball and chainsaw, he took a bite out of the apple and threw it into a bucket held by Lizzie.

Whipcracking: David gave us an explanation of whipcracking, the different types of whipcrack, the science behind it, and a bit of history about Wild Bill Hickok and his travelling shows, before demonstrating the different whipcracks, using the whip to break some roses held by Lizzie...held between the teeth, and other areas. David quipped that although it was dangerous for Lizzie, it was even more dangerous for himself as he was married to her!

Nail In A Bag: Another very straightforward trick, this one, but one that has gone horribly wrong on many an occasion. They revealed a small screen and projected onto it a brief compilation of incidences of this trick going wrong…the audience were invited to look away if they were squeamish. They also told us this trick is so dangerous, it’s been banned by the Magic Circle… "but that’s OK, we’re not members!” (It’s not and it isn’t, in case you’re wondering.)

Fire Eating: The grand finale was some tricks with fire, including eating it. Given their use of fire, I assume that their arms, hands and legs are completely hair-free. (If they weren’t before, they are now!) The major problem with fire-eating is how yucky the low-temperature fuel compound tastes.

And that’s all, folks! If it doesn’t sound like much, don’t worry, as we got a full 90 minutes’ entertainment with all the jokes, exposition and history thrown in. They came out for a bow, and off home we went.

The Lie

Now that Winter Is Coming, Thursday night is once more theatre night, and we are looking forward to the 2018 season at Circa Theatre. This week, we went to see The Lie, a new (for New Zealand) play by French playwright Florian Zeller. He was the man who also brought us The Father, which we saw last November. His other plays include The Mother and The Truth. I’m detecting a theme here.

Circa Theatre has recently rebuilt and upgraded their café and foyer, so as we had a 6:30 start I thought it would be prudent not to stray too far from the environs, and we opted to give the new café a try. I had the slow-cooked beef stew and Nicola had the halloumi. The stew was of the “I could do this better at home” variety, unfortunately…they should have taken the opportunity to upgrade their menu (and possibly chef) at the same time. Ah well, lesson learnt.

The play centres on two couples: Paul and Alice, and their friends Michel and Laurence. On the eve of a dinner party, Alice confides to her husband that she saw Michel kissing an unknown woman on the street earlier in the day, and she wants to cancel the party as she feels uncomfortable knowing this and concealing the truth from Laurence. But they’re too late, and the doorbell rings. The dinner party is excruciating, as Alice leads them all through a hypothetical “what would you do if…?” based on what she’d seen earlier.

The play has been criticised as contrived, and some even question the necessity for the final scene (as you should have worked out what was going on by then anyway). Nevertheless, we enjoyed it (simple souls that we are). It starred the usual suspects from the Wellington scene – Gavin Rutherford, Andrew Foster, and Bronwyn Turei are regularly seen at Circa, whilst Claire Dougan as Alice is a rarer bird.

Switzerland

Blimey! I’ve left this one a while! We went to see Switzerland at Circa last month. This is one of the theatre’s headline plays for the beginning of 2018. It’s an imagining of the final days of Patricia Highsmith, celebrated author of The Talented Mr Ripley, and even more celebrated pain in the arse.

As the Entertainment book year draws to a close, I scanned the app to see what we still had outstanding, and found, to my surprise, that we’d not used the Zibibbo discount. That’s easily rectified, and I booked us in for dinner. As usual, the food was up to standard, and also as usual, the maitre d’ recognised us but couldn’t remember our names. His is Gareth. I think.

The play is a two-hander, featuring two old hands from Circa, Catherine Downes as Highsmith and Simon Leary as Edward Ridgeway. Edward has been sent by her publisher to see the reclusive Highsmith in her retreat in Switzerland, to try and cajole a last Ripley book out of her. In fact, he volunteered for the job, as he’s a huge fan. Naturally, Highsmith takes exception to him, her publishers, and the world in general, and tries to throw him out. Although at first he seems pretty weedy, he eventually shows himself to be made of sterner stuff and makes a deal with Highsmith, which allows him to stay overnight.

Spoilers? You want spoilers? OK, it turns out that all is not quite as it seems. Well, duh! As the scenes change, Ridgeway grows in confidence, and this is reflected in his better sartorial sense with each change – from dowdy New York publisher-nerd to dapper confidence trickster. By the end, he is getting the better of Highsmith in their verbal duelling, and this leads to the final denouement. Which I won’t spoil.

A jolly fun night out, go see it if you get a chance.

Waiheke Island

We made a day trip to Waiheke when we were in Auckland for Christmas 2015, and decided this time to have a longer stay, and hire a car rather than rely on the somewhat infrequent bus service around the island. We caught the ferry over, and called our car hire company, Waiheke Island Motors. Which turned out to be a guy calling himself Julian, although I suspect he was probably Juliano, as he looked and talked South American.

Julian directed us to a rather old Nissan Maxima which was, frankly, in a bit of a state. None of the big car hire companies operate on Waiheke, as it’s too small, and there are just a couple of local operators with a fleet of ageing vehicles. This particular one had the seat adjustment bar broken off completely, so I couldn’t move it back at all, and spent the weekend driving around like an idiot with my knees up by my elbows.

Nevertheless, we set off and found our accommodation in Onetangi easily enough. We had time for a quick check-in before setting out for the evening’s dinner, at The Shed at Te Motu, a vineyard that we’d noticed passing on the way in. It was about five minutes’ drive away. They were doing a set four-course dinner with wine matches, and it was all very tasty and well presented. The wine waiter was a Californian chap called Brian, and he was very knowledgeable about the wines he was serving, which included a 1999 Te Motu – a blend of cabernet, merlot and cabernet franc. Not one that is normally available to the public, so I made the most of it.

The next day we set out early for the beach and a morning swim, before heading to breakfast at Charlie Farley’s, one of two cafés on the waterfront. We weren’t in a massive hurry as most vineyards don’t open until about 11am, so after a leisurely start we drove round to Passage Rock vineyard, which is nestled above a little bay on the south of the island. Unfortunately there’s no access to the sea as it’s all cliffs round that side of the island. We tasted several wines and chatted with the winemaker, an English woman who’d lived and worked in France before moving to New Zealand. We discussed England and cheese, especially the unavailability of certain varieties. The wines were very good, as they are the most awarded winery on the island – in retrospect, it may have been a mistake to start there!   

We hung around at Passage Rock taking photos, as the next winery on our itinerary didn’t open until 12. It wasn’t a long drive to Poderi Crisci, which, as you might guess from the name, is an Italian-influenced vineyard, growing some varietals which aren’t available anywhere else in New Zealand – such as Arneis, which has a smell like burnt matches or gunpowder, and is supposedly very good with fruit. We didn’t have any fruit. An acquired taste, no doubt, and probably needs to be served in the right setting to get people to properly appreciate it. The tasting room, La Locanda, is separate from the Italian restaurant, which was soon filling up to bursting, as it was a sunny Sunday lunchtime. We left them to it, and drove to Casito Miro, another European-inspired vineyard that we’d visited last time we were on Waiheke. They were full too, but managed to get us a table after a 10-minute wait. We had a lunch of tapas there, but, given the crowds, decided not to try their wines again. I seem to recall from last time that their tasting is a bit desultory as well, with no real opportunity to discuss the wines with the maker, so I didn’t feel we were missing out.

After a hard morning’s tasting we decided to head back to Onetunga for a relaxing afternoon.

We still haven’t been to all the wineries on Waiheke, so next year we’re planning to do two Shakespeares and spend more time on the island in between.