That 7-Day Photography Challenge I Accepted ...
My friend, and much-published poet, Kay McKenzie Cooke, challenged me ... over on Facebook, to participate in a 7-day Nature photography challenge.
I knew I would have to begin with my 8,000+ selection of photographs taken when I wandered New Zealand, back in 2012.
I began with one where I had attempted to capture something of the beauty of the Lake Manapouri shoreline at sunset. I remember how I felt ... it was like opening my soul and letting the power of Nature pour in. I hope some of that feeling is here for others to see too.
Ngati Ranana ... a Christmas Concert, London
Saturday I was up and out early, wandering off across the city of London to photograph the family of an old friend ...
Clare had sent me an almost perfect set of directions for making my way from the Underground to their place and ... with just a little help from strangers, I arrived.
I spent two hours attempting to capture the essence of this really special family whose wedding I had photographed 4 years before. It's another 'favourite' kind of photography. Family portraits.
We talked, caught up, I got to spend time with their small, soon-to-be-bigger, family, and then I was off again, heading for Oxford Street ... into the thick of the pre-Christmas madness. Ngati Ranana, the London-based Maori Group, were performing their Christmas concert.
I'm so glad I made the effort. I arrived hungry and kind of exhausted but was immediately inspired to pick up my camera and get serious. I moved between the ground floor and the first floor at venue, trying to find the best angles without getting in the way of the audience.
They finished performing around 5pm and as I arrived back in the world of conscious thought, I realised i was completely destroyed. Saturday night was spent at home, in pyjamas, with a bottle of red wine and a laptop full of photographs that needed post-processing.
Here are some of the Ngati Ranana photographs.
Meanwhile ... I Survived the 2015 Rugby World Cup Final.
The final was between New Zealand & Australia ...
The All Blacks versus the Wallabies.
We all knew New Zealand should win but I believe both countries were nervous.
Trans-Tasman mockery reaching an all-time high.
I watched it with folk met at The Running Stream pub, here in Farnham.
I barely survived.
The Aussies played hard.
New Zealand played harder.
Actually, the All Blacks played beautifully.
The highlights are below. You get a sense of the suffering involved, perhaps
Neil Finn ... & an instant trip back to my childhood
Obviously we didn't have quite the divine guest list as seen in the music video ... so many of New Zealand's greatest sporting folk drop in but this video captures so much that I recognise from my Kiwi childhood.
Those Mousetraps ... the grated cheese, egg and onion, maybe some tomato, on toast, baked and/or grilled. Sometimes burned. Hot milk Milo, friends over, furniture moved, mad crazy joy as instructions were shouted at the game on TV.
Martin introduced me to the song and he recognised 'home' too.
I Have This Friend ... this magical wild woman whom I adore.
Pippa popped up on my Facebook wall, after we'd been chatting over there. She wrote, and her words melted my funny little Kiwi heart. She had written me a poem. Memories from long ago during that first divorce of mine.
We used to talk for hours back then. Epic talks. And beach-walks with that beautiful Labrador of mine - still much missed. We talked wise woman talk ... tough but so good. So clear. That's the 'shit' she talks of .. .the times when we almost derailed our friendship. Crying or laughing. then simply talking our way back to being comrades, sisters, best friends forever.
She wrote:
Hey Di... miss you as always... just about to retire for the night. But our little conversation here tonight sparked me. So here is a wee gift for you... of course I haven't edited, so rough as always, but from the heart. Love you xxx
Who wouldn't love her right back. I'll even forgive her reference to that time, while moving a mattress, it collapsed under me as I leaned on it. She almost died laughing as I face-planted on the shag pile carpet. My head bounced off the floor on impact!!!
(Fortunately some red wine may have been consumed.)
If I'd died ...!! I told her. Later. After the laughter had stopped convulsing her body, the laughter that had rendered her speechless.
(She couldn't have called an ambulance. I swear it. I would have just died ... there on the floor. with her laughing too hard to give the address.)
How we laughed, back then, in the land of long ago.
Her poem ...
DI
Couldn’t resist
Sorry e hoa
To share such a rampant line:
Delicious as red-wine face-planting mattress-miss
Singing along
To magic music
Veins running red
Life-saving walks on beaches
Dog like abandon
Almost rolling in our own shit
To come out clean
Conversations shredding our lives
From before conception
And beyond limits
Dreaming outrageous dreams
That have come true
Faltered
Disintegrated
To make room for the exquisite chaos
Of life
Before death claims me
I know without doubt
I have lived!
Fearless
And fearful
In spite of
Because of
I will die a complete woman
Defeated, humiliated
To arise
Phoenix-like
To seize the dawn before anyone else is awake
Your smile, our clowning, stumbling shared
Moments
Brilliant jewels in the kaleidoscope
Of my life