The Jeffcoat Step

Today was my last day at work. After a very pleasant farewell, of which more later, I met up with Dad for a quick dinner at Higher Taste and we went along to the Film Archive on Ghuznee Street. Wellington was warming up after the icy blast on Tuesday and Wednesday, and there were crowds of happy people hanging out at the Left Bank night market.  Wellington's feeling really buzzy these days.

At the Film Archive this week, they are screening the Conquest of Everest documentary, filmed on the actual expedition to the summit, with gorgeous colour footage. A hidden gem. I had no idea it even existed, let alone that it was possible to follow the expedition is such complete detail. The camera went as far as the South Col, and possibly would have gone to the top if the extra weight hadn't been a life-or-death consideration.

So the footage stops when Hillary and Tenzing set off for the final two-day push for the summit, and it cuts to the team further back at one of the camps below, pacing and fretting. The summit was still shrouded in mystery, it felt like that experience was for them alone. But the agony of the months of slogging up hills and through snow, as well as the jubilation at their success was shared with the camera, and the whole thing makes for compelling viewing. It should be compulsory in primary schools, this great feat of exploration within living memory.

On the way home from the train station tonight, Dad described to me the Hillary Step, that sheer twelve-metre-high rock face which Hillary wedged his long bony frame into, grip by grip, without knowing what was beyond it. In one way I can't possibly imagine what sheer guts it must take to set out on an expedition like that, attempting something which has ever been done before.

But at the same time, I feel like I'm on the brink of something momentous in my own little world. Ten months ago I met someone wonderful, quite an exceptional human being. He lives in London, so in nine days time I am heading over there to get the chance to spend more than three weeks at a time with him. I'll be away nearly six months, back in New Zealand in early December. 

I'm also taking the opportunity to do something I've always thought about, and work for myself. I'm available for freelance writing and editing for New Zealand clients, and I will be building up my very own website at www.eatyourwords.co.nz.

After five and a half years in France, and coming home last year, the last thing I thought I would be doing is heading back to Europe. In many ways it's a step into the unknown, the realms of the heart, as well as the adventure of setting up on my own account. People keep asking me if I'm excited. I think if I was less certain, then I would have the jitters that you might mistake for excitement. But I'm just so deeply happy to get this chance to do something that matters a great deal to me.

I'll miss you all in Wellington, of course, but it's been a long time now since the people I care about were all in one city, or even one country. I'm setting out, to see what's next, just over the Jeffcoat Step.

April 16 2011: (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?

There are good movies and there are good songs, and then when you get both in the same package, well it’s just sublime. Went to see Morning Glory last night, and really enjoyed it for so many reasons. It’s sort of got this Bridget Jones / Mary Tyler Moore vibe about it, irrepressibly perky girl makes good in the big city. Rachel McAdams is almost unbearably goofy, but it kind of works. I mean, We’ve all had those awkward days (haven’t we?). Harrison Ford is magnificently grumpy as the bitter hard-nosed journalist who finds himself on breakfast TV, and his voice! It sounds like he's been drinking gravel smoothies for breakfast. And Diane Keaton is just splendid opposite him, gamely trying to keep it all going.

I only had two small quibbles – one, that Patrick Wilson’s role was basically just to be man candy – that relationship was barely interesting. Also, the scene when she’s running across New York. In 6 inch heels. Oh please. I hate this constant promotion of high heels as viable footwear, in fact the only acceptable footwear for attractive women. Still, I suppose I should get off my high horse about that.

Anyway, any minor quibbles are swept away by the magnificence of the soundtrack, especially:

• The Weepies, Same Changes
• Imelda May, Johnny Got a Boom Boom
• Paolo Nutini, New Shoes
• Newton Faulkner, Gone in the Morning
• And… Colin Hay, Waiting for My Real Life to Begin – beautiful.

The Imelda May song is playing during one particular montage, and I’m sorry to say I barely heard the song because I was laughing uncontrollably, tears streaming down my cheeks. Sorry to my movie buddies – unfortunately I don’t come with a mute button.

Lovely day here in Paris today, sunny but not too hot. Got up this morning and went to the market, then Coutume for lunch with a friend, and now just about to start cooking dinner. Have planned a menu which will hopefully not kill my guests with food – might just stick to 3 ½ courses instead of the usual 5…

March 6 2011 : Lost For Words

I think you can tell a lot about a person from the last film they went to see. Right now I’m wishing the last film I went to see was The King’s Speech.

Gosh, wasn’t it just fantastic? I felt a warm glow when it won Best Picture, and rightly so – they just don’t make films like that any more. And Colin Firth… what can I say. Making an uptight, repressed inarticulate royal seem realistic, vulnerable and sympathetic deserves an Oscar – and he could give Prince Charles a few tips.

Helena Bonham Carter seemed to have the quirky dialed right down, going back to her Merchant Ivory roots but letting just enough feist peek through to make her Elizabeth delicious.

But Geoffrey Rush – oh Geoffrey Rush was ROBBED of Best Supporting Actor (and I do not use capital letters lightly). What a beautifully judged performance as the goad against Bertie’s stuffiness and repression. Funny, touching – when the movie was over I wanted to stand up and cheer.

The next movie I saw provoked no such reaction… when No Strings Attached finished, all I wanted to do was slink out of the cinema and soap my brain. NSA, released here under the unprepossessing title ‘Sex Friends’, wanted to be a sexy, raunchy romp, but really it was just a glossy idealistic romantic comedy with period jokes. Shudder.

But at least NSA was aspirational – young romance sponsored by Apple and Audi. In Requiem Pour Une Tueuse, no-one can afford an iPhone (except for one ill-fated character) or a classic car. Instead it’s all clunky, functional dumb-phones and driving Renault hatchbacks.

[Warning, mild spoilers – but really, you won’t care]

Requiem Pour Une Tueuse is like someone decided to remake La Femme Nikita (why bother?) but this time with opera (again, why bother?) and forgot to call Luc Besson. So at the last minute they dragged in a poor young film director who has only ever done relationship dramas. And instead of a thrilling action movie in a beautiful setting, we get moody introspection (signaled by meaningful looks) and inner turmoil (signaled by pouting), and existential dilemmas (signaled by meaningful looks and pouting), plus a barely-articulated love triangle and a most unsatisfactory ending.

I expected better from Melanie Laurent, who has done better things with less (Le Concert) and also done fantastic feisty, complex women (Inglorious Basterds, Paris). But I should have seen trouble on the horizon when Clovis Cornillac turned up as the best soldier the French equivalent of the SAS has ever seen. Oh jeez. Clovis Cornillac is the guy you call when you need puppy-dog eyes, not when you need a hired killer. So he mopes around the screen watching Melanie Laurent fail to kill anyone, while he himself fails to kill anyone, except accidentally.

I need to go and watch La Femme Nikita again – and the director of this rubbish should be strapped in a chair and forced to watch Luc Besson’s entire oeuvre over and over again until he gets it.

February 18 2011: Aga Saga

Maybe booking a Eurostar ticket first thing in the morning after my birthday wasn't such a good idea. Got home from the restaurant at 12.30 and was up again at 6.30. Yawned my way across Paris on the metro and then nodded off completely in the Chunnel. Woke up with a start and realised I was in England. Jumped up just in time to get off the train in Ebbsfleet. Not as glamorous as arriving in St Pancras, but on the other hand it's not every day I get picked up from the train.

Suspicious Minds

Oh, but first I had to get on the Eurostar. The part that always makes me nervous is UK Immigration. They have this way of looking at me like I'm a shifty customer, just dying to ditch my return ticket to Paris and crash illegally in Surbiton for months on end. Huh.

This time I negotiated the usual interrogation by a dull-eyed official - how long are you going to be in the UK? What is the purpose of your visit? What do you do in Paris? Do you have a residents card? I pulled out the card, and then before she could even spot the expiry date, I pulled out another official-looking bit of paper and said "I'm in the process of renewing it, and here's my recepisse." Her shoulders sagged. Catherine one, UK Immigration nil.

Walking along the empty platform in the misty English morning, I felt oddly like I was coming home. The train guard saw me passing and I smiled at him. He smiled back and gave me a friendly nod. Yep, you're not in France any more, Toto.

At the top of the escalator, a bulky gentleman stood behind a booth marked Kent Police. This is more security than they have when you get off in London, and I had a moment of paranoia. He inspected my passport and said "Whereabouts in New Zealand you from?". I said "Wellington" and he broke into a smile. "I'll be there in a month", he said.

I come over to London so often that arriving is not a matter of slow-motion running and tearful reunions, but a quick hug and "Awright love, how are you". It's really my home away from home, staying with the Kiwi Mafia. I don't come over to be a tourist, I come over to see some of my oldest and closest friends. So it was straight home to Tonbridge to inspect the new digs and have a cup of tea on the sofa.

Tsar's new place is huge, massive - quite disorientating after my tiny apartment. I wandered into what I thought was the kitchen, but is in fact just the Aga room. Through an archway is the actual kitchen, which, no kidding, could eat my apartment for breakfast and still have room for lunch. I popped my home-made banana muffins in the Aga to warm up and we sat around with a cup of tea.

We did the school run, through gorgeous English countryside, starkly beautiful in winter. The school is on one side of the village green, with the cricket club grounds at the far end and the medieval village church, complete with tower, at the other. These kids are growing up in a landscape straight out of the books I used to read when I was growing up.

Swimming lessons were in a private school just down the road, in a country house like a mini-Hogwarts, all glowing honey-coloured stone and battlements. The sun was a huge fiery disk on the horizon. When we came out, the sun had been replaced by the lemony moon. The kids were fizzing with excitement, because tonight was the school disco!

Murder on the Dance Floor

I know what you're thinking - I mean, I didn't go to my first disco until I was at least 10. But the school is frantically fund-raising for new classrooms - behind the idyllic rural facade, the Con-Dem cuts are biting deep. So some volunteer teachers and a wedding DJ had hired a disco light machine and bulk-bought the crisps. When we arrived, the party was already in full swing. There was possibly more running and sliding than your average nightclub, but the volume level and incidence of fisticuffs was about the same - except that they had their mummies to kiss it better.

I've never been to a disco that finished before tea time. The younger classes had their party first, and then the older kids were starting. I sat around watching 5 year olds get their freak on to Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, thinking "discos were better when I was a kid", but then the DJ made a daring retro move with Kylie Minogue - and Madonna! And I cheered up a bit.

Most of the dancing consisted of jumping up and down and flailing their arms wildly - a pure joy in movement that far too many adults have lost. But some kids had seen more than a few music videos and were pulling some pretty fancy moves - there were even a few floor spins and arm waves.

But at 6.30 the lights came back on and we had to drag the ravers away, aided by the inducement of lightsaber bubble-blowers.

First, Annoy Your Cheese

Back home, we fed the kids sausages and I unwrapped my master-stroke, the Vacherin Mont d'Or. Vacumn-packed on rue de Sevres, it had survived the trip under the Channel, to release its perfume in Tsar's kitchen. "Trust me", I said, "it'll taste better than it smells", hoping that this would be the case.

I found a tray, wrapped the box in foil, sprinkled a bit of Savoyard white wine on top, and popped it in the Aga, feeling like I was having some kind of colonial/mother country homecoming. Steamed a few veges, unwrapped the ham and salami, and voila, dinner. The cheese went down all too easily, as did the white wine and then we collapsed on the sofa with the DVD of 'Boy', by Taika Waititi.

It's a lovely movie. I'm not sure how much English Pete absorbed, but Tsar and I were in fits of giggles at recognising large chunks of our childhood. Michael Jackson! Poi E! Lollies from the local dairy! Daggy haircuts! But then we never had to deal with the heartbreak of absent parents or the despair of poverty. The story was bittersweet, but the acting was superb. I'm not sure that finishing the film with the Poi E / Thriller mashup was quite the right tone after the wrenching story had played out - but good on them for thinking of it.