Kia ora koutou, I’m talking about friendship. The kind that lasts a lifetime.
I’ve been to Dunedin for a few days and it was looking its lovely best. The leaves are either turning or have turned so you have this changing colour trail as you drive (or even better, are driven) around. I can see things at a distance better than up close, not totally clearly, but I still felt like I’d walked into sunlight.
So there’s the trees, there’s my friend’s garden. Lovely red tomatoes still growing on the sunny side of her house, and the little glassed-in porch is stuffed with herbs, seedlings, all growing like they know thats their job and so conveninet when she’s cooking and wants some fresh herbs.
She hosted a lunch party for me too. Some friends I made when I first went to Dunedin with a show in 1984 and a couple from when I went there as the Burns Fellow in 1989.
It was such fun. You know how it is. Everyone there had a link to me and each other so the conversation was full of past and also lots of current happenings and events. I think we pretty well covered everything from the state of the world, through to Shakespeare and his annoying structure (me) quickly countered by reminding me that people walked in and out of plays in those days so maybe he was making sure they got the info? Yeah? Really? Maybe he just needed a good editor?
Our jobs ranged from a Methodist lay preacher, through to teacher, writer, drama teacher, university Prof, actor, director, and we laughed a lot.
Did you know that the Dunedin Collective was the first Feminist collective in NZ? If you didn’t, now you do. One can only marvel at their courage. And then Broadsheet began being published in Auckland and the second wave had arrived.
On Sunday I was taken to the Otago Museum where I sat in a reclining chair and looked up at the ceiling and watched a film about the migration of Monarch butterflies. ‘If you feel motion sickness, shut your eyes for a few seconds,’ we were advised. I did and it worked. Only twice and then I got used to it. This film and the planetarium where real live multi-coloured butterflies fly around among the visitors are two reasons (of the many) why a visit to Dunedin is such a joy.
The heavens wept copiously as I departed. Well, it rained heavily so I’m allowed a little poetic licence.
As I write this I’m smiling. I love the place and the people so why not?
Renée
