Second Hand Wedding

The movie we saw at home (see the previous post) was Second Hand Wedding, a NZ film with Geraldine Brophy in the lead. It stands or falls on her skills, basically, as she’s the focus of a good deal of it. And she does a great job. Her acting is full of subtlety and humour, and pathos in the scenes where she faces how her daughter truly sees her.
The story is simple. Brophy plays a woman (almost) obsessed with garage sales. But she’s crafty and clever and knows how to strike a bargain, as well as knowing what’s worth getting. Her house is chocker with acquired goods, and somehow she and her ever-patient and retired husband manage to live peacefully in the midst of it all. Her daughter gets engaged, but doesn’t want to tell her mother because she thinks the latter will take over the wedding and bring all her specifically-acquired bargains along with her. There are a couple of minor subplots, but the story sticks to a pretty straightforward telling of events, and does it well.
Ryan O’Kane (whose face is very familiar, but I can’t see why, since the only thing I might recognise him from is Out of the Blue, the film about the Aramoana mass murder) and Holly Shanahan make a pleasant young couple; Patrick Rose, who’s been in a host of NZ films and TV, plays the long-suffering husband, and there are various other familiar faces amongst the cast, including Ray Henwood.
The film is set in Wellington's Kapiti Coast apparently (I'd thought it was Auckland!) and nicely shot amongst the persimmon trees and the rata and all the other typical suburban foliage. Fun viewing.
You can watch a scene from the film on Flicks.co.nz

Bargain-hunting and tripping-off

For the time being I’m leaving Trade Me aside. With our attention being greatly devoted on our trip to the UK in two months, it’s hard to keep focused on buying and selling as well, although it’s been fun going to garage sales and secondhand shops and thrift shops and finding bargains to put on the auction site. Sometimes we’ve bought more for non-Trade Me purposes than for onselling, but that’s okay. Some of those finds have been good too, such as the job lot of kitchen cutlery and odds and ends that some woman was so keen to get rid of, she gave to us for a dollar.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned the trip to the UK on this blog. (I have on another blog.) My wife comes from the UK and every so often has a great yearning to go back for a prolonged visit. She regards New Zealand as home, these days, but that doesn’t stop the place she grew up in being very close to her heart. Sometimes I find her on the Net searching for references to it, or checking out the webcam overlooking the carpark there. About three weeks ago, we both came to the conclusion – separately, as it happened – that since I didn’t have the responsibility of a permanent job, and because we had a bit of money left in England from an inheritance, that perhaps it was as good a time to go as any. She could get the time off work as unpaid leave, and we could spend the time in the UK visiting her extensive family, our friends from the past, and perhaps doing a bit of tripping around. We might even work there spasmodically. If we leave it longer, until I retire for instance, we might neither of us have the energy or health to go.
So we’re off in early June, gasping a bit at the cost of getting there and back, and trying to save money where we can before we go.