Muriel Caddie

Next Wednesday I'm due to play at a retirement home celebration meal.  I've got to play from the time people start arriving, on and off during the meal, and then probably for a little while afterwards.  I'm also accompanying a friend of mine who's singing at some point.  

Because the theme is glitz and glamour, I've been sorting out some of the old selections of film and musicals music that I've got, music I've had since I first started work, I'd think. These selections are mostly very well done, with smooth transitions between songs, and take around seven or eight minutes to play. They were produced by a number of publishers: Chappell and Co, Williamson Music, and even Dunedin's own Charles Begg and Co.  Interestingly enough, none of them give any indication as to who did the medleys, some of which are quite inventive. I probably bought some of them at Beggs, but it's more likely I bought them at Muriel Caddie's little shop in Princes St.  She sold a great deal of sheet music, in a tiny shop, along with piano accordions (as one of the ladies in the Choristers, a choir I've recently become the conductor of, reminded me).  Muriel Caddie was a delightful lady, full of enthusiasm.  I think her shop must have closed during the six years I was away in England.  Anyway, it's been long gone, and I've no idea what happened to Muriel.  

Well, I hadn't looked on the Net to see if there's was anything about her, and of course, there is, though not in relation to her shop.   This link from Radio NZ has a file about a recording they possess, running to around eleven minutes, which features Muriel Caddie and Her Revellers.  And another link, from Papers Past, shows that Muriel Caddie and her Novelettes played for ten minutes in a broadcast on the 10th September, 1941. (They appear to have been frequent performers on the radio around this time.) So perhaps she was older than I thought when I knew her in the late fifties, early sixties.  Maybe she just sold her business and retired.  In fact, I've just looked further into the Papers Past site, and find a reference to Miss Muriel Caddie in 1927, playing two piano pieces, again on the radio.  (Radio in those days was very open to local talent.  I even managed to accompany the same person I'm playing for on Wednesday once.  Once only!)

Muriel also played accordian on the radio.  In fact if you start looking properly you can find her name popping up all over.  

From the Evening Post you can find a column dated the 7th January 1941, which tells us that Miss Muriel Caddie had been visiting her aunt in Wellington and was returning home - by plane - to Dunedin (!)  That visiting one's aunt should be an occasion for such notoriety!

Maybe Muriel bought her aunt some of her best Apogee jam.  I'm kidding - but I seem to remember that Apogee was the name of a kind of sealed jar that held items like jam and preserves back in the middle of the 20th century.  

PS. I've just come across a Trade Me ad from 2009 for the sheet music for La Vie en Rose which the seller says is Stamped inside: Muriel Caddie. 123 Princes Street, Dunedin. - (won't affect your playing..)

Code-Cracker

One of the ways I get my brain up and running in the morning, now that I'm retired, is to do the Code-Cracker.   My mother, when she was alive, and was living upstairs in our house, used to have the Code-Cracker done before I got out of my heated blanket in the morning (and I've always been an early riser).   Suffice to say, her brain was pretty sharp too.

I got started on the Code-Cracker in my last job - one of the female staff always used to do it in the morning tea break, and so we'd make a copy of it and both of us would get on and do it.  I never managed to finish it before she did!  I doubt that I would have beaten my mother either, if she and I had had a race.  (She could do cryptic crosswords without having the puzzle in front of her, just by having someone tell her how many spaces there were and what ones were filled in.)

The Code-Cracker that appears in the Otago Daily Times is produced by Simon Shuker, who lives in Wellington, NZ.  It's reproduced throughout the country in various papers, and is one of the most popular daily puzzles available.   And it's popular not just in this country, but in a wide variety of places around the world - it appears under the name Codeword in the Daily Mail in London, for instance, where it's been appearing for two decades.

Unlike some versions of Code-Cracker, Shuker's one always uses all the letters of the alphabet.  Furthermore, it's laid out in such a way that you can quickly see whether you've already used a particular letter or not, and what number it relates to.  And the numbering starts from the first box on the page and works consistently through the puzzle: before number 26 appears all 25 other numbers will have turned up in sequence.

Some versions of the puzzle don't use all the letters of the alphabet, which is frustrating, and some of them jumble the numbers all over the place, so it's not easy to know where you're starting from.  Personally, I think Shuker's 'hand-crafted' puzzle is the best version available - and if doing one a day isn't enough for you, you can always buy a book of his pre-published puzzles and do them again...

You can find a couple of interactive samples on the Code-Cracker site.  However, I notice that if you click on one of the letters at the bottom all the places that letter appears will show up.  That reduces the puzzle element considerably.  Think I'll stick to the paper version!

Election Forums

An invitation from the Centre for Theology and Public Issues to

ELECTION FORUMS in DUNEDIN and WELLINGTON

There's an election coming next month. How should we vote? What questions should we put to candidates? Will our voices be heard?

There's an opportunity to discuss some of the important issues we face at two Churches' Election Forums which the Centre for Theology and Public Issues is co-hosting in the first week of November. Each will include short presentations from an invited panel; summary and commentary; and opportunity for discussion and questions. (Please note these are not 'candidate meetings').

At each event the focus will be on four broad themes:

• alcohol, advertising, consumerism and their effects;
• our national identity and the Treaty;
• families and relationships;
• crime and punishment.

Churches are also encouraged to download the Centre's 'election resource pack' which also covers these themes. These would be ideal for discussion by groups in the weeks leading up to the election.


You are very welcome to these forums. Please also make them known among churches and other networks.

Dunedin: TUESDAY 1 NOVEMBER, 7.30 - 9.00 pm, Burns Hall, First Church, Moray Place.

Panel:

• Glyn Carpenter (Director, New Zealand Christian Network)
• Gillian Bremner (CEO Presbyterian Support Otago)
• Prof Andrew Bradstock (Centre for Theology and Public Issues)
• Dr Andrew Shepherd (Centre for Theology and Public Issues).

Summary: Rt Rev Kelvin Wright (Anglican Bishop of Dunedin)

Chair: Rev Anne Thomson (First Church).

Wellington: THURSDAY 3 NOVEMBER, 7.00 - 9.00 pm: St John's in the City.

Panel:

Glyn Carpenter (Director, New Zealand Christian Network)

Rev Susan Blaikie (Wellington City Missioner)

Lisa Beech (Research and Advocacy Coordinator, Caritas)

Dr Andrew Shepherd (Centre for Theology and Public Issues)

Summary: Rev Canon Deborah Broome

Chair: Very Rev Frank Nelson (Dean of Wellington).

Further information from: Jill Rutherford, Centre for Theology and Public Issues (03 479 5358; jill.rutherford@otago.ac.nz)

Office Hours:  9.00am - 12 noon,  Mondays -Thursday

Andrew Bradstock
Howard Paterson Professor of Theology and Public Issues
Director, Centre for Theology and Public Issues
Department of Theology and Religion
University of Otago
PO Box 56
Dunedin 9054

(03) 479 8450 
andrew.bradstock@otago.ac.nz
www.otago.ac.nz/ctpi
www.facebook.com/pages/University-of-Otago-Centre-for-Theology-and-Public-Issues/237859522928938

Lilburn blows it

Well, if I was beginning to reconsider my stance on Douglas Lilburn's music, he's just blown it by the selection that's being broadcast this morning on the Concert programme.

I've just listened to his setting for baritone and viola of a poem called Warning of Winter, by Ursula Bethell. Now I have a bit of a feeling for this poem because I also wrote a setting of it - you can hear it here being sung by tenor Brent Read, for whom it was written. I was listening to Lilburn's moaning/groaning version - the viola moaning along in the background - as sung by Paul Whelan, and it was only after he'd been singing for a bit that I realised it was the same poem. It took some time, because not only was the setting utterly different, but Whelan's words weren't particularly clear, I'm afraid.

The other two songs in this group by Lilburn are a little better, but the combination of viola and voice doesn't grab me, perhaps because there's not a sense of musical assonance between the two. It's a very dry kind of combination. (Gillian Whitehead uses similar sorts of non-assonance groupings with some of her songs - she seems to have a particular penchant for writing for voice and bassoon, with piano sometimes also included.)

Besides this batch, there were also some of Lilburn's electronic pieces. Piece being the operative word. Like a few of his piano pieces they're minimalist, having almost no length. The pieces in question were: God Save, and Cicadas, Oscillators & Treefrogs. They were 'realised' in the electronic music studios at Victoria University, Wellington. God Save consists of a smatterings and mutterings of God Save the Queen; the other piece requires intent listening to hear anything much at all.

Thank goodness the Concert programme has been playing some of his other work. I don't think Lilburn broke much new ground with his electronic stuff, or did himself any favours as a composer, just as Stravinsky seemed to go off into a cul-de-sac when he got into serial music. (Does anyone listen to Stravinsky's serial music?)

Nice...

Courtesy of Family First NZ.

What education can & can't do

In the Wellington paper, the Dominion Post, there's a weekly segment relating to the education of a particular well-known person. EPMU national secretary and Labour Party president, Andrew Little, was the man this week, and I liked a couple of things he said:

Although your formal education teaches some knowledge and understanding, as well as technical skills, it cannot teach values, personality, character and other things that matter in life.

and...

Study is a good starting point for whatever discipline you're preparing for or just for developing an inquiring mind, but that's all it is. It isn't a substitute for life's other passions or the creative spirit.

Another multi-talented person

I've written more than once about people who are multi-talented (Taika Waititi, for example, or Anthony Hopkins or Isaac Mizrahi). Today I was looking up something on the NZ Baptist website, and read the profile of its current National Leader, Rodney Mccann. When I first saw the name, I thought it rang a bell. It should have. Not only is he leading the Baptists in New Zealand (if anyone can), but he's famous as an opera singer. Not famous as someone who's been an opera singer, but someone who still is an opera singer.

I've come across opera singers who've given up their careers when they've gone into some other calling in life, but Mccann seems to have managed to be both a high-profile leader and singer simultaneously.

As the site says: He returned to New Zealand in 1990 to be the minister of Wellington Central Baptist church and is now Regional Consultant to the Wellington Baptist churches and National leader of the New Zealand Baptist churches.

That makes it sound as if he gave up his singing at that point, but the next paragraph shows that this was anything but the case: From 1990 he has performed regularly in Australia and New Zealand with all the major Orchestras and Opera Companies and has been involved in various recordings including Missa Solemnis – Beethoven (Sydney Symphony Orchestra – MacKerras), Verdi Requiem (Opera New Zealand) and most recently Journey to Horseshoe Bend – Schultz (Sydney Symphony).

Well, there you go, eh?

Miscellaneous

Alan Jacobs, who tweets a good deal on all sorts of things, and probably should be getting on with his real writing more often, sent a wonderful Tweet during the early days of the Soccer World Cup:

This ball might as well be an Elgin Marble, so incapable are the Greeks of retaining possession of it.

I only remembered about this because I've been keeping a list of various items I want to use at some point in the blog, or elsewhere. They're a pretty random bunch, and it's hard to think how I'd place Jacobs' line otherwise than by just plunking it down on the page.

Here's something totally different, relating to the number of bags that are lost annually by air companies. (By the way, if you travel a lot and want to prevent hair loss from stress, don't read the following!)

Apparently 25 million items of luggage are misplaced globally each year, or one bag per 100 passenger. Pretty scary. We've only ever had one bag go astray, and that was between Dunedin and Wellington last year. We stayed in Wgtn for a couple of days, but the bag still didn't manage to get there. Finally we carried onto Napier, our next destination, and somehow or other (since Air NZ didn't know we were going there) the bag managed to get there ahead of us!

So when do bags go missing? Here are the stats:

- Transfer baggage mishandling (52 per cent)

- Failure to load (16 per cent)

- Passenger bag switch/security/ticketing error (13 per cent)

- Loading/offloading (7 per cent)

- Airport/customs/weather/space-weight restriction (6 per cent)

- Arrival station mishandling (3 per cent)

- Tagging errors (3 per cent)

It's those transfers that are the big problem. I watched a bunch of guys throwing (yup, that's how it's done) bags onto a trolley while waiting for my plane to move onto the next destination a few weeks ago. None of the bags were checked in terms of whether they should have been taken off the plane or not. In fact, the guys didn't look at the labels at all. No wonder things go astray.

Fraser's Gully

I've lived in Dunedin, New Zealand, for around 55 years of my life. I was in Melbourne for the first three years, moved to Dunedin, stayed here for my childhood and adolescence. Had some very brief stints in Wellington and Auckland while I worked for the NZ Opera Company, moved back to Dunedin, went overseas to the UK for six years, came back with my newly-married wife, lived here totally until 2007 when I spent another five and a half months in the UK, and have been here since.

In all that time I have never once walked up the track through Fraser's Gully - in spite of the fact that I've passed the entrance to it hundreds of times, and have even dropped children off there for football or softball or something in the past.

I said to my wife this afternoon we needed to go for a walk and she was agreeable (she has to keep her reputation up now that she's appeared as the poster girl for Green Prescription in the latest Sport Otago magazine). It was intended as a bit of a fat burner walk, and proved to be that and more.

We wound up walking up Fraser's Gully, right from Kaikorai Valley Rd at the bottom to Dalziel Rd at the top - and then to cap it we walked around down to Taieri Rd, visited my son and his family for a bit and walked back to the car in KV Rd. Quite a bit of a jaunt.

Fraser's Gully turns out to be a delight. I've included a couple of photos here - which I took on the cellphone so the quality may not be high - but I could have photographed a heap more. The track is accompanied by a stream running downhill (naturally) on the left as you climb, and there are small waterfalls and lots of rocks and all the stuff that goes with a normal stream. The track itself is steep in places, although it wasn't as much as I thought it might be - and certainly no worse than climbing Brockville Rd, which runs parallel to it some blocks further south. Fraser's Gully track comes out in Dalziel Rd, which runs along the top of Brockville.

The walk certainly cleared the brains, which had become pretty foggy over the weekend, and helped get our muscles moving. We might not have done it if we'd thought about how far we were going to go, but we did!

On the way back down Taieri Rd we passed the Fernhill Reserve. I haven't been in there since I was a teenager, when Brian Hellyer lived in a house there. He was a doctor who sang in several Dunedin Opera Company productions (and other shows) and I once visited this house which seemed to be hidden away in miles of bush - we went there at night!

My wife and I go on holiday

Since this blog isn't normally about what we do on holiday, (even though there are a couple of earlier posts relating to the one we've been on most recently - here and here) I'll revert to using my Travel blog for further posts on the subject. So this one is just by way of introduction, and to alert you that there's more to the Crowl world of blog than this Random one.

The main focus of the holiday was a wedding we were attending in Napier, and when we were invited some months ago, we decided to take a week all up, fly to Wellington, stay there for a couple of nights, drive to Napier, stay there for the wedding and then drive on to some other destinations and then back to Wellington.

We hired a car on the Net through a company called Apex Rentals, whom I'd be happy to recommend. I don't think they provide up to date vehicles necessarily (or rather, we chose one that wasn't new) but their service seems fine, and they run efficiently, and the cost overall was within our budget. Best of all, we had no problems with the car, or the hiring. We could have hired ourselves an RV (or the NZ equivalent thereof), and saved ourselves some accommodation, but RVs (or the NZ equivalent thereof) are expensive to hire here, and thereby we avoided any RV breakdown (!) [Just had to sneak all that in, and it's roughly relevant.]

My wife has gone off to Auckland (she flew out from Wellington for another week's holiday, this time with my daughter and her family) with the camera and the smart drive with all the photos on it, so I won't be able to add photos to this post, or to those on the other blog. Maybe I'll come back and include them later...something I've been meaning to do since 2007 in relation to the overseas trip we took.

So....off you go to the Travel blog and check out some of the highs and lows...!

Update on CD

I'm ready to go with the Concert CD: CDs with the labels printed on and the booklet with all the words. And it's only taken just on a month (compare that to my previous record of three years and counting for the first concert's CD - however, even that is now progressing after all this time).

My wife and I are off to a wedding in Napier this week - on Wednesday - so there won't be much blogging done, I suspect, during that time. In fact, I'm seriously thinking of not taking the laptop. Apart from the inconvenience of carting it around, it won't do me any harm to have a break from it. (Although the heap of emails that'll be waiting when I get home isn't something I'm looking forward to. Still, I can probably hook up at an Internet cafe.)

We're going to be staying in Youth Hostels in Wellington and Napier, from Wed through to Sat nights, and then we'll probably stay in a two or three others after the wedding (which takes place next Saturday). Our plans are open-ended at the moment; we have to be back in Wellington on Wednesday week, but beyond that we could travel all over if we were of a mind. Currently Taupo's one possibility. Both the Wellington and Napier hostels are highly recommended on the YHA site; here's hope they live up to their reputations!

We stayed at a youth hostel in the UK (near Rochester) when we were there three years ago (in the picture upper left - it was a converted something, but don't ask me now what). It was pretty noisy at night, with paper-thin walls, and the bunks weren't terribly comfortable. However, the kitchen was good, and even though it was in London, officially, it was next to some woodland. Of course, very little compared to the two apartments we had in Valencia, which were not only spacious, but stylish. The living area of the first one is in the picture below (along with the ubiquitous laptop).

We hired the two apartments off an English bloke who was living in Valencia, and did all the hiring and payment collecting and admin himself. I don't know how many apartments he had, but he seemed to be doing very well, and he kept the places spotless. They were not only very well appointed but had quite an array of seemingly valuable artwork, bric-a-brac and such scattered around them. Not the sort of places to take the grandchildren!

Extreme Weather Events

I took Tim Jones’ first book of short stories, Extreme Weather Events, into hospital with me this week. His comment, before I went, was: EWE [is] a darker book, overall, than Transported [his second book], so it may not be ideal cheering-up fare if that is what you're looking for next week ... but that's up to you, of course. Well, EWE is certainly fairly dark in spots: Lizard, for instance, is plain horrible, in my reading of it, but it’s the darkest by a long way.
Some of the themes in this selection are similar to Tim’s second book: the apocalyptic destruction of the earth, climate change and the curious desire of people to worship in cultic groups where somehow morality is switched off.
Consequently, apart from the vile worshippers in Lizard, we have a bunch of them causing havoc in Temple in the Matrix, a sci-fi story with certain links to the film, The Matrix, and a vibrant language that’s sometimes unusual but never unreadable.
Maria and the Tree, the first story, takes place after some disaster has occurred in the world, and in spite of its gloomy tone, has a hopeful ending. Equally in the next story, Wintering Over, we know that there’s probably been a major nuclear disaster, but it’s only the background to the story of three scientists marking time in the Antarctic, rather than the main point.
In Tour Party some fairly large-scale disaster has happened, but we’re not party to the details.
These three stories lean to the pessimistic side of Jones’ writing, but, like many of his other stories, there’s a curious playful satire running across the surface. It’s not quite like the wit and humour of the second book (which was what encouraged me to read it), but it’s there.
The three short short stories, The New Land, The Kiwi Contingent, and The Pole, contain that delightful playing with a quirky idea that is Jones at his best, and The Man Who Loved Maps, quite apart from being set in my home town of Dunedin, is a warm-hearted story about a man who becomes the maps he so loves.
In another story, My Friend the Volcano, the female vulcanologist becomes one with Mt Taranaki via a bio-chip in her head. This story is told by a male narrator who falls in love with the girl, and who turns out to be surprisingly supportive of her rather odd approach to scientific study.
Black Box, the story of a kind of picture into the past that appears in the middle of Wellington one day (Wellington comes off rather badly in Tim’s world) ended a bit abruptly for me. I’d like to have explored further with the anonymous student who manages to break into the box, and discover what’s beyond its borders.
And finally, there’s Flensing, a very strange story about an abandoned fishing village and a church full of ghosts – and a family - father, mother and son - in which Oedipus might feel at home. There’s no doubt Jones has an imagination that hives off into peculiar corners. I can’t say I much liked this story (but then I’d just had an operation!), but it certainly sticks in the mind.