Best Things Lately! Music, water, friendship!

November 27th 2013.  Wow, what  great weekend!

Summer's here!

When picked up (gently) on a shell, this Nudibranch rolls into a little ball and hides!

Went up North (Whangarei) and visited my oldest friend. She lives in a postal code requiring 'rural delivery', so it's quiet and tree huddled, perfect for refreshing the soul and mind. Her three chooks laid an egg each day, the dogs played together like slightly agressive children. During one of our beach excursions I found two amazing sea slugs that I'd never seen before. Behold, they were Nudibranchia! 

The previous weekend (of my birthday) I'd also gone out with Portia and Mum to Bethel's Beach had dinner with other friends, saw Lawerence Arabia playing at the King's Arm's with Otis, and have had encouragement and input from Liz regarding the book I've been trying to write for more than ten years! I'm also finally finishing my hypnotherapy studies, wah hoo!

Dance, dance, it's a Nudibranch!

So it's that feel good thing, where you pick yourself up into the sun and do a little Nudibranch dance because you can! Oh love! Oh life! 

Another busy week planned, catching up with Peter the Tanned tonight, seeing a play with Portia tomorrow, and on Friday I think I'll go to Osho Kundalini Meditation. So this was really just to share a little bit of postive shit with y'all, especically since I'd gone on a bit about depression and anxiety of late. Still, a lotta people get anxious and depressed in a society that's too bogged down in technology, overwork, high expectations and fear of the future (and the past, eek!). 

I feel so transformed after leaving the city and some of the crappy trappings (like spending way too long on facebook). Oh, and I have to say that seeing Lawrence Arabia for the first time live was an absolute treat. They even played 'Apple Pie Bed' and the teacher song! Gorgeous great fun.

Lawrence Arabia plays the King's Arms November 2013. How lovely it was too.

 He's got this moustache that reminds me of mums' boyfriend from 1977; Steve Marshall. Steve was the manager of Mckenzie's in Ashburton, so we moved there for a year (which is how long the relationship lasted between mum and Steve Marshall). 

I loved Ashburton. I went to this old school covered in ivy and bird's nests. I made really lovely friends and had a school teacher who didn't mind that I couldn't spell, she just let me get on with being creative. One of my best friends was Richard Jones. He had pale skin and floppy dark brown hair. He would come over to my house, and even though I didn't really like the programme 'Animals, Animals, Animals' that much, I'd watch it with him to please him. We used to make little books together and he insisted on making them go from back to the front. I would try to explain that a book had to go from the front to the back, but he just couldn't do it, so I agreed that we could do it the way he found it easier. I would write the stories and he would do the pictures. It was a match made in heaven. We also wished we could make our own 'Narnia' wardrobe. I loved him so much, then he moved away. I have kept a love letter he wrote me that was designed to hang on the wall. He kissed me just once after school; a quick peck on the lips. I was thrilled and scared because I thought he'd then want sex (of course, being seven years old, I doubt he'd come to that conclusion just yet, but how was I to know?).

 I will never know what became of him, Richard Jones of Ashburton in 1977/78. That was the year a song called 'Substitute' came out, and I really wanted to understand what the woman was talking about. The lyrics went something like "I'll be your substitute, whenever you want me, oh oh, don't you know I'll be your substitute, whenever you need me, oh oh. Every night, you sit inside, hoping to see her face, you might as well forget about her and find someone to take her place". I tried to discuss it with mum, and she said "it's a stupid song". I liked singing along to it, and I think 'high heeled sneakers' was also on the radio. Being seven years old, the excitement of punk's uprising was lost on me and only snuck into my consciousness when I was eight and songs like Ian Dury's 'Rhythm stick', DEVO's 'Whip it' and 'Turning Japanese' managed to get onto mainstream radio.

And that is the sort of thing that crosses my mind, however fleetingly, when I look at a young man with a moustache. Happy days! Nudibranch dance.

Church Bay, Whangarei. Site of Nudibranchia!