I overheard a distinctly Irish brogue, so I moved nearer and spoke to N, sipping a beer and looking quite alone, although his delectable Kiwi wife wasn't far away and soon joined us. But N had a story and it briefly went like this. Like so many Irish he had quit the green isle for richer shores, this time NZ. He had ridden the Celtic Tiger to big money, but also lost it, with some enterprise only an Irishman would have considered. Like buying a decrepit sixteenth century castle out of Cork and trying to restore it in an economic bust time in Europe. But who was to know this, the Celtic Tiger had been rampant, for a while anyway.
N then emigrated to NZ. Skilled in IT, he was very employable and wanted to work like crazy, meaning about sixty hours a week, whereas the Kiwis went sailing after forty. He also had a stint in Saudi, crazy days, and then the Philippines. He made big money, and lost it, which is where his castle and the restoration came into play. Eventually he found a beautiful Kiwi bride, married her and had a babe, a mortgage, and a castle costing heaps. He's still smiling and like Edith Piaf, has no regrets. He is also renovating his home in Seatoun, next to the party house, the neighbours whom he just met today. He is laconic and whimsical, like many Irish, and the lifestyle in W suits him just fine.
The other guy, I'll call G, was living in Melbourne, an ex-pat from Auckland, an actor. So I saw why he had moved countries. My age, he was staying with his sister who is in the choir with me, she had told me he would be there. Spent some time in London in early seventies, tried the theatre scene there, too tough and no money, I agreed with him on that, so finally he moved to Melbourne where he managed to make a reasonable living. He was happy enough, comes home occasionally to visit sis and discover the beauties of New Zealand he had forgotten about. I fear he is lost to the final beauty of this country, having been seduced by the bright lights too many years ago. Once a thespian, always a thespian.
The third, and perhaps most interesting is K, in photo below in his world of creation, under the house his father built by hand, fifty years ago. He is a wood craftsman, a guitar maker to be precise, a trained and well qualified musician, and he was there with his eighty-eight year old Chinese born, but Russian mother, who was quite the character of the party. K doesn't fit in with the world, is a dedicated pacifist, a vegan, and is happiest with his computer generated wood saw he calibrates to the finest millimetre to make the exquisite sounds of the guitar, used normally, he assures me, to creat a violin. He generously insists on driving me home when I tell him was taking a bus, or two. It is indeed much faster, and in ten minutes I am home, mulling over an interesting afternoon. Three men of a certain age, one married, the other two finding their way in an unpredictable world. I wanted to tell them about the HU, but I don't think they would have been interested.
Today, I've just come from the HU, talking with like Souls about experiences some would call weird, but which we call spiritual. You just can't separate the spiritual from the everyday, it's in everything, if you pause to notice.
The Laundry on Cuba
Below....father-love at Macca's, where I just had a chai latte, possibly my last, as it is tasting pretty reconstituted, like most things in this awful fast-food palace.
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