Do you remember me raving about a song last time I was over here called
‘Drops of Jupiter’
I heard it once on the radio & it hit me like a ton of bricks. A couple of lyrics stuck in my head & luckily from these Stan was able to find it on the net & post the lyrics on my Blog. He told me the band was Train.
If I was a technically able person, I would search the archives, find the reference & link it, but as I’m not, you’ll just have to take my word for it.
I find it hard to say what the song does for me & I’m too self-conscious to explain it’s meaning to me (at least without several glasses of Wolf Blass) but personal insights aside, it encapsulates in a melody everything about NZ. It’s breezy, upbeat, poignant, and aching with the unknown.
After returning to the UK, I resisted the urge to buy the CD. I know, I know, it doesn’t make sense, someone has already told me as much. Thing is, for me, a song keeps it’s ability to hit where it hurts by being fresh and that means I shouldn’t be able to just listen to it when I like. I love the fact that every now & again, I’ll hear a really special song on the radio & it will move me. If I owned ‘Sitting on the dock of the bay’ I’m not sure I’d feel the same about it.
Quick break, at 1450, to collect Alice from school & take her horse-riding …
Post started again at 2303, having returned from dinner at friends.
Their baby kept smiling at me – weird.
As I was saying I haven’t bought the CD, however Laura at work loaned it to me & I have listened to it daily for the past 3 weeks. Train are really not my thing, being quite soft-rock MOR but I just can’t get enough of this CD, especially track 11 ‘Mississippi’, haunting.
Btw Milky, why can you only buy scary music in Epsom ?
Music has such life-enhancing properties that I can’t imagine restricting myself to one type. Milky asked me recently what I liked, prior to compiling some Cd’s for this trip. I find that a really hard question to answer. Some days it’s Puccini & I bellow along to Turandot, others it’s Prince. Linkin Park have a special fascination for me, I love the rage in their lyrics. REM & Tracey Chapman never pale & if I’m exercising it has to be really LOUD trance. I cannot get to a dance-floor quickly enough if I hear Faithless’ Insomnia, Da Rude’s Sandstorm or for the best old skool ever ; C & C Music factory’s ‘Gonna make you sweat’. I’m not saying the dancing is pretty but it’s enthusiastic. Thinking about it the only music I cannot tolerate is jazz, the thought of it brings me out in hives.
I can have a good night out without dancing, but I can’t have a great night out without it.
It was the single most important thing missing from the Old Boys weekend, for me, that is.
Another weird thing about being here is I listen relentlessly to ZM. Very loudly. And yet in the UK, I listen to Radio 4, all the time. You cannot imagine 2 more diverse radio stations, I love them both & yet one is NZ me & the other is UK me. Schizophrenic ? Quite possibly.
You’ll be thrilled to hear it’s pouring down as I type this. It has been since about 5pm this afternoon & started while I was watching Alice’s horse-riding lesson.
I offered to take her, to Eric’s relief, as I was keen to see how she was getting on.
(Thought you might like a progress report too Uncle Stinley ?)
I am delighted to report that Alice’s riding teacher has kids totally sussed.
She was relentlessly strict & picked up on their every mistake. A couple of
things she said struck me as particularly good
‘Oi, oi, why aren’t you looking at me, when I’m talking to you ?’
and
‘This isn’t a pony-ride, if you want a pony-ride go to a fete, I am trying to make riders of you’
Please don’t think from this that she was an old harridan, she wasn’t and she was quite softly spoken. It’s just that she noticed everything and was very, very strict with the girls. The lovely thing was that Alice really responded. She has been placed in this group after 6 private lessons on the lunge (round & round on a rope) and the concentration on her face was great to see. Alice usually tires of things after a fairly limited effort so I was really impressed to see her knuckle down & concentrate for well over an hour. When the teacher reprimanded her several times for the same thing, Alice accepted the criticism, applied herself & did better. No backchat, no ‘I know’, no faces – how refreshing. Alice particularly excelled in the sitting trot & it was great to see her smile as she came past, knowing she was doing well.
The Tibetan monks say ‘give me a child for 7 years & I give you the man’
This riding teacher could do it in half the time – inspirational.
It’s blowing a gale out there now – almost loud enough to drown Eric’s snoring.
Bridget & I went to the pub last night, the Prince Albert of course.
When I asked her if she knew where it was she said ‘ye-ah’ in that way as if
‘How could anyone not ?’We talked solidly for over 3 hours. I learned that it ‘doesn’t take 7 hours to see a film’ and she learned which bath bombs to avoid.
Loose plans
Murray thinks this weekend will be best for kite-buggying as it’s low-tide so I am going to head into Matamata tomorrow to check out bus & ferry times to
get me to the South Island. I would like to travel Thursday & aim to be in Nelson for Friday evening - something tells me there won’t be a lie-in on Saturday morning. I was originally going to hire a camper van straight off the ferry, but it’ll just be sitting there unused whilst I’m at Murray’s at $116 per day, so it makes more sense to hire one as I leave his. I then aim for Blenheim to say hello to Mike & Mal & a3/4 day road-trip with Mal. The camper van idea may have to be scrapped in favour of B & B’s though unless I can find one with twin beds, at the moment they’re all doubles. Hmmmm.
Goodnight, sleep well,
Cx
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