Daily Archives: August 17, 2007

Beads on a string

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This morning I got in my rental and drove to the little town of Wakefield. It was either named after Cap’n Wakefield of the New Zealand Company or Wakefield, Yorkshire. I secretly hope it’s the latter, because the Cribs are from Wakefield and they are an awesome band. There wasn’t much to do in Wakefield, but I found an antique shop and bought a 1960s Fijian postcard someone had sent to her loved ones back in Nelson.

I hit the road again (I never just drive) and ended up at the Hoglund art glass studio. There was a bead-making class, so I signed up for it and got to melt roads of glass into various shapes and came out with seven beads, the likes of which are usually made into jewellery sold at weekend craft markets and bought by middle-aged ladies.

Now I’m in Motueka. I’m trying to find somewhere to eat, but it seems hard when there are places such as the “CHINESE SUSHI” joint and a cafe where all the cabinet food looked deep-fried. I mean, I wouldn’t consider myself a particularly fussy eater, but the eateries of Motueka aren’t giving me any love.

One thing I’ve noticed about internet cafes is how people want to haggle over rates. “You say the minimum charge is $1 for 10 minutes. If I spent only nine minutes, is it free?” It’s only a dollar, you cheap-arse tourist.

Now I must eat or I shall surely faint.

Nelson = nil sun

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Today sunny Nelson is not being sunny.

After lunch yesterday I went to the Suter gallery (which I want to spell Sutre). It’s Nelson’s main art gallery and it was rather good. The main exhibition was on abstract expressionism and the cold war, specifically how the cold war influenced artists and how the CIA used this art to show people in communist countries of the freedoms of the West. It’s just as well communism was all about classlessness, cos if you should some abstract expressionism to a bunch of middle-class folk in the ’50, they’d start mumbling about their four-year-old doing better.

Then I went to the centre of New Zealand. There are signs all over the place pointing to the centre of New Zealand. I followed them and began walking up a hill. This seemed normal because, well, the centre of New Zealand could be anywhere. But the path and signed seemed to be taking me right up to the top of the hill, which seemed a bit too much of coincidence. Finally I reached the top (and was glad for the times I’ve done the 100-step walk up the big stairs at work) and I saw, right atop the hill, a plaque marking it as the centre of New Zealand. No wait, it was the “centre of New Zealand”. Those cockers used scare quotes! It wasn’t really the centre of New Zealand. It was a trig station magically transformed into a tourist attraction with a monument the Jaycees erected in the 1960s. What a rip off. It’s not so much the centre of New Zealand as the centre of Nelson’s civic ego.

I realised something about Nelson as I was walking along the main street this morning: no graffiti. It’s unusual to experience a place that’s totally bald of graffiti. No stickers either. And none of that grey anti-graffiti paint.