Away Again......

At 0845 tomorrow, Friday, we set off yet again for another croquet tournament.  This time in Whakatane on the north  coast of the Bay of Plenty pretty much directly north if you draw a line but the real drive goes all over the place.  In fact it's quite a drive: Napier > Taupo > Rotorua > Whakatane.  Jane and I won the doubles there last year so we are off to defend our title.  We are back on Monday.  Now for bed.

Thankful Thursday

I'm not sure sometimes what the difference is between being thankful and simply playing the Glad Game.

I have never been a betting man and these days I try to be dogmatic and certain about almost nothing because experience has shown me that absolute certainties rarely turn out to be that.  Occasionally I will say that I will put money on something  when I'm pretty sure of my facts.  I remember very clearly (rare for me I admit) writing a piece on the Glad Game and Pollyanna.  In fact having just looked up some facts again I had a real dose of déja vu.  However I have searched both this blog and Eagleton Notes and can find references to the Glad Game but none referring to Pollyanna or to how the phrase came  into being.  

I'm sure that Heather will know because the character Pollyanna went to live in Vermont with her wealthy but stern Aunt Polly. Pollyanna is a best-selling novel by written in 1913 by Eleanor H. Porter who also wrote a sequel.  The remaining Pollyanna Series of books were written by other people.

Pollyanna's philosophy of life centers on what she calls "The Glad Game", an optimistic attitude she learned from her father. The game consists of finding something to be glad about in every situation. It originated in an incident one Christmas when Pollyanna, who was hoping for a doll in the missionary barrel, found only a pair of crutches inside. Making the game up on the spot, Pollyanna's father taught her to look at the good side of things—in this case, to be glad about the crutches because "we don't need 'em!"  [Wikipedia]

There have been many versions of the story committed to film and television but, for me,  the 2003 ITV  TV film version of Pollyanna starring  Amanda Burton as Aunt Polly and Georgina Terry as Pollyanna reigns supreme. This version is very faithful to the book, with one or two minor differences that do not affect the accuracy of the plot. It uses the original characterizations and storylines, but takes place in the English countryside rather than Vermont (only the scenery and accents show this, and the town is still called Beldingsville).  I will not mention the ending because if anyone who reads this has never seen it I would recommend it to you whether you be a young and romantic female or an old and cynical male or someone in between.  If it does not move you then I shall be very surprised (and disappointed).

So my 'Thankful' today is that I learned about the Glad Game.  Over the last decade it has helped me through many situations.

Oh, to be in Scotland

Oh, to be in Scotland
Now that snow is there,
And whoever wakes in Scotland
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the Highland Bull ex-patriated be
To New Zealand pastures in the raging sun
For which he, heavy coated and so desperately hot, cries
'Oh to be in Scotland--now!!'

With apologies to Robert Browning

I Considered Modesty

but then decided wotthehellarchiewotthehell.   I've just had an excellent tournament and why shouldn't I be proud of the achievement?  I may have told you before about Miss Twomey who was the Headmistress of the Prep School to which CJ and I went and who, when I was 5,  stressed in one lesson that pride was one of the seven deadly sins and then in the next told us that we should have pride in our work. When I queried this (which, as a five year old, seemed to me to be completely incomprehensible) I was told off for being insolent (or whatever it was I was supposed to have been).   After that I always thought that Miss Twomey was logically challenged.

Anyway I played in three events at the Tournament:  Handicap Association Croquet Singles,  Handicap Golf Croquet Doubles and Championship Golf Croquet Singles.  I enjoyed the first two events and learned a few things at the first event.  I won the Championship event beating a few pretty good players along the way (and, in turn, suffering an occasional defeat by players whom I might have been expected to beat).

All in all it was a great time away.  the Rangitira Club in Dannevirke is an absolutely wonderful facility and the players are excellent hosts.  However there are so few of them the Club may not survive another year.  That would be so so sad.

Time to Go

Carol's and my son and Gaz's brother, Andrew, died in 2006 but his details are still in my computer's address book.  This really makes no sense and it's not a form of denial it's just that I don't feel able to remove that link.  Although it's not in that category (I sincerely hope) for the last 5 months The Archduchess has not blogged.  After a fairly traumatic time in her life she just stopped blogging.  That was over 5 months ago.  I have to ask myself whether the memory of a very interesting Blogger and a very talented young lady is now to be erased from my list of bloggers or whether she should continue to be there on my list as a memory.  I am not a worrier but I would like to know that she is safe and well.

That actually has started me thinking about the whole issue of bloggers and the relationships we all have.  Family excepted, I have made some very good friends through Blogland.  Some, like Pauline, I have met and some I have corresponded with.  Some like Deedee from Deedee, Cut Adrift have just melted in to the background having not blogged for a long time.

Some have entered new phases in their lives and continue with occasional posts and it's good to know what's happening but one doesn't expect significant participation in our blog world.

Blogland is a very strange and unusual place and as Andrew would have said "It's a funny old world Dad."

Thankful Thursday

I have just read Jaz's Thankful Thursday post about the mining tragedy on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island.  I would really suggest that if you want to understand what is typically this country then you would appreciate a lot reading that post.

The tragedy is not, of course, something for which I or anyone is thankful.

New Zealand is roughly the same physical size as Britain.  In terms of population, though, it's small with about 4.2m compared with the 62m in Britain ie less than 7% of Britain's.  That's one of its great attractions for me.  It's not that I don't love people.  I do: in small numbers.  I've lived on an Island in Scotland for over half of my life and have enjoyed the 'smallness' where it is unlikely that I would ever go into the local town of Stornoway (population of 'greater Stornoway' about 9,000) without meeting people I know.  So when there is news in NZ it tends all to be 'local' in that it tends to be shared from the southern tip of Stewart Island to the northernmost part of the North Island at Cape Reinga.

So the earthquake in Christchurch on 4 September this year was felt psychologically, if not necessarily physically, by people in the whole of the Country.  Now that there has been a mining disaster at the Pike River Mine near Greymouth (population 10,000) on the remote West coast of South Island it is being felt throughout the Country.

Like Jaz I am thankful that I live in a country that cares.

Just in case

you happen to be wondering what has happened to me I thought I'd better tell you that I'm away at a croquet tournament in Dannevirke.  It's the New Zealand Veterans.  It's two days of Association Croquet and three days of Golf Croquet.  I'll explain the difference one day.  It's really full on with 7 to 8 hours of actual play each day - quite a lot for us oldies.  Some of the players are in their late eighties (or even 90s!).  They are a very hardy lot considering you can walk over 9 kilometres in a tournament day.

I'll be back with lots of posts after the weekend.

We Eat How Many?

Someone on the television or radio a few days ago said that the average person (I'd love to meet that person some time) eats 8 spiders during their lifetime when they are asleep.  Well when I was making my bed this morning I found a spider under my pillow.  Fortunately I'm not an arachnophobe  but it still wasn't a pleasant experience.  But I played the Glad Game.  At least I hadn't eaten that one!

It's at Moments Like This

that you think 'I should have been facing the other way when that train came!'

A Branch in The Sea

When we were at Waipatiki there was a  piece of tree washing up on the beach moving in and out with the waves.  I became fascinated by it and decided that I really had to try and get the photo that gave me the most satisfaction.  In fact I took 68 pictures.  Each time I was looking for something slightly different but in actual fact only once did I actually know what I wanted to achieve and that was in this picture:

where I managed a continuous line between the cliff and the tree branch whilst also getting the wave coming in and about to move it again.

I rather liked these two as well: