Public Address | Cafe | Busytown: Cry me a river

Hebe

Mon, 28 Apr 2014 23:05:48 +1200

This thread makes me want to move to Auckland: up the top of Mays Road would be dandy ta.

Gary Richard

Mon, 28 Apr 2014 14:22:20 +1200

hi..a few years ago..but was looking up poems by fairburn on a wet and rainy day and saw this site..do you know the address of the house where he supposedly wrote those lines?/

alan C

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:20:18 +1300

Withdrawal!!! Two months is a long time to be going without. Me cryin a river now too and checking every day for the next posting!!!

Karla Hill

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 23:10:21 +1200

but this time: Auckland, what the hell??!! Where did you go? What are you doing? And what idiot taught you to drive?
Honestly, I was shaken. Has it always been this bad? Has the city always been utterly in thrall to the car? Why did the Auckland chicken cross the…

Steve Barnes

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 11:24:41 +1200

Just a bit of editing and...

I almost cried three times when walking into their tree and sculpture.

Ouch. ;-)

Simon Grigg

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:23:56 +1200

I guess it's a matter of where your reference points lie but after a few years in Asia, I've been in a state of joyous bliss over the driving in Auckland. So polite, so gracious, and there is so little of it.

Apart from Ponsonby Rd that is.... (where there…

Ben Gracewood

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:12:37 +1200

I don't know if I'm going soft in my old age, but I vigourously agree on the Auckland driver suckitude. When someone blasts past me or runs an orange light, I have to think to myself "well, his wife must be in labour I guess". It's the only way to…

Carol Stewart

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 11:29:43 +1200

My grandparents, who lived in a small village in the Peak District in northern England, never owned a car and walked all over the countryside to go to church, visit friends and to the local shops. I think they were fairly typical. It wasn't that they couldn't afford it -…

Danielle

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:11:20 +1200

My great-grandparents, also from a small town in Southland, drove a car jointly. He steered and she shifted gears. They did not, needless to say, have a licence.

JackElder

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:03:33 +1200

Loved your diatribe about driving- I think it's even worse in smaller towns in NZ. Mind you, the very fact they gave me a licence is a damning indictment on our country's road safety....

My grandparents lived in a small town in Southland. Towards the end of their lives, whenever…

Matthew Littlewood

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:08:42 +1200

Nothing really to add except that was a really nicely written piece, Jolisa Gracewood.

Loved your diatribe about driving- I think it's even worse in smaller towns in NZ. Mind you, the very fact they gave me a licence is a damning indictment on our country's road safety....

Hilary Stace

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:48:36 +1200

Interesting bio of ARD Fairburn on the Book Council site and it also links to the Dictionary of NZ Biography essay (www.dnzb.govt.nz). Met and married Jocelyn Mays who was an Auckland art student at the Slade in London. [An NZer on her OE in the 1930s – that's another thread]…

Kerry Weston

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:11:36 +1200

She said every writer needs a wife. (She never had one and ended up burnt out, unable to get out of bed for several years.)

Yeah, mandatory advice for all artists and writers – if you don't have money, marry it. Otherwise get a wife.

why I walked around in…

Russell Brown

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:27:04 +1200

It was a relief when Fiona started writing again, and thus better understood why I walked around in a self-obsessed daze sometimes. It's easier if you both do it.

Robyn Gallagher

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:59:33 +1200

Rex would have been too busy popping down the butcher's for some sausages and coming back three weeks later. Our cultural heroes did not tend to help much about the house...

Heh, so true!

One of the best pieces of advice I've had on writing came from a veteran Australian…

Grace Dalley

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:48:54 +1200

I'm still chortling over

like a bouncy castle with a slow leak, you're letting us all down

Thanks, Jolisa, another brilliant post :-)

FletcherB

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:27:30 +1200

Interesting that the real estate blurb doesn't mention the literary connection but instead waxes lyrical about the indoor outdoor flow, six car garaging and spacious decks on which to sip one's G&T. Philistines!

Indeed.... but at least one of the photo's did prove that the "ferries at the bottom of the…

Russell Brown

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:06:09 +1200

The house on King Edward Parade had been lived in by a number of disabled and elderly aunts, and the Fairburns moved in to help look after them.

Well, Jocelyn did, I'm sure. Rex would have been too busy popping down the butcher's for some sausages and coming back three…

richard

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:58:20 +1200

@giovanni tiso: I have heard it said that you know you have lived in a place a long time when you give directions that take the form "Turn left at the place where the Circuit City (or whatever) used to be."

I caught myself doing it the other day, as…

Jolisa

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:53:41 +1200

It's not been a good week for old fellers: also Walter Cronkite, and the world's oldest (and possibly coolest) man, Henry Allingham.

dc_red

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:20:08 +1200

Speaking of matters literary, readers may be saddened to hear that Frank McCourt has died.

Robyn Gallagher

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:18:53 +1200

It's interesting that a rather itinerant sort like Fairburn could have afforded that house back then, but now it would only be within reach of someone who makes money from money.

I just rang up my mum. The house was owned by the Mays family (Fairburn was married to Jocelyn…

Russell Brown

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:07:28 +1200

Surely the reason that he could afford it was that, at the time, it was way out in the sticks, where no sane person would actually want to live? And then as the region slowly gentrifies, the prices rise and force the poets and the hippies out.

Sorta. But those…

Russell Brown

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:07:14 +1200

Surely the reason that he could afford it was that, at the time, it was way out in the sticks, where no sane person would actually want to live? And then as the region slowly gentrifies, the prices rise and force the poets and the hippies out.

Sorta. But those…

RaggedJoe

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:54:59 +1200

Have recently changed my commute from Sthn mtwy madness to cycle- ferry- cycle to the office, shower on arrival. It's early days but feeling great even though it is slower and (personaly) more expensive..Cool to be on the harbour every day, always something different to see. Highly recomened to those…

Carol Stewart

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:27:20 +1200

Oops, heritage.

Carol Stewart

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:26:38 +1200

Rather a nice pamphlet from North Shore City Council about the North Shore's literary heritate ..

JackElder

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:24:17 +1200

It's interesting that a rather itinerant sort like Fairburn could have afforded that house back then, but now it would only be within reach of someone who makes money from money.

Surely the reason that he could afford it was that, at the time, it was way out in the…

Carol Stewart

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:22:16 +1200

It's interesting that a rather itinerant sort like Fairburn could have afforded that house back then, but now it would only be within reach of someone who makes money from money.

Apparently the opening of the harbour bridge in 1959 had a major effect on real estate values on the…

Jolisa

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:18:44 +1200

Urban redesign by way of cataclysm is really the only form of progress that Italy can hope for at present.

Nice! I have to say, it feels a bit that way in Aotearoa, too...

Jolisa

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:17:49 +1200

Or a blogger. Well, most bloggers.

Russell Brown

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:13:54 +1200

It's interesting that a rather itinerant sort like Fairburn could have afforded that house back then, but now it would only be within reach of someone who makes money from money.

It certainly wouldn't be available to a poet.

giovanni tiso

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:05:07 +1200

Now, about those gondolas...

I'm the last person you want to speak to about that, sorry. Milan used to be criss-crossed by rivers and canals, but they were all paved over save for a few that we don't seem to be planning to open to boats of any kind anyhow.…

Carol Stewart

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:01:08 +1200

More pics for the property pervs among us.

Interesting that the real estate blurb doesn't mention the literary connection but instead waxes lyrical about the indoor outdoor flow, six car garaging and spacious decks on which to sip one's G&T. Philistines!

Daniel

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:55:35 +1200

I think a rehabilitated Waihorotiu would be excellent, winding out across Queens Wharf, terminating in a little wetland.

But on a broader scale, I have been thinking for some time that what we need is some kind of forum where ideas like this can be put forth and aggregated -…

Danielle

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:54:49 +1200

More pics for the property pervs among us.

I spend a lot of time, as a property perv, mentally asking 'what possessed you people when you bought that lounge suite?'

Jolisa

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:49:04 +1200

More pics for the property pervs among us.

By which I mean, me.

Jolisa

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:47:57 +1200

Bingo, Robyn. And here are the details for prospective purchasers.

My mum used to visit her Fairburn cousins there during the school holidays and says back then it was a rambling bohemian abode, full of all sorts of cool stuff.

Damn, I bet it was. What a great place to…

Jolisa

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:44:32 +1200

Oh, Gio, the heartbreak. You know it, too. All you can do is squeeze 'em, eh.

Now, about those gondolas...

giovanni tiso

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:35:27 +1200

I’m optimistic, because the alternative is simply uncountenanceable, and I don’t even care whether that’s a real word or not. I refuse to countenance it, anyway.

First thing my son (who had just turned seven) said after we parted with my mother last year: "I hope to see her again."…

Tom Semmens

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:30:30 +1200

Water ferries are incredibly Green compared to buses or even trains, because they use the sea as a road and can use diesel-electric drive really efficiently as they don't have to stop and start like land vehicles, they just throttle up and slow down to and from the wharf.

Heck,…

Paul Campbell

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:24:10 +1200

Yeah pedestrians get a real bum steer here – partly I think it's our reliance on give way signs to do what in the US they would use a stop sign for.

In California there are pedestrian crossings everywhere – and i mean EVERYWHERE – even if they're not marked…

Robyn Gallagher

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:23:09 +1200

That was A.R.D. Fairburn, the Devonport dweller! I believe the house in which he wrote that line is currently for sale. There are still ferries at the bottom of the garden, although a pretty crap ferry terminal.

This is the house in question, on the corner of Mays St and King…

Jolisa

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:18:48 +1200

I have fond memories of that old terminal too – it did everything you need a terminal to do – and riding the old wooden ferry back and forth all afternoon without getting off.

Tom, between your drunken rants and my burbling blogs, we can totally make it happen. Vaporetti,…

Carol Stewart

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:16:24 +1200

It was a while ago now that I lived in Auckland with a kayak and enough leisure time to enjoy it – around 1990-92. It was great fun to ride the tides around – I discovered that on a rising tide you could paddle almost all the way to Albany!…

Tom Semmens

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:13:54 +1200

Arrrgh... One of my soap box rants when I've had a few is my vast plan for a far, far cheaper public transport system based on the Waitemata and Manakau harbours... If we built the canal along PORTAGE ROAD and through the CANAL RESERVE then you could in theory travel…

Carol Stewart

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:10:35 +1200

It certainly is a crap ferry terminal – I preferred the old one which was refreshingly scuzzy and dilapidated and generally un-Devonport. The ferries are a great way to get around Auckland, for those who are lucky enough to live and work near ferry terminals.
The North Shore has certainly…

Jolisa

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:08:41 +1200

Would be a great way to get to work, as long as you didn't have to wear your best clothes...

In the Distant Future, you'll be able to bowl up to work in your togs (undies, undies, togs) because clothes will be provided for you.

That, or truly waterproof backpacks.

Jolisa

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:07:14 +1200

And you're right, Carol, it was a gracious city – or at least it felt like one. Not so long ago. When were you kayaking around the waterfront? It must completely change your perspective on a city to actually do it; it has changed mine merely to imagine it.

richard

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:01:48 +1200

I had momentary visions of a city where people commuted to work via a lazy river, but I guess the problem with that is that water only flows down hill. Perhaps you could accomplish the return journey via a system of locks?

And the express lane would resemble a log…

Jolisa

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:59:17 +1200

That was A.R.D. Fairburn, the Devonport dweller! I believe the house in which he wrote that line is currently for sale. There are still ferries at the bottom of the garden, although a pretty crap ferry terminal.

Carol Stewart

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:43:51 +1200

When I lived in Auckland, I had a sea kayak and would tow it down to the local beach (Cheltenham) and head out to Rangitoto. And I'd paddle to visit friends in St Heliers. I really did see the city in terms of its waterways.
I forget which writer described…

Tim Welch

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:22:38 +1200

Those pictures of Cheonggyecheon are amazing. What a good idea doing the same to Queen St... It is rather soul-less at present.

Public Address

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:22:38 +1200

Discussion from blog post.