April - May 2010

April began with my last day working at the Social Services Centre on Buffalo Beach Road. I had rented a room there for just over 6 years since we arrived here in Whitianga. They had been a lovely group of people to work with, but as the centre will soon be moving close to the school it was time for me to move on too. Rooms became available at the health shop in town, Health 2000 and so I grabbed that opportunity. The move went well with kind help from people at Social Services shifting my heavy hydraulic treatment bench. I now have 2 adjoining rooms: The first is an office where I can take people’s details and explain the treatment to them. The second room is where I treat and has a warmer feel to it, with some lovely photo collages (made by Cara) and other artwork on the walls, relaxing music playing and of course my treatment table. Allayne (the owner of the shop), Fiona & Pauline who work there have all been very helpful at settling me in, answering calls and making appointments for me. Since I moved, my business has definitely increased which I think is due to a combination of 3 things: The letter I sent out saying that I was moving reminded people that they needed to see me; I’m now in the centre of town which is more convenient; The shop attracts health-conscious customers, who think about coming for treatment from me too. Seems like it’s a good move for me.

The move happened over Easter weekend, but we still found time for some family Easter fun. This year Cara hid eggs round our garden because she didn’t think we were very imaginative or good at it. She really enjoyed watching us looking for the chocolate eggs. Alistair found more than I did, but my excuse is that I couldn’t eat the eggs because I have found that I’m intolerant of soya and most chocolate and ice cream contains soya lecithin. They seem to think that I have a tendency to just have a “man look” for things these days.

The next weekend was the long-awaited MEDANZ (Middle Eastern Dance Association New Zealand) festival in Tauranga. There were so many workshops I wanted to do that I’d booked onto 8 which meant dancing from 8.30am until 5.15pm on Saturday and Sunday with only 15 minute breaks in between classes. Sadly, Iris (who used to teach evening dance classes in Whitianga) damaged both her ankles a week or so before the festival, so I ended up with a 2 hour break on each day to go out for food with Alistair. The workshops certainly stimulated my apetite! I learned some great exercises for using, developing and stretching dance muscles, experienced the awareness in movement of the Feldenkrais technique, enjoyed some Tahitian moves and got a taste of dancing with long poi. I am trying to find time to work on developing this for my clowning and have bought a dvd from www.homeofpoi.co.nz Watch this space. After a weekend of dancing I felt a lack in Whitianga now that there are no Middle Eastern dance classes, so I decided to be brave after 20 years of dancing and start teaching weekly classes. I’ve never liked the fact that it’s widely known as “belly dance” since I felt that the hips were the main movers. With my knowledge of Romany, Eastern European and now Pacific dance as well as Turkish, Armenian, Egyptian etc, I felt that “Middle Eastern” was too limiting a term for my dance classes and I now move my chest, shoulders, hands and belly as much as my hips so I decided to resign myself to using the popular term and advertised Belly Dance classes on Monday mornings at 8.45am at the Town Hall in Whitianga. I was really happy to get 4 brave women come along to the first class and I’ve had as many or more at classes since (except when we had a wether bomb and flooding), so I’m enjoying the exercise, music and chance to dance with others. An hour at my dance class is also a good warm up for the Zumba class which happens in the same room half an hour later. I’m getting fit with dance again and loving it! Cara is still coming to Zumba classes too and we enjoy exercising together, but I haven’t got her to come to my belly dance classes……yet.

We have had a couple of family trips. We drove down to Wanganui (about 8 hours each way) to visit my Great Aunt Cynthia and Great Uncle John and their/our family who live round Wanganui. It is sad in some ways that after 65 years of marriage, John and Cynthia are now living separately…..at the age of 91 Cynthia’s moved into a rest home, which is a much better for her as she is quite delicate physically. At 95, John’s long-term memory is great and he showed us old photos taken in India and Kenya in his youth, but he forgets more recent events. John is still happy living in their lovely home and it’s only a short distance for him to visit Cynthia which he remembers to do most days. We took Cynthia out for morning coffee (see gallery) and John for lunch and enjoyed spending time with each of them. We also had a lovely evening meal at cousin Louise and Steve’s home and the following day with cousin Nigel, Adaire and Chris as well at a restaurant in town (see Gallery). On the photo you can see that I’m having a hot flush! I don’t get many of them these thanks to sage tea, but wine seems to set me off.

Cara persuaded Alistair and I to take her to a matinee performance of “Spamalot” in Papakura near Auckland. This Monty Python inspired performance was really well done and got us all laughing and singing – don’t mention brave Sir Robin to me!

We also went to a wonderful matinee in Auckland for Alistair’s birthday when we saw and heard NZ soprano Dame Malvina Major singing with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. With no microphone she was still able to be heard clearly over the music of a full orchestra. It made me question my singing in our local choir, but I suppose that’s more for fun and community. We’ll be performing on Sunday 27th June and I’m singing soprano, alto, tenor and bass – no, not all at once. Back to Alistair’s birthday: we had booked as a birthday treat to fly to Auckland in a small plane from the airfield Whitianga, but the wind, rain and fog prevented that, so we got the shuttle bus instead. We did enjoy the ferry ride home from Auckland to Coromandel where we caught the Inter City bus back to Whitianga. It was a nice change not to have to drive over windy roads ourselves.

Autumn has definitely arrived with wind and rain, which is a shock after the long, hot and dry summer we’ve had. The cracks in our lawn have gone now with some rain that was needed by the earth. The ocean temperature has gone down to 18C so early May was my last time diving (at the Aldermen Islands) in a wetsuit for a while. My dive buddy, Vanessa and I went for a weekend diving on Pacific Hideaway liveaboard boat to the Poor Knight Islands north of Whangerei organised by our local dive shop, Dive HQ. This is a marine reserve and so there were large numbers of fish and particularly large snapper. I dived in my drysuit, which made doing 4 dives on Saturday easier and warmer. We had a relaxed time and were well catered for and looked after by Mark and Bruce onboard and Dania & James drove us to the boat in Tutukaka and back. The highlight for Vanessa & I was when we got down to a depth of 40 metres under Eastern Arch (see Gallery) in spooky dim light we saw our first bronze whaler shark. It was about 2 metres long and it was a great surprise as we’ve never seen sharks underwater while diving in NZ before, just in our tropical dive trips. The other divers were really jealous. Non-divers who I’ve told were more concerned about me, but I’ve never had any trouble from sharks I’ve dived with and they are beautiful movers underwater.