Some time ago I found an old wiro notebook in a drawer. A scruffy wiro bound notebook with a photo of 2 men in a kayak with a bear on the front cover. In that notebook I found terrible sketches drawn in pencil made while travelling in 1991. One sketch leapt out at me. It was a rough pencil sketch of Mt Ararat from a backpacking trip to eastern Turkey. The sketch really surprised me – it was a very basic pencil sketch, drawn using a .5mm technical pencil on a cheap notepad. The sketch is just black and white… To my surprise the sounds and smells of the day came flooding back. Meeting some Kurdish goat herders and their flock near the base of Mt Ararat, about 10km from the Iranian border on a bright sunny but cool, alpine day. Along with memories of driving across the mountain steppe in an old Renault 19 and the smells of chai and coffee in a Doğubayazıt pasta solunu. It all came back come flooding back! Why did it evoke such vivid memories? I’m not really sure to be honest. Maybe t...
It seems way, way, to early for Christmas but the annual Santa Parade took place in Auckland yesterday. We jostled with our 3 for position amongst thousands of others in the baking afternoon sun.
Many will wake up today with sunburned shoulders, fathers across the city will wake up with sore shoulders from carrying their children, and also with a distinct twitching feeling in their back pockets for the shopping carnage that is to come.
All the usual suspects on show, the Santa float of course, reindeer, snow men etc (never looking out of place at all in the NZ summer), highland pipe bands, clowns, acrobats and some distinctly NZ content, such as kapa haka and a very large inflatable kiwi...
Comments