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...
Autumn is almost over down here. At Victoria park, the cricket pitches have well and truly gone and the rugby posts have gone in.
Autumn hits some parts of Auckland harder than others with most streets lined with evergreen native trees, but others like Victoria Park and Franklin Road are lined with enormous deciduous Plane Trees so when the temperature drops, so do millions of leaves leaving a crunchy rusty golden carpet over everything.
It's already snowing in the South Island and in a few days winter will officially be here.
Autumn does have advantages though - it's apple season. You can't beat crunching into a crisp NZ apple like these juicy new Pacific Rose and Mahana Reds...
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