New Zealand Vacation

Tuesday, February 6:
Christchurch

Well, I may have ignored my e-mail, but Folk Project business followed me to NZ. George let me know of some Minstrel performers who were remiss in sending him publicity material, and I e-mailed them the appropriate threats if they didn’t get on the ball. (Had all their e-addresses in my newly re-charged Palm.)

Our 10:00 AM wake up was the first late morning of our trip. We wandered out to Christchurch Centre to look at the town. Took in an unremarkable (all things being relative) cathedral and a very nice botanical garden. The garden boasted, among other things a couple of pretty full-grown sequoias. (How long ago had they been transplanted, I wonder?) We took a canoe ride through the gardens and caught the last hour or so of open hours of a respectable science and natural history museum.

I was sort of pooped by the time we got back, but recharged by a great BBQ with a whole house full of Scots. Davy’s brother and sister in law were visiting from Scotland, and they are all a bunch of jesters and wise-crackers. Besides which, I love the way they talk; I could listen to a Scotsman read the telephone book.

The day wasn’t done. Jenny went to a play downtown, and I went to a session at an Irish pub in center city. There were a bunch of players I had met in Waihi Bush plus locals: 15 or so. A woman named Jo held forth as sort of Mistress of Session. It was difficult to argue with her accordion. The evening was in full swing when I got there, with fiddle tunes, mostly familiar to me. I was unable to keep up on the concertina, and switched off to guitar. Jenny joined us after the play, but by that time, the tunes, which she would have really enjoyed, had migrated to songs, with '60s & '70s American pop and folk comprising most of the repertoire. Randall, a really fine fiddler from Waihi Bush told me that the pub had hired a band for the evening, that they paid off and told to go home because the session was such a hit with the crowd. There was a retirement party for someone in a group of traveling nurses that came up to us and told us that they couldn’t have had a better time if they had hired a band.