Signposts - a blog about Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

During the REAL New Zealand Festival, which runs alongside Rugby World Cup 2011, our Jock is roaming the country and blogging about it for the REAL New Zealand Festival Insider blog.

It is strangely revealing that of all the Fanzones and REAL New Zealand Festival offerings that I have visited over the past month, only in Christchurch, city of quakes, city without World Cup games, have I had a really good belly laugh.

There were some nice cartoons at the Rugby Museum in Palmerston North; there are some very funny, but familiar, Billy T. James clips in the nzonscreen containers; but elsewhere it has been serious stuff. Perhaps our earnest commitment to showing off our best, or the strain of trying unsuccessfully to win for 20 years, or even the example of Graham Henry’s grim visage, have meant that rugby has not been a laughing matter. But in Christchurch the pain has been so great, that they have learnt to laugh through it all.

The Outwits

Over the last two nights I have seen two very funny shows at the events zone in North Hagley Park. The first was ‘The Complete History of World Rugby (Abridged)’ played out on the rugby pitch at the Fanzone. ‘Played’ because the three actors in The Outwits who came out to perform the show in their stripped jerseys began by drawing the analogy between acting and playing footie – even to pointing out the fiercesome trio in ‘the front row’ (of whom, I must admit, I was one!).

The performance proceeded at great pace and energy through a series of skits which very crudely and amusingly gave us a potted (or potty) history of the game. There was, as might be expected, plenty of ‘wind and ball’ humour, so us rugby blokes particularly enjoyed show, but there were plenty of women guffawing in the audience when I went. It was just so slick and inventive. I loved one bit where David Attenborough, in his finest BBC voice, introduces the wild animals who inhabit the rugby fields – the Puma who feeds on meat in the Andes, the Wallaby considered a pest in New Zealand, the Springbok who was ‘colour-blind’. There was some lusty vocal items – a rap song explaining the difference between a ruck and a maul (which taught my neighbour something she had not known); and a very funny Gilbert and Sullivan song about the tragedy of Buck Shelford’s testicle in the test against France and featuring a huge testicle…

Read more on the Real NZ Festival blog…

During the REAL New Zealand Festival, which runs alongside Rugby World Cup 2011, our Jock is roaming the country and blogging about it for the REAL New Zealand Festival Insider blog.

Scaffolding

The sun was out; the new leaves on the oaks were a brilliant green; and the huge chestnut trees were covered in tufts of white flowers. Christchurch’s Hagley Park in the spring is a glorious place and it brought back childhood memories – playing footie on frosty fields, hitting golf balls with my grandfather. All comfortingly familiar.

Then things started to change. Victoria Lake, where I used to sail model boats, was empty of water – just mounds of fresh earth. I wandered into my old school. The big grass square in the middle of the quad – called ‘Upper’ in my day – looked very much a ‘Downer’ with a line of prefabs. Scaffolding clothed the old stone buildings in each corner.

More scaffolding

I turned the corner to the Arts Centre, the old university buildings where I used to go visit my Dad. The round turret was sitting on the ground; the great hall where I had sat so many exams was being held up by a huge steel frame. The whole area was enclosed by a metal fence which had been cleverly used to host the Black Boots Legends exhibition. The place was deserted – no Japanese tourists, no trams.

Down Worcester Street, past the new Art Gallery, such a symbol of human defiance in the harsh days after 22 February – that too was deserted; and still not open for exhibitions. I pressed my nose up against the barrier marked by ‘Extreme Danger Keep Out’ signs. I could just make out the rubble of the cathedral, where I had spent hours listening to sermons and singing. Even the statue to Robert Falcon Scott, a childhood hero of the British Empire, was gone – nothing but an empty plinth. I passed the old Children’s Library, where I first developed a passion for reading. The bulldozers were there, and most of the building had become brick rubble on the ground…

Read more on the Real NZ Festival blog…

During the REAL New Zealand Festival, which runs alongside Rugby World Cup 2011, our Jock is roaming the country and blogging about it for the REAL New Zealand Festival Insider blog.

About four years ago I received an email out of the blue from an English photographer, David Matches. He said that he had read what I had written about rugby in New Zealand and was interested in exploring it as a photographic subject. Would I like to meet him for coffee? I agreed, and over the trim flat whites he explained his idea. He wanted to photograph footie players immediately after they came off the field to capture by their expression and demeanour what the game had meant to them. He explained that the idea came from a Dutch photographer, Rineke Dykstra, who had photographed new mothers just after they’d given birth.

Wellington No 8, 31 caps, Wellington 8 v Avalon 10

At the time I was involved with the New Zealand Portrait Gallery. I knew that under the inspired leadership of its director, Avenal McKinnon, and its programmer, Keith Ovenden, the gallery was trying to broaden the concept of portraiture – away from the formal oils of the rich and famous towards images of ordinary people in a range of activities. David Matches’ idea fitted this vision perfectly; and of course there was a World Cup coming up. I put him in touch with Avenal; and with an awful lot of hard work and help from others, the two did the rest.

Four years later and David Matches’ exhibition, The Match, is up in full glory at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery, Shed 11, on the Wellington waterfront. It is worth the wait. You enter a room of 100 large vertical images of rugby players. They are facing the camera. Most are taken from the waist up. The backdrop is plain white, which brings into relief the colour of their club jerseys which they all are wearing. Without exception they are carrying the scars of battle – mud stains, bloody cuts to lips or cheeks, large patches of sweat. Apart from a couple, all are solo portraits. They look strangely satisfied, but notably grim – there is hardly a smile among them. The catalogue tells us their club, position on the field, their number of caps, the date and the score – but not their name…

Read more on the Real NZ Festival blog…

During the REAL New Zealand Festival, which runs alongside Rugby World Cup 2011, our Jock is roaming the country and blogging about it for the REAL New Zealand Festival Insider blog.

Hollie Smith

Saturday was cold in Wellington, bitterly cold with winds straight off the Antarctic. Only in Wellington on a bad day – or Invercargill – can you feel this cold. I wandered down to the Courtenay Place Fanzone to hear Hollie Smith. She began by apologising for the weather. There were no more than 5o people huddling in doorways listening to her powerful voice. It was not a good start to Wellington’s big quarter final weekend.

The liveliest places, because they were the warmest, were the pubs - the Welsh Dragon Bar in Courtenay Place splendid with its red doors, Molly Malone’s all decked out in green, but even the Irish fans inside were not in quite such a jovial voice as I had heard in Rotorua. Perhaps they knew what was coming.

Plenty of green, and some red, at the stadium

I had backed the Irish, partly because I liked the fact that the Irish rugby team are a united Ireland team and partly because as one Kiwi mentioned to me, ‘All of us have some Irish in us, don’t we?’ Certainly in the 19th century about 20% of the immigrants from the old world were from Ireland; while under 1% were Welsh. The game was tight, competitive and enjoyable; but it was cold.

Where to watch the next game - endure the freeze and watch it on the big screen in the Fanzone beside the changing lights of illuma; or endure the crush of bodies and try to watch in a pub? In the end we made our way to the town hall where there was no alcohol, but warm coffee and a big screen…

Read more on the Real NZ Festival blog…

During the REAL New Zealand Festival, which runs alongside Rugby World Cup 2011, our Jock is roaming the country and blogging about it for the REAL New Zealand Festival Insider blog.

A moment of panic as I woke. Was I late? I lent over to flick on the torch. Yes, time to get up. I went to the bathroom and relaxed for a few precious seconds in the warm even flow of the satin-jet shower head while enjoying the Dave Kent poster on the wall. I raced to the kitchen and put some toast in the toaster. Damn! I knocked the tin of muesli on the floor. No worries. The neat dust-pan and broom did the job. Just time for a quick minute to check the e-mails while I sat on my oh-so-comfy Formway chair. Then the taxi was there – I was off again on the REAL New Zealand Festival road trip.

What made this scenario survivable was that all the items I encountered on this early morning journey worked and were well-designed; and all, believe it or not, were creations of graduates from the Massey University College of Creative Arts or its predecessors.

Old School New School at Massey

To mark the 125th anniversary of the establishment of Wellington’s first School of Design under Arthur Riley in 1886, Massey and the REAL New Zealand Festival have combined to put together a fascinating exhibition in the main hall of the old museum building at Buckle Street, Wellington.

‘Old School New School’ surveys the work of the school’s graduates. It is surprisingly wide-ranging. In some ways the most intriguing aspect are those pieces of industrial design which surround us everyday and make our early morning panics survivable - torches, toasters, chairs…

Read more on the Real NZ Festival blog…