The Bun Launch

Beattie's Book Blog has done me proud, not only generously reviewing the book but running an extensive blog on the launch at Turnbull House, including three images of people eating and talking and enduring me talking. Guest speaker the food writer David Burton was amusing on the way we used to eat, at the Jolly Frog in Wellington and Hi Diddle Griddle in Auckland. If you want to know what he said, what I said, who was there, what food was on offer, check out Beattie's Blog or email me for the full blog.

The Communion of the Easter Bun-Rabbit

Several already cannot come to the launch at Turnbull House, Saturday, 22 November, 3pm. Fiona Kidman is in Vietnam, Kathie Webber is trying to save the Buckinghamshire Library, Roger Hall is climbing the Pyramids, Galya and Bob Brockie are in Oz, Euan McQueen is in the Wairarapa, Katherine Lissienko is hosting her lad’s birthday in Auckland, Chris Finlayson is in Kaikoura, my dear brother John is in Fiji. Others may be recuperating from a new virus -- Kiwi culinary history exhaustion. I didn’t know when I started this book that I was to be the sixth cab off the Kiwi culinary heritage rank this year. Tony Simpson has reprinted his awesome A Distant Feast, Alexa Johnston Ladies, A Plate, Kate Fraser’s Cooking Times, Helen Leach The Pavlova Story, and David Veart First Catch Your Weka. I do offer a point of difference a friend identified – I offer a lot more recipes than most of the others. There is also sometimes an advantage in being last cab off the rank. Look at the Maori Party! Sorry, Helen, I miss you too.

Anyway, the other point of difference is that my book is primarily a celebration of food and loved ones, most notably my brother Michael, my oldest and dearest friend, who cannot be with us because he is not well. My formative bread making years were shared with him, and of course our Mum’s overwhelming provisioning, the subject of the first chapter, The Mum of Plenty Baking. Later Mike and I shared poker and peanuts, golf and beer barns, a Cab Sav McGill 76, even the kava he got a taste for in Fiji, where no doubt my youngest brother John is developing that taste right now.

Other celebrated folk are

Graham Kerr, whose leftovers I had access to courtesy of some lasses who lived in the same complex in the 60s

Fellow student flatters such as Win McLean and Roger Hall and Helen Faville

That wonderful Aussie actor Kenneth J Warren, who introduced me to Tom Ugly’s Rice and Kangaroo Tail consommé

English cookery editor Kathie Webber, who educated me, to the degree I could manage, new experiences like snail and quail and suchlike

A wonderful Armenian nun in Bethlehem who taught me about food and love

Graham Cooper, who taught me about food and love too

Railway guards, who taught me where the best spots were for paua, rock oysters and figs, and inspired my professional dedication to Kiwiana (I claim first use of the word, in my first slang book, along with leather ladies and underground mutton – Harry Orsman loved those two)

Harry Seresin, godfather to my daughter and café culture godfather to the nation

The haggis and malt whisky guests, including the dear cover lady Dinah Priestley who revealed my Protestant relations and that bread-making was in her family, and also

Ikar Lissienko, who claimed he was asked to deliver the address to my hagii (thanks, Jeanie Douche for the plural of haggis) because he was Russian, whose family provide a slew of authentic Russian recipes

David Burton, whom I knew when he was the guy at the Evening Post who assisted the continuous overseas press reports off the wire and into the bin, who is now our leading food writer/historian, if Tony will allow me to say that based on David’s astonishing output, several columns a week (I know how hard that is) and books and his continued practising of his preaching.

Finally, my dear sister and other cousin Audrey on the other paternal side and also on the cover with Dinah and moi, who provided me with the critical books and attendant info that prove we are bakers on both sides of the family. Oh, yes, my daughter Kate took the cover photo. All in the family.

Mock Funeral Memorial

Paul Madgwick is more than the handout kind of journalist so familiar these days. Not only has he handsomely reviewed my new novel The Mock Funeral, he has researched the life after the sedition trial of the priest Father Larkin and in the Hokitika Guardian newspaper for 20 October last has noted that the 'Manchester martyrs' that initiate my story have not only been remembered ever since in Ireland, but in the last few months the Irish parliament has had the long-held desire to bring their remains back from Manchester raised and the government has committed to 'bring home the patriots'. This is engaged journalism. Take note those metropolitans who tell me they have their Christmas books for review, like my story was of no consequence. Maybe I am paranoid, but I cannot help noticing that certain academic writers attract pages of plugs. Oh well, I cannot change my journalistic spots, nor would I wish to. I am proud to be in the company of the likes of Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Dickens, Norman Mailer and Paul Madgwick.

Mock launch with song and drum

The Mock Funeral was launched 25 October at the National Irish Feis at Kapiti College with song and drum. Guest speaker, Paekakariki poet Michael O'Leary, enjoyed impromptu accompaniment from Phil O'Connell on bodhran, the amazing Irish finger drum, but not before the launch was held up while a hair dryer warmed the drum skin to finger tapping elasticity. Michael sang 'Skibbereen' and Phil then demonstrated the bodhran's range, his wooden knuckles employed on the skin as he sang an Irish song, then turning the drum on its side and beating the wooden skittle against the wooden surface, making the instrument its own orchestral accompaniment for his traditional singing. This was folk music at its most potent and primeval, foot-tapping good. I asked Phil what they did in the days before hair dryers. The obvious answer, an open fire warmed the skin. No peat fires available, so you adapt, eh? It looks like one of those crossed wooden trays you sift dirt in, and apparently that is what the instrument was adapted from, whatever was to hand in the 'dirt'poor Irish bogs. Phil of course has played his drum in the H Block and Armagh protest Irish band Ourselves Alone (Sinn Fein in Gaelic)for 30 years.He has even, he told me, played with the fellow from the Chieftains, whose DVD is an incredible bargain for $10 at the Warehouse. Slainthe!

Scuse me while I kiss the sky

Yes, Stephen, Chris, Chris (two Chrises) and whoever
First Bob Jones in his column in the DomPost calmed me down from my rancour about the media ignoring me yet again, then watching DVD of Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock balanced things out. Voodoo Child an incredible 15 or so minutes segueing into the absolutely astonishing Star Spangled Banner delivered like an airborn attack on a Vietnamese village, totally virtuoso, and just about as savage as anything out of popular music. His body language seemed mild though, all that peace and rainbows stuff. What a guy! Not long after Woodstock I saw his last performance, which those of you who have read my Treadmill Tapes know about, but for the guy who has not, I was at Ronnie Scotts impromptu late at night, say midnight, after Eric Burdon and War, Jimi strolls on to empty stage, about three of us in the audience, does his thing, goes home and dies accidentally. I was a street away and read the headline at Shepherds Bush tube. I am so glad Buddha sticks were too strong for my tummy.
This is straying a little from my Irish NZ novel gig tomorrow, but I have to do something to get a response to my blogs. Maybe Jimi was a black Irishman, like Phil Lynott? After all, Shakespeare has been said by some Irish to be of that persuasion. Scuse me while I kiss the sky.

Irish launch date

The launch of my Irish novel at Kapiti College is on Saturday 25 October, but my blog lists American date time, the day before in the case of my just listed blog about my ancestral Irish eyes smiling. My web consultant will be looking into this anomaly and aiming to change to real south Pacific time. American hegemony will not triumph!

Irish origins

My Irish ancestral eyes are smiling, for in the course of launching my Irish West Coast goldfields 1868 era novel The Mock Funeral, I have been checking out my Irish ancestors. The results are on show at my launch tomorrow at the Kapiti College canteen at 4pm, in the Irish National Feis weekend there. While this may be merely personal history, it has some interesting wider public value. For instance, seeing for the first time the paybook of the drummer boy born in Ennis, County Clare, at my Paekakariki cousin Audrey's house, I realised why the Scots and Irish were so closely tied in my family and in our society. This lad of 12 or so was my great-grandfather, his father serving in the area, for there was no other work for a poor man in Scotland but to join the British army. The lad was bought out of the army for a harsh 20 pounds redemption and they came to New Zealand, where the father soon died and the 16-year-old became a baker, then mayor of Auckland. But wait, as Suzanne would say, there's more. He was the first mayor in chains to sire a child and his councillors in 1886 sang him a ditty. He responded with a 22-line variation on 'To Be or Not to Be' and then sang back to them. All this came from the newspapers via an Auckland cousin Bryan, aged 79, whom I will meet soon for first time. Between Audrey, Bryan and my father, and the prompting of this novel of the first major Irish impact on New Zealand, I discover the major impact of Irish on me -- I am half-Irish,not the quarter previously thought. This weekend there are genealogical seminars also at Kapiti, with Fair Go's Kevin Milne among those taking part. Who knows what folk will discover? It is truly exciting to discover a rich ancestral landscape. It does need elbow grease, and I am fortunate to have three major contributors and now I have joined their dots and invite you if you are in the area to come celebrate with a glass and a chat. Slainthe!

Blogging intent

Hi Guys
I have been reeducated in blogging and will now try and keep them coming, after a lasped year. Usually I expend my thoughts in email responses, and I am concluding that some are worth blogging out to the world wide web. Take today. Two emails, from Graham Coe, National Library, and Fiona Kidman, writer. Neither can make it to launch of my Irish riots novel (see previous blog announcement of The Mock Funeral). Both are out of the rea, Graham in Germany. He wants to know if as a small publisher I would have any input into his report to NZ Government on the Frankfurt Book Fair. Do I what? Oh yes.
I think the NZ Govt could sponsor a booth or stall at the FBF and feature all us small publishers, demonstrating to the world the wealth of publishing in this ocuntry, currently unknown because of cost. I spent a small fortune on the New York Library book fair this year to feature one title, The Mock Funeral. My thinking was that all those Irish New Yorkers would respond to one of the main characters in the novel, the New York Irish editor who is tried for sedition here, after being tried for treason in Australia for provoking the Eureka Stockade incident. Potent stuff.
I could not afford any other displays of the book.
The response to Fiona was that I was enjoying very much her memoirs 'At the End of Darwin Road' because it is a powerful reminder of the male authority fascists we left behind when the feminist charge came in the 70s, Fiona prominent. She was a pioneer, putting up with headmaster, doctor, even shamefully a writer, and her own FEMALE library boss giving her a hard time for not being at home with the kids like a good suburban mum. Then there is the story about her husband a Maori being called a Spaniard by her relations. We had that dark rumour in our family of a Spanish relation. Bollocky nonsense. Fiona and my novel inspired me to check out my Irish connections and lo and behold, I am half Irish, not the quarter previously thought.This presetns a challenge to my Scottish emphaisis. I haev the McGill tartan, cost a pretty penny to be made into a kilt. What about the Irish? Well, at least I have written now twice about the Irish in NZ. The attraction of doing so I can now regard as an inherited disposition. I pursue that thought with my upcoming food memoirs, where I claim I am what I cook. More on that after the Irish noel is launched at the national Irish feis come Labour Weekend, at Kapiti College. Slainthe!

Mock Funeral

I launch my fact-based novel 'The Mock Funeral' about the Irish Riots on the Goldfields of New Zealand in 1868, at the National Irish Feis or festival at Kapiti College canteen this Labour Weekend Saturday at 4pm. Come along if you are in the area and enjoy Irish dancing and singing and then the only drinks available (yes, we have permission to serve alcohol at the launch at the college). The novel follows the incendiary several months from the mock funeral, when around 1000 Irish iners amrched behind a priest and three coffins to commemorate the hanging of three Fenian patriots in Manchester the previous year, through the sectarian clashes on the goldfields and the sending in of troops by the new Governor Bowen, following death threats to himself and other officials, to the trial by the top New Zealand judge of the priest and editor of an Irish patriotic newspaper. In the midst of this turmoil two Anglo Irish agents are seeking to identify those planing the assassination of the Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria's second son, due in Hokitika. The story is told from the perspective of a young journalist keen to make his name by immersing himself in the Irish goldfields community.