Available Light

We spent much of the weekend sitting in the car, me driving because Clemency is not confident about towing the caravan. We led a quiet day in St. Michael's Clyde, where we spent the night, then participated in a confirmation in Wanaka, and a lunch in Tarras. The weather was clear and still and warm and sitting beside each other as we drove past the lakes and rivers and tawny paddocks was about the most appropriate thing to be doing, because 40 years ago today we were married, and spent the fortnight afterwards traveling these very roads in our 1962 Volkswagen Kombi. The people of the Upper Clutha parish treated us today with the most extraordinary generosity and kindness. Clemency and I exchanged some small but significant things and our children gave us gifts which showed a great deal of care and thought and planning, including a USB drive containing 40 pieces of music our children knew and remembered from their childhoods, or that they knew one or both of us responded to. So...

It's Valentine's Day. It's also Clemency's 64th birthday, so I got up early, cooked her the breakfast she wanted, and had the appropriate Beatles' song playing when she sat down at the table. She opened her presents and we skyped to allow Noah to help her blow out the candles on her birthday scone. Later this year we will celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary, which means that we have been together for 44 years. She was in my English 3 class at Canterbury University in 1972. I had noticed her, of course; she was so beautiful how could I not? But I was navigating other waters for most of the year, as was she. Around September/October exams loomed and most students stopped whatever it was they were occupying themselves with and began to study in earnest. We all spent the  most part of most days sitting at two seater desks in little cubicles dotted around the creaking three floors of the old townsite library. We arrived early and stayed all day and i...

  Fence, Samos  Samos Monastery When we arrived at the monastery of Samos we took the 3  euro tour, which was money well spent. A young woman showed us around the five storied cloister and the huge chapel with its statuary and relics and vast spaces. At the end a little monk in his Benedictine habit admired my staff, joking that it looked like a bishop´s crozier. I then showed him a photo of myself in the full rig, looking very episcopal indeed. "Oh", he said in Spanish, "you are a bishop! And you", he said, turning to Clemency, without the slightest hint of embarrassment, "you are the bishop´s amiga?" His reading of the situation was plain: some foreign bishop touring the world with his floozie. I responded quickly " ¡Oh no no no! Yo soy protestante! Esta es mi esposa !" and we laughed it off, but I was very surprised at his lack of surprise. It set me thinking for the rest of the day about marriage. Later we checked into the alberg...