I spent from Saturday to Wednesday in Hamilton this week at the LIANZA conference. Conference started early Sunday arvo, but due to the tediousness of air travel between regional centres, me and the rest of the Massey contingent left Saturday lunchtime. However apart a dull two hours in Auckland airport, I can't complain because we really made the most of our time in the Tron before conference.
We went to an Italian restaurant, Adriana's (so good, we went again on Monday night). Then three of us went to the Lido to see Behind the Candelabra. Really good acting, amazing bling-y sets. I did hope that they would show Liberace in his infamous stars and stripes hotpants, but sadly not. Maybe Michael Douglas put his foot down! Rob Lowe was also born for the role of the plastic surgeon/drug dealer.
Sunday morning I walked along the river walkway to the next bridge and back through various pretty parks. Next was the Art Gallery, and the Waikato Museum. The Waikato Museum had an exhibition about the Big Muffin Serious Band! My love for the BMSB is either the zenith or nadir of my fondness for silly music. A punk version of 'Dream a little dream of me', a Scottish take on 'Johnny Be Goode' (Jimmy Be Goode, natch, who plays the ukelele). Love. Lunch at a cafe featured in the museum's coffee exhibition. And we discovered a second-hand bookshop, Browsers, that stays open til 9.30 pm 7 days a week!
So I've been buying books lately. I usually try and avoid this, for both space and money reasons, but I still have a house full of the things. I have a huge urge to buy Doctor Sleep which I'm currently resisting. (This may not last - everyone seems to be raving about it.) The library does have copies, but I dread to think how many holds are on it. Probably not the 1900+ that are on The Luminaries in Auckland. I bought Inequality: A New Zealand crisis after listening to Max Rashbrooke, one of the authors/editors, give a talk out at Massey. Unbelievably, Massey has had copies on order since July!
At Browsers, I bought 4 books: The Penguin Book of Love Poetry, edited by Jon Stallworthy; Pyrates, by George MacDonald Fraser; The English Monster, by Lloyd Shepherd; and The History of Myddle, by Richard Gough.
Pyrates and The Penguin book of love poetry are replacement books - in both cases I lent them out and lost contact with the borrowers. I haven't read MacDonald Fraser's other books, but Pyrates is hilarious. I first discovered it at the Lower Hutt Public Library as a teen. It's set in the fantasy pirate age of Errol Flynn movies and here is a random quotation:
Avery's head swam, and he could not repress a ruptured squawk as he conned the lead paragraph: "Buccaneering and official naval circles were rocked from truck to keelson last week by the dastardly defection..." there it was, the lying tale of his supposed betrayal...the loss of the crown, Vanity's abduction, the breakfast menu for the fatal day... but not a word of his defiance when they fed him to the sharks.
I'm never lending it again.
