You hear that, Mr Andersen?

Diggin' your scene

I've had an idea, but I may need some help. I want... well, I guess, cliches, for want of a better term.

I was thinking that it might be interesting to run a game where the players get a limited hand of "complication" cards, that can be played to introduce twists into the game. I was thinking along anime lines (especially because I just finished reading a sourcebook on running shoujo, or "girl-oriented" anime), so the kinds of things I was thinking of were:

Rival Interferes! One of the characters' rivals (or possibly a new rival!) pops up and further complicates the current situation. Examples include Ranma's rivals in Ranma 1/2, or Team Rocket from Pokémon.

Pervert! Someone accidentally walks into the wrong changing rooms, or is looking at the wrong time when an errant gust of wind blows up a skirt. Again, Ranma 1/2 has a number of examples, as do things like Love Hina and Please, Teacher! - anything that has an easily embarassed male, pretty much. I guess it might include an actual "pervert" turning up, like the Classics teacher in Azumanga Daioh.

Flashback! One of the characters immediately gets to have a flashback to something appropriate from their history.

Falling Petals... Someone has to confess something - either something they did, or something they're feeling.

Run, It's The Fuzz! Someone in authority turns up at an inconvenient moment - the cops, a teacher, a lifeguard, or anyone who'll defuse the current conflict.

I was thinking that some of these might be marked as having to be played at the beginning of the scene - the "Pervert!" one, for example, since it requires some set-up to work, or "Falling Petals...". Some might have the option of being used as a scene-setter or as a complication - say, "Flashback!". And some are obviously complication-only - "Rival Interferes!".

I was thinking about ways to encourage people to use the cards to complicate their lives, and I thought that cards would have a number of points associated with them. A few that were definitely positive for the PCs might cost a point or two, but most of them would introduce a pool of points that the players could get by taking on board the complication - being the one doing the confession in "Falling Petals...", for example.

Anyway - any other thoughts about cliches or situations that might be useful? I was thinking that "Food!" might be one (either someone gets real hungry, or the scene is all about cooking or eating)? Yeah, I'm reaching a bit here... ;)

Another toonish vignette

This was my write-up of the session of Sorcerer that happened a fortnight ago. I feel I should point out that I normally play much more upbeat characters; I'm not sure what happened with this guy.

Anyway, I figure this is of limited interest, so I'm sticking it "below the fold", so to speak.

***

Excalibur gleamed on the grey tissue, black and deadly among the brushes and polishing rags. The bare lightbulb above the table shuddered slightly as a garbage truck rumbled past in the night; the dancing shadows made the gun seem to stir contentedly, like a viper dreaming in the last of the day's heat. Over at the counter, Danny poked doubtfully at the congealed beans, shrugged, and bought them over to the table with the last of the rolls he'd swiped from the staff canteen. Somewhere
below them, one of the other lodgers started picking at his guitar; a generous listener might recognise the tune as "House of the Rising Sun", weaving in and out of the traffic noise.

"Lost again. Just ain't no damn good at cards, I guess. I swear, that goddamn dog has gotta be cheatin' - ain't no way that you win that often without dealin' from the bottom of the deck. I catch him, and... and nuthin', I guess. He's got that cop in his pocket, Wes whats-his-name - Boss Pig'd probably get pissed if I wasted someone high-profile like Greystone. Dammit."

Danny stopped pushing the beans around his plate, and took a swig of beer - also compliments of his day job on the movie lot.

"So, what we got? There was Sancho the Lazy Cat - that was easy, just had to grab him off the street an' take him to that weird guy to do whatever the hell was going on behind that big safe door. And there was telling that guy, Home Plate or Home Star or somethin'... Home Run, yeah. Making sure him and his money guy understand that nuthin' goes on in this town that Boss Pig don't get a cut of. Y'know, name like that, I kinda expected a toon, but no, turns out it's just some sad ol' guy; I guess he might manage to pull somethin' with that Sunday-funnies crew he's got, but most likely they'll get grabbed knocking over a 7-11 or some weak-ass stunt like that. Still, they were smart enough not to mess with us, so I guess Boss Pig knows what he's doin'.

"Then there's that kid and the Roadrunner. What the hell's an eight-year old kid doin' with a toon? An' hanging out on Skid Row, no less. Crazy. It's gonna be trouble - knew that as soon as we saw how happy [Butler's Name] was. Been pissed at me since the first night I picked you up and wasted that guy for the boss..."

Danny unconsciously fingered the thick pink scars on his right hand. The burns had long since healed, and he had gotten everything he'd asked for - he was a movie star now, and one of Boss Pig's best enforcers. But sometimes, late at night, he remembered the smell - the dark charcoal smoke of the brazier, the sharp sweat of the guy on tied to the chair, the acrid burning hair and sickeningly succulent roast flesh as he scooped Excalibur off the glowing coals, the metalic gunpowder tang...

... been the ruin of many a poor boy...

Danny frowned and pushed the plate of beans away. He pulled his Camels from his shirt pocket, tapped one free... and pushed it back into place. He had to stretch them out, at least until next pay-day. Damn dog. He glanced back at Excalibur.

"Anyway, should have been easy, no matter what the damn butler thought. Just gotta ask around the bums on the Row - someone would have seen somethin', someone always sees somethin', and a girl with a toon ain't exactly inconspicuous. But, no, some drunk's got to get uppity, decide that you're his long-lost gun, and he's some sort of action hero. Who tries to grab a gun out of someone's damn hand? A crazy guy, that's who. That's the only reason he got the jump on me - too damn crazy.

"Then he tries to run off with you. That's how you really know he's crazy, 'cos if you have the gun, you don't gotta run - that's the whole point of guns. Dammit, he pissed me off; nearly got away too. Winged him with that trash-can lid, but I guess I wasn't thinking too clearly when I tackled him. Don't know why he didn't shoot me - looked like he was pulling the trigger. Man, that was the last straw - trying to shoot me with my own damn gun. My gun, dammit - mine, not his! He got what was comin' to him."

A gust from the street set the shirt hanging in the window swinging. Soaking it in cold salt water like his mother taught him had gotten rid of the worst of the stains, but there was the odd fleck of brown further up the sleeves that he'd missed.

"He got what was comin' to him."

The guitar and singer rose up over a lull in traffic.

... spend your life in sin and misery, at the House of the Rising Sun.

***

Couldn't remember the name of the crazy guy who tortured toons, or the name of the butler.

I was trying to think of a nice insulting name for ineffectual toons - "Sunday-funnies" was the best I could come up with. Other suggestions considered. :)

It's very first-draft, so be gentle. :) As is probably obvious, I'm not entirely sure how to do the soundtrack properly; I'm also not sure whether the that's the right way to finish. And "sickeningly succulent roast flesh" might be a bit too flowery - maybe coming up with a something that's more in keeping with how Danny might describe it might be a good idea. And the whole paragraph about Sancho the Lazy Cat and Home-Run is a little too Exposition-y... part of the problem is that I wrote it too long after the event, and so it's hard to remember details. Plus I wrote this pretty quickly. ;)

History never repeats...

One of the things that I miss about working for the university is that I don't have enough time to do some of the more obscure things that I used to do. For example, I used to read a few newsgroups - not many, but a few. Two of the ones that I miss most are rec.games.frp.advocacy, and soc.history.what-if.

The first, as I understand it, was established to be a "my game is better than your game" forum; but when I was reading it, it was a place where I got some really interesting and insightful views about the hobby - plus a number of radically odd-ball views that I might never have encountered, which I didn't agree with, but gave me a much broader picture of what people do with role-playing. I don't necessarily agree with the models they came up with, any more than I totally agree with the Forge models - but they gave me some useful tools and frameworks, a set of terms to explicitly hash out what I was thinking about in nebulous terms.

The second was just nifty. It was a newsgroup that specialised in counterfactuals, "What if this happened differently, or this never happened?" There were double-blind posts, written from the point of view of someone in an alternate history describing to their version of the newsgroup how a change to that alternate history's past could have resulted in our present-day (and often follow-up threads in the same style talking about how very unlikely it was that our present-day would ever come to pass). In fact, one of the reasons I started watching The West Wing was because there were posts written from the point of view of someone within that universe, talking about our politics seen through their version of the show - stuff about the actor who plays Hussein holding out for more money, and that's why we never saw him any more.

There was a whole lot of other stuff - there were great epics, stories that went on for tens of posts writing about a world where North America was the site of four or five countries, or where all of civilisation is destroyed save a bunch of South American bannana republics and a small industrialized democratic constitutional monarchy in the bottom of the South Pacific. (That's a really cool one, actually, though more science-fiction-y than others - the thread was called
Red Star: End of Days, and was a follow-on from Ad Astra -or- Red Stars, which was pretty cool in its own right.) They have Alien Space Bats (for when you want to put one implausible thing into the timeline and see how it plays out), and guidelines for what makes good alternate history; and some of the best, sharpest writing that I've read in a long time.

One of the reasons I like alternate history and counterfactuals is that it can give a deeper understanding of what actually happened, and can let people talk about why things happened one way instead of another - why the Maori were never going to be an iron-weilding industrialized nation, for example. (The iron deposits in NZ aren't suitable for Iron-Age smelters, unfortunately.) I'd love to have the time to go through the archives of the newsgroup, and pull out the awesome authors and threads that I know are lurking in there; and I'd like to have time to learn more history myself.

Maybe one day. One day, when I can actually stick to 40-hour weeks. ;)

In the middle of our street

I find thinking about the future a bit depressing. Not the future in the sense of the current apocalyptic vision of impending climatic doom - I'm fairly optimistic that either we'll find a solution, or I'll be killed early on in the cannibalistic frenzy for my succulent flesh. (Ditto the current social structure, for almost exactly the same reasons.) No, what I tend to avoid thinking about is retirement and saving.

That's not to say I don't save - I do. But I'm not making a serious effort to save, and I'm sorta aware that every dollar that I frivolously waste now is robbing Future Svend of many potential dollars. On the other hand, what has Future Svend done for me? Nothing, that's what! Take that, sucka!

In contrast, if I had a mortgage, I'd have a strong pressure to save, since it would be towards a debt I'd have now, rather than for some fuzzy potential future benefit. And there's the fact that house prices are only going to keep rising... What I should do is pick some typical numbers, and show myself how much renting and continuing to save for a deposit will cost me, compared with buying now - also taking into consideration how much house prices are likely to rise, I guess.

See? All this mental effort about stuff I really, really don't care about! This is time I could spend reading P.G. Wodehouse, or watching Due South, or studying the state of Europe just prior to the second world war, or learning to draw, or making cool cocktails! All I really want is somewhere convenient to put my stuff, and not be reduced to eating cat food when I stop working. Houses and money are that deadly mix of dull, necessary, and stressfully important. No wonder I prefer to ignore it.

Anyway, it is sadly true that not thinking about stressful things very rarely succeeds in actually banishing the stressful thing, so I guess it's a good thing that I'm talking to people who Know About Such Things. Hopefully I'll be able to set things up so I can get on with stuff that's interesting and useful to me, and the impact on my life will be limited to not buying anything that's not a business expense and living on rice and potatoes.

***

Of course, DVDs and movies are probably a business expense. Hooray for the entertainment industry! ;)

Here they come, just in time...

While I'm aware that there's a stereotype of bloggers as having severe mood swings, I'd like to point out that a bunch of stuff happened between my books turning up and yesterday's somewhat frustrated entry, so I'm not quite as mercurial as the entries may have made me appear. And being able to knock a couple of jobs off today has done a fair amount to restore my equilibrium.

I'm still looking forward to my upcoming brief stint of unemployment with anticipation, though - roll on Christmas, say I.

***

I wish, in an idle, not-willing-to-put-in-the-required-hard-work way, that I could draw. Yeah, that would be cool. It would at least give me something constructive to do in the long meetings where I'm basically sitting, staring out a (usually metaphorical) window. One of the things that made me think of this was reading "Hearts, Swords, Flowers" a couple of nights ago, which is a suppliment on running shoujo-style games in Big Eyes, Small Mouth. (Jenni will be happy to know that I spotted at least one reference to Angelic Layer.) It refers to a bunch of typical tropes from shoujo manga, and I thought that it would be nifty to make up a bunch of cards for each trope, as a creativity spur for this style of game. But I'd want to be able to draw a lot better than I can at the moment for that to happen.

I've thought about buying or getting out one of those "how to learn to draw" books, but I'd much rather buy a "how to wake up one day knowing how to draw" book. Anyone seen one of those? :)

On a related note, Megatokyo refers to a Powerpuff Girls (and Dexter, Boy Genius) manga. It's not a super-compelling, but it's kinda pretty - and I kinda presume that the Cartoon Network will sue it into the ground sooner or later. :)

***

If I were seriously considering buying the igloo house, I'd almost be compelled to buy a door from the Hidden Door Company. (Thanks to David for the link.)

Everything seems stupid

I thought I had just been overtired, so I made sure I got to bed early last night.

Well, at least I'm not as tired today. It's useful to be wide awake for a day as crappy as this one has been so far.

The most annoying thing, in a meta sense, is that I know that things have now built up to the point where stuff I'd normally just shrug off, like loud conversations in my room while I'm trying to work or the coke machine swallowing my money, are getting under my skin. I don't like being snappish and unreasonable. I might just stay at work until I'm fit for polite company; there's no reason to inflict this on my flatmates.

(The second most annoying thing is that some of the stuff that has happened could have been avoided if I didn't dislike complaining to people - the builders blocking the driveway this morning, for example. If I had re-parked and gone and found someone to move their car, I wouldn't have scraped paint off mine trying to turn the wrong way out of our garage. Don't worry, flatmates - our garage appears to be completely undamaged, and I managed to back all the way up the driveway without driving off the bank. And I was going to get the car touched up anyway.)

I suspect that it's not a good sign that I'm finding things this stressful this early in production, since we'll probably just see the pressure increase until the film is finished late next year. Now there's a cheering thought.

I'll try and think of something peppy and upbeat to write about later.

(The title is a quote from a track from Republica's second album, Speed Ballads - the track's called "Nothing's Feeling New". If you didn't know they'd done a second album, neither did I until I bought it; the only reason I have it is because I found it on sale while waiting in a train station in Norway. There, that's reasonably upbeat, right? :)

Back to work.

Oh joy, oh rapture unforseen!

My books have arrived!

Yes, 10 kilos of second-hand books, last sighted in a little Welsh border village in mid-August, have wended their weary way to Wellington! Huzzah! I would include a cute animated gif of me doing a happy-dance, except no such series of images exist - nor will they ever.

Erhm. Anyway, as I was saying - happiness and glee! :)

Also causing large surges in the cheerful-o-meter is that I popped into Moore WIlson's with Mum today, and got a bunch of the things on my list - no Parfait Armour, but I did get what claims to be a violets-flavoured liquer, which I regard as Very Intriguing Indeed. And also, they gave me a free turkey, which is handy for... eating... or... no, just for eating. Anyway, since it's on the family card, and the parents have an enormous oven suitable for turkeys, cooking it over there seems like the fairest solution - where "fair" means "Svend has a good chance of getting out of doing the dishes". :)

In other "finally got done" news, the money I've been trying to give my Dad for my grandfather's car has finally left my account. I can only hope that it actually went into his.

Now, all I need to do is tidy up my room, catch up on my sleep, and read some of these books that I've accumulated (and watch some of the DVDs I've bought), and then... well, it'll probably be sometime next year. :)

Viva la 10 kilos of unexpected cool stuff! :)

Let's rub noses

Mum is on the lookout for a property for me to buy. She helpfully sent me a link to this house, which is... well, let's include a picture for those who don't click on the link, shall we?

Hmm. There are a bunch of advantages to the place - double garage, two double bedrooms plus a single bedroom and conservatory - but... hmm. Maybe if it wasn't painted blue? No, I don't think that would help... :)

Where the fellas chew tabbacy

Popping bubblewrap is definitely relaxing, and perhaps even mildly addictive, for the person doing it; but it's pretty darn annoying for anyone in earshot. Maybe an analogy can be made for smoking - except for whole not-making-you-and-others-die thing - but that just makes me wonder what the bubble-wrap equivalent of a cigar is - popping a paper bag, maybe? (Is making bubbles out of gladwrap the equivalent of 'rollups'?)

I was thinking about smoking after hearing an Auckland publican saying on the news this morning that they had no problem with banning smoking inside, but they wanted clearing guidelines about how to provide a smoking area. It's weird - thinking about my friends, I'm hard-pressed to think of any smokers, but it's quite common among my eldest sisters friends and fairly common among my workmates. I wonder whether it's occupational - my sister is in the music industry, and work is the film industry.

(I've just realised that there's another bizarre pattern: inside the IT dept, only the wranglers smoke. None of the coders, support people, or systems guys smoke - in fact, when one of the wranglers made the transition to coding full-time, he gave up smoking. It's like there's some sort of curse that hangs over thae poor wranglers, to go along with the shift-work and being yelled at by Production when the renderwall isn't going fast enough late at night.)

I'm glad that smoking seems to be at a fairly low ebb among the people I know and like; ideally, it'd die out in the near future, like the custom of tipping your chamber-pot into the street did. Hmm - what would the smoking equivalent of indoor plumbing be? :)

***

And in an unnerving act of synchronicity, The Register is running an article on Scotland's complete ban on smoking in public places:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/10/scottish_smoking_ban/

Some notes about the funeral.

The funeral went well. I'm going to write to my sister who's overseas at the moment, so this may contain stuff not of interest to the general reader - bear with me. :) I'm also going to write as stuff occurs to me, so it may be a bit disjointed.

One of my aunties pointed out that it was only six weeks from when Grandma was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer to when she died. In many ways, it seems like it was a lot longer - probably because so much has happened since then.

When we went up on Wednesday, Grandma was in her coffin. Cloaks had been laid over it - red, black and white wool, flax, and one of kiwi feathers. A taiaha and patu sat on top, and before the funeral, Mum added a bird-of-paradise flower from the bush that was right outside Grandma's bedroom window - the stem was as long as the taiaha. A picture of her from two weeks ago sat on a table by the head of the coffin, next to a picture of Grandad; she looked a little gaunt, but cheerful.

Her extended family were there for the Rosary on Wednesday evening - children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, brothers, nieces and nephews, great-nieces and nephews, in-laws and partners, and people she'd grown up with. She had been born in Foxton, and lived most of her life there - though I know that she lived in Mt Vic during the war, in the same house that a friend of mine flatted in, near the Mt Vic tunnel.

Paul addressed us in Maori, talking about why we were there, and what kind of woman she had been; he was a strong speaker. There were prayers, and some singing - while it was called a Rosary, there was only one decade of Hail Marys. (This was just as well, as I was sitting cross-legged on the floor; after awhile, it was clear that this was a lot more painful than I remember it being at primary school. :) The person who played the keyboard (an elderly nun, and organist for the parish) was a little wobbly, but the singers managed regardless.

(I later found out that the church's organ has a bunch of stuck keys, none of the footpedals worked, and a number of the stoppers don't do anything anymore. As the family's koha to the church, they're probably going to start a fund to replace it.)

Giffy was there, and drove my father's mother home - so she missed the sight of me singing hymns in Maori with a bunch of others for fun, Paul accompanying us on guitar. Some of the songs I knew and some I didn't, but I think you get a knack for hymns after a while - as long as you have someone with a strong voice who knows the tune, you can do a passable job.

Paul, Joella, Erik and I all went off to stay with Phillip for the night. Phillip's wife had already gone to bed, and Joella went to bed soon after we arrived, but the rest of us stayed up for a while and chatted; not about the funeral, especially, just general stuff, like the stories Paul tells the kids at camp. It was nice, and not the kind of thing that we get to do very often.

The funeral was on Thursday, and went very well. The church and the choir loft was completely full, and there were still more people outside - the principal of the primary school set up their PA system outside the church so that those who didn't make it in could hear what was going on. The older members of the Surf Club turned up in their red and yellow parkers, looking like an honour guard - which I guess they were. Phillip, because Grandma had asked, was there in his dress uniform; we have a number of ex-servicemen in the family, and they were definitely touched by this. Grandma's youngest brother spoke about how he had been two when their mother died, and how Grandma had looked after him - Mum stood up and hugged him at one point when he had trouble continuing.

Mum spoke about how Grandma had supported and helped so many people - she compared her to the cloaks that lay on top of the coffin. (Someone has pointed out that Mum is now the family matriarch, being the oldest woman of the group, and her siblings have already used that as an excuse to hand off stuff that no-one wants to do. For example, Auntie Colleen rang someone to ask about what might be an appropriate koha for the church, and then said that Mum wanted to talk to them - then she and the brothers, quickly left the room so that Mum couldn't hand the phone back. :)

It was a full mass - Phillip did the reading, there was singing, and people filed up around the coffin for communion. If there was one thing that I wish had been different, it would have been the singing - the hymns were played at a slow, stately pace, but I'm used to singing Mo Maria as a spritely march, and I would have preferred joyful to solemn. Plus, it's easier to sing that way. ;)

Leaving the church, I discovered how many people were outside. As well as Dad's parents, his four brothers had also come up. The church is just off state highway one, and the police were there to direct traffic as the crowds left the church grounds. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and Grandma was buried with Grandad in Foxton cemetery.

Afterwards, there was tea and light refreshments at the parish hall, and then some of the aunts and cousins went to the pub; the family then got together again for dinner.

***

We still have a lot of connections to Foxton - most of Mum's family is there, and I remember spending a fair bit of time up there as a kid. Mum told me a story about Jock Roach, a 99 year-old who's living by himself in Foxton, and still mows his own lawns (since "only lazy buggers don't mow their own lawns"). He still has a strong Irish accent, despite having lived in Foxton for 80 years.

One of my great-uncles is in a band; another relative was talking to him about a new number that his group was doing. They asked him how it went; he said, "It doesn't - we have to get out and push."

Opposite the shop run by an uncle and aunt is C.F. Goldie's - if you're not familiar with that story, Goldie was famous for painting Maori portraits, and a chap from Foxton was making a fairly good living selling forgeries. Once he had served his time, the forger changed his name to C.F. Goldie by deed poll, and continued painting...

***

I know I've left out lots of important bits, but I hope that tells my sister some stuff that she wouldn't have heard about otherwise, and was interesting to other readers.

Dona Nobis Pacem

I son't know whether I would have mentioned my grandmother's death, except now it would seem odd not to. I mean, I have no problem with other people discussing it, I just find it kind of weird. I can't imagine anything that would make me feel more awkward than grieving in front of my workmates, for example.

Okay, no, that's not true at all. Trying to deal with my workmates with no pants would be more awkward, but less likely outside of a particular dream cliché.

I don't think my family tends to be solicitous, as such, in times like this; I mean, when we got together to discuss it when we first found out that my grandmother had pancreatic cancer, it was sad, but there was also joking, and gentle teasing, and puns, and recounting funny things that various people like my grandmother had said. So... I guess I find concerned sympathy kind of weird to deal with.

***

My grandmother died at dawn. All her children were with her, and they had just drawn the curtains to let the light in. The birds outside her window had started to sing. It was a Sunday.

I am sad that she's gone.

(I'm now thinking that listening to The Blind Boys of Alabama's Spirit of the Century at work may not have been the smartest thing I've ever done. This entry will be continued from home.)

***

I cooked dinner for Dad and Louise last night, and went over to do the same tonight. Unfortunately, the fish fingers turned out rather badly - more like fish rusks, in fact. I was inclined to blame my technique, but Dad mentioned that they may have been in the freezer a little too long, or possibly quite a lot too long. On the up-side, everyone seemed to like the mashed potato and kumera (with garlic, mixed herb and a pinch of green herb stock :), and we did have some of those fish burgers as well, so it wasn't a complete disaster.

My grandfather overdid it in the garden, as he often does, and my father's mother chatted with me about her mother and father. I stuck around until Mum came home, and she told stories of the Otaki clans descending on the house, with Auntie Ettie riding her electric scooter down the drive calling, "The Maoris are coming! The Maoris are coming!" (Of course, Auntie Ettie is more Maori than Grandma was, and nowdays she'll slip into speaking Maori without noticing.) Mum was careful to make sure there was a bowl of water for people to use outside the door so they could come into the main part of the house and have a cup of tea after visiting Grandma without having to hunt down the bathroom. I'm related to plenty of traditional people up that way. :)

Mum also told me that I had been volunteered to be a pall-bearer, and that Erik and I were to lead one of some of the singing. Now, carrying a coffin is fairly straight-forward, but carrying a tune is something else entirely - and given that one of my uncles estimated that there'll be at least 300-odd people at the funeral, it slides from mildly to moderately intimidating. Mum reassures me that that a bunch of the Otaki crowd are in good voice, so we won't be left carrying the can ourselves; of course, that changes the anxiety from worrying about singing badly by ourselves to worrying I'll sing badly in front of actual singers. Thank goodness I know the tune. (It's All the Earth Proclaim the Lord, if you're curious.)

And poor Paul, as the only fluent Maori speaker among my family, is likely to be tapped for greeting people and the like. He's gotten a lot better with public speaking, but even so, I know I'd be intimidated.

***

One slightly unnerving thing is that November is the month of rememberance of the dead in the Catholic calendar, so the church notice at mass on Sunday was all about the blessed dead. Kind of eerie, kind of comforting.

***

Well, it's now midnight. The post could do with some more polishing and so on, but I've got to get to work tomorrow morning, and then pick my sister and her partner up from the airport and drive up to Foxton. We'll be staying up there overnight, and coming back after the funeral.

Goodnight.