Wednesday 26th November 2008

Katherine Mansfield was born in Wellington in 1888 and left for Europe at the age of nineteen. She was born in a house close to our hotel which has now been restored to what it would have been like at the end of the nineteenth century. It contains a good selection of household items along with photos, quotations from some of her letters and excerpts from the short stories for which she is famous.

Her decision to leave New Zealand was taken as she found life here too restrictive and she made her way to London where she became friends with people such as Virginia Woolf, T.S. Elliot and D.H. Lawrence. Most of writing, though, reflected her life in New Zealand and she clearly loved the country.

I can’t resist recording that we visited the Botanic Gardens here, which are located just over the road from our hotel because I really want to put on show examples of two of my favourite flowers.…… the orchid

…… and the water lily.

Jean

Train spotted

New Zealand appears to have a pretty perfunctory rail network and it was only yesterday I saw a passenger train for the first time as we neared Wellington, 19 days into our trip here.

Wellington station serves quite a few suburbs but there’s not much long distance stuff. As someone interested in rail and transport generally, I find it a bit surprising but clearly the terrain is difficult and the population quite small.

At such times when trains are sparse I develop a kind of twitching and begin to lose weight. Doctors have diagnosed a rare condition called Anorakia Nervosa. Ho, Ho.

Also downtown, we visited Old St Paul’s, Wellington’s cathedral until superseded in 1966 by one much larger and not made of wood. Colonial Gothic style with superb windows. Dave.