Words: Graeme Smith

“I’ve booked you and Catriona in for cooking with Poo tomorrow” said Cathy my friend and host in Bangkok. Insects are regarded as a delicacy locally but Poo? My face must have betrayed my thoughts. “Don’t worry – everyone says it’s fantastic and the best part is eating what you cook”. I cooked with poo and I ate it – yeah right!

At eight thirty the following morning a collection of nervous strangers gather outside the Emporium Hotel. Two families of Australian born Chinese, two brothers from Bulgaria, both chefs, a young American couple and us. A white mini van with the Helping Hands logo pulls up and smiling Thai woman in a yellow polo shirt hops out. Her charisma is immediately obvious. “Cooking with poo?” she asks. “I’m Poo – it’s not my real name but it’s what everyone calls me”. Saiyuud “Poo” Diwond and her two assistants check off names and explain the next four hours. First we will visit a local food market to purchase fresh ingredients then take a short drive to her kitchen for a cooking lesson. And lunch.

I love the ordered chaos of markets. This one is an assault on all the senses. Scraggy looking chickens cluck and fight for space, live fish flop around in bins full of water. There are bags full of live toads, huge bins of dead locusts and spiders. Exotic and brightly coloured fruit demand to be touched and tasted. A man balances a pole with dozens of tropical fish in small plastic bags of water attached to it. Enormous blue prawns sit on a bed of ice. Catriona turns up her nose at a basket of raw chicken feet. Underfoot it is wet and dirty, an open drain runs though the market, yet everything looks fresh and edible. Poo and her helpers explain what some of the delicious smelling buckets of spice pastes contain. I am spending too much time taking photos and not enough listening.

Poo’s kitchen is in the Klong Toey slum area of Bangkok, a place tourists normally avoid. Small shacks and dwellings are crammed in with no back yards. The “street” is a pathway just wide enough for a scooter. Before 2007 Poo scratched together a living doing whatever she could including working in a clothing factory and cooking food for sale in a street stall. A chance encounter with an Australian social worker led to the birth of the Helping Hand initiative that runs the cooking school and assists other slum dwellers into self-employment across a variety of fields.

The kitchen is a simple affair. Each trainee chef has a single gas ring, a pan, a chopping board and a knife. First we make a prawn Tom Yum learning how to slice lemongrass and chillies in different thicknesses to control flavour and heat. Next dish is Pad Thai where I discover I have always cooked my noodles the wrong way – “use water not oil – better for you and better flavour” exhorts Poo. She moves from person to person, correcting, demonstrating and encouraging. I am surprised to learn Thai people put a lot of sugar into their cooking. The third dish is Larb Pet, minced duck with coriander and lime. I learn the best way to juice a lime using a spoon and how to make a lemongrass and rice powder for flavouring. Finally – “this normally takes ten hours but here is one I prepared earlier” – sticky rice with mango.

In the mini bus afterwards everyone agrees it has been a fabulous morning and at $44, including lunch, a bargain. If you happen to be travelling to Bangkok check out the website www.cookingwithpoo.com and you too can say, “I cooked with Poo and I liked it”.

When Emily Chamelin tells people in her native USA that she shears sheep for a living she says most look back at her blankly.

But she felt right at home in New Zealand during a recent two month stay that culminated in her representing the USA at the Golden Shears championship in Masterton early this month.

“It’s been such an education to come here and to compete in a country where shearing is such a big deal. It’s like wow, people understand.”

Emily was based in Rangiora in the weeks prior to the champs, working around the North Canterbury region for local shearer Rowan Nesbit and staying with one of his wool-handlers Rochelle Gibson in Loburn.

“I work on my own back home so this was the first time I had experienced working in a crew – it was lots of fun. Rowan and his team were such great people to work with, watch and learn from. I picked up something new every day.”

Work was Emily’s priority rather than sightseeing during her time in New Zealand so she could soak up everything she could about the fast-paced local industry.

“It was a big adjustment. I was in shape to shear in the States – but not here. My body hurt for quite a while!”

Essence caught up with Emily for coffee not long before she headed north for the Golden Shears. She’s slight but strong, with a tattoo of shearing blades and tribal wings snaking up her arm – a Christmas present to herself and daily reminder of how much her profession means to her.

“There is something about shearing that is completely addictive. You never shear a sheep perfectly so you are always trying to get better and faster or learn a new trick. It is not a dull job even though there is a lot of repetition.”

Emily grew up on a dairy farm at Maryland, near Washington DC and “begged” her parents for some sheep when she was in her early teens.

They got a couple of bottle fed lambs, but when they grew bigger there was no one to shear them.

Emily decided to do a course at a local shearing school and shear them herself. Soon others in the district asked her to shear their small flocks after school and when she was 16, she topped and tailed her uncle’s flock of 150.

“It took me a couple of days and they were awful, but I was so proud of myself.”

That was 10 years ago and for the last three, the mother of one has had her own full time shearing run – working for clients within a three hour radius of her home.

Around five years ago Emily learned to blade shear from Kevin Ford, her mentor and fellow member of the USA blade team at the Golden Shears.

“If I’m not pressed for time and numbers I love the blade, the quietness and the history of it coming through. It’s nice knowing you don’t have to depend on electricity however a nicely machine shorn sheep is also a beautiful thing.”

The off-season presents opportunities for Emily to travel, enter shearing competitions and learn more about her craft.

At the Golden Shears she finished a creditable 14^th out of 18 in the World Blade Shearing section (as the only female competitor in the grade), and was 14^th out of 77 competitors in the Junior Machine Shear.

“The highlight for me was winning the FMG Quality Award for clean shearing in the Junior Machine class. I knew I had shorn very well but to win that award was unexpected and really special considering some of the great Kiwi shearers I was up against.”

Emily uses many superlatives to describe her time in New Zealand – saying it is an “amazing” country with Kiwis the “most friendly and helpful” people she has ever met.

“From the moment I got off the plane everyone was so welcoming and open to helping me out – even in the shearing shed. I learned so much I almost wanted to stay but in the end I couldn’t wait to get back home to my daughter Lydia.”

She says Lydia has grown up around shearing pens and has her own “wee broom” in the car so she can be her mother’s shed hand.

“She has just turned six – and reckons she is going to shear her first sheep soon. I’d love to bring her to New Zealand one day – I think she’d fit in really well.”

Winner:                      The Cleansing by Sandy Watson

Sandy receives a $500 cash prize from Gulliver & Tyler for her beautifully written story reminiscing childhood memories.

2nd:                            Christchurch – Reflections by Toni Hannah

Toni receives a $200 cash prize from Gulliver & Tyler

plus the Peoples Choice Award of $100 for her moving story reflecting past and present ties with Christchurch. Essence May issue.

3rd:                             The Shatterling by David Palmer

                                    David receives $100 cash from Gulliver & Tyler

For his clever and interesting entry which will feature in the June issue.

Poetry Prize:              Flaxton by Nicola Davies

Nicola receives $100 cash from Gulliver & Tyler for her entry in the new poetry category which was based around capturing life in North Canterbury.           

Interest in this competition remains strong, with a great number of entries received. The overall standard of writing remains very impressive.

It’s great to have had such a high level of interest and shows how many creative people we have living here in North Canterbury.

Congratulations to this year’s short story winner Sandy Watson and Nicola Davies for her poetry entry.

My thanks go to all those who entered. Special thanks, also, to our wonderful sponsors Gulliver & Tyler. Without their commitment and support, there would be no competition!

We intend to publish the second place getter in our next edition and third place getter in the June issue. We hope you enjoy reading them.

Dorothy McLennan – Publisher

Occasionally, a hand would raise to flick away a fly or insect buzzing around her face.  They said her name was Aroha.  It was all I was ever told.  My questions going unanswered despite my prodding for answers.  I knew that Aroha meant love, and as I passed her each day on my way to school I remember quickly glancing to see if she was there – sitting and waiting, and yes she would be.  Who was it that she loved?  I wondered if she ever moved, ate, slept or left her station?  No one ever seemed to visit her.  There was never the sound of mokopuna playing in the long grass or climbing the old apple tree by the rickety gate. The apple tree seemed to pass the seasons unkempt – apples lying on the ground eaten only by noturnal visitors of the possum variety.

When I was twelve mum and dad sent me off to boarding school in the city.  A long and windy bus trip that took from the familiar to the frightening, and later as I grew accustomed to my new life, from the memories to the excitement of friends and new opportunities.  I missed my daily cycle to school and back as I passed her house.  I missed the familiar smells of the sea and wind and rain.  The way the sea could change from peaceful to squally and back again in a matter of minutes.  The way the wind would buffet me on my bike as if playing a game to see who was the strongest. The sun beating down on a hot summers day almost burning skin on the back of my neck. And as always she would be there sitting, rocking, waiting.

As the years went by I would return to the bay in the holidays, usually in the evening when all was still.  The first thing I would do in the morning was to grab a bike and pedal as quickly as I could down the old dirt road – rutted from years of wear – just to see if the old kuia was there sitting, rocking, waiting.  And it came as a relief to see her there still hunched over her stick – even more so as I grew older.  The apple tree larger, and forever a lonely sentinel at her gate. 

When I finished my schooling I went on to university, returning to the bay less and less as holiday jobs in the city and the bright lights drew me away.  But I always remember her – Aroha, and wondered was she still there, surely not?  Maybe she had been a cleverly designed statue, carved to ward off intruders.  Maybe the apple tree was her only friend?  Not long after I married I took my husband back to the bay to show him where I had spent my childhood. I was excited at the idea of here being there after so many years.  But the porch stood lonely, just like the apple tree.  It came as a shock at first.  I felt an emptiness, a longing to return to the memories of old.  The sea still looked the same, the wind buffeting the toi toi and grasses with great gusts stirring up the sand.  But where had she gone?  What legacy did she leave behind? 

Only then did I venture past the apple tree, along the overgrown path up to the porch.  Her chair lay on its side old and broken.  As I searched for any sign of her I noticed a framed sign on the wall by the front door.  It hung askew as if the wind had toyed with it too.  The words were faded and written in an ancient script from long ago.  I read, and then I knew why she had always sat there, sitting, rocking, waiting.  She was now and had always been at peace.  Her seat and the view out to the sea had been her place of cleansing, refreshing, renewal.  She didn’t need any thing else.  She was at one with her land, and herself.  The ancient words read, “Purea nei e te hau, horoia e te ua, whitiwhitia e te ra.  Mahea ake nga poraruraru.  Makere ana nga here” ( Scattered by the wind, washed by the rain and transformed by the sun, all doubts are swept away and all restrains are cast down).  

I returned the chair to its upright position and sat in it like she had.  The view was magnificent with the sunlight playing like fingers on a piano over the sea, the grasses moving as if in time to a heavenly symphony.  I took that peace, that stillness, that picture of a time and place from long ago, and I too felt cleansed, refreshed, renewed.  It was time to show the rest of my memories to my husband and remember what had been and always would be.

While holding vigil at the hospital Chris had phoned his mother across the ditch in Oz, but a man he didn’t know answered the phone so he hung up and sent her an email. She returned it the day after the funeral with some added lines of regret. That evening an exhalation of echoes drove him from his home, and at a darkening intersection a truck that wouldn’t stop wasted his trademark Chevy. He felt as if teetering on a wobbling floe, watching a frozen-ever-after past recede.

The castaway feeling deepened during the remaining month of his work contract. His friends were Sophie’s friends and he felt them receding after her. The rent for the flat, once reasonable for two, proved excessive for one, driving him to put his things in storage and shift to a hostel.

The day after his job finished Chris loaded a backpack and took a bus to the Dunedin outskirts. He stood airing his thumb until getting a ride to Oamaru. He could have afforded a train but was repelled by routes and schedules that narrowed to relentless destinations. When drivers asked where he was going he said “North”, because from an Otago standpoint north was less limiting than south. An hour spent standing outside Oamaru bought a ride to the edge of Christchurch, where he was picked up by a car heading north via Rangiora. But soon afterward the driver took a cellphone call and pulled over on a country road.

“Sorry, mate – break in plans.”

Chris got out. The car U-turned and diminished behind a dying roar and dispersing ghost of fumes. Airy birdsong and the distant lowing of a cow skirted an aura of silence around him. A line of poplars followed the road as it narrowed off into haze. An expanse of fields bordered by barbed wire and machine-cut conifers lay prostrate beneath a towering sky. The luminous evening hour had risen when dinner and the six o’clock news empties roads. No traffic meant no rides. No rides changed his future from a fogbank to a wall. The fog allowed a sense of progress while it muffled and hid. The wall reflected him back across the savagely clear gulf behind.

At the edge of the expanse arose a stand of trees, as erect as a church, enclosed by an overgrown hedge. Hefting his backpack, Chris crossed a fence and went over. He saw no gate but found a cleft in the hedge big enough to penetrate. Branches tugged at his clothing and veils of aromatic leaves stroked his face. He tripped on a root and tumbled down a bank.

Arising, he found himself among shadows. Before him lay what had once been a lawn but was now a hollow thigh deep in grass and wildflowers overhung by trees and hemmed by domestic shrubbery gone wild. A gap between forking hedgerows revealed grapevines and apple trees heavy with fruit. An old farmhouse slouched amid the fecundity like a gravestone in a neglected churchyard.

With animal caution he approached the house. Flitting spectres of light gleamed in broken windowpanes.

A bell chimed. He started, then realised it was a voice, and a snatch of song. A figure flew out from the dimness under an old European tree. It was a boy of perhaps nine. It pranced in a circle, singing on gasps of exertion in eerie high-pitched yelps.

The boy saw him and stopped.

Chris cleared his throat. “Hi. Sorry to barge in. Anyone about?”

“Nope.”

The boy looked familiar somehow. Chris shivered to a sense of strangeness. The boy observed him with solemn self-assurance. Skinny and long-limbed, as poised as thistledown, he glowed with exertion.

“Where do you live?”

“Here.”

“Where’re your parents?”

“Ditched them.”

“What?” The boy’s tone had been disconcerting, its youthfulness undermined by a sly and allusive knowing.

“After they split. She moved in with a bloke.”

“When was this?”

“Before Christmas.”

“That’s four months back. Where’ve you been since?”

“Here.”

Unbelieving, Chris decided to play along. “What do you eat?”

“There’s fruit here. Veggie gardens all round. A lady leaves food outside her door.”

“What about water? Electricity?”

“There’s a well. Don’t need light.”

“It’ll be winter soon.”

The boy shrugged.

“Someone’s bound to notice you. The police will come.”

Another shrug. Specks of light winked through the hedge, casting lances that gilded the boy for luminous instants.

“You’re not scared?”

“What happens happens.”

The fidgeting foliage and jitter of light and shade flirted with his gaze, shattering concentration.

“Wish I could think like that.”

“‘S’easy. Just let go.”

Easy for you, he thought, with so little history.

A golden shaft appeared between them, populated by lambent motes. It made the boy look like a lucent human-shaped portal.

The light winked out, the boy returned. Chris felt an odd nostalgia.

Chasing the facts seemed pointless. “Can I stay?”

The boy made a rather elegant gesture of invitation. Chris entered the house, aware of being followed. His footfalls echoed off bare floorboards; the house quivered like a cobweb slung between dark masses. The lifting light limned archaic floral designs on wallpaper as tenuous as a film of dust. Shadows deepened in rooms like husks. He glanced over his shoulder. The little figure followed, close, but too distant to touch.

Vagrancy didn’t seem to be harming the boy. As spare as his form was, he looked healthy. He had leapt about as if on springs. Chris remembered as a kid dancing like that for sheer joy and felt a bitter envy. The weight of experience slumped back on him. The grief returned, freighted by a renewed sense of how much was lost. His dad and Sophie were just the edge of a receding continent.

Returning to the garden, they shared a meal of vegetables roasted on an open fire. The boy’s face against the dark was animated as dancing firelight played with the shadows of his features. A sudden surge of release and potential lifted Chris out of himself and his heart took flight. But the surge only arced to a childhood memory of a night out camping with a friend, playing at being outlaws. Playtime was long over.

Sad and tired, he said goodnight and retired indoors to lie on empty sacking. But the dust and echoes oppressed him and he returned out to the boy’s fire, felt peace descending, and at last surrendered. He awoke at dawn preoccupied by an idea. I’m not Dad’s son any more, nor Sophie’s partner, nor a tenant, nor a temp. A wind seemed to be blowing, stirring him like a seed; he felt breathless and excited.

The boy had vanished. Out scavenging presumably; the man already forgotten. The wind urged movement. Chris clambered up through the cleft in the hedge, tripping over that same root and falling outside. Getting up, he couldn’t see the house amid the greenery.

Out on the road he set off striding. He didn’t look back.

Fast forward to my 30’s: working in a CBD office and loving my job and my river view, happily married, living the dream on a lifestyle block we work hard to maintain, riding horses, developing an interest in rugby, wearing a lot of red and black. Splitting my life between the buzz and vibrancy of the CBD and the tranquillity and birdsong of my country home, and thinking I truly had the best of both worlds. How lucky was I? The big nights out replaced by a bottle of wine with valued friends; wanting to spend an evening talking in a quieter place, leaving the louder, brasher bars to those younger than I. Envying those sitting on the sunny Avon River banks eating souvlakis and enjoying the Canterbury summer, while I met deadlines and wrote reports. Visiting my favourite city haunts – Scorpio Books, Nourish, Ballys, Lush, Dmitris. Seeing the familiar faces every day during my lunchtime visits in search of nourishment or retail therapy, faces that were part of the fabric of the CBD, and revelling in the fact that this was my city, I belonged here. Laughing at the Buskers, admiring Christmas decorations in the City Mall, hearing the sound of buses and trams, the sight of tourists taking photos from the Worcester St Bridge, seeing the ducks bringing their families for food onto the riverbanks. Knowing that I may be older, but my heart is still firmly in Christchurch.

Then – February 22. Loss, noise, chaos, disaster, confusion, dust. My Dad, dodging masonry in Cashel Mall, still carrying his cream bun from the bakery. My husband, watching a building fall and the road split in front of him. Stories of death, courage, bravery, despair, soul rending heartache, compassion and kindness from strangers. Those frantic moments trying to reach loved ones – sometimes hours and days later when contact is made. Crying, sometimes helplessly. Thinking ‘if only….’.Thanking God and any other deity I can think of that my family, friends and colleagues are spared. Feeling guilty that I can say that, when others have suffered such unimaginable loss. Seeing the good in people emerge as if galvanised by disaster. Simple acts of everyday kindness; hugs, asking ‘how are you doing’, offering tea and a shoulder to cry on, have new meaning now. We talk to each other. And we listen.

Now – a year later. A year wiser. Trying my hardest to value each day, value those around me; achieve my dreams in a city which has been brought to its knees. Appreciating anew what we had, mourning what is lost, and anticipating what we will become. Determined to be part of the future of our city, to be able, in some small way, to contribute to the future of Christchurch the way it has contributed to my past, the sometimes unappreciated backdrop to my personal life story. The future is undetermined; the past remains with me always. Christchurch is in my blood.

In 1860 it was a tiny rural settlement with few residents, a blacksmith, a carpenter and a wheelwright. A couple of years later in 1876 the railway steamed into town. Since then it’s been onwards and upwards for Amberley – named after the family farm in Derbyshire, England of one of those early residents.

While honouring its history and the environment, this friendly community enthusiastically embraces newcomers, visitors and business enterprise alike.

When visiting Amberley you’re well-advised to expect the unexpected.

Nestling alongside busy SH1 just 40 minutes north of Christchurch, it’s a small town with big city energy where country and commerce happily coexist.

Whether you’re after a great meal in an award-wining restaurant; good coffee in cosy coffee shop; fresh produce at the popular weekly farmer’s market; unusual gifts and local craft; or just want to have a yarn in an historic watering hole, Amberley has it all.

Home to the Hurunui District Council and a bustling business community where companies as diverse as a farmer’s co-op and engineering concerns trade alongside trendy restaurants and fashion outlets in the busy main road, Amberley surprises and delights.

Strike up a conversation with a friendly local and you could find yourself talking to a famous chocolatier ; a renowned children’s author; one of a bunch of talented local artists and crafters; an enthusiastic community volunteer; or an interesting character from the growing community of ‘golden oldies’ who’ve settled here from farther afield.

The impressive recycling facility and well-stocked library are both manned largely by helpful volunteers who obviously love their town and what they do!

While its people are its treasure, there’s so much to see and do in and around this gem of a town.

Scenic Amberley beach, nearby lakes and rivers and much-loved Mount Grey all beg to be explored. And just outside Amberley, the delights of the award-winning Waipara Valley Wine Region await thirsty visitors.

Walking around Amberley one can’t but notice many attractive new residential developments, all blending in nicely with established neighbourhoods. Locals are eagerly anticipating the planned spring 2013 opening of a large new shopping centre because it will ‘provide the region with exciting new retail and leisure options’.

With a rich past and a future as bright as the snow that for large parts of the year covers the legendary ‘Floating Mountain’ as Mt Grey is known locally, charming Amberley is worth at least one visit if not a couple!

To view more on this article see pages 20 and 21 of the March issue of essence magazine.