Busytown by Jolisa Gracewood

What do you get if you cross a papal visit with the legendary Simon and Garfunkel reunion? Maybe something like the Dalai Lama's talk in Central Park yesterday, during which the esteemed Buddhist with the steely twinkle in his eye spoke about peace and fortitude to an appreciative audience of sixty thousand or so New Yorkers.

I wonder how many of them had read the fascinating piece by Patrick French in the New York Times the day before, "Dalai Lama Lite", on the general tendency to turn the spiritual leader into "a cuddly projection of our hopes and dreams" at the expense of his complexity? French also noted, for the record, the Dalai Lama's less-than-marketable views on non-procreative sex, including homosexuality (he's against it -- all of it). A canny fellow, the Dalai Lama apparently heeded his editors and removed the subject from his latest book, Ethics for the New Millennium, no doubt selling a few more copies than he otherwise would have.

I missed the Sunday be-in, detailed hilariously by Christopher Farah over at Salon. But I caught a ripple effect the day before, when the Dalai Lama held court in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine at the end of our street, for an exclusively Tibetan audience. The Saturday gig wasn't widely advertised. The first I knew about it was when we ventured out that morning and had trouble merging with the foot traffic on our usually quiet street. A constant stream of people headed towards the cathedral, the women dressed in long dresses with beautiful panels of woven silk worn apron-like at the waist, the men in white cotton shirts and elaborately tied trousers, and occasionally a clutch of monks in ruby and saffron robes.

It may have been the largest gathering of Tibetans outside of Tibet or the Tibetan capital-in-exile, Dharamsala. These were New York Tibetans: monks wielding cellphones, women wearing their babies in sturdy Scandinavian front-packs rather than hand-woven slings. On and on they came, flocking to hear their spiritual leader speak over the course of the afternoon. Later that evening, walking home from a picnic on the Columbia campus, we met the returning traffic streaming away from the Cathedral: monks and more monks, men, women, and children in their best clothes, what seemed like several thousands of people passing in steady groups of four or five for a full half-hour. I couldn't take my eyes off them, especially when we passed one old monk with glasses, who could have been (but probably wasn't) the DL himself.

It was a quiet, unexpected spectacle, an extraordinary vision even in New York. Not seeing people in unusual clothes - that's an everyday occurrence - but seeing so very many at once, such a deep and prolonged intersection of two distinct spaces. It was like two zones had somehow crossed their wires, as if a well had been tapped, as if a wormhole had opened up between here and the other side of the world. I was reminded of a seamlessly photo-shopped picture in a recent issue of Adbusters, which showed a very desirable, perfectly cozy room -- comfy couch, walls of books, polished wooden table -- and, visible just outside the window, a group of armed Afghans. It was like a surreal episode of Playschool for the post-millennium. Through the square window: the rest of the world.

So, for an afternoon, in the city that fancies itself the capital of the world, a virtual Tibet assembled itself inside the world's largest (and I'd venture shabbiest) gothic cathedral. It was an interesting choice of venue. Over on the East Side, the blockish, lego-like United Nations building is home to the official deliberations about who belongs (and doesn't belong) where. By contrast, the unfinished and weatherbeaten Cathedral up here on the cusp of the Upper West Side and Harlem welcomes all comers. It's more like a giant church hall than a giant church. Impeccably ecumenical and right-on in its affiliations, it has a poet-in-residence and an official writer – Madeleine L'Engle, most famously the author of the children's book A Wrinkle in Time.

The Cathedral is home to an eclectic collection of memorials: to the Holocaust, to victims of Aids, to 9/11, to animals. Inside, it has the requisite ancient tapestries, stained glass windows, smaller chapels, religious statuary -- and a giant crystal in a glass case. Outside, a family of peacocks -- one of them miraculously albino -- roams the grounds, which include a defunct corrugated-iron stone-cutting shed (a giant eyesore), a marvelous tiny Biblical garden (a hidden gem), and the children's sculpture garden, which features one of the most alarming pieces of public art I've ever seen.

Chronically underfunded, the Cathedral is only partly finished, and work seems to be progressing at genuinely medieval speed. Rusting scaffolding clings to the bell-tower the way ivy clings to the walls of better-funded universities. Indeed, poverty makes for strange bedfellows: Columbia University, ever seeking room to expand, is negotiating with the Cathedral to build faculty housing on two corners of the cathedral grounds. The designs promise to be very tasteful, with a faux-English Cathedral Close theme, but still it seems profane to hem the massive building in any more than it already has been, with a nursing home over the road, a hospital next door, and a school tucked in behind.

It's so hemmed in that it is difficult to get a clear sight of the edifice: walking down our street towards the front steps of the Cathedral, your view of the great front facade with the rose window is cut off at the sides by the buildings of 112th St, like curtains pulled half-closed. It's not like St Peter's in Rome, with a magnificently spacious piazza out front from which to marvel at the marmoreal symmetry of it all (and where I once overheard an Italian tour-guide pointing out the "private parts of the Pope"). On the other hand, it could be argued that the snug neighbourhood of St John the Divine bears a glancing resemblance to York Minster, which benefits atmospherically from being crammed in between the wall that encircles the city and the smaller buildings and half-timbered little shops that cluster in its embrace. The Minster is unmistakably the tallest thing in its part of town, though.

But if you walk along the eastern edge of Morningside Park -- the less-favoured side, now a zone of intense gentrification -- you can get a wonderful and surprising view of the nave of St John the Divine. From down there, the cathedral is a different beast altogether from the steep and truncated glimpse that greets your approach from Broadway. Looking up across the granite cliffs, willow trees, and ponds of Morningside Park, the lovely haunches of the Cathedral are the largest thing you see – no longer dwarfed by its surroundings, it looks like the magnificent building that a cathedral wishes to be, closer to the heavens than anything else.

Like his parents, Busytot professes no particular religion, although on a visit to an exhibition of medieval art in the Cathedral last year, he was deeply impressed by a statue of an apple-cheeked baby Jesus happily tweaking his Holy Mother's nipple. Only one year old, Busytot didn't know much about art but he knew what he liked. "Ahem!" he said appreciatively while pawing my front, in the manner of a pub regular drawing the barmaid's attention to his empty glass. Proto-Catholic, or art critic in the making? You decide.

But as we made our way against the tide of Tibetans on Saturday, I remembered how when he was a baby we used to half-joke that we feared a knock on the door from monks in search of the next Dalai Lama, such a placid, wise little baby was he. He really seemed to have been here before, not once but several thousand times, and exuded an air of serene benevolence that everyone who met him remarked upon. Of course this was before he grew into his "Weapon of Mass Destruction" T-shirt (size two, naturally) and began to experiment with mood-altering substances (sugar, naplessness, the frustrating gap between reach and grasp). Lately we've been treated to the occasional burst of extreme anti-serenity. You only have to witness this once to realize that "hopping mad" is not just a metaphor -- he genuinely leaves the ground, repeatedly and loudly, for several minutes. Not a flying yogi, just a regular furious almost-two-year-old doing a total Rumpelstiltskin.

Sadly, or fortunately, not one of the lamas we passed on Saturday caught his eye and murmured "Are you the one?" I suppose that means I can take "learn Tibetan, buy tickets to Dharamsala" off my parental to-do list. This time round, anyway.

There's a Billy Connolly routine in which he describes seeing a child contestant in a talent show. The little fellow is warbling a love song, Jimmy Osmond style, with a chorus that goes something like "Oooh lady, I'm going to love you all night long." Interjects Billy, with deadpan incredulity: "Wha' wi'? His wee pointed willy?"

There's been a lot of wee pointed willy action in our house lately. Busytot has been a bit of a late bloomer in the self-love department. Oh, he loves himself plenty, but so far he hasn't really concentrated on any particular part of his lovely little bod to the exclusion of all the others. Nostril, ear, elbow, they're all fun to twiddle. But sooner or later we all discover our own little built-in pokie machine, and before you can say Gamblers Anonymous, it's all about the genitals. (I'm assured by mothers of girl toddlers that the phenomenon is not confined to little lads and their love-handles).

So Busytot is on a major penis kick at the moment, which coincides happily with a newfound interest in undoing the velcro straps on his nappies. Rrrrip, rrrip, and suddenly everyone's invited to a home showing of Puppetry of the Penis. With a twist (ouch). Whereas those Australian professionals impersonate everything from ostriches to the Eiffel Tower, Busytot specializes in one particularly eye-popping sleight-of-hand manoeuvre, a "now you see it, now you don't" routine, involving an index finger and a wicked grin. I call it Puppetry of the -- What Penis?!

If I can get him back in his trousers, we can return to the other main attraction of the moment -- the mint condition green German-made tricycle I scored at the op shop for a cool five bucks. Of course, I then went and quadrupled the price by tracking down the optional extra push-handle for the back. The handle looks like an avant garde chopper flag, but it's basically a parental overdrive for when those stumpy little legs run out of cookie-powered oomph, or when a drifting eye threatens to steer the small driver into the path of a garbage truck.

By far the coolest bike on the block, though, is the one Busytot's best friend brought back from his holiday in the UK. It's a Like-A-Bike, and as its name suggests, it's a lot like a bike. It's a two-wheeler, but with no pedals and is completely intuitively driven: you just hop on, start pushing with alternate feet, and coast rapidly off into the distance pursued by frantic parents and a Pied Piper-like trail of covetous children.

It means you can skip the whole three-wheeler/training wheels stage and go straight to getting the hang of balancing while moving forward on two zippy little wheels. What I love most about it is that it's made out of wood. I know, a wooden bicycle. It sounds like a chocolate teapot. But it does the job, and mark my words, this time next year everyone you know will have one.

While I'm mentioning ways to spend your discretionary dosh on those too young to have their own credit cards, let me plug a couple of lovely items we brought back in our suitcase that have already earned their weight in toddler satisfaction. Jive's Pipi Diggers, by Phillippa King with gorgeous illustrations by Gabriella Kreplatski, is the story of a little boy called Jive who, "once upon an island," goes digging for pipis with his Mum. Then his Dad cooks the pipis up on the barbie, and then they eat them. It's deeply satisfying and the pictures are deliciously kinetic and involving. The beach scenes are particularly well drawn, and I like it that the Mum and Dad are young and spunky.

Then there's Don Linden, who has been collecting all those old children's radio show favourites and re-issuing them on CD. There are several discs of the longer stories (Little Toot, Gerald McBoing Boing and co), but I grabbed a copy of Junior Requests Vol. 1. This one has tons of classic songs on it (The Teddy-Bears' Picnic, How Much is that Doggie in the Window, Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh) and some completely wacked-out ones too. Petula Clark trilling "I wuv you, I wuv you, said the Little Blue Man" and Tommy Steele giving voice to the little man in the fridge who "puts the lightie on" are two I'd recommend to readers looking for an aurally psychedelic experience.

Anyway, I figured there'd be enough variety on this disc – twenty-four songs -- to keep young ears entertained without turning older brains to jelly. I'd neglected to factor in "The Kiwi Bird," a appealing vintage number by The Knaves, which immediately became Busytot's favourite song in the whole world. When he's not bullying me into playing it on repeat (and sighing with relief every time the old-time radio intro kicks in, in a perfect echo of the way in which I greet a morning cup of tea or an evening G & T), he's wandering round the house singing it. "Got two wings. Cannot fly. Kiwi. Kiwi. Kiwi. Kiwi. Kiwi. Kiwi." If I never hear that song again it will be too soon, but if you buy the album you'll never regret it.

By the way, does this sound at all familiar?

Best New Web Site We want to recognise the most innovative or interesting new site launch of the past 12 months to October 19. It must be a stand-alone new site, not an add-on to an existing site. Nominations are sought for New Zealand Web sites that have launched during this time and have made an impact on a significant number of Internet users in this country.

Or this?

Best Personal Blog We’re looking for enthusiasts who have created their very own content-packed diary on the Web. The subject matter may vary from personal thoughts to daily life experiences written in a way to enthrall the reader, making us come back for more. Age or occupation is secondary; of primary importance is the interest factor created by the content.

Or, quite possibly, even this?

Site of the Year The winning overall site of the year must be local, it must have great design, excellent content, original ideas and a real Kiwi flavour.

And certainly, this:

Best Web Designer This award is for professional Web designers who are leading the charge in distinctive New Zealand Web design. We’re after a portfolio of sites that look good, are easy to navigate, are visually stimulating and keep visitors interested.

If so, the Netguide Awards 2003 are coming up, and you have exactly a month to nominate and/or vote for your favourite sites/writers/designers in the whole world. Just so's you know ... and hey, if you've got any babies that need kissing, I'm an expert.

It's Tuesday, warm and mild, the first leaves drifting off the gingko trees under a cloudless sky of vivid autumnal blue. According to the calendar, the anniversary falls on a Thursday. But Tuesday is the day that feels like the day it happened, the true anniversary. Like all anniversaries, like birthdays and memorial days, the day itself marks both sameness and difference; the increasing time-lag between then and now, and the loop that invisibly connects that day to this. And the mysterious gap between the living and the dead: we get older, while they stay the same age forever.

Sameness and difference; mundanity and the shock of it. From where I sit I can see workmen on the roof of Butler Library, twelve or so floors off the ground, striding around happily as if no-one ever found themselves trapped at the top of a tall building. The friend who brought us the first visual report, telling how from a distance he saw the first tower falling as silently and inexorably as "snow sliding off a roof" (a phrase that still wakes me up at night), no longer lives in the city. The child who was a heavy, leaping, nameless presence inside me then, now hops up and down so that both feet leave the ground simultaneously while demanding "Mummy carry you!" He weighs five times what he did then; he breathes air and speaks in sentences.

Too much writing, too many words, too much unearned built-in poignancy; it feels cheap to squeeze another paragraph out of an event that I'm not even sure is mine to write about. Or is as much mine to write about as anything, anywhere, but which is so often written about as if such a thing only ever happened once, here, two years ago. So much blah blah blah, in the service of so many agendas. I wonder, one year after the first air-raids on London, were the papers full of articles reminiscing about where people were when the Blitz started, and how life had changed irrevocably?

When words fail me (or vice versa), pictures offer a respite, something to meditate on. A cover image on the Village Voice in the weeks after September 11 showed the towers miraculously restored; on closer inspection, a hand in the foreground held a postcard of the buildings up to the gap in the skyline, over the tagline "Wish You Were Here." In the days after the event, locals as well as tourists rushed to buy postcards of the missing towers, as if they too might disappear; like holy pictures and medals, representations of the thing itself acquired a mysterious aura of sanctity. Of course you can, as always, still buy postcards of the towers at every postcard stand in the city; that's the work of architecture in an age of mechanical reproduction.

The New Yorker is legendary for covers that evoke the time of year, haiku-like, with deft, often witty seasonal references. Three years in a row it has captured the new mood of early September. Art Spiegelman's cover for the issue of September 24, 2001, printed barely a week after the towers fell, was a masterpiece of understatement, a flat evocation in black on black of the stunned feeling that pervaded the city. It looked like a field of unrelieved mourning darkness, until you noticed a thin line slicing through one of the letters at the top of the page. Tracing back down, you discovered that the line was the radio mast on top of one of the buildings, both of which were imprinted on the page in a barely distinguishable, marginally lighter shade of black. You looked and looked and you could almost see the towers; one minute they were there, the next gone, and then there they were again, in a flickering optical illusion that echoed the way the mind struggled to comprehend their sudden absence.

Last year's cover for the week of the anniversary, by Ana Juan, was at first glance a semi-abstract smudge of autumn colours -- oranges, blues, greys -- around and through the dimly visible shapes of half-familiar buildings around the WTC. An obscure but identifiable vision of the site we were all thinking about, but suggesting what? Was it engulfed in flames and smoke, or emerging from a dawn mist? Once again, the doubleness of the towers themselves inspired an ambiguous depiction: destruction or rebirth? Fire or sunlight? Smoke or haze? The image was titled Dawn Over Lower Manhattan, but struggling to read the picture, your eyes continue to play tricks on you. The oscillating set of equally plausible alternatives echo the still undetermined effects of the catastrophe, one year on.

This year, the cover of the New Yorker returns to more representational art in the form of that old staple, the iconic Manhattan skyline -- but uncannily adjusted. It takes a moment for Gürbüz Dogan Eksioglu's image to sink in. Two Woolworth Buildings. Two Empire State Buildings. Two Chrysler Buildings. And so on up the river, each edifice standing next to its own twin tower, redoubled presence as mute, insistent tribute to the missing pair. Perhaps in tribute to Spiegelman's cover, the spikes on top of the Empire State Buildings slice through the W of the New in New Yorker. The repeated buildings fill the page left to right, two by two, rank on rank, and they're doubled again by their reflections in the water. The city, suggests this picture, is more present than ever; twice as present, assertively compensating for its loss.

Freud, writing on the idea of the uncanny, notes that doubles – shadows, reflections, guardian spirits, the idea of a soul that outlives the body – function at first as "a preservation against extinction." With that reflective evidence of our solidity, we feel more assured in our precarious singleness. Eksioglu's image suggests a city shoring itself up, insuring itself against further loss. But as Freud also points out, at a certain point the double, the doppelganger, the doll, the other us, ceases to reassure and becomes spooky: "From having been an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny harbinger of death." Uncle Sigmund, dabbling in lit crit and amateur psych, captures the ambivalence of most New Yorkers – fearing further disaster, but living as if it won't happen; walking among towers not unlike the ones that fell, building new ones to replace the old; and looking over their shoulders, every autumn for a long time to come, wondering where that strange shiver comes from.

The buildings in Eksioglu's picture also seem to stand at attention, like soldiers on parade, or at a funeral. Double duty, déjà vu, double irony: quickly running out of servicemen to finish the job in Iraq, the US Armed Forces has suggested that those who have already done their tour of duty might need to be brought back (or worse, kept there) for a second round. This is how we thank them? Meanwhile, inside this week's New Yorker, another through-the-looking-glass moment: the projected ten-year five trillion dollar surplus that George and Al bickered over in the months before the 2000 election, is now looking like it will be, instead, a five trillion dollar deficit. A hole in the ground where once a pile of wealth stood...

Gotta hand it to you Public Address readers: you know your liquor, and you're all creative geniuses in the kitchen. No sooner had I raved about the feijoa-flavoured drinks and foods I encountered last month, than several enthusiastic missives arrived offering do-it-yourself recipes. I think it's only fair that I share them with the world at large.

First up, one regular correspondent (OK, my sister) suggests using a dash of feijoa-flavoured liqueur to liven up a glass of méthode champenoise. As she puts it, "Wheeeee!" The same correspondent suggests this cunning lurk for bakers: "You can make a good old feijoa cake by making a banana cake recipe using apples instead, but soaking the apples first in the feijoa liqueur." I'll remember that trick, especially since I last saw feijoas at Fairway for US$2 each, whereas apples are a dollar a pound. Thanks, Gemma!

And then there was this marvellously straightforward recipe for home-made fruit-flavoured liquor, from Raewyn Whyte of URL. [NB recipe amended and expanded 6 Sept 03]

Fruit-Infused Vodka (or Gin)
...the Crummer Road small batch method...

Half fill a very clean wide-mouthed (V8 juice-type) jar or a standard preserving jar with peeled and chopped up fresh, ripe organic fruit such as feijoas or pears, or washed whole blueberries.

Note: For a standard V8 juice jar, 6 - 8 feijoas or 2 pears or 2 punnets of blueberries should be adequate.

Add sugar (in an amount roughly 1/10th of the volume of the jar, or slightly more for blueberries).*

* Important note on sugar: You need the sugar to be in solution -- i.e. dissolved in the alcohol -- for the infusion period. You can simply add the sugar to the alcohol and shake to dissolve, but that takes a while (though we have found this is a perfectly good way to do it!). A more elegant method is to use a sugar syrup, made by dissolving 400gm/1lb of sugar in 4 cups of boiling water: stir until dissolved, and cool before use. Add the necessary amount of cooled syrup to your fruit + vodka infusion -- using the syrup to account for around 10% of the total volume. You can also use commercial glucose syrup, which makes a stickier liqueur, although you'll need to warm it slightly before mixing it in.

Then top the whole lot up with vodka or gin.

Cover with a nice tight lid and store in a safe place for 6 weeks or so: patience is rewarded by richer flavours.

Once you have infused the vodka for 6 weeks or more, and drained the fruit out, add syrup til you get to a desired level of sweetness (more for a syrupy dessert-style liqueur, less for a subtler taste).

Store in freezer and sip from shot glasses.

...or pour over ice-cream, use to tart up cocktails, infuse breakfast cereal (in extremis), etc. Besides feijoa, pear, and blueberry, Raewyn recommends cherry, but notes that pomegranates are rather tart and persimmons just don't work at all. She adds: "We have discovered that you MUST put sugar in with the fruit at the start as it helps to draw the flavours into the vodka or gin. The feijoa vodka and blueberry gin we've made is quite delicious and we never make enough! The critical thing seems to be making sure the fruit is ripe. We use organic fruit off our own tree and from a friend's tree."

Her partner-in-crime Derek -- who actually makes the vodka from scratch for the full DIY effect (see Still Spirits for ideas and equipment) -- notes that it's far from an exact science. "It's all a process of trial and error. We had one batch of feijoa-infused vodka that was crap after 6 weeks, but after a year it was utterly fabulous."

Thanks, guys! Inspiring stuff, especially for those of us far from a source for the bought variety, or those lucky enough to be gazing out at a tree full of fruit and wondering what to do with it after you get sick of feijoa ice-cream, feijoa crumble, feijoa kebabs, etc. I get the impression the infusion process gets pretty addictive once you get started. So what do you do with all that lovely fruity liqueur lying around the house, apart from drink it? As it happens, Raewyn is writing a book on cooking with vodka -- keep an eye out for it in October 2004. Consider this an exclusive preview to whet your appetites and make sure you have enough of the raw ingredient lying around when the book comes out.

Now I look forward to hearing the results of readers' experiments -- tamarillo liqueur, anyone? -- and in the meantime, anyone know of a North American source of dried feijoa bits that I can mix into my home-baked muesli, for that taste of home?

After a month in New Zealand and only a week back in Manhattan, Busytot has come out as a confirmed café crawler. We just had lunch at Chez Nous, which was a pallid substitute for the café lunch I promised him. The café I had in mind turned out to be packed full of Columbia undergrads – first week of semester, rainy day -- so what could we do but go home, set the teeny tiny table with plastic knives and forks, and order up cheese toasties, peaches, and chocolate milk for two. Thankfully, Busytot fell in with my cunning scheme, after some initial scepticism (i.e. shrieking "No go home! Want go café!"). Advantages of the domestic ersatz-café: vastly more elbow room than your average city eatery, own choice of music (in this case, Don Linden's classic selection of vintage kiddie songs with the beloved "Kiwi Song" on endless repeat), and best of all, the clientele can fall asleep on the floor after eating.

Behold the urban child. I was reminded of writer Adam Gopnik's description of his daughter's imaginary friend, a chap called Charlie Ravioli who was always too busy to see her and whose PA would frequently put her on hold when she called him (Charlie Ravioli has become quite a meme, all by himself). It hasn't got quite that bad around here yet, but the first morning we woke up in the city after arriving back from New Zealand, Busytot's first comment upon waking was a dreamy "Oooh, garbage truck... garbage truck go backwards..." And yes, outside the window, the garbage truck of the apocalypse graunched its way up and down the street, waking the dead and the jet-lagged.

Only a week back in the city and we're sleeping through the garbage trucks and fitting back into our American life. You know how when you travel, certain mundane things carry the aura of the Other Place long after your return, how you hoard the last few drops of Fairy Liquid, or French dentifrice, or Danish hair skum, but one day they're finished and you're back to prosaic local products? This time, it was the switch from Treasures to Pampers, and handing over the last of the little boxes of UHT milk, the one that proclaims itself "the milk NZers grow up on." And reaching the bottom of the box of Hubbards' feijoa-flavoured cereal...

Someone once said that patriotism is the memory of foods eaten in childhood. I don't know if that's entirely true, but there seems a whole lot of food-based nostalgia going on in NZ at the moment, from kiwiana wedding menus (sausage rolls, mini-pavs) to feijoa-flavoured everything. It's not just the cereal and the fizzy water, but vodka from 42 Below, and a very yummy liqueur that, as far as I can tell, was made in Greenhithe. As the label on the latter points out, the feijoa is originally a South American fruit, as indigenous to New Zealand as, well, Chinese gooseberries, but it's also indelibly the flavour of a Kiwi childhood, especially if you were lucky enough to have, or live next to, one of those damnably prolific trees. We used to put washing baskets full of the things at the end of the driveway, labeled "FREE!"

The feijoa liqueur is particularly redolent, and it makes a nice metaphor for what seems to be happening to New Zealand at the moment: there's a sort of distillation going on, a concentration of particular flavours that is both welcome and a little intense. I tried to immerse myself in it over the four weeks we were there -- I feel like the chap who drowned in the giant vat at the whiskey factory, and who bravely fought off his rescuers -- and will attempt to describe it in the next several blogs. I don't promise anything coherent: it's as impossible to anatomize a return to an ever-changing, multi-faceted place as it is to explain your family to strangers, and probably for similar reasons. Watch this space.

But here's something I can detail for you. It was a major treat to finally put faces to most of the other Public Address bloggers. I'm happy to report that they're all devastatingly good-looking and uniformly charming, and altogether not so different from what I had imagined. See, in the movie version of Public Address that had been playing in my head, our Russell was inexplicably played by Russell Crowe. Turns out our Russell is smarter, nicer, has more whiskers and would far rather hug you than thump you. He also makes the best coffee in the southern hemisphere.

For Debra and Chad, I already had author photos to go on (which are generally as accurate as the gruesome mugshots in one's passport, only in the opposite direction). Happily, these two resembled their glam studio photos far more than they did, say, Liza Minnelli and David Gest. I had no mental picture for Damian, save that he had shoulder-length hair and a surfboard in one hand; I am pleased to report that he is much more urbane and well-groomed in the piece (which is to say, that's not really him in the picture that you get if you do a Google image search for Damian Christie ).

Meanwhile, Matt and Karl, our loyal designers, coders and debuggers, always showed up on my mental screen as Sean Bean and Viggo Mortenson, wearing manly armour and speaking in iambic pentameter. Substitute keyboards and desk-chairs for swords and horses, but otherwise the resemblance was spooky. Alas, Rob didn't make it to dinner, so he's still stuck in my head as Hugh Grant (circa About a Boy, rather than Maurice). And yes, I realize I've left one person out: dear readers, feel free to picture me as Sarah-Jessica Parker, albeit after a stiff regime of protein shakes, wearing something made in NZ, and without most of that silly hair.