Blast from the past

I meant to post something last weekend but I got a cold and my brain was as gummed up as my nose though I'm starting to feel better. I have several accumulated links, and also photos from our team-building tree-climbing exercises last week (before the cold hit), but for now I'll just tell you about Ian McKellan appearing on the news in one of my childhood towns.

I grew up all over the North Island, and one town I lived in (twice) from about age 4-7 and 8-11 was Stratford. Its main claim to fame is the 67 streets named after Shakespearean characters. We lived on Juliet, Ajax while our new house was being built, and Orlando, and the school was on Regan.

McKellan is raising money to rebuild a Christchurch theatre with a travelling one-man interactive show and he started his tour in Stratford, or Stratford-on-Patea as he called it. It was a nostalgia hit seeing him wandering about the streets (and being amused at the names, esp Regan)--and across the wooden bridge I used to play on. I'd walk along the narrow ledge on the outside, clinging to the railings while boys playfully hit my hands in the attempt to make me fall off. I never did, but the fall to the river wasn't as far as I'd thought back then; Greg was rather dismissive of the danger.

And man, I just saw in the Wiki article that Neil Volzke is mayor. I was at school with him (unless it's his father). :-P