Blast from the past

[vilakins]

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

Comments

[mab_browne]

I didn't know that about Stratford - but then if I've driven through it once I was doing well. :-)

[eglantine-br.livejournal.com]

I recently found out that a younger brother of an old friend of mine, (a little boy I remember mostly for thumb -sucking,) has been made chief of police!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

It's very strange when they've never been adults to you.

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, how cool. And I didn't know about that Stratford - that's a great theme for street names!

:-)

(The best street name I know, though, is from my home town, which is Penel Orlieu, because it's really random and unusual and nobody outside Bridgwater knows how to say it - and yet all it actually comes from is the fact that there used to be a Penel Street and an Orlieu street there, back in the middle ages.)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I don't suppose you say it the French way, going by other English place names.


Akaroa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akaroa) in the South Island was settled by French and the streets are all Rues and some businesses have bilingual signs. It's a very curte town with a lot of artists.

[thisbluespirit]

Actually, it's not all that far off a French pronunciation, although of course, the 'l' gets sounded. (Pennel orloo, basically. In a Wurzel type accent, because it's Somerset.) I remember once it coming up on the local radio and the newsreader doing a sudden "aargh, word I can't pronounce" reaction, finishing up with a hopeful "peenel orlyew?". Heh. But then I went to uni in Wales as well, and each year the bank would ring me up and go "Can you confirm you're still at... er... your Welsh address?" :-D

Aw, that is lovely.

[zoefruitcake.livejournal.com]

Nice to revisit old haunts (kinda)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I haven't been back but my sister did a couple of years ago. She went to the primary school on Regan we attended and, typically full of chutzpah, went in and saw the headmaster and got a tour of the school off him.

One day maybe. It's quite a drive away and not on my way to anywhere.

[imhilien.livejournal.com]

Am sorry to hear about your cold...

[zoefruitcake.livejournal.com]

I remember going back to the convent when it was an auctioneers (it is now housing, http://www.berkeleygroup.co.uk/berkeley/summers-place the second picture of a bedroom is where we had lunch when we were in the juniors) and everything seemed so small. There was a wall I used to have to launch myself at to sit on, and it wasn't tall at all. Which is odd, as I was 5' 2" when I left there at 12 and I'm only 5½" taller than that now