Paua To All Our Friends

My Dear Princess & Dear Fellows,

Happy Waitangi Day!

Well it's happy for me, because I am at home on my @rse. 

I'm feeling a bit dazed today actually. This is because I was having weird dreams all night. In my dream, it was the 18th century and Russell Crowe was accused of a crime he did not commit! He was being pursued all over 18th century France or maybe England. And in my dream I thought, "But that's not right, Russell Crowe is JAVERT," and so then HE was doing the chasing and he was chasing ME! 

So there you have it. Even my subconscious watches musicals.

But that is nothing to do with Waitangi Day.

In honour of New Zealand's national day I took a picture of a paua shell. I think it is beautiful. The paua itself is like a giant mussel that you can throw on your barbecue and eat if you don't mind eating giant molluscs. It is not for me. 

Er Indoors, on the other hand, can't get enough mollusc-action and keeps a small bucket of green-lipped mussels on standby in the fridge at all times. I have to leave the room when she eats them because she makes a SHLUP noise that makes me boke. 

Also nothing to do with Waitangi day.

I apologise if today's rubbishy pun has put the Cliff Richard song in your head by the way. I know it is in mine. My mum LOVED Cliff Richard. Ever since she was a teenager, even when he went through his "Sue Barker" phase. She thought he was CHEATED out of victory, not just in Eurovision 1973, but also in 1968. She was very bitter about it. 

I recommend you watch the YouTube video, purely for Cliff's comedy dance moves which are effing hilarious. Seriously. He is worse than me after drinking. I love the bit where he does a spin and nearly crashes into The Shadows, and the bit at the beginning where it looks like he is playing invisible cymbals between his knees. 

In fact I enjoyed it so much I stayed on the YouTube channel and watched lots more Eurovision videos. I love the big flouncey outfits and the overblown singing. My favourites were:

L'Oiseau Et L'Enfant
Ding A Dong
Tu Te Reconnaîtras
Viva Cantando (That frock! And those little cries of "hey!" Ha ha ha!)
Meine Kleine Welt
Baby, Baby (Who doesn't love a matchy-matchy couple?)
Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son

Seriously. How can you NOT love a song called Diggy-Loo Diggy-Ley? It is impossible.

But none of this is anything to do with Waitangi Day. To be honest, I'm still a bit confused about it. The Treaty of Waitangi forms the fundament of New Zealand's unwritten constitution. But the confusing thing is, as far as I understand it, there are two versions - one in English and one in Maori. And what with the difficulty in translating the exact meanings of words, I believe the two documents can be intepreted in different ways, which has led to controversy over the years.

But still, it is central to NZ's identity as a nation. I try to think of it like this - much like the American Constitution, it can be interpreted differently by different people depending on their point of view. It's more "the vibe of the thing" to quote Dennis the Lawyer. 

It's more the principle that this land wasn't conquered, but an agreement reached between the settlers and the Maori which continues to this day.

And to be honest, the Maori were unconquerable. I read a book about the New Zealand wars that made it sound like the Maori were so good at war because they just bloody loved getting into a barney. Way before the first world war, they had invented trench warfare - figuring out that the best way to deflect the British big guns was to build huge earthworks, like massive forts, called "pas".

One of my favourite stories about the British trying to storm one of these pas was that they tried to dig trenches right up to the gates of one. Naturally, the Maori warriors fired their own guns into the trenches, so the British hid their troops by covering the top of the trenches with woven flax leaves they bought from the locals. Eventually, after digging their way in, the British stormed the pa to find the Maori had effed off out the back ages ago (and presumably started work on another pa somewhere else). 

Insult to injury, they were also the ones who had been weaving the flax - which they'd sold to the British, thereby making a nice profit out of the whole venture.

I love things like that. I love history. Paua to the Maori. Paua to the girls I knew before and those I've yet to meeeeeet.

S.