Mount Ngauruhoe is apparently still an active volcano, has been for 2,500 years or so, and last erupted on 19th February 1975, and reportedly has erupted around 70 times since 1839.
The mountain is usually climbed from the western side, from the Mangatepopo track.
This photo was taken in summer from the Chateau Tongariro carpark.
In late autumn, on one of our many visits to the area, the mountain was covered with a light sprinkling of snow and ice.
On our most recent visit, this year, in winter, it was fully covered in snow.
There’s something to be said for a story that starts like a James Bond movie, throwing you straight in the deep end, a perfect way of getting to know the main character, David, or is that Alistair?
A retired spy, well not so much a spy as a retired errand boy, David’s rather wry description of his talents, and a woman that most men would give their left arm for, not exactly the ideal couple, but there is a spark in a meeting that may or may not have been a setup.
But as the story progressed, the question I kept asking myself was why he’d bother.
And, page after unrelenting page, you find out.
Susan is exactly the sort of woman to pique his interest. Then, inexplicably, she disappears. That might have been the end to it, but Prendergast, that shadowy enigma, David’s ex-boss who loves playing games with real people, gives him an ultimatum, find her or come back to work.
Nothing like an offer that’s a double-edged sword!
A dragon for a mother, a sister he didn’t know about, Susan’s BFF who is not what she seems or a friend indeed, and Susan’s father who, up till David meets her, couldn’t be less interested, his nemesis proves to be the impossible dream, and he’s always just that one step behind.
When the rollercoaster finally came to a halt, and I could start breathing again, it was an ending that was completely unexpected.
This book has also been written for some time, like The Document, and the manuscript was also sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.
And so it begins…
…
Going back and forth, fixing the timeline
…
That’s what editing is all about.
Reading that first rough draft and deciding it’s all crap. Then, after a good night’s sleep, deciding that it’s not half bad, just need to weed out the crap.
I’ve decided to add some more after the agent and target are gunned down and our protagonist shoots the sniper. One of them at least. There’s another out there, waiting.
There’s more to the target’s story that wasn’t conveyed to the planners and comes to light in that apartment. There’s going to be a twist in that tale.
The funeral is interesting, not only for the aftermath, but who attends, and as it is for the mentor, our protagonist is there to see what shakes out of the trees.
Meanwhile, our planner is now being interrogated as if she were a foreign spy, the last thing she expected from her own organisation.
There’s more than one way … er, perhaps it’s better to say, there are many ways to use the word bar, which is not bad for a three letter word.
Bar, the one you associate with drinks, in hotels, restaurants and we’ll, just bars.
Probably the best type of bar you might find me in is a Sports Bar, where you can snack on buffalo wings a tall glass of beer and watch with ice hockey in winter or baseball in summer.
It’s one I use from time to time when asked, what will we do, and the reply is often let’s go to a bar. The best bars are underground, dark and dingy, full of eclectic people, with a band playing almost passable music or better still jazz
Bar, as in the legal variety
There are so many legal references to using bar, that the one that I am most familiar with is being admitted to the bar which means that you can now practice law.
Raising the bar, if that’s possible, where the bar is that imaginary level which offers sinks very low. When someone says they’re going to try and raise the bar, you may be assured there will be a long battle ahead, simply because people generally find it hard to change.
Bar, as in we are not going to let you in here. Yes, this is the irksome one where you find yourself, often for reasons unknown, barred from somewhere or something. This may also be referred to by saying everyone may enter bar you.
Bar, as in an iron bar, the sort that is sometimes used as a blunt force object by villains to remind the victim they owe any one of a loan shark, bookie or the mafia. God help you if it is all three.
There are also iron bars of a different sort, those that are set in concrete outside a window most likely in a prison where the objective is to prevent escape.
It gives rise to an old expression, that person should be behind bars.
Then there is just a bar, such as a bar of gold, which I’m sure we’d all like to have stashed away, but not necessarily in the mattress, or the more common variety, a chocolate bar, which I have one now. What’s your favorite?
And just to add to the list of meanings you can always refer to sashes or stripes as bars.
Confused? Well, there’s still music, and the bane of yachtsmen, sand bars but I think we’ll leave it there.
50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And, the story:
Have you ever watched your hopes and dreams simply just fly away?
Everything I thought I wanted and needed had just left in an aeroplane, and although I said I was not going to, i came to the airport to see the plane leave. Not the person on it, that would have been far too difficult and emotional, but perhaps it was symbolic, the end of one life and the start of another.
But no matter what I thought or felt, we had both come to the right decision. She needed the opportunity to spread her wings. It was probably not the best idea for her to apply for the job without telling me, but I understood her reasons.
She was in a rut. Though her job was a very good one, it was not as demanding as she had expected, particularly after the last promotion, but with it came resentment from others on her level, that she, the youngest of the group would get the position.
It was something that had been weighing down of her for the last three months, and if noticed it, the late nights, the moodiness, sometimes a flash of temper. I knew she had one, no one could have such red hair and not, but she had always kept it in check.
And, then there was us, together, and after seven years, it felt like we were going nowhere. Perhaps that was down to my lack of ambition, and though she never said it, lack of sophistication. It hadn’t been an issue, well, not until her last promotion, and the fact she had to entertain more, and frankly I felt like an embarrassment to her.
So, there it was, three days ago, the beginning of the weekend, and we had planned to go away for a few days and take stock. We both acknowledged we needed to talk, but it never seemed the right time.
It was then she said she had quit her job and found a new one. Starting the following Monday.
Ok, that took me by surprise, not so much that it something I sort of guessed might happen, but that she would just blurt it out.
I think that right then, at that moment, I could feel her frustration with everything around her.
What surprised her was my reaction. None.
I simply asked where who, and when.
A world-class newspaper, in New York, and she had to be there in a week.
A week.
It was all the time I had left with her.
I remember I just shrugged and asked if the planned weekend away was off.
She stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, hands around a cup of coffee she had just poured, and that one thing I remembered was the lone tear that ran down her cheek.
Is that all you want to know?
I did, yes, but we had lost that intimacy we used to have when she would have told me what was happening, and we would have brainstormed solutions. I might be a cabinet maker but I still had a brain, was what I overheard her tell a friend once.
There’s not much to ask, I said. You’ve been desperately unhappy and haven’t been able to hide it all that well, you have been under a lot of pressure trying to deal with a group of troglodytes, and you’ve been leaning on Bentley’s shoulder instead of mine, and I get it, he’s got more experience in that place, and the politics that go with it, and is still an ally.
Her immediate superior and instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position he had not taken advantage of a situation like some men would. And even if she had made a move, which I doubted, that was not the sort of woman she was, he would have politely declined.
One of the very few happily married men in that organisation, so I heard.
So, she said, you’re not just a pretty face.
Par for the course for a cabinet maker whose university degree is in psychology. It doesn’t take rocket science to see what was happening to you. I just didn’t think it was my place to jump in unless you asked me, and when you didn’t, well, that told me everything I needed to know.
Yes, our relationship had a use by date, and it was in the next few days.
I was thinking, she said, that you might come with me, you can make cabinets anywhere.
I could, but I think the real problem wasn’t just the job. It was everything around her and going with her, that would just be a constant reminder of what had been holding her back. I didn’t want that for her and said so.
Then the only question left was, what do we do now?
Go shopping for suitcases. Bags to pack, and places to go.
Getting on the roller coaster is easy. On the beginning, it’s a slow easy ride, followed by the slow climb to the top. It’s much like some relationships, they start out easy, they require a little work to get to the next level, follows by the adrenaline rush when it all comes together.
What most people forget is that what comes down must go back up, and life is pretty much a roller coaster with highs and lows.
Our roller coaster had just come or of the final turn and we were braking so that it stops at the station.
There was no question of going with her to New York. Yes, I promised I’d come over and visit her, but that was a promise with crossed fingers behind my back. After a few months in t the new job the last thing shed want was a reminder of what she left behind. New friends new life.
We packed her bags, three out everything she didn’t want, a free trips to the op shop with stiff she knew others would like to have, and basically, by the time she was ready to go, there was nothing left of her in the apartment, or anywhere.
Her friends would be seeing her off at the airport, and that’s when I told her I was not coming, that moment the taxi arrived to take her away forever. I remember standing there, watching the taxi go. It was going to be, and was, as hard as it was to watch the plane leave.
So, there I was, finally staring at the blank sky, around me a dozen other plane spotters, a rather motley crew of plane enthusiasts.
Already that morning there’s been 6 different types of plane depart, and I could hear another winding up its engines for take-off.
People coming, people going.
Maybe I would go to New York in a couple of months, not to see her, but just see what the attraction was. Or maybe I would drop in, just to see how she was.
As one of my friends told me when I gave him the news, the future is never written in stone, and it’s about time you broadened your horizons.
It was the small town that we had visited once, some years ago, that had enticed me back.
Those had been happier times, times when the stench of money hadn’t overtaken sensibility, and who we really were.
Not that I had changed all that much, except for the upper west side apartment, and posh car to go with it, but what had disappointed me was the change in Liz, the woman I thought once was the love of my life.
Without the trappings of wealth, she was the kindest, most thoughtful, and generous person I knew, but that had changed when I became the recipient of an inheritance that beggared belief. We both made a promise from the outset that it would not change us, but unfortunately, it did.
And that was probably the main reason I was standing outside an old fixer-upper house on several acres overlooking the ocean.
I’d asked Liz to come, but she was having a weekend away in Las Vegas with her new friends, or as one of the ladies rather salaciously said, a what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas kind of weekend.
Charmaine had told me about the house, one that she had admired for a long time, but didn’t have the means to buy it.
Charmaine was a painter, a rather good one, and both Liz and I had met her on a weekend away upstate, and I’d bought one of her landscapes to hang in our new apartment. Liz hated it, but I think that had more to do with the painter than the painting, and that was because Charmaine had flirted with me, and that, I had observed over time, was how she was with everyone.
She called it her sales technique. After all, it had worked on me.
I listened to the auctioneer go through the rules of the action and then move on to a physical description of the property. I’d been to several viewings and got a promising idea of what was needed if I were to buy it. It had good foundations and suffered from a lack of TLC. It was how the auctioneer summed up.
When he called for the first bid, I felt a hand slip into mine, and a glance sideways showed it to be Charmaine. I had asked her along for support, but she had something else to do, but it appeared now, that she hadn’t.
“So,” she whispered next to my ear, “you were serious about this place?”
I had been dithering, not being able to make my mind up, but Liz, in the end, made the decision for me. I’d overheard a snippet of conversation with one of her new friends, and to be honest, I’d been surprised.
“Perhaps it was time to find a hideaway.”
“Things that bad?”
I shrugged. “Maybe I’m writing too much into it. At any rate, I needed an excuse to get out of town, and being here was as good as any.”
The first bid came in at 450,000. I knew the reserve was about 700,000, and I was prepared for 850,000. But I was hoping to spend less than that because the renovations would be about 250,000.
“We could go and have a picnic. It’ll certainly cost less than buying this place.”
“I’m here now.”
Holding hands was just one of Charmaine’s ‘things’, and I had never written anything into what might have been called a relationship of sorts. We were not lovers, and the conversation had never been steered in that direction, but I did find myself gravitating towards her when Liz was off doing her thing with her friends. To be honest, I just liked the idea of a picnic and watching Charmaine paint her landscapes.
I raised the bid to 500,000. Another from the previous bidder, 550,000. Another at 600,000. It seems there were three bidders for the property. The other sixteen people attending were observers, probably locals interested in how this would help their property value.
I went 625,000 when the auctioneer changed the increment after a lack of bidding. It was countered, moving to 650,000. Another at 657,000, and then the first bidder went to 700,000, the reserve.
“You do realize the other bidders are friends of the owner and are there to push the price up?” Charmaine whispered in my ear.
I’d heard of it happening, but I’d not suspected it until she mentioned it.
“Going once, going twice at 700,000.” The auctioneer looked at me. “I’ll accept 10,000 increments.”
I nodded. 710,000. It quickly moved to 800,000, after I bid 790,000.
The auctioneer looked at me expectantly. “810,000, sir?”
That was more than I wanted to spend though an elbow in the ribs was the clincher, and when I declined, there was an air of disappointment.
“Going once, going twice, all done at 800,000?” A look around the crowd confirmed we were all done, and the gavel came down.
“Looks like we’re going on a picnic,” she said. “I’d expect a call in an hour or so.”
Two things happened that weekend, both of which surprised me. The first, Charmaine was right, I did get a call, and finished up with a hideaway in the country, overlooking the ocean. The second, Liz didn’t come back from Las Vegas. She had apparently found someone new, someone more exciting, or so she said.
I guess I was disappointed but not overly concerned. She had changed and I had not and if the truth be told, we were drifting apart. We parted amicably, sold the apartment, and moved on, each in a different direction.
I had a new residence, and renovations to take my mind off the break-up, and when I told Charmaine, she just said she didn’t believe we were that perfect match. And in the light of my new status, I could now ask her to come and stay in the spare bedroom, a lot better, I said, than the one-person tent she had been using, an offer she readily accepted.
Until, a year later, it became something more than that.
You know, the sort of day where you have the best of intentions, you get up ready to start attacking the agenda you’ve told yourself you’re finally going to sit down and get on with.
The same set of words you’ve been using to fire up the enthusiasm you really don’t feel much of the time, but this time, have worked yourself into a high degree of positivity just before going to bed.
Everything is set up. All you have to do is bound out of bed, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to go.
That was the first mistake. You went to be very late, around 2 am, and when you woke up, it feels like death warmed up. No bright eyes, and definitely no bushy tail.
But, there’s work to be done.
Before that, there’s other stuff, and as each succeeding chore is down, the less enthusiasm feels. I have to clean up the dining room, which, at the moment, is the go-to for all the tools, paint, tile glue, tiles, and everything that’s being used in the latest round of renovations.
Frankly, the room is a mess. I can move a lot of the tools out to the shed now that I’ve finished with them, and the rest, a few pain brushes and the tiling equipment, we be used over the next week.
An hour and a half later, the room is now clean.
I go out to the writing room and look at the list. Good thing I’d didn’t put a time against anything, because if I have, I was now looking at being at least four hours behind.
A phone call made that timeline worse. People always call when you don’t need any calls to distract you. It’s one of the reasons why I have seriously considered getting the landline cut off. And if it wasn’t for the grandchildren, who know they can call on that line, with a number that’s easier to remember than a mobile, I would.
But that of course leaves me open to the half dozen scam calls a day, trying to sell cladding, and solar panels, defend myself from a car crash that I never had, fend off illicit charges from Telcos, and now Amazon. Not forgetting my friend from the NBN who rings once, sometimes twice a day telling me my internet is about to be cut off.
To be honest, I wish they would, but as much as I tell them to cut it off they never do, perhaps knowing that if they do, they can’t scam call me anymore.
By the time I get back to my office, it’s time for a cup of tea.
Or something stronger.
The morning has gone, and the afternoon is half over, and all I’ve done is look at the list.
And since blog posts are on the list, this is why I’m writing this whinge.
How is your day going? I hope it’s better than mine.
When I opened my eyes, there was a moment where I felt I was rising up from the bottom of the ocean, holding my breath, and heading towards the light.
I was in the captain’s seat, and as my vision focussed, I sucked in a huge breath and sat up. There were others in front of me still slumped over their consoles, barely visible in the emergency lighting.
I tried standing intending to go over to the navigation console and felt my legs buckling under me, and had to sit down again.
I heard a groan from behind me, followed by, “What happened?”
It was the Chief Engineer.
I turned just as he attempted to stand and collapsed to the floor.
I tried again, with more success, and walked slowly over to him. That was when a different sort of light illuminated the bridge and, when I turned to see what it was, just saw the edge of a planet come into view.
We were very close, and it seemed the ship had adopted a circumnavigation path. The ship also seemed to be slowly rotating, hence the changing view of the planet.
Others were stirring. I helped the Chief Engineer up.
“Whatever happened,” I said, “we seemed to have traveled to an as-yet-unnamed planet.”
“Mars perhaps?” He sat back at his console.
A voice yelled out, “not Mars sir, Uranus. And in the distance, that reddish-colored moon is Oberon I think.”
Exactly where the alien ship had said there was a colony, under the ice surface.
I turned to the Engineer, “Chief, what’s the state of the ship?”
“It apparently is on standby, awaiting our command. It is as the Navigator says, we are at Uranus, in a geosynchronous orbit.”
The moon that we believed to be Oberon came up on the screen, and standing off it was three ships, the two that we had encountered, and a larger ship, no doubt belonging to the kidnappers.
“Do you have the elapsed time since we started the test?” I was curious how long we had been unconscious.
I would also like to know why were ended up unconscious, but that was a matter for later. The other problem; the three ships would soon discover our arrival and would be curious themselves, and I didn’t like the odds if we had to go into battle.
“Sixty-five earth minutes, sir.”
I’m sure he would tell me just how fast we had traveled soon enough. “I’ve got to get back down to engineering. I’ll have a report as soon as possible, but, if required, we’re on standby for any operation you deem necessary.”
“Very good.” Then, “Any chance we arrived un-noticed?” I asked the navigator.
“No sir. We were just scanned, so they know something is out there.”
I found it surprising that the kidnappers had told me precisely where they were going. Perhaps they had not expected our ship could follow them, and that, until just over an hour ago, was exactly our thoughts too.
“Is it possible to scan the moon, and the planet?”
“In the process of doing so, sir.”
I went over to the military console where the officer was quickly checking all the systems. “Everything online and available?”
“As far as I can tell. We should be able to retaliate if we have to.”
“It may be sooner than we think. One of the ships, a smaller one, is heading in this direction.”
I yelled out, “Anyone needing medical assistance?”
No one replied. It seems they had all suffered the same malaise I had, a period of unconsciousness. Then a series of reports filled the bridge as each officer reported their systems were online and ready.
I then asked the ship’s department heads to report in, and each came back, not asking the obvious question, but to say everything, and everyone, was ok.
Five minutes later, the ship could be seen approaching us, stopping in indeterminable distance from us, but it was quite close, close enough to make out the detail of the outer hull, and, I noticed, for one of the scientists to scan the vessel and take photographs for reference if we needed to know about it later. The first alien ship in our database.
Then a voice came over the communications system, not one of ours. “Hailing earth ship’s captain. We are sending one of your crew back to you, we do not know what is wrong with him.”
The next instant the captain, in a prone poisition, appeared on the deck in front of the chair. “Medical team to the bridge,” I said.
I went over to him, and he appeared asleep. I checked for a pulse, and there wasn’t one. He was cold, and not a good sign.”
“We have him,” I said. “What happened?”
“He collapsed. Our medical people tell me from what they know of your physiology, that he has stopped breathing, and possibly had what you call a heart attack. I assure you we did not harm him, or your other crew member in any way.”
One of the ship’s doctors came out of the elevator and ran over to us, and immediately did a scan. We were the first ship, the first people, in fact, to use the new technology which was supposed to diagnose most of the problems humans could suffer in a matter of minutes.
“He’s dead, sir,” the doctor pronounced. He had brought several others on the medical team, along with the means to transport him back to the hospital.
They carefully lifted the captain onto the mobile stretcher. “Permission to leave, sir?”
I nodded.
The alien captain, if it was him, came back, “We would like to know how your ship managed to get here so quickly. Our knowledge of your technology makes it impossible for you to travel such distances as you have, and especially in that ship.”
“We’re trying to work that out ourselves. Would you like to tell us how you can move so quickly yourself?”
“We have nothing to hide. Perhaps we could meet and discuss it.”
This book has also been written for some time, like The Document, and the manuscript was also sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.
And so it begins…
…
It depends on your definition of guilty
…
From the aspect of the poor agent who walked into a maelstrom, it has to be the planners, or at the very least someone within the organisation.
Leaks are rarely considered to be from the outside.
But, it could be someone on the inside trusting the wrong person. It’s a matter that will merit more investigation, after …
Well, there are those on the inside who believe that it was the planners, and one in particular, Evelyn.
While the protagonist also believes this is the case, and despite her protestations, because of the unique relationship between them, it is about to land her in a world of pain.
Meanwhile, the protagonist has a funeral to attend.
Mount Ngauruhoe is apparently still an active volcano, has been for 2,500 years or so, and last erupted on 19th February 1975, and reportedly has erupted around 70 times since 1839.
The mountain is usually climbed from the western side, from the Mangatepopo track.
This photo was taken in summer from the Chateau Tongariro carpark.
In late autumn, on one of our many visits to the area, the mountain was covered with a light sprinkling of snow and ice.
On our most recent visit, this year, in winter, it was fully covered in snow.
