Hold your values close. Celebrate the good. Find fun or make it if you have to.
Despite the travel cost, what better time to return to my hometown?
While some of the world wondered about the wisdom of King Charles’ impending state visit to the United States to celebrate its 250 years since independence, we had no such qualms about the visit of our King.
Dame Annette, that is. The closest thing we get to royalty in Murchison.
She breezed into town at the weekend to be the especial guest at the town’s 150th celebrations.
As usual, she did not disappoint.
If there had been any Donald Trump type who needed to be reined in over the weekend, I am confident her down-to-earth charm would have saved the day.
With our two youngest sisters on the organising committee, the Auckland-dwelling sister and I expected to be put to work, although we were slightly surprised our first task was scrubbing the sinks in the school’s art room (displays were staged there).
We are confident they have never been so pristine.
Another assignment turned out not to be quite what we had expected. We thought we would be briefly dressing up as the Sisters of No Mercy, rattling collection boxes to help raise money for the local theatre.
But no, all four sisters were involved in giving the safety briefings at the two showings of some historic movies of the town, and at a concert.
This included me spontaneously bursting into song and being told to shut up.
The Auckland-dwelling sister got off lightly in this nonsense, because she had taken a vow of silence.
It was fun to be back in the old theatre, first built as a dance hall early last century, but later converted into a theatre space, used for movie screenings, local and visiting dramatic productions, and the Competitions.
As I have recounted before, it was the scene of my embarrassing stage fright incident during my primary school solo piano debut in the Competitions.
I went blank and forgot most of the notes in my rendition of The Bluebells of Scotland.
The around 180-seat theatre seemed so huge then.
On the rare occasions we were allowed to go to the movies, we would sit up the front. It seemed miles away from the mysterious teenage shenanigans going on in the back seats.
I was too frightened to do anything naughty and risk attracting the torchlight of what seemed like a perpetually grumpy usher.
We were roped in at the last minute to travel in the motorcade. The silent nun found her voice, revving the engine of the elder Murchison sister’s 1972 Vauxhall Viva to amuse the crowd (or herself).
After years languishing in the garage, the car, affectionately known as Winnie (short for Winnebago), had been made roadworthy for the occasion.
She did well until the last lap of the showgrounds, when she spluttered to a halt and refused to be coaxed back to life and had to be pushed out of the way.
(We have since heard some delusional theatre-goers thought the Sisters of No Mercy was a professional act. In these tough times, we may need to become nuns for hire. We will need petrol money for Winnie, should she ever decide to burst into life to faithfully transport us to our performance venues.)
We distributed flowers at graves at the local cemetery ready for a commemoration on the Sunday, discovering in the process unloved fake roses on my father’s grave with moss sprouting in them like hair in an old man’s ears. Oh dear.
We avoided arrest and an ACC claim (a ladder was involved) with some late night bunting slinging and guerrilla gardening at a local business.
A sewing machine malfunction resulted in us hand-sewing hems on banners, and on the last day of festivities, we helped with a series of old-style games.
It was great to see children and sometimes their parents, having this free screen-free fun, and being rewarded with sponsors’ products for their efforts.
After the weekend, I drove away replete with old times revisited and a renewed fondness for my hometown, in awe of the 17-strong group wearing multiple hats (literally and figuratively) who had worked through the many details involved in two years of planning and then executing such a complex event.
They might have been exhausted by the end of it, but they were still smiling.
But my Murchison girl credentials were in question. My pioneer spirit was flagging.
Too much singing and talking and too many late nights, meant I was moaning about a sore tonsil. Pathetic.
- Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
