Day Eighteen - Snow & Connection

Easter Sunday. In lockdown. At the beach.
Busy with things today, and then kinda blustery and growly. Didn't want to get blown to smithereens (what the hell is smithereens?!) or drowned. Hmmm, could have had dozens of walks, the rain mostly held off despite looking threatening.

For many years I went skiing in Europe at Easter, when I lived in London. Such fun ski days in resorts all over Europe. Crazy beyond belief. One of the best was "Meribel Magic" week, 1989. A particularly nutty one was in Chamonix. Also many zany weeks in St Moritz in the 1989/90 season (my boyfriend at the time did a season there). So long ago but so memorable. More in a later post ...

So today's photo is of a ski resort, rather than a beach one.
Friends John & Shelley are living in St Anton, Austria for the winter season. They were aiming for 100 ski days, but alas Covid has stymied that target. Here are some pics from their FB page.
They went into lockdown in St Anton before us, and were set for 4 weeks of it. After persevering through 26 days - they just got advised it's extended to 6 weeks. After testing everyone in the town they found that 15% were positive.

St Anton, Austria

Weather turned rather nasty here around 3pm - just as I was watching Jesus getting crucified in the livestream of Jesus Christ Superstar. What a truly harrowing scene, I could barely watch. 

Although it's not one of my fave musicals, it has some good tunes and this was a wonderful edgy production (2012 at the UK Arena). I loved Mel C (Sporty Spice) as Mary, she's brilliant. Andrew Lloyd Webber came on at the end and it was a joyous finale. Loved.

Ballet:

Watched the Royal NZ Ballet "A Midsummer Night's Dream" earlier this morning on livestream (2015 production). The lighting and set - magical. The dancing beautiful. Oberon and his sparkly fluid coat were the epitome of 100% handsome. The final pas de deux was emotional beyond description, Loved.

Next weekend: Cinderella. Tune in. Can't wait.

Zoom catch up ...

Had fabulous 5pm catch up with friends (and drinks!) tonight.
This group has been getting together for a special Christmas dinner for years now - if we don't get to catch up during the year, there is always that, at least.
So now with Covid, we have a bonus catch-up in April via Zoom! Yay.

Bring on next Sunday!

Connection with friends is great at all times, just rather different in Covid times. It's not that hard - although sometimes technically tricky!

Dinner: Pumpkin/parsnip/kumara soup.
Janice and Paul were having prawn green curry - I wanted to go to their place!

SHARE-NOTE OF THE DAY:

A Serendipitous Reconnection from a couple of years ago - to inspire the keeping up of connections, resurrection of old ones and generation of new ones. 

Here's a story of how tracking someone down is worth it. 

I was friendly with a girl called Karen at high school. We lost contact after we left school - she went overseas straight after, and me not long after. but I'd often thought about her through the years. .At times I'd tried to find her but only got a dead end.

Gave it another go a couple of years ago. Eureka, I found her. I couldn’t locate any contact details or an email address, but I did manage to learn that she was living in Melbourne and working for a large company there. It just so happened that I was going to Melbourne the following week and, what’s more, my hotel was literally around the corner from the company HQ. How fortuitous!

So, on a sunny morning in Melbourne, and with a little bit of trepidation, I rocked up to HQ reception.

“This is rather random,” I began “but I’m looking for someone I haven’t seen for 40 years and I believe she works here.”

I gave the receptionist the name, told her of the school connection and how much I was hoping this visit would bring two old school friends together. The entire reception team was listening in by now, with intrigue and delight. The receptionist rang Karen and told her I was in reception to see her. “I’d better come down!” said Karen. And she did.

And there we both were, looking at each other 40 years after we last saw each other. It was quite surreal. Luckily, Karen was in between meetings, so she suggested coffee. Perfect. It’s fair to say the chat never stopped. We reminisced, we updated, we remembered our late parents. We laughed at quirky stories that we recalled like yesterday, filling in each other’s gaps.

We share an ongoing love of creativity. We exchanged contact details. There were no awkward moments. Conversation flowed easily until we had to part – Karen went off to her meeting and I skipped out into the Melbourne sunshine pinching myself.

All the ducks had aligned perfectly for this unexpected rendezvous and I was elated. As Karen pointed out, it’s hard to know how meeting up so many years later might go; some reconnections can end up being a one-off rather uncomfortable encounter, but this meeting was effortless and consolidated why we had become friends in the first place.

I encourage everyone to seek out former classmates – if you’ve been wondering what they’ve been up to, get going and try to find out! Contact your old school, they're likely to have plenty of archives as a great starting point.

You may just find that lost friend. As I did.

 Brilliant!