gryphonelle

NB Still dry and fusty. 

I’ve been on twitter for a while now and I’ve noticed that, while pretty well everything else imaginable is tweeted about, menstruation doesn’t get mentioned a lot. People are happy to boast about their wanking, rimming, fellating, tea bagging, and anal bleaching, among other things. ( I read other people’s favourites to glean this information).  It really seems that it is de rigeur to have hairless or nearly hairless genitals in the manner of a child or adolescent, and to mention your appointment every time you go to the waxer.

 And maybe I’m in the wrong corner of twitter but not much mention is made of the endometrium regularly sloughing off the uterine walls when conception has not taken place. This messy phenomenon, with which almost every pubescent and post-pubescent female is well acquainted, is either a matter of no or little interest, or, well, private. It’s still not an easy topic for most women to discuss freely, except in fairly select company, and it’s one that many men are likely to joke about coarsely, awkwardly and ignorantly.

Quite recently in New Zealand there was some consternation expressed (quite rightly) at the restrictions to be placed on who could view an exhibition of Maori artefacts at Te Papa. It was suggested the pregnant (hapu) or menstruating women (mate wahine) make arrangements to view it at a more ‘convenient’ time. The explanation was that because some of the artefacts were of a funerary nature or had been used as lethal weapons so they could somehow impart some ‘negative spiritual energy’  (my interpretation) to the women affected by these mysterious and dangerous forces of nature. Or maybe it was the other way round. 

However, to make up for all the horror, tampon wrappers are now really pretty.

Remorse, the fatal egg by Pleasure laid
In every bosom where her nest is made,
Hatch’d by the beams of Truth, denies him rest,
And proves a raging scorpion in his breast.

William Cowper.

 This is a silly little story of a girlish fancy and the peculiarities of the brain (mine anyway). Many years ago, I had a bit of a ‘thing’ for a boy a little older than me. His name was Neil Webster (and probably still is). I thought he was very good-looking, with dark hair and I don’t quite remember what else. I don’t think I knew a single thing about him otherwise. He was a year ahead of me at school though not in the top stream, which obviously didn’t bother me then. I don’t think we ever really had a proper conversation. I’m sure we had absolutely nothing in common but I don’t know that I knew then that having something in common was sometimes a useful feature.

However (and I really don’t know how this came about — I wish I did), every time I open a new jar of Vegemite I remember his name. I’ve opened quite a few jars over the years as Vegemite is a household staple here. So, for some lunatic and obsessive reason way back when, I trained my brain to make that association. And I’ll swear that I’ve never missed remembering in over thirty years.

[I think the blonde girl (top right) in the photo married him. The dark haired one on the top left also rather fancied him. (She  had a relationship with MIke Gatting years later). I’m the one sitting demurely by the maths teacher. I’m pretty sure I was over Neil Webster by the time that was taken. (There could be another little story there.)]

1867, I mean.

This is the birthdate of my great-grandmother Rose. I don’t know her original surname as her parents anglicised their name when they came to New Zealand from Lithuania (or possibly Latvia, I’m not quite certain). They also anglicised their religion.[Not so much, as it transpires]. Rose was born in Palmerston North (which is named after Lord Palmerston) in the North Island .[Update 20/12/90: Apparently some of this is slightly incorrect. Rose was born in Hokitika, not Palmie. The family farm (see below) ‘Palmerston’ was named for the city ‘Palmerston’ in the Northern Territory which is now known as Darwin.]

They must have gone to Australia when she was quite young as she married my great-grandfather four days after her sixteenth birthday, and from all accounts he had ‘had his eye on her’ for a few years(!). They had eight children, the eldest of whom (born July 1885) was the soldier on my profile picture. My grandmother was the baby of the family. [One of Rose’s cousins was Yackandandah’s famous son, Sir Isaac Isaacs.]

Rose died in 1935. She is buried in Melbourne, in the Jewish cemetery.

A lot of interesting people were born in 1867, including Marie Curie and Ernest Dowson. It was also the year that the modern rose was born (La France) and the year that gorse was introduced to New Zealand. Gorse is now NZ’s worst noxious weed, partly because it cleverly worked out how to flower in two seasons here, and not in just the one as it does in its original home.

The New Zealand House of Parliament, also known as the Beehive. (It is unicameral and based on the Westminster system).