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Blog 6 - From a Villa in Grey Lynn - Happy Birthday 2024

Ashleigh Ogilvie-Lee

On New Year’s Eve, my friend Lil and I drove through the torrential rain to Pakiri to see the new year in with sister Damaris (Adie) Boydie and their son Jo and his partner Isabelle. We drove past the camping ground where the tents were bravely sheltering people who, like most of us, were praying that the rain would wash away, taking 2023 with it.


We sat round the table, laden with shiny pizzas, with one sadly unvarnished just for me and my oilless diet. Damaris, a devotee of parlour games, started a butterfly-in-your-stomach sort of game called "expose of the soul", whereby you tell each other your dreams and aspirations for 2024.


Isa (Isabelle) and Jo are young enough to take the world seriously. Isa wants to find a balance between work and play, meaning spending more time creating wild garments on her sewing machine and less analysing policy. Jo is trying to navigate the waters churned up by a new government but is worried his ship has been overrun by pirates with different moral values than a committed climate activist. (I ask Gus what he wants to do and he says, speaking for all the boys, they want to not get so f...... up with drinking and stop vaping.) Boydie wants to finish his book on how to save the world from the obesity epidemic but needs to get his Christmas letter out first. Damaris wants to dance and look after those who can’t. Boydie, an academic, insists she needs something tangible to actually prove she has existed for a year, so she thinks a moment and then of course Eureka, the panacea for doing nothing, I will write a book she retorts. I say I want to be a piece of driftwood but Boyd says that’s ridiculous as I too must have a tangible goal. I will give him some Camus to read to convince him that tangible goals have no place in an absurd world and he is too old to take the world so seriously. The only truthful one amongst us is Lil, who bravely says I just want to have fun, but a week later when I ring her, she says she hasn’t had any yet.


We go down to the Pakiri rugby club for more wine and chat with the locals who are drinking wine from bottles with a glass built into the top. One of them is a council weed sprayer and he is friendly and smiles when he tells us how the posh folk yell abuse at him for using chemicals. Another local, who is a -2 golfing green keeper, is on music and just gets "Auld Lang Syne" on in time for us to cling to a stranger as the clock strikes midnight and we all hope the new year won’t turn into a pumpkin. Just when we think the frivolities are over, a seasoned supporter of the pub nods to a young fellow, and the moment they have been preparing for all year is here. They solemnly amble outside. A few minutes later, 2024 bursts into life as a single Catherine wheel twirls and fizzes around and around, and all we need is a sparkler to hold to be 5 years old again. If we can just keep our aspirations as modest as that single firecracker, who knows we might just find fire in our belly in 2024.


Watching 2024 be born...




Izza, Joe and the -2 golfer



The party.


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Invitado
10 ene 2024

"I say I want to be a piece of driftwood but Boyd says that’s ridiculous as I too must have a tangible goal. I will give him some Camus to read to convince him that tangible goals have no place in an absurd world and he is too old to take the world so seriously."


These two sentences have (temporarily, perhaps) given me permission to stop futilely clawing for a "purpose", and it's a HUGE relief. Thank you.

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