Art and Abart

The Ordeal of Richard Fevrel is apparently the most famous of George Meredith's novels. Born 10-20 years after Trollope, Dickens, Thack...

Cardinal Pell.  Yuck yuck yuck. Pell, friend of the far right, bully and now convicted pädophilie. The decision by the jury was unanimous. ...

It has been a week since my last post and in that week I have learned what a nightmare shingles can be.  It isn't the itchy blistery...

Outside my window is a bush with little  butterfly-like flowers. The bees love these flowers which renew themselves daily as their long s...

I am on day six of the antivirals against shingles, one more day to go. I thought by this time I would be ' over the hump' but no, t...

I have been looking through the photos I took of Alan Pearson's portraits in Nelson's Suter gallery and in Wellington's national...

I didn't see much of Queenstown this visit as shingles makes you feel quite off colour and causes all sorts of odd aches. I developed a...

I had been waiting for Shingrix to arrive in Australia. It is a vaccine against shingles that is very effective.   The current alternative i...

Wellington on a good day is glorious. Blue skies, deep turquoise water, houses dotted along the hills all looking freshly painted. Tub ...

A couple of days without coffee means I am really enjoying the excellent coffee at a little warehouse type coffee shop called Emporio Cafe i...

Goodbye Nelson I had a very smooth flight from Nelson to Wellington this morning. There were two smoke plumes in the distance and p...

The New Zealand String Quartet (NZSQ) is a national treasure, which is something I didn't know before coming to Nelson. They were on my ...

Nelson has a marvelous little gallery, the Suter Art Gallery, set in the Queens Garden, which is a green refuge near the city centre. Qu...

Smoke haze enveloped Nelson in the morning yesterday.  Three thousand people have been evacuated from Wakefield just south west of the city....

The fires near Nelson continue to dominate the news. The family of my concert seat neighbour were told to evacuate yesterday. She has been s...

Today is Waitangi Day in New Zealand, and a public holiday. It is day 6 of the music festival and I am pacing myself, staving off exhaustion...

Coming back from a concert in a tiny church at Lake Rotoiti, we saw smoke  billowing from the hills nearby. Poor Nelson. The sky is now or...

While I am in Nelson I am sketching the musicians, especially Dénes Várjon and Izabella Simon, both pianists from Hungary whom I had met pre...

The auditorium at the Nelson School of Music is an amazing structure, a 'heritage' auditorium opened in 1901 and known for its good ...

Adam Festival Facebook post The organisers of the Adam Chamber Music festival in Nelson can be proud of themselves. They produced a wond...