Fortuitous circumstances, odd coincidences, and old-time 'sea captains'

Monday morning here, on Queen's Birthday long weekend. It's foggy outside and in – it's a bit rainy (but very warm for early June) and I'm a bit fuzzy, following a fun dinner party with my neigbours Clare and John last night.

New friends are fun to meet – especially when they are close neighbours here in my new 'hood.

I met Clare a couple of months ago, on the bus coming home to our respective aeries here atop the Aro Valley cliffs. Then the next day she was walking their hound, Jake. We kept running in to each other on walks to and from work. Then one day two weeks on the bus, she invited me to Sunday dinner on this holiday weekend. A great time and fantastic meal ensued (Moroccan lamb stew!) and fine red wine flowed.

The other guest, Chris, had lugged along a couple of shopping bags full of interesting knicknacks he had amassed from cleaning out cupboards in his rental house. It was a pile of unrelated small crockery items, some Irish pottery/crockery, mustard and tea containers, a few more recent glasses, two cheesy plastic 60s vase-type things, and some mystery items.

This collection was bestowed on me as I left (apparently there had been lots of other bags of swag turning up at Clare and John's house, and they decided to share this one with me).

I'm going over the pile of swag now, as my hangover slowly fades away ... trying to determine the function and form of some of the things. I've made a wee movie and I'm sending it to my sis Kim to see if she can ID any of the mystery items (I'm purposely avoiding using the term "random" here, as that is consistently used incorrectly when the language manglers mean "unusual", "odd" or "strange" ... and that malapropism is a juicy topic for another post.)

Among the many conversation arcs and loops swirling around the table last night at the dinner party, I learned some of the history of Clare and John's house. It was built back in the late 1800-early 1900s, by a "sea captain" who designed the original structure like a ship ... with several doors (allowing for many avenues of escape, perchance?), and some hidden cupboards and such. He must have been a fellow of diminished height, because the doorway arches were considerably lower than me, and the architectural standard of 6'8" ...

They thought the sea captain was a rum-runner, and perhaps other booty, treasure and ill-gotten gain had also passed through his home.

In the 70s, famed New Zealand actor and musician Bruno Lawrence lived there, and the house was HQ/Ground Zero for his creative collective, BLERTA.

Bruno Lawrence

The copious quantity of wine and great food didn't allow my brain to twig to the last time I heard Lawrence's name until this morning – I'd met his biographer, Roger Booth, at a gathering a year or so prior to this. Roger had a copy of the book Bruno: The Bruno Lawrence Story and gave me a signed copy.

Now I need to find out more about this mysterious "sea captain".

Nothing like a bit of sea-faring history and mystery! Yarr!