Posts by David Haywood
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Southerly: Høstens Vemod, in reply to Fiona Mckenzie,
If you’ll excuse me for butting in I’d suggest lower Highfield or (as that’s a pretty large area), individual streets – Park Lane, Beverly Rd, Nile Street, Orbell Street all have homes like this.
Thanks so much, Fiona -- hugely appreciated! Now I'll go mad looking on Google Street view. I scoped out a really good location when I was last in Timura, but somehow stupidly lost my notes.
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Alfie wrote:
Here’s more evidence of vemod being Swedish with the author’s Swedish wife claiming it was probably the “most Swedish” word she knew.
Very interesting! As I understand the word ‘vemod’ exists in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and (sort of) German (as ‘Wehmut’).
But the descriptions given in that discussion thread don’t really match very closely to what the Norwegian (an electrical engineer on paternity leave) told me. I wrote down what he said at the time and he wrote ‘høstens vemod’ in my notebook for me. I found his description of the Norwegian national character to be fascinating.
Lucy Telfar Barnard wrote:
I don’t know about the Norwegians, but the Danes think that the absolute best kind of practical joke is the one where the butt of the joke never finds out about it, ever.
I feel you may be onto something here, Lucy! I can quite imagine the electrical engineer going home to his wife and talking about the amazing practical joke he just played on a New Zealander. “Now he’ll go and tell everyone in New Zealand about it. Quick get onto wordreference.com and write an article claiming it’s also the most important phrase in Swedish. He’ll never figure out that this was a huge practical joke: ever.”
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Southerly: Høstens Vemod, in reply to Paul Campbell,
When I went to live in the US “home” meant Dunedin, after 20 years when I moved back it somehow magically changed to mean “Oakland” …. now, 10 year later, it’s just confused. I need a special word for that other place.
It certainly sounds like Paul Brislen is halfway to helping with his definition of Hiraeth:
(noun) “a homesickness for a home you cannot return to, or that never was”
We know at least what you're suffering from now (if not the name of the actual place).
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Southerly: Høstens Vemod, in reply to Chris Waugh,
But that’s Swedish, isn’t it?
You're quite right, Chris -- I should have spotted that...
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Aidan wrote:
Particularly loved the “BUGGAH”
I'm afraid that Polly has inadvertently picked up some engineer's language from her old Dad. We've had a few conversations about how children are held to higher language standards than incorrigible old codgers such as myself. So far with moderate success.
Emma Hart wrote:
I shall look it up and email.
Thank you, Emma -- hugely appreciated!
PaulVeltman wrote:
Hoskings vemod is even worse
This may indeed explain many of New Zealand's failings in comparison to Norway...
Stephen wrote:
My experience of Finns is that they stoically endure all four seasons equally.
Oh dear, yes, you're absolutely right -- I'd quite forgotten about that...
Deborah wrote:
BTW, what is Polly’s charge out rate?
You can get an awful lot of child labour out of her on the promise of a new tiara...
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Southerly: Høstens Vemod, in reply to Hebe,
Love the sound of your inventive and surprising children, and very sad at Polly’s fear of her home disappearing again. I’m so happy that you have broken through to the other side of resettling.
Thank you so much, Hebe. We had a difficult couple of weeks with the refusal-to-leave-home phase, but the interview with our local councillor fixed it in one amazing session. His imagination was just about on par with Polly's. Hooray for local democracy!
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Southerly: Høstens Vemod, in reply to Ianmac,
My Høstens Vemod is the dread that Polly’s clarity and originality might get weighed down and the flames flicker out.
I don't think you need to worry, Ian! Young Polly has a very useful conventional streak to her brain that enables her to fit in very well in school (in comparison -- ahem -- to some other members of the family). Then she simply turns on her stream-of-consciousness generator as soon as she's out of the school gate...
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Southerly: Høstens Vemod, in reply to Carol Stewart,
Yes, I would love to go back to Norway too. I was taken with the grassy roofs...
I fell so insanely in love with the grassy roofs, Carol. I have several times suggested them for people doing new builds in CHCH -- to a few seconds of enthusiasm followed by "hmm... seismic loads", which is a very tragic. I've seen some work suggesting they can be done as a very minimal extra weight, but I guess people fear that it's too much like pre-installing graveyard turf above your family.
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Southerly: Høstens Vemod, in reply to Paul Brislen,
(noun) “a homesickness for a home you cannot return to
I definitely have hiraeth in spades then, Paul -- for pre-quake Christchurch. And I've met a lot of former Christchurchers who suffer from it too. A very useful word indeed for us.
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Southerly: Høstens Vemod, in reply to JonathanM,
cheese that smelt like diesel,
Thanks Jonathan! I was quite worried about that cheese -- but strangely my kids scoffed it down without a problem. Every so often I've thought that I should stir myself to find out why it smelt like that.