eduplus1

Eight weeks after my father arrived home from Indonesia, my grandfather died.  It was like he’d been waiting, waiting, for his youngest son to return.  December 1948 was cold then; at the Tiboel Siegenbeekstraat in Leiden, the whole family came to greet the paratrooper home from the tropics.  That year, Theo Stijnman’s Christmas present to my Dad was particularly poignant. He’d transcribed every one of my father’s letters home, in long-hand, into notebooks. It got even colder in January 1950....

I’m reminded of my Tante Riet by a review of Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional on Radio NZ. The Howick Library has a copy. It's a work of fiction. The book is set in a nunnery; it's blurb promises a woman who "holes up" almost by accident in a small religious community hidden away in the backblocks of Australia. Her personal disquiet is set against backdrops of the pandemic, a mice plague, invasions of personal space and bullying relationships.    What motivates women who choose a...

When I was a child, the Dutch community in our parish held a family event for Sinterklaas in our church hall. I remember recognising Mr Van Dyk as Zwarte Piet in blackface, bent double and carrying two bulging sacks of presents in pillowcases on his back. The adults were laughing as he toured the hall behind Sinterklaas, in priestly red over Father's cassock with a broomstick painted in gold with a cross on top. I must have been about six years old. I remember the crowded hall, the lolly...