both entrenched alcoholics, both the originals Dostoyevsky might have claimed, although both stark losers by the worlds brute standards.
Yes, I was there too, that late Saturday night after THE DUKE, riding the Kelburn cable-car up under the shadowy, Gothic pile of Victoria
University, where furtive as hedgehogs, we found a hand-hold to jemmy open an illegal window, fossick the disused office for carton stacked upon
carton, each one packed with indexed filing cards, meticulous references, NZ arcana, forgotten dialects, fables rare as moose from Southland,
obscure derivations, etc., incalculable musings of an idealist and dreamer (this he showed us) here lay the singular industry of a reverential scholar,
abandoned yet thirty years on, The Oxford Dictionary of New Zealand English first appeared, penned by an academic of that selfsame city.
We are the last of the witnesses Geoff, like the derelicts who took the sun sitting behind the Public Library, or sheltered in Pigeon Park, days long
gone (along with THE DUKE and THE GRAND HOTEL) a city newly syllabled, yet the light remains, much the same milky white and pale as stone.
Hotel Diligencias
In Veracruz dusk troubles with a scent of gardenias after the last tramcar passes by, and the rocking chairs begin their small breeze-making on the balconied terraces between the family photographs and little statues.