Flash Harry

How about this gorgeous boy? He has been living on an exposed verandah down in Dunedin for a number of years - until I rescued him. And he turns out to be really very flash – Flash Harry indeed.

My Dunedin friends knew that he deserved another life and he has risen to the occasion magnificently. And also amazingly, I managed to get hold of some actual authentic sixties fabric which my neighbour had been hanging on to for all these years. I am thrilled to be able to totally restore this lovely mid-century chair and then to be able to recover it in authentic mid-century fabric. It’s not something that happens often.  

I suppose I could be accused of looking back with too much sentimentality; in truth a lot of those old fabrics were not durable and were scratchy and had no give. And the chairs were lumpy and hard and made scratches on the floor. But not this big boy – he’s got no flaws.

 But the looking back with a rosy view is a hypnotic pastime when you get to a certain age. I am at last selling the building and apartment that we built and then lived in for more than 30 years. It is a weird unsettling time. I guess I am fortunate not to have experienced this particular weightless, sense of disconnection too many times before in my life but the flotsam of a life lived in one very large house is fairly overwhelming.

So we are hoping for a new future and handing over our treasured lifetime’s work to some other people. But I can’t help but look back- with far too much sentimentality really.