The Green Birds & The Apple Tree - pictures without words

A Parody: Pop God Harry Styles Slips Into Queenstown

Harry wears Gucci

The prettiest prince-of-pop, since, well, Prince, slipped into Queenstown on Saturday in his Gulf Stream 550. Harry Styles, the charming Gucci clad kid from Redditch, now 26, and worth a cool sixty-three million quid, is here to film the music video for his latest single.

“Psychedelic Mushroom Pie”, penned during quarantine, in his London pad after a meditative tequila massage is already No. One on UK pop charts, and destined to make this popular solo artist a whole lot more doh-ray-me.

Harry has rocked up in the adventure-playground-for-the-bored-and-famous with a heady-sized entourage of fifteen. This includes hip hop dancers, film crew, sound techs, eyebrow stylist, Gucci stylist (also named Harry.) Plus the ironer of his bellbottom trouser collection, and his Siamese cat, Sweetcorn.

The postponement of his European summer tour can only be a boost to New Zealand’s current domestic tourism drive, which is taking off very slowly in the picturesque lakeside mountain town. On Wednesday morning at 11 am, the only visitors in Queenstown Bay were one hundred mallard ducks escaping duck shooting while searching for breadcrumbs. Along with one lone female in a grey hoodie skulling a bottle of wine.

fuck a duck where is everyone?

Janice Bloomfield (niece of NZ’s newest GQ coverboy Ashley) was lucky enough to catch up with the gorgeous Harry. While it was hard for her twenty-seven-year-old-soul not to see unicorns and rainbow sprinkles every time Harry opened his pretty mouth, her fifty-six- year-old-self kept it together (just) enough to ask a few deep and meaningful questions.

JB: Harry! Our borders are closed! How did you get in? Are you featuring in a new Air New Zealand video or something? Do tell.

HS:  Nah. Spoiler alert. I’m the new face of your domestic tourism campaign - ‘You Cannot Leave! Please See The Country!’ Naw, but seriously I sold my Hollywood mansion earlier this year. I was cool to pay your government's boa-constrictor-sized International Visitor levy. No worries mate! Kamate! Kamate! Kia Ora!

JB: Hey Harry you know a bit of Te Reo. How come?

HES:  After refuelling Gulfy GHES in Auckland, we picked up Cindy and Neve. Cute kid. Then we zipped into to rotten-roo-ah (laughs) sorry, I mean Rotorua. Cindy had hooked up a famil for us at the Te Puia Cultural centre. OMG. I loved it. I wanted to hongi everyone but you know, Covid. My hip hop dancers learned to spin pois. I bought this greenstone tiki.

Harry pulls the tiki, attached to a Gucci gold chain from his beneath his pale pink v-low-v-neck cashmere jumper. JB notices he has no chest hairs, but a very pretty tattoo of a butterfly just below his, urm, pecs. His nails are painted alternately pink and purple.

JB: Beautiful! Harry!

HS: When I heard that tikis are symbols of fertility I bought one. Apparently, I’ve tried to have a baby with a kiwi before now, you might have heard. A Victoria Secret model. Called G... Georgia. I wrote a song about it. It’s weird how lyrics and poems just come to you sometimes when you’re not really thinking about anything. I called the song “Kiwi”.

JB: (I bet a lot of kiwis women (and men) would want to have your baby, Harry.)

It’s a great rock song. ‘I’m having a baby, it’s none of your business.’ Ha ha. Did you see a kiwi? The bird kiwi? Feathery. Short. Long beak. Shuffly. Snuffly.

HES: Yeah! Wee, little fluffballs. Way sexier than the lil British robin red-breast, our national bird. But we legged it to Queenstown (such a great name!) from Rotorua after we’d done the ad campaign biz. With Cindy.

JB: Now with your domestic tourism job out of the way, you’re down here to film the music video for your new hit single. “Psychedelic Mushroom Pie”? Interesting title. Tell me about it. 

HES: (Laughs) Yeah, well, ahem, it’s old news that I like to nibble a handful of magic mushrooms occasionally. Hell, it’s been written about in Rolling Stone magazine! There is nothing like a spot of psilocybin shrooming to get the creative juices flowing. Really. And my sources tell me there used to be a bountiful supply at the head of lake Wha-kah-tee-poo. Blue meanies. Gold tops. Or do you call them gold caps?

JB: Crikey dick, I wouldn’t know. I’m your mum’s age. Past, urm, shrooming. How is your mum, Anne? Did she come on this trip?

HES: No, she stayed home. We detoured to Broome, Australia to buy her a present. I’ve always wanted to buy Paspaley pearls, The Most Beautiful Pearls in The World direct from the source. I got a string for me and one for me Mum. (Harry beamed, showing his trademark dimple. Now the most asked for cosmetic procedure in the US. Source The Sun.)

JB: I dropped my notes. I didn’t know what question to ask next. I felt like I was chairing an interview for a live audience. And not very well. I wished I could give darling Harry some help re forests-of-psilocybe-cubensis, when his eyebrow-stylist popped his head in and said:

ES: Harry me old guv. Times up sorry, luv. Gotta get these badgers waxed and trimmed before the shoot. Your convoy of Landrovers arrive in half . The dancers look brill in those crocheted romper suits you chose, Haz. We’ve peroxided their hair. Gonna look wild when they’re running through the dark fairy forest in the vid.

At that point, Harry is taking off his cashmere jumper, while I’m stashing my dictaphone. All he had on underneath was a mesh bodysuit with Stevie Nicks’ face stencilled on.

HS: ‘Janice it’s been so nice meeting you. A local. Here take my jumper. I always give my interviewers something. And you can’t have my tiki. It’s new! You and my mum would get along great. Hey, maybe we could have a cup of tea when I get back to town. We’re going to stay at a rug bay … no Blanket Bay for a few days. Some sort of resort with horse trekking and degustation grub and wine pairing and that.

I was clutching his jumper, still warm and reeking of the unisex scent, which he is the signature face of - Gucci’s Mémoire d’une Odeur, speechless, when Harry-2, his Gucci stylist walked in singing “Old Town Road.”

H2: Mate! Let’s throw on your new pearls with this 70’s crocheted, multi-coloured, bell-bottomed onesie. White Gucci snakeskin boots. You’ll be matchy matchy with the dancers. (Hums) Psychedelic Mushroom high! (H2’s pupils were the size of a Clydesdale’s hooves.) You can add a velvet beret or a corduroy cheese cutter. Plus a fur stole. It’s going to be cold and damp up there our scout, Neil, tells me. Choff these down and you’ll be toastie as a crumpet. (H2 hands HS a small pouch.)

I took that as my queue to leave. I was dying to ask for a backstage pass for Harry’s NZ tour. Harry Styles plays Auckland’s Spark Arena Monday 23^rd November, 2020. (Source: Ticketmaster.) I opened the door to leave. The Harry’s waved. Smiling. They both had dimples.

HS: Janice! This guy told me in the pub last night that there is this gigantic eagle here that you can take on a scenic flight to Milford Sound. Where do I book?

I had to break it to him that no trekking operator had managed to tame an extinct Haast eagle and get a saddle on it. But that adventure tourism operators were having to get really creative to urn a crust. I guess it’s as likely as that rumoured 2020 One Direction reunion, taking place in Queenstown later in the year.

As they say in the movie biz – watch this space.

Or better still, watch Harry eating watermelon!

Janice xo

The Possibilities Project - A #lockdown #poem

Possibilities      by Jane Bloomfield

I prefer bubble baths

to lockdown bubbles

I prefer wholemeal sourdough

toasted the next day

I prefer butter cold and sliceable

I prefer to stew apples I have grown

I prefer autumn’s gold leaves to summer’s brown grasses

I prefer loose leaf tea brewed strong in a small silver pot

I prefer my hair turning white than paying in to disguise

I prefer all my three children at home

even though two have left home already

I prefer walks alone with my thoughts and my dog by the river

I prefer getting puffed walking up hill than doing squats in a gym

I prefer native bird song to weedblowers, chainsaws or diggers

I prefer reading the book before seeing the movie

I prefer having an appetite before I cook dinner

I prefer sleeping long and deep than being disturbed

I prefer dreams vivid enough to remember

even those that unsettle

I prefer being kind and receiving kindness back

I prefer referring to sales assistants’ name badges, ‘Thank you, Casey.’

I prefer not to walk under ladders or stand on the crack

I prefer candles when the dusk falls to night

I prefer the definition of winter evenings to the endless southern summer nights

I prefer weeding to mulching

I prefer hanging out the washing to folding it

I prefer galloping my horse uphill than down

I prefer being on the bottom than being on top

I prefer tomato soup fresh from a can

I prefer that we all be good humans

I prefer to hope

Thanks to Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature for this video of yours truly reading the above!

The Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature Possibilities Project was run during the 2020 #lockdown with Otago poet, Liz Breslin (inspired by her Krakow residency.) It invited local writers to pen their response to Polish poet, Wislawa Szymborksa's poem 'Possibilities' :

Possibilities 

I prefer movies. 

I prefer cats. 

I prefer the oaks along the Warta. 

I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky. 

I prefer myself liking people 

to myself loving mankind. 

I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case. 

I prefer the colour green. 

I prefer not to maintain 

that reason is to blame for everything. 

I prefer exceptions. 

I prefer to leave early. 

I prefer talking to doctors about something else. 

I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations. 

I prefer the absurdity of writing poems 

to the absurdity of not writing poems. 

I prefer, where love’s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries 

that can be celebrated every day. 

I prefer moralists 

who promise me nothing. 

I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind. 

I prefer the earth in civvies. 

I prefer conquered to conquering countries. 

I prefer having some reservations. 

I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order. 

I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the newspapers’ front pages. 

I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves. 

I prefer dogs with uncropped tails. 

I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark. 

I prefer desk drawers. 

I prefer many things that I haven’t mentioned here 

to many things I’ve also left unsaid. 

I prefer zeroes on the loose 

to those lined up behind a cipher. 

I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars. 

I prefer to knock on wood. 

I prefer not to ask how much longer and when. 

I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility 

that existence has its own reason for being.       (c) Wisława Szymborska, 1997