Peter Hamilton - New Moons For Sam: Becoming Kiwi – Life of a New Zealand Diplomat

Summer has left the island today and gone north for a season. In exchange, the north wind and squally rain blow across the Gulf and up the valley, signalling a return to winter. There is thunder in the clouds. The rain beats on the window panes of the cottage and the raw wind whistles through the ill-fitting door frames.

From the warmth and cheerfulness of summer, the captivating trilling of the tui and the exuberant dance of a kereru on a thermal updraught, a prosaic and grey mood descends on the island. The days are shorter and colder and night comes earlier. Gone for the moment are the long still evenings and gentle sunsets. With the sound of the waves crashing and foaming on the beach below, everything now is in rough motion.

There is an aching beauty in this island, no matter the season. It is easy to overlook the scars on the landscape. In places the vista is of an undisturbed nature, as the island must have been before Homo, not always sapiens, discovered it and began to diminish it. Winter is a time for reflection and there is time enough for that. Far out to sea, it is difficult to see the horizon. Sky and sea seem to merge indistinguishably.

We walk a difficult path in this life and there are good and bad times. We are blessed when a new child joins the family and we contemplate in humility lifes mystery. But darkness follows the day, like winter the summer. Often it is a darkness we ourselves have created.

It is wrong to damn a whole nation for the sins of some, but there are those who have ceaselessly waged war, built the concentration camps and the gulags, let loose the killing fields, profited from arms sales and, without compassion, have countenanced the death even of children.

We never seem to learn the lessons of the past, which is why history is so important when we risk knowing less and less about more and more. In the midst of unspeakable horror, there are the courageous few, the resisters, like Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans in Nazi Germany, who refused to kowtow to evil. Sophie was a bit younger than me when I was a student in Germany, 33 years after she was cruelly murdered, at the young age of 21, by a corrupt regime.

When I first heard Sophies story, I was filled with admiration for her courage. Doing the right thing when most others had taken the easy route by acquiescing in barbarism. There have been countless others through the ages who have been equally brave. A younger generation must learn from them and must guard against a lazy indifference and complacency.

It is reassuring to look out to sea from the vantage point of this island and to feel thankful. The optimist in me knows things can get better, but the pessimist, who is never far away, sees the uncertain and degraded world our children inherit.

We will be affected in many different ways by those we encounter. Nothing is so painful as losing loved ones and companions. Except we can draw comfort from the knowledge that we have known them and loved them and that they too have been on lifes journey with us.

There have been many who have influenced me, family and friends, and the many individuals I narrate in this story whom I have met in 70 years:

• my maternal grandfather, satisfied with the daily routine of country life on his small farm in Somerset, a no-nonsense, plain-speaking, rough but loving man, who had little education but great wisdom;
• my maternal grandmother, a love of family, a skepticism for established religion, a disinclination, despite an outward politeness, to kowtow to inherited privilege;
• my paternal grandparents, a dour and narrow outlook which can cloud appreciation of family life;
• my father, a sense of humour to demolish lifes false airs and graces, to carry one through the tough times, but, as well, a shyness and stubbornness;
• my mother, optimistic perseverance in whatever we undertake and a generous and forgiving nature;
• Edith Baker, my teacher at the age of nine, dramatising the story of King Alfred of Wessex burning the cakes at Athelney in Somerset over a thousand years ago, which made me realise what fascinating characters had been on lifes road before me;
• Fordy, my teacher at high school, an appreciation of the timelessness of everything and our own insignificance and yet the grandeur of it all;
• and those, like Sophie Scholl, who inspire by their selfless example.

There are 39 places in the world called Wellington, 47 called Hamilton and five called Christchurch and Dunedin. There are even two Aucklands.

But there is only one Stogursey. Most people have never heard of Stogursey, population about 1600. It is a little village in West Somerset, nestling at the foot of the ancient Quantock hills not far from the Bristol Channel. As English villages go, there is nothing very special about it, apart from its lovely Norman church. It has the required ruined castle, a non-descript pub, a squat Victorian-era stone school, a couple of little shops and a sports field for cricket.

Stogursey is a corruption of Stoke Courcy, indicating that the ancient Norman family of de Courcy held land in the area after the Norman conquest. At the time of the conquest in 1066, the land was owned by a Saxon thane called Brixi. He was rudely dispossessed.

If you drive north from the church, up through the village past long rows of pastel-coloured houses and past the pub and school, after about a kilometre you come to Little Water Farm and its imposing two-storey farmhouse set at right angles to the country road.

I was born in this farmhouse on Thursday, 28 June 1951, early in the morning. The next day, 29 June, was my fathers 25th birthday, so I assume I was a welcome birthday present. Sixty-four years later, in 2015, Dad would decide to cement this connection by dying on my birthday, just a few hours short of his 89th.

My mother gave birth to me in my grandparents bedroom, the same room in which she had been born on 21 December 1927. I am told that electricity was switched on at the farmhouse the same day. I guess for the family my arrival was a doubly auspicious occasion.

The farmhouse, with slate roof and whitewashed exterior walls, dates back to the 16th century, possibly earlier as it had a cruck arc internally. This signified that it was originally a medieval yeomans cottage, before it was enlarged in the late 18th or early 19th century to make it a gentlemans cottage. Its small rooms had low ceilings and metre-thick stone walls.