Stories of Ourselves: "At Hiruharama" by Penelope Fitzgerald

A man named Mr. Tanner explains how his grandparents settled in a remote part of New Zealand and started a family.

Here are links to our lists for the short stories in Stories of Ourselves:
The Hollow of the Three Hills, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Signalman, The Happy Prince, The Yellow Wall Paper, The Son’s Veto, The Open Boat, The Moving Finger, The Door in the Wall, Sredni Vashtar, How It Happened, Her First Ball, The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection, The Fly in the Ointment, The Custody of the Pumpkin, An Englishman’s Home, The Phoenix, There Will Come Soft Rains, The Prison, The Destructors, Meteor, Billenium, The Lemon Orchard, The People Before, The Enemy, Five-Twenty, A Horse and Two Goats, Report on the Threatened City, The Rain Horse, Ming’s Biggest Prey, The Village Saint, Secrets, The Stoat, Games at Twilight, The Taste of Watermelon, Journey (Patricia Grace), The Bath, My Greatest Ambition, To Da-duh, in Memoriam, Of White Hairs and Cricket, Elephant, Sandpiper, Journey (Shirley Geok-Lin Um), The Third and Final Continent, Tyres, At Hiruharama, Real Time, On Her Knees, The Contest
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. apprentice
    someone who works for an expert to learn a trade
    That meant that he had to say something about his grandfather, who had been an orphan from Stamford in Lincolnshire and was sent out to a well-to-do family north of Auckland, supposedly as an apprentice, but it turned out that he was to be more or less of a servant.
  2. reckon
    expect, believe, or suppose
    She probably reckons I’m made.
  3. remote
    located far away spatially
    They had to start in a remote country place.
  4. shilling
    a former monetary unit in Great Britain
    The land round Auckland at that time was ten shillings an acre, a third of the price going to build the new churches and schools, but where Tanner and Kitty went, north of Awanui, there weren’t any churches and schools, and it was considerably cheaper.
  5. hitch
    connect to a vehicle
    When he did catch what she was saying, he hitched up and drove into Awanui.
  6. infirm
    lacking bodily or muscular strength or vitality
    ‘No one dies here except from drink or drowning. Out of three thousand people in Taranaki Province there hasn’t been a single funeral in the last sixteen months and only twenty-four sick and infirm. You may look upon me as a poor man.’
  7. homestead
    dwelling that is usually a farmhouse and adjoining land
    When he drove out of Awanui he stopped at the last homestead, where he knew a man called Parrish who kept racing-pigeons.
  8. loft
    a raised shelter in which pigeons are kept
    Some of them, in fact were just arriving back at their loft.
  9. predicament
    an unpleasant or difficult situation
    Tanner explained his predicament and asked for the loan of two birds.
  10. hamper
    a basket usually with a cover
    The Maori boy chose out two birds and packed them into a wicker hamper, which Tanner wedged into the driver’s seat of the dray.
  11. confer
    have a meeting in order to talk something over
    Tanner went out to the dray and fetched the pigeons, still shifting about and conferring quietly in their wicker basket.
  12. practical
    concerned with actual use
    In any case, it only had one chapter of a practical nature.
  13. apparently
    seemingly; as far as one can tell
    Then, apparently sighting something on the horizon that they knew, they set off strongly towards Awanui.
  14. buggy
    a small lightweight carriage
    They could hear the screeching and rattling of his old buggy, two wheels in the gutter, two out.
  15. gully
    a deep ditch cut by running water
    ‘He’s stopped at the gully now to let his horse drink,’ said Kitty.
  16. likeness
    picture consisting of a graphic image of a person or thing
    There used to be a photograph of Brinkman somewhere, but Mr Tanner didn’t know what had become of it, and he believed it hadn’t been a good likeness in any case.
  17. commotion
    a disorderly outburst or tumult
    Like most people who live on their own Brinkman continued with the course of his thoughts, which were more real to him than the outside world’s commotion.
  18. perpetually
    everlastingly; for all time
    ‘I’m a neighbour, come over for dinner. I think of myself as one of the perpetually welcome.’
  19. oversight
    an unintentional omission from failure to notice something
    There Tanner had made his one oversight.
  20. wring
    twist and press out of shape
    That evening, when the doctor came in from the yard with the messy scrap, he squeezed it as though he was wringing it out to dry, and it opened its mouth and the colder air of the kitchen rushed in and she’d got her start in life.
Created on Fri Mar 09 09:04:34 EST 2018 (updated Fri Mar 23 15:42:31 EDT 2018)

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