I learnt something from ‘Brokenwood’ the other night; it’s nice when the telly offers a side-order of education.

There’s something about ‘Brokenwood ‘that makes it a laid-back guilty pleasure. There’s the country-leaning Kiwi soundtrack but I also get a touch of Tauranga pride that the best episodes are often written by ex-local lad Tim Balme.

What I learnt in the weekend, not from a Tim Balme script as it happens, is that the collective noun for nuns is a superfluity.

Since the town of Brokenwood apparently suffers the highest murder rate in New Zealand, one of the – spoiler alert – not-actually-nuns living in the local not-actually-a-convent became deceased. And the very capable Fern Sutherland pronounced that the collective noun for nuns is a superfluity. Which – nerd alert – I immediately looked up.

It seemed odd that a collective noun would be, well, slightly rude.

And indeed, the Oxford tells us that superfluity means “an unnecessarily or excessively large amount or number of something”. But that’s the enduringly wonderful thing about collective nouns. They often manage to be completely surprising yet satisfyingly apt. Like a French tomato and banana soup: it’s hard to imagine the flavour, yet the minute you taste it the combination becomes perfectly understandable.

Animals

The animal ones are the best. Who doesn’t love a parliament of owls; or a bloat of hippopotamuses?

A new one for me is a shrewdness of apes, which is very good and apparently dates back to the 1500s. But they are simply endless. I hope you will be as amused as I am by a few of my more recent favourites, and I haven’t made up any of these...

Here we go: a damning of jurors; an incredulity of cuckolds; a misbelief of painters (that’s painters of paintings, not of houses); a tabernacle of bakers; a balance of accountants; and a drunkenship of cobblers. A big thank you to the English language for providing such endless entertainment.

And we better move onto the arts, since this past week has provided a superfluity of festival announcements in Tauranga.

Taking them in order, the first thing on the calendar is Tauranga’s edition of the NZ International Film Festival. Things kicked off earlier this week on August 10 and run until August 27, and while several of the tastier treats from Auckland haven’t made it here there is still a lot to enjoy. Be warned, some of the online programmes are incorrect and miss out several films. The Rialto has hard copies.

Music docs

There are three music documentaries, about Ennio Moriconne, Little Richard and one that’s local: ‘Tiki Taane In Session With CSO’, which documents his one-off 2021 collaboration with the Christchurch orchestra. Elsewhere there is recent Cannes Palme d’Or winner, the French film ‘Anatomy of a Fall’, as well as Sundance hit ‘Past Lives’, an intensely intimate Korean film that is getting great word of mouth.

There is also the latest from deadpan Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki, ‘Fallen Leaves’, and a new Wim Wenders film, ‘Perfect Days’. Legendary octogenarian Polish film-maker Jerzy Skolimowski presents a by-all-accounts charming film about a donkey, ‘EO’.

But perhaps the film I’m looking forward to most is ‘Monster’, from Japan’s Kore-eda Hirokazu. It stars Ando Sakura who also led the director’s previous Palme d’Or winner, the brilliant ‘Shoplifters’.

Moving on, Loserpalooza returns to Totara Street at the Mount on September 2, with two dozen bands, 12 hours of mayhem and hardcore goodness. This time – and kudos to the organisers – it is a proudly totally local affair. More on that next week...

And the Tauranga Arts Festival has launched its official programme.

It’s online and there are groovy little booklets all over town.

As you would expect, there’s a whole bunch of music and much that has me fizzing at the bung, including a collaboration between Finn Andrews (of The Veils) and the NZTrio’s violin, cello and piano.

Alt-country singer Jenny Mitchell is performing, as is Tama Waipara; Irish band Grada is returning to New Zealand; Katherine Mansfield has her words put to music, and 1960s girl groups are celebrated by the Up-Doos. There’s also the unique country stylings of Wilson Dixon. I will explore in more depth before October.