Letters from Wetville

It's a funny thing, blogging.  I didn't mind blogging for the whole world to see, but once my out-in-the-ether-blog collided with my people-I-look-at-many-days world, that's when I got too self conscious. Then Facebook came along and changed the landscape.  I could do short posts and it was easy to post photos of my sewing without many words.  The original reason I'd been blogging (space of my own while I was raising small children) has passed now I'm at work lots and the kids are bigger. This morning, surfing the net instead of sleeping, I wondered about blogging again.  I've gone back and read the writing I'd stored on a private blog.  Some of the writing is okay, but what really struck me is that I had a record of some very specific experiences, and they are precious now.  I've written the story of each child being born, and I have an unfinished piece I really like about visiting Cousin Mary's house and the stories I learnt about each object. ...

Once upon a time there was a woman called Rose.  She owned a shop.  She made shoes and dresses to sell in the shop.  They were so pretty that everyone bought them.  Rose was rich until one day Rose had children.  They were twins.  One of the twins was a girl, the other was a boy.  One day a robber stole her children and kidnapped them.  When Rose found out that her children were gone she closed the shop down and started to look for them.  She looked everywhere but she couldn't find them anywhere.  Then one day she found them.  The same robber that stole them was guarding them so Rose rang the policeman to come and put the robber in jail and he did.  Rose rescued her children and they lived happily ever after. Brighid, aged 6 1/2.

8.25am Climb in car in dressing gown.  Deliver husband and children to work and school. 8.40  Get dressed.  Hang out washing. 9.00  Turn slow cooker on high. Slice two onions, and three carrots and put in slow cooker.  Roughly chop one black pudding, one white pudding and three chorizo and put in slow cooker.  Pick four bay leaves from tree outside and add to slow cooker, along with some red lentils, a tin of tomatoes and some water.  Stir it up and put the lid on. 9.15  Eat leftovers from last night's dinner for breakfast (noodles and stir fry).  Put a pear and a banana in a bag to take to work for the rest of breakfast.  Clear table of breakfast things, and remove the laundry the laundry monsters scatter through the house. 9.40  Drive to work.  Do busy work things at work. 2.00pm  Drive home.  Drive back to childminders to drop off hockey gear.  Drive back home.  Bring washing in.  Pick kale from...

Some parents take their children to church.  We take ours on marches. I love my garden.  I've been out in it, even just tiny bits of wedding and caterpillar squashing, almost every day this past fortnight.  I planted out seedlings of crimson kale. green kale and celery last weekend, and have packets of coriander and rocket ready to scatter this weekend. In The Rushing Woman Syndrome , Libby Weaver talks about exposing ourselves to seratonin through daylight as soon as we get up.  This is supposed to have the effect of helping us start the day bright and full of energy.  I think it is helping.  We have blackout lining on our curtains (I like proper dark to sleep in and also it blocks the street lighting), so it's good to go outside as soon as I get up.  Even when it is raining, I can stand under the lean-to by the old shed and look at the chooks and my garden and greet the day. Although I haven't dared ask my loved ones for accurate feedback, I ...

School holidays.  No making school lunches at 7am.  The juggling game stills for a time and we all get to catch up on sleep and time with each other and the garden and the house. While the sun shone, I set beer traps for the slugs.  Favourite Handyman mowed the lawn and Brighid and I took Mary K (85 and in a rest home) out for a drive. While the rain poured, I made laundry liquid.  I helped Fionn empty his room of clutter (I think he calls most of it Lego) so that I could vacuum the entire wooden floor.  Favourite Handyman put Fionn's posters up and now the room looks superb.  Yesterday we all went to the movie Kiwi Flyer .  It was lovely.  A perfect family movie in an old fashioned sense. This morning I finished Skylark by Jenny Pattrick.  I really enjoyed it, and I'm so pleased that someone has put part of the goldfields story to print, especially since I've still not written up the stories I think need telling yet.  Now that ...

Prudent and sensible lost. The mechanic's bill arrived and it wasn't as bad as I'd feared and I went ahead and booked a weekend in a rainforest.  I like being married.  It means I get to organise birthday presents which involve great pleasure for myself. I still want to write like Deborah Challinor.  I lay awake at night plotting a West Coast historical drama, one with a strong and likeable female protagonist whose main aspect is not sexual gorgeousness.  I feel like I'm swimming upstream a bit on this, even just thinking about it.  Last time I wrote more than five pages, I was in Santa Marina de Valdeon, a tiny hamlet in the Picos de Europa in Spain.  My obsession at the time was the marriage of my Irish great great grandparents in Canterbury in 1880.  They lived in two quite separate parts of Canterbury, one in Lincoln and the other in Chertsey (which is near Ashburton).  I was sure that the travelling Catholic priest had arranged their meet...

It's 7pm, long the craziest time of night at the messiest house in Wetville.  For the first time in almost ten years, I have the house to myself for more than a few hours.  The music is my choice and my volume, I eat to my own rhythm, wine is back on the menu and the fire is warming the house nicely. Last time I had more than five seconds without multi-tasking, I committed to me-made-May '12, an online project where participants wear at least one piece of clothing they have made themselves each day for the entirety of a month. All 31 days. That turned out to be a misguided attempt at commitment on my part.  Tonight, I'm wondering about something else.  Could we create a book of poetry and prose related to the West Coast?  I've speculated on who to talk to to create a 'we'.  I've thought of what I would write about. I also know that when term starts this is going to seem a ridiculous idea in terms of finding time to make it happen. But on every other...

Morning. the constant refrain of lost shoes. Clean House. Reunited Pairs of Socks.

The sun! The sun! Today the sun shone brightly and no one was wheezing or sneezing green stuff. I realised how long it has been since I was outside in the bright sunshine when it was so shadowy even at midday. I took these outside photos at midday. The chooks get no sun in their run at the moment. YTou can see the roof of the poultry palace in the very centre of the photograph. I guess there won't be much vitamin D when we kill them and turn them into stock. Beautiful sky huh? The low angle of the sun stretches out the washing line shadows - they look to me like giant blackbirds. A whole day without rain. Woohoo. I hope Christchurch people get a whole day without an earthquake soon. And then days and then weeks. The wood piles, pitifully low, are soon to be supplemented by coal. This is rata which we've had in storage for over 12 months. It burns hot and is wonderful stuff. This is beech, which we had delivered in April. It is mostly dry rather than completely so. U...

Today was the Joan Rosier-Jones writing workshop here in Wetville. Indeed it was very wet but as we still live in a prosperous country not yet devoid of any services for non-rich people, we got to have the workshop in the warm, dry and carpeted local primary school library. Two years ago under the same scheme (Society of Authors writer in residence for the top of the South Island), we had a workshop with Kate de Goldi. Both of them were very good, though I must confess that I fell in love with Kate de Goldi (total vivacious enthusiasm with unpretentious charm and vivid imagery games) and Joan's workshop was more aimed at getting your manuscript or short story to win competitions. A colder approach but I think the variety is a good thing. Out of the first workshop arose our local writers' group, which has been a pretty good thing. It's even made me write more than shopping lists and blog posts (though not a lot more of late). Out of this one, definitely some new member...

Like a zombie. Most of the zillion meetings and deadlines for this week have been met and although I may die younger because of eating mostly carbohydrates today (the pinwheel scone for lunch was most pleasing on the tongue) and fish and chips likely cooked in canola oil for dinner and red wine for right now, sleep and happiness shall be mine tonight and there is only one more alarm clock day this week. I have been thinking about things like national identity a bit (an excellent alternative to considering the merits of rest homes and the size of the washing pile) lately, prompted by my Bill Pearson phase. A man who came out of nowhere to me, who was invisible until I saw a brief news feature on his biography a few weeks ago. Now, I have options on the book as I have reserved a copy at the library and even more exciting, someone blessed by winning superfluous prizes would like to send me my very own copy, which is very nice indeed I got the 1970s book of Pearson's essays out of ...

Herbs to soothe, nourish and satisfy. When we moved here 3.5 years ago, the strip of so-called garden alongside the path the back door was filled with gravel in an ugly attempt at a no-maintenance exterior. Not long afterwards, I found that my baby daughter was lying across me, not a good move for a woman who not only didn't want a caesarian, but wanted a home birth. I did a pile of exercises and got her to turn breech. Next stop, to turn her head down. Every day I would part fill a bucket with stones from this strip on my hands and knees. Brighid turned, we got our home birth and the previously neglected strip of stones was planted with broccoli, then garlic and later herbs. When life is so busy I barely get to look at my garden and weeds grow rampant and unchecked, my herb garden, with its minimal care requirements and all season greenness (temperate enough here that the herbs mostly don't die off completely), brings me great happiness. Above is the rosemary and the lemon th...