Letters from Wetville

No Fretful Sleepers (subtitled A life of Bill Pearson , by Paul Millar, AUP, 2010) was a surprise and much appreciated gift by a reader of 'Letters from Wetville' called Christopher who was the fortunate owner of two copies. This feature, combined with being on bed rest for a nasty chest infection, meant that I read the book entirely to the end, when I am prone to skipping bits of literary biographies. I am glad I did. There is something satisfying about this book which I would have missed had I foundered on the sections filled with who Pearson had tea with in London and who else wrote him a letter about the price of milk (oops, the price of publishing Coal Flat ). I knew nothing of Paul Millar before I began this book. In the photograph on the back dust jacket, he has his arms folded and his face, neither smiling nor frowning, seems deliberately closed to the reader. I didn't warm to his image, suspecting a writer given towards postmodern theory. If you are still reading ...

chest infection. too much pushing out the boat to get that one more essential thing done. but still. a few things my brain has still been thinking about. This post by Reading the Maps is one I keep going back to. Not because of the main content (though that is good) but because I am so intrigued by the comments section where someone called Giovanni talks about a 1970s survey of NZ freezing workers which found that half of them would like to be self employed. Class solidarity is not a first instinct for much of New Zealand and I find it intriguing. So how about this march in support of Dick Hubbard ? I get the strong sense of lots of ordinary working people out marching for their local millionaire, their scout leader who lived the dream of many and helped others along the way. No one I know marched for Dick Hubbard - I don't have strong links to Timaru - but this dream of independence, a sense that working for someone else is what you do when you have to but not what it really is al...

There is a fancy word for that - words with the same final sound used together. Please tell me if you know it. I like a bit of fancy technical vocabulary, though best with sentences, financially ominous if it comes from the mechanic. Anyway, the winter solstice. Yule, according to my Southern Hemisphere Pagan Calendar. Here at the messiest house in Wetville, we are for the most part thoroughly, dredgedly institutionalised and much more likely to celebrate when work takes a break in two weeks' time. But I have been thinking a little about pre-industrial winter solstice. I figure the two key things people must have worried about are food supplies and heating. Which is rather similar to right now when I check the bank balance and plan for food provision and try and work out firewood provision to last us until fireless warmth (very late down here, we have had the fire on in December before). We haven't bought enough wood (a fortnight of sick people requiring all day fires burns a b...

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 ...

Out of beer. No wine. Meetings and squeatings and deadlines and people with cancer and the boy who both threw a tantrum this afternoon about tomorrow's dental nurse appointment and is yelping and moaning and begging for paracetamol (I've got him on garlic and cloves) because his tooth hurts tonight. Oh and no car as FH is out at one of 85 totally important and most inconvenient meetings which seem to be scheduled for this week. Really. A girl, a 38 year old going grey girl who knows how to make her own bread and grow her own garlic and how to at least get one child properly to sleep, has to do something a little resourceful. There is ginger beer in the fridge. Supposedly for the children but they didn't eat their pumpkin for tea so baaaaaad luck. I wondered if I had brandy left in the spirits cupboard. I have a line in the sand. Spirits are for drinking at pubs, with company, in strict moderation. [wine and beer are for anytime after 4pm or at lunchtime in company a...

We lie to our young people. Big bad lies. We tell them that education is everything and they have to work hard and get lots of credits. We tell them that employers now want Level Two to underline how serious this need to do school work diligently and successfully is. What we don't tell them is that employers are not, on the whole, now asking for Level Two (Year 12, sixth form) where once Level One (Year 11, old school cert age group) was enough because the jobs have become more intellectually demanding. They raise the bar as some kind of filter as there are nowhere near enough jobs. We skirt this issue and suggest to young people that if they study hard enough, then good jobs will be theirs. We reprimand and punish and despair of those who refuse to play this diligence game. We are telling lies. The harder everyone works for pieces of paper bearing qualifications, the higher the qualifications bar will go. Education offers a lot of wonderful things. But to suggest that if ever...