Biddy’s deaf now. She can’t hear the cracked tones with which she asks for her dinner. Or the caught-a-mouse yowl that’s replaced her former mild enquiries. From being stand-offish and remote, she’s moved in close. Where I am, there Biddy wants to be. What could be nicer than a sunny table top with a lumpy pencil case?
There are so many deep and serious questions to ponder at present, in particular, which is also to say, in general, how to make the best response to each moment of life in this ravaged, beautiful world. However, I find that my drawing pen refuses sobriety. When it revels in absurdity, what can I do but abdicate responsibility and follow its lead?
It made me wonder how and why we’ve chosen particular physical traits to celebrate, covet, lust after, and even augment, and others to hide, banish, or reduce.
Why don’t we, for example, fixate on toes, and develop unguents for turning short stubbies into willowy beauties?
Why do we make a fetish of straight teeth, when elsewhere on the body curves and curls are far more interesting? With a little application we could turn them around, I’m sure.
And haven’t you ever felt bored by neat pink ears? Probably it would take only a sprinkling of this or that to cultivate a pair of lovely cauliflowers.
First, there was high tea at the high table in the Hippopotamus Room for the BNZ Literary Awards. (This article highlights Chiao Lin, the young writer I chose as winner of her section. Too typically, she is under-mentioned elsewhere.)
From Wellington, Kate and I hit the road. Pretty much the first thing I did was throw my whole, hot cup of coffee over the car floor. (Sorry, Kate!) 
Nevertheless, Kate shared hers.
Craig drove us up the narrow Wanganui River road. The roadsides were studded with goats and pigs. We saw no one on the hour-and-a-half- trip in to Hiruharama — Jerusalem.
We were on the lookout for James K’s grave. Someone said he was buried on the riverbank somewhere. Kate got a bit close to the riverbank. We decided not to carry on over the old swing bridge with missing teeth. (Thanks for a lovely time, Kate!)
Trouser legs in case you can't tell.
Next day I tried to fly home and made it as far as Christchurch. The day after, I sat in the falling dark and stared at the little plane ready to fly me south.
I'm drawing from memory, okay? I know there are bits missing. But there was definitely something holding the tail together, and other bits tying the plane to earth.
My prayer for a cancellation was answered.
I flew home 24 hours later. Hardly a bump.
Today I was remembering Can Serrat as I blogged there about the link with Rosa Mira Books.
Garden statuary, Can Serrat, May 2005.
In the mail today:
Next week I will shuck off my slippers and therapeutic neckscarf, and scratch about for something that will pass as ‘business attire’, catch a plane to Wellington airport, and thence be professionally driven to the BNZ Literary Awards, where I will add my voice in praise of NZ writing, especially that of some very talented teens.
It’s an odd thing to contemplate from the quiet fastness of this Dunedin living room where I work.
Polly wrote on the footpath this morning.
How’s that for a neat dog?
Then I happened upon Helen Lehndorf‘s tantalising Pinterest page, where I spent a few minutes gleaning ‘sartorial inspiration’. I was rather taken with the ‘naughty dog’ brooch, and created my own, dangling into it Pollly’s favourite scoffings.
In case you can't decipher them: tissue, Whiska, crust, apple core.
I saw this small one on my way down to town at lunchtime. S/he (I couldn’t tell which) was tucked well away from the school playground, where the other children were zooming about. I couldn’t help thinking it looked like the kind of child who would be absorbed by the fiction of Joan de Hamel, who died last week.
From the NZSA newsletter: ‘Joan de Hamel was the award-winning writer of many wonderful books for children and teenagers. She was one of the first authors to write books specifically for teens that were set in New Zealand amongst our unique flora and fauna with X Marks the Spot in 1973. Take the Long Path won the Esther Glen Award in 1979 and her children’s picture book, Hemi’s Pet, won the A.W. Reed award in 1985. Her books brought the gift of adventure and of laughter to generations of young New Zealanders.
‘Joan will be remembered with great love and affection as a wonderful writer, supporter and friend, and as her family wrote in her death notice, “she died peacefully after a long and happy life.” Joan’s cheerful and adventurous spirit and love of nature shines through in the plaque dedicated to her in the Dunedin Octagon Writer’s Walk which quotes her 1992 novel Hideaway: “What more could anyone want than their own land down to the shoreline and the whole Pacific Ocean as a boundary fence.”
At her memorial service in Dunedin, one of her sons read from an essay she wrote after her initial poor prognosis was delivered (eighteen years ago). She was busy with the beloved donkeys and goats that she bred, and commented (sorry, I can’t quote directly) about life’s relentless drama — concerned, if not with birth, then with death.
I’d visited her a couple of years ago, wanting to be sure that the donkeys in Island were written accurately enough. I reworked this scene with Joan’s advice in mind:
“Martha put on a warm jerkin and took her dinner up to the vegetable garden. She had time enough to swallow half a plateful of half-warm mutton and kidney pudding before the impending foal forced its mother into the lee of the macrocarpa hedge. Martha dropped her plate on the grass and knelt up on the stile. Over in the dark cove, Merry’s hoofs were planted wide, her head low and facing away. Across the paddock her mate made bewildered forays along the fenceline, shaking his head at the injustice of being kept at bay.
This is why we have the boiling of water and the tearing of sheets at human births, Martha thought. To give the poor father occupation. But a jenny was an independent creature and neither Martha nor Joseph would be welcome at Merry’s side just now.
Merry’s flanks heaved, and her head hung low.
Watching her struggle, Martha thought of Captain Swathi struggling up at the hospital, each of them towards an opposite end. Or were they so opposite? An end that might be a kind of beginning, a beginning that led to an end. Anyway, this one was a fine distraction from the ward – if only it didn’t look so painful.
Martha picked up her plate again but found that the white-nubbed sac she could see emerging from Merry spoiled the cooling cubes of kidney on her fork.
As Merry’s knees gave beneath her, Martha stood up on the stile, half-inclined to run and offer help, while Joseph planted his feet on the first rung of the gate.
A squalling bray from Joseph brought Rose hurrying from the kitchen, as the jenny delivered herself of a shiny package. At once Merry knelt to lick away the wrapping from a pale nose . . . a dark head . . . a neatly folded donkey.
Joseph threw himself at the gate and broke the latch. He clambered through the open wedge and the vegetable garden, the new peas and the tepee erected for the climbing beans. Martha caught him around the neck but now he was stock-still, shocked rigid at the sight of the wet head wobbling on its neck as Merry, half-risen but still on her knees, licked her baby clean.
Martha surprised herself by sobbing. She hid her face in Joseph’s shoulder, and prayed no one come to witness this scene of dishevelment and joy.”
