The intertidal zone

It’s in the contract. I re-activate my website and plump up my social media presence. Nell, the novel of my grandmother, will be published early next year with Cloud Ink Press, I’m delighted to report. Meanwhile, Ratty has been on the shelf, perusing the Rosa Mira backlist and itching for re-employment. There’s silver on his…

Lockdown day 21. Two weeks ago the grocery shop felt eerie: the spaced-out queue snaking around the carpark; the sanitiser; the distancing; the grim care we were all taking; being barked at for stepping over a blue line; germ phobia between groceries and car then adding bleach between car and aunt, aunt and car (who…

Turning 61. Life is still its old paradoxical self. (Why does the notion persist, that one day it will fall into order?) Taking it all in is the thing. Muskets and flowers. Trucks and colouring pencils. The presence and the absence of loved ones. Have been reading Anne Salmond’s Two Worlds, coincidentally as Aotearoa reckons…

Talking with a friend recently whose time is freer than it was. She notices a tendency to fret on her now-unscheduled days. That’s why people go to work full-time, I said. No time for fretting. I was going to be ‘at work’ this week, but without snow, my role as hut manager was postponed along…

Three and a half years since I wrote here, in the hot Northland summer of 2015. Now I’m stockpiling stuff for the cold. For a winter playing lodge manager (‘hut mum’ if the age or behaviour of the ski-schoolers calls for it it) in the Southern Alps. I’ll go fortified by kindness and comfort from…

Woke this morning in another new house, with a full view of the Pacific and a fat Abyssinian who seems indifferent to our presence unless we’re stroking his ginger sleekness. Over the road, we swim in waves which, in the south, would knock you flat. Up here they churn over you aerated and playful; it’s…

Two years on, still house-sitting, still loving it. ‘Dolphins!’ comes the call from the beach. This month we’re perched between two bodies of water; such dynamism is alluring. In a roar of wind the estuary turns to ink. So, too, is the idea of home: vegetables we shepherd from seed to plate; trees we watch…

Fork. Sharp. Corn. A-ice. Cold. Cold. Cold. Baby. Rock, rock. Up says Spencer.

There’s a fine line (there are many fine lines, including those in my favourite shirt) between objectively and wisely questioning what you think and do, and starting to wonder if it’s all wrong: what if I’ve taken the wrong turn here; made a poor choice there; spent my time badly; responded inadequately; pegged my life…

It takes a while (55 years or more) to learn and trust that life is rhythmic, to learn not to be thrown by the big shuddering in-breath or the (occasionally dis)gusting out-breath. Not to be dismayed by the sometimes-too-long pause between these two when it’s tempting to think something has died and gone forever. Following…

For the first time in months, socks and shoes. At the bird sanctuary we waited amidst nikau and puriri for tui, bellbirds, kereru, fantails, a robin, and when we’d given up, at last, tieke — the saddleback. Girls in bikinis were swimming out from the beach and surging back through the cavern. In the cool…

Walked into the sunrise. Read half a manuscript. Strong and unsettling. Swam at the next bay with the girl who laughs in water. Joined the Great Northern Library. The neighbour handed fresh, smoked kawhai over the fence. Kedgeree coming up.

Salt water is good for many things. A flat mood, for example. Full immersion is best. Add blue waves, a swimming dog, and a girl who can’t stop laughing for the joy of it. Fifteen minutes restores full buoyancy. A cup of tea on the beach is icing on the buoyant.

Easter Monday. Fresh beginnings. Making a mark. The first footprint.    

It’s over three months since I last wrote or drew here. In spite (or because) of that, the Intertidal Zone has received this award: Thank you, Bookie Monster. If nothing else gets me posting, this does. In fact, as a condition of accepting it, there’s homework in several parts. The first is eleven random facts…

I’ve been tagged as Emma Neale was tagged so, while the title may not be apt, if tag’s a game, I’ll play along at this weird self-interview blog-meme thing (although I still don’t know what a meme is). I’ll adapt the ten questions to answer my own ends. What is your working title of your…

In the six or seven weeks since I last wrote here we’ve packed up our home of 17 years, said many fond farewells, long and short, and headed north with A, fresh from Edinburgh, in our laden wagon. We’ve come to roost for a few weeks at the Whangarei Heads where we lap up the…

We’re looking after four ducks and six hens (along with the house and gardens of their usual minders). Today I woke before dawn and fretted. The hens are kept in a shed with all hens need for survival: a pellet dispenser, water dispenser, clean dry wood shavings, laying boxes, a perch and room to move.…

Someone, sometwo or somethree have been sneaking onto my blog and registering as users when my back was turned. I’ve swept them out the door and removed the option to register from my log-in page. The lesson, I think, is to spend a little more time in the blog-garden myself. Unmown lawns and clambering weeds…

In the absence of ideas, I’m hoping that the fact of opening up a new post here after six weeks away will strike fire, and the flame run will run across the page, leaving interesting scorch marks in its wake. I had to make up a new password to enter my own blog just now.…

My laptop hard-drive crashed the other week, so when the call came, it seemed an apt time to put the work on hold and spend a few days with my father while Mum was away. Dad and I get on pretty well so most of the time we happily tinkered about in house and garden,…

On Monday we walked in the regenerating kauri forest of Titirangi. Our daughter was in labour. On the way home I called in to a little church. It was as simple and still as a pond without ducks, frogs or dragonflies. I prayed for our daughter to be strong and well, full of light and…

It seems important to write something although I have no idea as I open this page what it will be. I’ll stick in my latest drawing and see where I go from there. When I was young and very idealistic, I would be seized by intense longings (weren’t we all?) and one such ‘seizure’ concerned…