Assemble your tools and an able assistant. Dampen the area to be covered, which preferably includes a crack. Tip most of the cement into the barrow. Keep some in the bag in case — as with icing — you make the mixture too sloppy. Gloves are optional. I like drawing them. Pour water by cupfuls…

It rained hard last night. We noticed the damp patch in the ceiling above the table but it was dark outside and the roof space too cramped for entry or even torchlight. This morning I realised I’d had a lucky escape. The laptop is still functioning. R. has been up on the roof. He’s bought…

Our PM John Key referred to New Zealand on the radio today as a cork bobbing on the ocean, which I think shows a lack of imagination. Polly went out on the smorgasbord tonight. She sneaked off and chomped her way around the neighbourhood bins and compost heaps. Tonight she’s stunned, rotund, and leaking queasy…

The new year is underway. We have little idea what it will hold. We have hopes and qualms, loose plans and quiet intentions. We will all be watching what unfolds and will play our part accordingly. Tonight I made tom kha pad thai yum. I heard Aung San Suu Kyi answer questions from a class…

Perhaps in order to prevent collisions with its plate glass windows, the local swimming pool has near-life-sized transfers on the glass, of young swimmers frolicking. This morning, we watched the window cleaner charge his squeegee and make the first bold sweeps. I walked into plate glass once. We’d just finished walking the Milford Track and…

Now, I’d better get on with some work.

I was poking around the sunny vege garden on Friday when I noticed I wasn’t alone. A black rat was also sauntering and sampling, grasping and nibbling on salad greens. In fright, I leaped into the nearest room and snatched the cat from the bed. She sat where I planted her on the flagstone, dazed…

It strikes me, writing this, what a flimsy vessel a book is for recording the plethora of exploits Pat Deavoll has put herself through over the last thirty-five years. Nonetheless, in this handsome volume published by Craig Potton, Pat’s fine, unobtrusive writing makes vivid her favourite places on earth: wild, remote, very high places reached…

The day started with a lit candle that I sat and didn’t look at while I tried not to think either. A nice young man cranked my arm and shoulder into positions it was reluctant to adopt. However, progress is being made. I blogged over at Rosa Mira Books, wondering where in a sex shop…

Thanks to all my friends and family and the sun and the dog and birds and people who inspire me, not to mention life itself…

Oil is spilling. Marchers are occupying. An egg is cooling.

Yes, we too would be lost without our Apples. By these means we have bitten into the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We are changed. The question’s being asked, who can take the place of Steve Jobs? I guess the answer has to be no one and everyone. David…

I thought the tomato probably wanted to speak for itself. I brought it inside and had a look at it: When it’s grown up, closer to Christmas, we’ll hang a few of these on it:

While in Australia I went out looking for wildflowers but it was too hot to snatch more than a couple. Well, that’s my excuse. All that foliage is a fiddle to draw. I chose simpletons. I read only one book (and started another): May Sarton writes in Journal of a Solitude: ‘… we have to…

We seem to be on a camera-free holiday (is it a holiday? perhaps a 75 percenter) but have a few pics from when we were here last year in the Bouddi National Park. I didn’t make it quite as far along the rocks this time — I had bare feet; the stones were sharp, and…

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…

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…