Nature, nurture or just ego?

Over the last few months, I’ve found myself frustrated over comments from people about members of their family. They have used family with quotation marks – “family” because they have included people in it who have been adopted. (Spouses were also not included as “family” but that in itself has not bothered me). [...]

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By my hand

Writing by hand is more therapeutic than typing. Why is that? Why, when I feel that I need to ask questions of myself, or explore my emotions or thoughts or plans, do I crave the feel of paper beneath my hand, of pencil (or favourite pen, I’m quite fussy about that) between my [...]

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A wonderful indulgence

A few years ago, a few weeks before Christmas, I had my first email read out on New Zealand’s National Radio. I had heard a panel discussion about what to buy as Christmas presents. Members of the panel felt that gifts of vouchers were the domain of the unimaginative, that they required little [...]

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A Friday morning coffee

This morning, after the gym and before a meeting, I sat in a cafe with a good book and a cappuccino. It was a typical cafe in central Wellington at 10.30 on a Friday morning. To my right were two business colleagues (an older woman and younger man) clad in corporate black, enjoying [...]

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Old Mali

Lali started me thinking about this. What type of old lady do I want to be?

I would like to be like Helen Mirren. Dignity, glamour, humour and sexuality defying age. But that would be nice even at 46. If I don’t have it now, I doubt I’ll acquire it [...]

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Life (and death) on the farm

When I was little, maybe three or four, we had a white calf. The calf must have lost his mother, because we kept him close to the house and we used to feed him milk out of a bucket. As far as I was concerned he was my calf. I loved him. [...]

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