KRAZY KIWIS

Posted on February 28, 2006

Back from booful NZ. Camped with my Dad on a little piece of land we have at Matarangi on the Coromandel Pennisular.

My umpteen trip back but this one was a bit different in that I was alone and in Auckland, where I first lived on my own when I was 16.

A very different city but still very funky, the Kiwis are into wild hairstyles, clothes and shoes – regardless of age!

They’re much more into looking unique than we are in Australia, where everyone seems to be trying to look like Jessica Simpson – God knows why!

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Author Goes up the Boohai

Posted on February 22, 2006

Had the most harrowing week with my paid writing job – the corporate work is getting more complex by the minute. Fortunately that is all out of the way now and I’m heading off for a four-day sojourn to the land of the long white cloud.

According to a Kiwi phrase site I stumbled upon, if you don’t wish to reveal your whereabouts you say that you’re going ‘Up the boohai shooting pukekos with a long-handled shovel’.

I grew up in NZ and I’ve never heard that one before. My father always said he was ‘Going to see a man about a dog.’

One word I did recognise, it fact burst out laughing at because I haven’t heard it for years, was ‘bugalugs’ described as: a bit like ‘mate’ as in ‘How’s it going bugalugs?’ Now that was in common use—didn’t realise it was Kiwese.

Back from boohai on Tuesday.

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Author Becomes Almost Famous

Posted on February 21, 2006

Newspaper story came out today and it was a pleasant surprise. Even the photo was okay (apart from wrinkles)-that was the biggest surprise.

The photographer ordered me about as though I was a mutinous schoolgirl: ‘Sit there…no, higher…turn your head to the left and your body to the right (duh!)…no, that’s no good, sit here instead’

Then she jammed a massive black camera lens in my face and chastised me because ‘I looked like I was at the dentist’ – apart from having my mouth open, I felt like I was at the dentist. Ah, the price of (almost) fame.

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News as it Breaks!

Posted on February 20, 2006

Good news! Penguin has ordered another reprint of my book. So, this is the third reprint since ‘The Olive Sisters’ was first printed in October. It gave me a small moment of pleasure but then set me to thinking what I needed to do with another reprint as my goal.

Article coming out in the local paper tomorrow - which I’m nervous about. When I say local paper, it has a readership of 90,000 and people really do read it.

It’s fantastic publicity and I’m incredibly grateful for that but I don’t really enjoy that level of personal attention – I’m not a person who would ever want to be recognised in the street. I could never have been a newsreader or a television personality, let alone a rock star. Wouldn’t mind being a backing singer – doo wah, doo wah..just out of the spotlight.

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It’s a Goal!

Posted on February 20, 2006

Saw the movie ‘Goal’ over w/end - I really enjoyed it and would be very interested to know the story behind the making. The tale itself is inescapably predictable but comes across as quite believable, isn’t but could be, based on true story.

Shot in grey, soggy Newcastle-on-Tye there are some great local characters with fruity Geordie accents as well as the actual Newcastle United players –interesting marriage of fiction and reality.

I’m not a fanatical football fan but I love to witness that moment of pure mad joy that a player wears when he kicks a goal – hmmm you don’t get that in writing I have to say.

The best you get is a nice warm feeling (for a moment or two) in the belief that you’ve written something quite wonderful but, when you read it next day, it’s almost always complete crap