Year: 2019

The first week will be great, as Christmas and all the holiday plans fall into place, wherever they are for you. Then the summer break in New Zealand, and then everyone comes home but wait…still plenty more holidays left for the kids-they are bored- and you need to be back at work!
So, if you have arty, crafty, writery kids in Wellington, send them to Maria Gill and I for
Draw Like an Artist and Write Like an Author School holiday programmes.We will keep them busy!

There is one last thing to do when leaving the Robert Lord Writers’ Cottage in Dunedin. It’s to write in ‘the book’. This is something that you are presented with at the end, rather than at the beginning of your tenure and it’s a glorious rabbit hole of remembrance from past writers to dive down.
I recognised nearly all of them and was glad that the cottage is now equipped with double glazing and a heat pump, when reading about the battle to keep warm in an Otago winter- mostly from far north authors! This was my entry, typed printed and pasted because nobody wants to try and decipher my handwriting, least of all me!

It’s been nearly 2 months since we set sail (literally, on the Interislander ferry) for Dunedin. In this time, our ancient cat has not apparently died, or even missed us. He’s going to be so annoyed when our doting house residents leave and we come home. We bought 6 months of Chef and Whiskers cat food for the duration and he is determinedly working his way through it all. All hail the cat of 9-12 lives.