Fresh Words Daily

It has hit New Zealand after many years in the UK.  The Master Chef programme on television.  All the hopeful cooks have lined up in fact queued way down the street in the hope that they would be the chosen one.  I have to ask WHY?  What is it about winning the title of master chef that is so seductive?  Is it merely a chance to be on TV to cry a little to hug the judges when they give you a pinny.  Gosh my mother used to make masses of them for the Presbyterian Church Bring and Buys – florals with matching plain bindings.  Works of art really.  But maybe it isn’t for the apron because every contestant talks about their passion for food, their passion to cook and they want one day to own their own restaurant.  STOP!!  It is a rotten job cooking in heat, trying to make food that fussy customers will like.  Spending huge amounts of your life cooped up in a kitchen with people you may not necessarily like.  Trying to pay the bills for rent, wages, product, and then the staff don’t turn up.  Madness I say.  I also have a passion for food, but I am happy to cook a little in my little kitchen for my family and friends, and then to eat a few times at restaurants I like – but doing it every day for a living.  Never Never Never.  I would be weeping on the programme too if I knew that I would have to have three fussy men looking at my food as if I have resurected it from the dustbin.  Forget it folks.  Go to the beach, go to the library, read a book,  but cook every day of your life nada.

In Mexico they have a “Dead People’s Day”  and those who have passed before are remembered.  On the Marae when entering the meeting house after having removed your shoes you walk to the end and honour the ancestors – pictures of those who have gone before.  Today I had lunch with a friend whose son would be 40 today if he had not died from an infection which spread like liquid silver through his body 3 years ago.  We talked and wondered how those mothers whose sons went to war ever survived the grief of their death far from where they can be remembered.  Then I said that at the weekend I had made a pineapple mustard sauce to go with the hot ham we were providing for a dinner of 12 people.  It was my sister’s recipe and it was in her handwriting. And so there she was again in my kitchen over 30 years since her death.  Not all memories are unhappy ones and we remember our dead often not from a gravestone which can become overgrown and rotten as time passes but through the tangibles we pass on. Recipes, books.  And then there are the intangibles like laughter and ideas.

Borders UK is under management and it seems about to go under but with the hope that it can be held bouyant and that jobs will not be lost.  There have been a host of owners for Borders UK.  Transferred from one investment company to another all hoping that it will be the golden goose.  What the investment companies have forgotten is that books are different from any other product.  It isn’t like selling a jar of jam.  A book has a different genesis.  It is created from an intellect, worked and re-worked and then finally produced for enjoyment, instruction, or illumination from one human brain to another.  So selling books is not just cash and wrap, though I have to say that is about what you get in the Borders bookshops.  There is no knowledge of the books, there is no love for reading.  Most of the people employed are there for a job to enable them to live – and that is a good reason too – but they are not there because they love literature.  I once asked a assistant at a Borders bookshop if they had a book on Ernest Rutherford, the famous New Zealand scientist.  She looked a bit puzzled and said she wasn’t sure and then brightened and said:  “What has he written lately?” 

The only good thing about a large conglomerate bookshop going to the wall is that it allows space for the small independent booksellers.  These small usually owner owned businesses do know their stock, and they do try to get to know their customers. They are in this world of  selling books because that is what they love to do.

I am sorry that Borders may be on its way out – it employs a large staff and they will be amongst the many looking for jobs, but I know that I will always prefer the small independents.  A real place for real book lovers.

Most Christmas shopping is done by women.  So it is always good to have some time-saving tips for the days which become fraught with trying to get through everything the kids have at school as well as working the budget around extra food and gifts.

My number one tip is to shop where parking is free.  This means that if you are dithering over what exactly to get for the hardest person to buy for in the family and you have been to two different stores and still not decided at least you don’t have the added stress of trying to remember if you have overstayed your time in the carpark.

My Number One Place Not to Go To is Smales Farm on the North Shore.  Long ago, when I lived on the North Shore, Smales farm was a farm and had real animals and a farmer who came and shifted stock and generally tended to them if a farmerly way.  Now Smales Farm is a conglomeration of offices and a cafe and a few poor stores who must be in the worst business location on earth.

Parking is for one hour.  It is well signposted with that information, but if you happen to be like me and park and then are thinking ahead about the next task you may not notice the restriction.  At your peril.  I have just had a parking ticket for overstaying my time by 15 minutes and even though I have written explaining the situation I have just received a letter to say that I must pay my $40 fine and if I don’t do it by the time allocated I will be charged another $25.  Pretty easy money don’t you think?  This is not a council initiative but it is a private parking place and the fines and the parking is policed by Parking Control Services – PCS. So be wary of having coffee or staying longer than an hour for lunch at the cafe.  You will be paying for more than the cost of the caffeine.

What I find most surprising is that the business in the area agree to such a ridiculous time allowance for parking.  It isn’t as if it is a small car park with not many spaces it is large and the day I was there I noted plenty of spaces available.

I wish the cattle were back at Smales Farm. I wish the farmer was there doing his farm work.  And I hope Santa forgets to come to PCS this Christmas.

This year Nitescope my first children’s book was published.  It gave me huge pleasure to write it but it took ages.  I would work on it than put it away and do some other work and then go back to it.  The best result has been the response from children who have read the book. They are the fiercest critics. If it doesn’t grab them well forget it, they won’t persevere.  So now I am about to embark on a new children’s story which has been rolling around in my head for a while now.  It means research – which I always like and much of that will be done at Auckland’s National Maritime Museum a place of infinite information on things Marine in New Zealand.  They also have a fantastic information officer called Marleene  and I think I will pirate her away into my office cupboard and just pull her out when I need her.  The excitement of a new project is always seductive.  Then comes the real work.