Fresh Words Daily

It is always a bit unnerving for me to read about studies that are done and the amazing conclusions that have been reached when I see it all as merely old fasioned common sense.  The latest world shattering discovery is that children who have charge of the remote for the television are more likely to be less involved with their fellows, and often not doing well at school.  Well Yeehah what a breakthrough.  I would have thought that anyone would have been able to work out that the more a kid is involved with television, ipod, internet, mobile texting they are isolating themselves.  They have fewer ideas generated, less opportunity to understand their fellows in kidland and generally be poor at just about everything.  It comes down of course to parenting – well doesn’t everything.  It seems to me that parents want to be ‘mates’ with their kids rather than parents. Is it fear that the children won’t ‘like’ their parents? Lots of children go through a phase of not liking their parents that’s part of growing up. Some parents go through phases of not liking their kids much too – but usually they never stop loving them.  So some obvious things are – don’t have TV on except when there is a programme to watch.  The adult has the right to first use of the remote. Dinner is served at the table and everyone eats and talks together.  Mobile phones are put in a dish in the kitchen (not simmering!) and collected when the owner leaves the house.  Texting is not tolerated at the table, and I know of one mother who doesn’t allow it in the car.  Good for her –  and every kid that gets in her car is told the same thing – usually by one of her own offspring, “Mum doesn’t let us text in the car.”  They talk to one another and  I know those children are top students at their school and they are not repressed or miserable they are wild and outgoing and fantastic.

So who paid for this great piece of research on children with the remote?  Hope it wasn’t me the taxpayer.

It was very quiet in the auditorium.  Usually the set builders are talking, arguing, hammering or there is the swish of the paint brush.  They were silent, the temperature was cool and every action was definite. Things were not going well with the director.  There had to be changes made. “Bloody directors” said one of the men to me daring me to react.  When a play goes on in any theatre there is often more drama before the opening night. Set designers are fantastic people but it is the set builders that I take my hat off to.  The ones at Howick Little Theatre are the best – they can build from a shaky bit of a drawing dashed off on the back of an envelope to a sophisticated plan with all the measurements.  They try hard to do what the director wants but not everyone who can direct, or act can hold a colour in their head – understand dimensions outside of reality, or realise the size of furniture in relation to the set – the set builders accommodate, and if it is sometimes with gritted teeth I don’t blame them.  What always fascinates me that through the maze of irritations, grumbling, director’s mind changing, out of it all comes a play. A set which is spectacular, a play which entertains. Howick Little Theatre do it well – worth coming to see Mammals which is on until 27th March.  On the 28th March the set gets broken down, furniture goes back into store or is sold on Trade Me and they are ready to start the process all over again.  A cheer loud and long for the forgotten heroes in the theatre – the set builders.

I am so impressed with ice skaters. Not only can they stand up on thin bits of steel they can twirl and leap and stand on one foot, and do amazing things called a double axel and a camel – things that remind me more of transport rather than of sport.  They glide they slip and sometimes fall but always manage to leap again and smile.  If it were me I would be sobbing into the ice so heavily the salt from my tears would melt the surface.  Not these wonderful athletes.  I have learned to ski.  We once went to Threadbo in NSW Australia because our son was working there and I thought it was time we saw him.  It had never been my intention to strap bits of wood to my feet and skim across a snowy hill but it was snowy and we were there so I did.  I had a lovely instructor called Lavinia who was patient and kind and eventually I managed to float down the beginners slope and get my bum onto the ski lift and do it all again – I loved it.  My husband, a sailor, hated it all and his downward flight was usually straight for a red wheelbarrow at the back of the utility shed.  Once though he barrelled through the queue waiting for the ski lift. Oh so popular!  At the end of the day he said he was convinced it was a sport that would never catch on.  Try telling that to the fantastic athletes in Canada.

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.