How are you spending your time during lock-down?
I’m still working, from home in my bubble. I share the bubble with my husband of fifty years, Graham. We’re doing okay and I’m getting more and more computer and technology savvy each day!
Have you read any good books lately?
Yes, I’m reading an 871-page fictional story about an Australian one-time criminal who is a refugee in India. Written by Gregory David Roberts and set-in modern-day Mumbai, The Mountain Shadow is an exposé of life lived by a person with a different set of values…
Have you listened to any good podcasts or music?
I don’t really listen to podcasts as I have a time issue! But I listen to all sorts of music all the time – either from National Radio or from our big collection of CDs.
Do you have a favourite author or genre at the moment?
As I read so much nonfiction each day in my working life, I read novels when relaxing because I need the escapism they provide. I like authors who write about locations, what makes people tick and who scrutinize history.
If you could have your own Mad Hatters tea party, catered for by the Featherston Booktown Country Tea and Cakes volunteers, which writers would you invite and what would you most like to eat? (living and dead writers)
I would like to invite two men I admire who are sadly not with us now: Rumi – a thoughtful poet and Te Rangi Hīroa (also known as Sir Peter Buck) – a medical doctor with an interest in cultural anthropology and sea-faring peoples. I would also invite James Mitchener, Edward Rutherford and Joy Cowley. We would have a hāngi on an island – either the North or the South Island - and we would drink wine and talk about the Islands of the Pacific and history.
In a perfect world who would you most like to hear speak at the next Featherston Booktown?
Sam Neill as the after-dinner speaker at the Fish’n’Chip Supper! I would love to hear him talk about his fascinating life and values, the roles he’s played in amazing movies like The Piano, Hunt for the Wilderpeople (based on the book Wild Pork and Watercress by Barry Crump). He’s always been extremely loyal to New Zealand and now he is living, growing grapes and making wine in Queenstown. We could taste his wines during the supper…
