 |
| Taiaroa Head Lighthouse |
It was wall to wall, who’s-who of kiwi literati at the Dunedin Writers & Readers Festival last weekend. From Ockham winner and Burns Fellow, Becky M. To Ockham 2021 finalists Catherine C and Vincent O. Top crime writers Steve B and J Savage. To late-career maestros Witi and Brian. Along with children’s writers, emerging talents, slam poets, and two steampunk fanatics.
Keep the borders closed I say. Keep this reverence of Aotearoa’s literary genii going.
I divided my time over the weekend between my son, 18, a first-year at Otago Uni, and the DRF. More than once, I wished I could have been in several places at once. There were so many overlapping events going down. My Friday started buying threads at a skater shop, sushi at Hikari, and then hostel vitals at Spotlight. Later I attended Nalini Singh’s Romance Workshop, at the curiously titled Otago Pioneer Women’s Hall. The hall is more a green-carpeted room with a very large and handy kitchen and a smell of old. I kept wondering what those pioneer women did there as Nalini (disappointingly for this writer) explained that sex scenes should take the story forward, like any scene. I’m currently writing a popular fiction. I thought sex scenes were just a hot-interlude. I imagined those pioneer women made a lot of hot tea and scones in that kitchen.
On Saturday morning, I swapped birds for words, roused the son, and we set off for the Royal Albatross Colony at Taiaroa heads. A mist hung over the Otago peninsula. It lifted now and then revealing the most incredible golden sweeping bays and rolling tides to the east. Stands of gnarly macrocarpas clung to the verge on the narrow twisty road. A plump kereru sat on a powerline in the otherwise unnoteworthy Portobello.
We’d booked the 11am tour and arrived at ten to. Albatrosses have a three metre wingspan. One percent of their entire population returns to Taiaroa to breed annually (99% head for The Chathams.) Six Albatross chicks, hatched in January, sat a few metres apart on the cliff face below the observation hut. Stationary balls of white floof. A hefty seven kgs of it. A mum returned from sea. She landed, folded her wings origami style and ignored her chick, which was now snapping its long pink beak at her. The chick then became a mini Sesame St Big Bird as its oversized, grey webbed feet waddled toward her. Mum was clearly exhausted or had no tucker in her gullet. She vamoosed.
A teenage Albatross bombed the hut in air-show-fashion during our entire forty-five-minute visit. People hogged the front window and the binoculars. A smooth-faced couple in shiny, thin puffa coats hung back. They asked lots of questions but did not smile. I could not stop. Son and I felt as though we were in our very own Cirque-du-seabird-spectac!
I made it back to the Octagon (via an independent vape shop in St Kilda) with seconds to spare before my next literary sessions.
At the wrap party that night, Brian Turner said, as a boy of about 15 he and his mates used to go out to the Taiaroa heads and watch the Albatrosses fly. I could only spout the facts I’d retained from our one-hour tour. Brian was probably putting his historical observations into eloquent stanzas. Albatrosses are gliders. They cover 1,000 kilometres a day! They can lay eggs until the age of seventy! They don't touch land for a year!
We were back in the Otago Pioneer Women’s Hall. I was a gate-crasher of sorts. I wasn’t a presenter but a participant. I was with my publisher, Steve B. We’d chatted through the rain and ended up outside the ODT office and had to backtrack. The room was wall-to-wall smiles. Pretty much how I suspect the opening of the Auckland Writer’s Festival will be this evening.
Gareth Ward won best shoe. Later on, I thought he might fire up the jetpacks on those red patent leather babies and hover above the snack table still laden with hummus. Lou his better half won best true story about Neil Gaiman. Talia Marshall won most fun person to go to a party with, in the half-sentence I spoke with her. Becky Manawatu won best reading at a literary festival (I’m still having visions of that dimpling temple and that flying can opener.) Vanda, Rose, Catherine, and Elizabeth won best hair.
Sunday was Mother’s Day. The tide was full and the surf was pumping at St Clair. Son and I had our last supper at Starfish.
My car smelt sweetly of lucerne chaff on the way back to Queenstown. A trip, I realised I’ve been doing for twenty-three years since I moved to the SI, and still can’t get the towns in correct order. A three and half hour journey mostly made for momentous events. The births of my three children. My waters broke spectacularly in the far unit of the St Clair beach motel back in 1998. A tsunami of amniotic fluid complete with entire mucus plug on white towels. I left my second daughter’s placenta in the fridge in another motel on George Street, in 2000. It was an odd sort of payback as the motel had hurried me along into an induction. I was five days overdue. They had a booking for a rugby game at Carisbrooke. The placenta won itself a bus trip to Queenstown. I didn’t chance it with my son in 2003. I had a caesarean. Then I enjoyed a five-night holiday in Queen Mary high, yet nauseous on morphine.
Medical events aside, there have also been good times. School trips. Concerts. Pink. ID Fashion Show. A highlight was taking my mum to Fleetwood Mac in 2015. And there have been literary events. I got stalked by a tall, bald man at the first one I nervously attended alone, back in 1994 at the town hall. When I ignored his advances he took to sitting directly behind me at each session. So I brought a brown velvet hat from a hat shop on Princess Street and wore it with its brim down. The incident no doubt gave me material for the feeble short stories I was writing at the time. But it also killed my vibe.
Right now, I’m having major FOMO that I won’t be at the AWF this weekend. Catching up with writing buddies (mostly) and celebrating words. Especially Kyle Mewburn's memoir session Family Dynamics with Charlotte Grimshawe and Lil O'Brien.
If you haven’t already made bookings - grab a friend, or your best hat and get thee along!
 |
| Me and Mum in the mosh at Fleetwood Mac + a visitor from Hawkes Bay |
No comments:
Post a Comment