On intimacy and submission in writing

‘I too have had a week of looking at that extraordinary book of Fayum portraits. And what first strikes me, as it must strike everybody, is their thereness. They are there in front of us, here and now. And that’s why they were painted – to remain here, after their departure.’

This is John Berger in a letter to the artist Leon Kossoff collected in Berger’s book Portraits. 

The Fayum portraits that Berger refers to are paintings done on linden wood and linen around the 1st–3rd century. Berger reminds us that they’re contemporaneous with the writing of the Gospels of the New Testament, but, he notes, they look as though they’ve been ‘painted last month’. They were found at the end of the 19th century in the Fayum province in Egypt and were buried in necropolisis. They weren’t made to be seen by the living. 

Fayum girl portrait, 120–150AD

They weren’t made to be seen by the living. 

This idea seems extraordinary to me now in an age where portrait images are everywhere I look. Somedays I have to put my phone out of reach, because I’m overwhelmed by images of people, their children and dogs, countless advertisements with flawless models. The visual stimulus begins to numb me and take me out of my own life. So to consider a portrait made with the intention that it will be unseen and buried with its subject’s dead body, is an idea so entirely out of the current mentality it’s difficult to comprehend what it means. 

Berger explains the collaboration between the Fayum painters and their subjects was very different from that of an ordinary portrait commission.

‘The Fayum painter was summoned not to make a portrait, as we have come to understand the term, but to register his client, a man or a woman, looking at him. It was the painter rather than the ‘model’ who submitted to being looked at. Each portrait he made began with this act of submission.’  

The act of painting here is changed by the intention. Berger’s argument is that the product of this submission by the painter are portraits that ‘incarnate, frail as they are, a forgotten self-respect. They confirm, despite everything, that life was and is a gift.’ For Berger this is what makes the Fayum portraits so compelling.

• 

  John Berger in the studio of sculptor Henri Presset, Geneva, 1962

I often read Berger as a shot of adrenaline to my own thinking and feeling about writing. He’s a celebrated art writer because he was such a generous thinker. A writer with enormous capacity to connect ideas across time and place, a writer with huge heart.

In publishing, people make distinctions and judgements on work often by saying that a novel is ‘literary’ or if it’s not literary it may be ‘commercial’ or ‘genre’. This is short-hand for many ways of categorising  and marketing work, but it’s a distinction I’m less and less interested in as a reader or writer, and one I don’t think is helpful for talking about how we experience literature. These days I like to feel about novels, because that’s how I remember what I’ve read. Novels I consider wonderful are so because I felt them in my body as a live force, as an experience. It’s the same with how I experience poetry and music. It’s good because the artist has somehow made me feel what they were conveying in my body, not just think it in my head. 

So can I apply Berger’s analysis of the Fayum portraits to the characters in my novels? Can characters be like portraits of people who are not living? 

A novelist’s characters aren’t really dead (unless we kill them off!) but neither are they really alive in any real world sense. However, for a novel to succeed we need to make-believe in a character. Whether we like them or not is by the by, for me at least, but we do need to believe that Long John Silver is complicated enough to be capable of being both fatherly to and killing Jim. The fact that we do believe this is what makes Treasure Islanda great book. 

How does a novelist make us do this make-believing? How do they make us feel the character has ‘thereness’ in the make-believe world of the novel?

I come back to Berger’s idea of the submission of the Fayum painter to their subject. In fact I’ve become slightly obsessed with the idea as a way to work. Can I, as a writer, submit to my subjects? What sort of fiction can I make if I set out to do this? What if I write intending to bury a book with its subjects? (And does the intention become moot if I dig it up out of the grave and publish it?)

In Berger’s letter to Kossoff he says that ‘the romantic notion of the artist as a creator eclipsed – and today the notion of the artist as a star still eclipses – the role of receptivity, of openess in the artist.’ It is the artist’s receptivity, he is arguing, that is paramount in terms of creation of great work. I believe it’s this ‘openess in the artist’ that distinguishes the novels I merely read to the ones I feel. 

• 

  Speak to me, George

I know this from my experience as a reader. If the openess is there in the writer, I feel it and I connect with the story. It is an intimate experience. I need to feel that it’s me and only me, who is being whispered to by the storyteller. Just as the writer’s ego is dissolved in the act of submission to the story, the reader’s ego can momentarily disintegrate with the story. The contradiction is that this relationship between reader and writer is not monogamous. How many ears has George Eliot whispered into? Yet, I feel, when I read Middlemarch, that it’s me she’s speaking to; that I am George’s only reader.

Runner’s runs

Running 21kms is a strange thing to do, my husband said yesterday, when you could drive it. 

Last week I ran my first half marathon. Part of the Tarawera Ultra events, the trail run went from Lake Okareka – a small lake next to Lake Tarawera with lots of fancy holiday homes, to the Energy Events Centre – one of those bland grey come-all-events buildings, made even more dull by the fact that it stands next to the glorious turn of the century Rotorua Museum. The run went around the Blue Lake, through pine, native and redwood forest, and finally along the sulphorous edges of Lake Rotorua. The territory was undulating – steep in a few parts but nothing like running Wellington’s hills.

Sunrise over Mt. Tarawera

Trail running is a popular sport – there were over 1000 people running the 20km and 800 people running the 50km the next day. But the star events are the 100km and 102mile races. People come from all over the world to run the Tarawera Ultra. They fly in to run distances I can’t fathom covering on foot, at least, not yet.

About 15 mins into the run through dense bush a clump of people were stopped up ahead of me on the narrow track, with a child runner obviously in distress. As I shortly found out, the child had run into a beehive. There’s nothing like angry bees to freak out a bunch of bare-legged and bare-armed runners. I got two stings through my knee-high socks, then on my hip and lower back before I decided there were enough adult helpers with the child and I sprinted past, brushing bees off me as I went.

The fright of the bees made me pee my pants a little. If you are a woman runner who has had kids, running can be an interesting sport for your bladder. It definitely toughens it up, but I’d started the run needing to pee and now I was busting. I wish it were ok to squat on the side of the road and let rip. I found out later I could have climbed 25 metres off the track,dug a hole and peed, but at least it made me run the next 5km to the aid station faster than I might have. 

My friend who was running the 50km race the next day was there with her family cheering me on at the first station. She took this photo.

At the Blue Lake aid station

I ate half a piece of peanut butter on white bread, a food I would normally not go near, and continued on. The pain in my calf from one of the bee stings was growing. It occured to me that the stinger was still in, and yep – rolling down my sock I saw the brown stinger hanging in the centre of an angry looking welt. I pulled it out and rubbed my leg, pulled up my sock and took a panadol. Fortunately I’m not allergic to bee stings.

The next 9.7 km are a bit of a blur – there was the ugly part where we ran through recently logged pine forest along a dusty track in full sun, then a steep climb up into the bush before a downhill glide through the trees to the last aid station. I passed quite a few runners at this stage including a woman well into her 60s – the steep downhills of Wellington paying off – no knee pain at all. I ran through the last aid station with 5km to go thinking I would ace this. 

And then, I got tired. Apart from the stings my legs had been feeling great, but suddenly they had no spring. My left leg was tight and movement in my glutes felt restricted. Runners I’d overtaken through the forests passed me including the 60 year old. I admired her steady, determined gait. I stopped and tried to stretch out my tight leg but it made no difference and it felt bad to stretch because I could feel just how tight it had got. As I reached Lake Rotorua I could smell the sulphur and a cold prickly feeling rose up at the back of my neck and covered my scalp. Maybe that’s ketosis I thought. Apart from the peanut butter, I’d eaten nothing. Or maybe I’m allergic to sulphur. Or maybe this is normal – I’d never run that far before. 

As I struggled to keep running through the manuka and over the sulphur flats I called on my dead grandmother, a woman my father said had a backbone of steel, to help carry me through. Doris, I said, I need you. Then I called on my grandfather, an athletics coach and my other dead grandparents. In the end I had a herd of dead people pushing me through that last 5km. 

I’ve felt tired at the end of long training runs before, but this was ridiculous. 

I finally reached the last 500metres which felt like they went on for another 2km. And then it was over, I was across the finishing line in under the time I’d guessed I run in. I was pleased. I got a finisher’s medal and my friends were there to meet me and give me hugs. It was good to stop running. The cold prickly scalp was still with me even though I’d let the dead grandparents go. I went to collect my bag so I could put on more clothes, thinking I was just cooling off quickly. 

The end.

Then my guts seemed to drop into my pelvis. I found the toilet in time to lose the contents of my bowels. Wow, I thought, running! It sure does strange things to your body. On the way home I made 3 more emergency toilet stops, each time coming out in a cold sweat as my guts cramped up. I texted my father a photo of myself with my finisher’s medal. My father used to run road marathons back in the day. Good run, I said, though it’s given me diarrhoea. Nah, he textd back, run won’t do that, you’ve eaten something dodgy. I spent the next 8 hours moving between the bed and the toilet. A triumphant day! Later I read about the ‘runner’s runs’. Apparently diarrhoea during and after races is a common side-effect for many runners.

The next day I had recovered and went in to run the last 5km of my friend’s 50km race with her. As we both shuffled along the edge of Lake Rotorua I tried to distract her from pain and fatigue pointing out the sunset. She’d been running since midday and it was now 8.15pm. It’s hard to know what to do to distract someone who’s been pushing their body like that. In the end I ran out in front of her and told her I was pulling her along with my imaginary rope.  

It’s a bit of a game this running business. It’s you competing with and against your own body, pushing it beyond what is usual in a world where you’re choosing to run a distance you could easily cover in a car or even on a bike. I freely admit it’s weird, but I love it. And next year I’m planning to run the 50km. Maybe I’ll have to do it in adult nappies. The chaffing will be terrible, but there are worse things I could do,

A Proposal to Stop My Nightmares

All around us is a dust storm and we’re filthy and tired. Everything is broken and there’s no where to go that’s any different, but we have to keep going…

That’s a note from a recent dream. I’ve been having post-climate devastation dreams for a while now. The narrative’s the same: it’s the end of the world and all around me people are dying. Apart from me of course,  because I’m the antiheroine of my dreams. But, just like you dear reader, my time is limited.

Next year at work we’re publishing Rebecca Priestley’s book about her work in and about Antarctica. It’s part essay, part science, part memoir. I met with her last week to discuss the book and mentioned the dreams I’m having. So much of the science done in Antarctica is about climate change – the ways in which the ice is changing, and the effect this will have on sea levels and biodiversity including human life. Only the wilfully blind and indifferent cannot know the importance of the connection between those ancient ice shelves and the rest of the planet by now.

Rebecca nods when I tell her about my dreams. It’s nothing new for her. She’s been in the science communication business for a long time. She knows the facts. She tells me that many climate scientists talk about the level of anxiety they carry around with them.

We talk about ‘junkets’. Academic conferences for her; writers festivals for me – but let’s call them what they are: junkets. I’m just back from a junket (writers’ festival) in Toronto. She’s considering going to a junket (academic conference) in South America next year. Neither of us feel good about our contribution to carbon emissions our travel makes. I ride my bike or run or take a bus to work, but it hardly makes up for the two international flights and the 6 domestic flights I’ve made this year. Let alone the shit I consume – imported wine, imported  cheese, shoes, new computer – hell! I’m a one-woman bougie climate shitter of the first order.

But. Whenever I walk I think about climate change. Whenever I prepare a meal, or drive my car to get groceries, or buy some food item that’s travelled all the way from Italy or China to get to my mouth, I think about climate change. Whenever I unpackaged yet another thing wrapped in fucking plastic I think about climate change. I talk about it with my friends. I dream about it. And yet, I’m not doing enough, I’m not doing nearly anywhere near enough to force the changes that are required to stop us going beyond 2 degrees of warming. And neither are any of our governments,

Rebecca points out to me that junkets are seen as prestigious. To be invited to a junket and have your air travel and accommodation paid for by an institution or an arts organisation is seen as prestigious. It’s the same with international travel, which is still in most quarters, seen as a luxurious and fucking lucky! Aren’t you lucky, we say when our friend posts a picture of themselves up the Sagrada Familia drinking champagne and eating organic tacos. You absolute bastard, we think and sometimes accidently say out loud.

And that’s a problem. There is a fundamental cultural shift that is going to have to occur for us all to address climate change, on a personal and societal level. And what do we put in the place of prestige – shame? A heavy dose of penitence? So I do one festival in Toronto then am barred from  travelling by plane for the next five years and must whip myself nightly with a handmade broom made of gorse? Being a masochist I’d probably quite enjoy that. I’ll get back to you with a Proper bad sentence.

Would I advise any of the emerging writers I look after who have been invited to an international festival to present their work not to go? No! I’d say, go and do your best and remember to take ALL the free hotel toiletries. 

This is so very hard. I would like a formula for my actions:

XX number of hours on PornHub this week = XX kWh = XX hours of planting trees + abstaining from imported brie next week. 

That kind of thing.

I want to be told what I can and cannot do. I want my government to regulate car and flight usage. I want all the governments of the world to severly limit their own carbon emissions. I want to it to be illegal for it to Not be vegan.

I’m into regulation, because it’s not like most humans are great at self-regulation. I’m good with not eating too much sugar or smoking, but get a load of my alcohol intake! And um, junkets. 

The top three carbon emitters in the world run capitalist economies and are communist or democratic: China (Gold), USA (Silver) and India (Bronze).  So I propose that the only way real change will happen is through benevolent non-capitalist dictatorships that are rolled out planet-wide. 

I’m looking to hire competent dictators who can put the same amount of energy into halting climate deterioration as dictators of the past and present have put into murdering people who don’t agree with them. 

I’m joking but I’m really not joking.

The business man’s gift

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. –Simone Weil

Coming into land from the south the plane was struck by violent cross winds that I saw as penitence. Myself, my husband and the passengers on this plane were all going to die because the night before I left my children with friends in Wellington to go to the wedding of a famous friend. At the wedding I drank too much and listened to so many great New Zealand singers perform in one room; and the payment for this night of hedonism, hubris and neglect of my children was the about to be torn off wings of the plane we were on. The second reason for such hefty penitence is explained by the first: my own inward spiraling solipsism, because if my depression is one thing it is this – an inability to pay attention to anything bar my own misery.

The plane we were on was unable to land in the excessive cross winds, and it ascended quickly, using go around power. I learned this phrase from James Brown’s first collection of poetry Go Round Power Please which is what the pilot of flight TE-901 said to the air traffic controller shortly before their plane collided with Mt. Erebus. Incidentally, 28 November 1979 – the go-round-power-please day – was the day I turned five. There I was, drawing a picture of my birthday cake at the bidding of a woman calling herself my teacher when I could be at home beside my mother, the same mother who’d just abandoned me at this school as if it were normal. I drew an imaginary cake while 257 people lost their lives on a blank expanse of snow, ice and rock, far far from home.

As my plane slowed and righted itself a hush came over the rows of passengers awaiting news from the pilot as to what the hell was going on. I dug my fingers into my husband’s hand and tears rolled down my cheeks. I couldn’t stop them if I tried. Fear. The people on the plane were far too silent, the plane’s engine had been far too loud as it accelerated fast and now, was it…was it going much too slow? I whispered to my husband, ‘Why isn’t the pilot saying anything?’

Why are our prayers not answered?

‘Are you alright?’ The business man sitting next to me asked.

I’d watched him writing in an attractive notebook when we took off. He’d drawn a grid and written bullet points in the four quarters. This is what professional people do. I once sat through a lecture Eleanor Catton gave to English teachers where she drew a grid to show the intersecting push and pull of story plot and arc. It made great sense to me at the time, but I can’t remember a jot of what she said now, because I’m unprofessional and I didn’t take notes. Truth be told, I have never made a grid for anything in my life.

‘No,’ I told the business man. ‘I’m a fearful flyer.’

‘I can see that,’ he said. His acknowledgement of my fear was firm, but gently declared, and to have one’s fear acknowledged is sometimes enough in itself to begin a soothing process. I see you, the acknowledger says, I see you are suffering.

Yet still, depression makes me suspicious and I waited for his fixed-blade—laughter and a patronising explanation of how my fear was irrational.

But no, he just watched me with patient eyes.

‘We’ll circle again,’ he said. ‘The pilot’s just waiting for instructions from air traffic control.’

‘Will we try to land again?’ I said. I didn’t ever want to try and land in this plane again, but I desperately wanted to be on land and never be on this plane again.

‘Yes, but we’ll probably come in from the north. The wind is…uncertain.’ The business man was calm. He smiled as he spoke of uncertainty.

‘I know that my fear is irrational,’ I said, trying to beat him to the first cut.

‘Yes, but that’s no help to you, is it?’ he said. His patient eyes took in my own open blade.

I put it down.

‘No,’ I said.

The plane turned back and flew south. As it turned west and then north again, we were tossed up and down, side to side. The south, my primitive brain was thinking, is evil and only means us harm.

‘Pull your seat belt as tight as you can around your hips,’ said the business man. ‘I’ve got mine as tight as it goes. You need to ride the bumps. Don’t—’ he held his hand out against the seat in front of him as I was doing—‘Don’t do that, because you’re fighting it. You just need to sit tight and ride with it.’

I did as he said. I lowered my hand and pulled my belt to a circulation-stopping tightness and perhaps I felt minutely better, riding the jerky descent to death. But again the tears poured out of me and this time I openly moaned, no longer able to hide my fear in silence.

And once again the plane hit go round power and we ascended quickly up into the cloud.

‘Still can’t land. They should have done what I said and approached from the north,’ said the business man. ‘Bloody-minded pilots, now he’ll be fighting it out with air control.’

The business man’s amusement at himself and the pilot, the way he imagined terse negotiations between pilots and those that control the air space, carried with it a calming sense of faith in human ability. If he could be amused and the controllers of the plane and air could debate the direction from which to land the plane while it jerked around as if in seizure, perhaps we weren’t going to die yet.

Still, I remained suspicious.

‘How come you know this stuff?’ I needed proof. ‘Do you work in aviation?’

‘Nah, but I’ve been flying on all sorts of planes since I was three. My old man worked for NAC back in the day. I used to visit the workshop in Nelson with him. You want to see the bolts in these planes – bolts for Africa. They’re tough as old boots these bits of steel.’

I took him to mean that the wings of our plane would not fall off.

The business man looked out the window. ‘They’ll land from the north now, it’ll be much calmer, you’ll see.’

The plane circled wide again as we talked, the business man, my husband and I. He told us about his company in Auckland and his fiancée in Wellington whom he commuted to see every weekend. I guessed he was in his mid-60s and so on a second, perhaps a third, marriage. When he said that word fiancée I thought how lucky they both were: his fiancée to have a man who pays attention to the distress of a stranger, a man who can talk a frightened flier down to earth; and he to have a love that made his face lighten when he spoke of her.

The plane flew steady over Porirua, then the harbour, Matiu Island, the cake tin and the Wellington sign on the hill.

‘You see, I was right,’ he said. ‘Much smoother.’

When the plane touched down the passengers clapped. I thanked the business man for his kindness in talking to me and distracting me from my fear.

‘It’s fine,’ he said, waving my thanks away as though what he had done was nothing much.

But it wasn’t nothing. Paying close and kind attention to a stranger is never nothing. It is about as much of something as humans can be for each other.

 

 

 

 

Uh, uh

Uh uh, says the baby as the plane heaves itself into the air, ungainly mechanical bird, rising on a cross wind. Uh uh.

The baby sits between its parents in the seat in front of me for the hour-long flight home to Wellington. The family are visitors to New Zealand, the mother clutching a pen and passports. They speak quietly in a foreign language. But uh uh is universal.

That uh uh was the most articulate sound I’d heard that day. I’d been cutting down on my antidepressants in a self-prescribed kind of way. As I like to tell my husband, I am a little bit of a doctor. But that morning I’d woken in Auckland feeling a terrible dread in my chest. I was ready to cry over anything. It was my own stupid fault that I had no medication to push back the creeping tide of sadness. I could feel anxiety, like a viral rash, creeping up from my stomach, clenching my shoulders and constricting my lungs. Soon my face would be covered in metaphorical egg.

Uh uh is not uh oh, which is the sound for when definitive wrong has occurred.

Uh uh is the sound of present uncertainty, it’s the sound my brain makes when trucks thunder past our house causing me to stand stock still and feel the earth under my feet to ascertain whether it’s a truck or an earthquake.

Uh uh is a sound that comes from the gut, the soul’s nesting place, which is why a baby who doesn’t speak a language I understand can be the most articulate person on the plane.

On a day when a heavenly comet burns a path towards the earth and the sea evaporates and God proves her existence by pointing the golden finger of benediction at me and mine, I won’t say hallelujah, I’ll say uh uh.

I’ve been scared of flying for a few years now. On long haul flights I take a self-directed cocktail of clorazepam, gin and MOR American comedies. I never sleep, but this mix gets me through without having me claw at the exits screaming to be let out. I thought I was getting better on domestic flights until the uh uh baby spoke.

For some reason I was not sat next to my husband so I thought I’d just sit next to him anyway. Then some off-duty pilots came up and I was sitting in one of their seats. The air steward tried to get me to move, but perhaps the pilot saw how I was about to cry, and he said, Don’t worry, I’ll sit here instead. He was kind. He sat down and said to me that when people don’t sit in their assigned seats it can interfere with the trim on the plane. Trim, I said? And he explained, It’s the balance of the plane – they balance the weight of people on a plane so it’s even.

I’ve always loved this stuff. I love proven safety systems, checks and balances. I love it when they wheel the rear stairs up to the back of the plane and the person outside thumps the rear door twice and the air steward in their high-vis vest thumps back twice and only then do they open the door. It’s very reassuring that sort of thing, and I love watching people do their jobs well and elegantly, and correctly.

I told the pilot how hospitals looked to aviation as the industry with the lowest fail rates, and they copied the methodical checklists for the hospital environment. I told him how I loved that we can learn things from each other’s industries, modify the way we operate to do our jobs better. He asked me if I worked in hospitals. I said no, I work in publishing, which is mostly based on feelings and opinions. He looked bemused and said, Well, it’s good to have interests outside your work, it’s healthy. Later I wished I’d told him I was a little bit of a doctor as well as a publicist and writer. But that would have made me sound as unhealthy as I felt.

As the plane came into Wellington to land from the south the buffeting began. Up and down, side to side. I clung onto my husband’s arm, dug my nails in. Tears ran down my cheeks, from fear, and from being so tired of feeling scared, so exhausted from my ongoing, unpredictable sadness. At that moment I felt that it wasn’t wind but my grief pushing the plane around, my grief that would bring certain death to us all on that plane. Grief is selfish like that. From the point of view of the griever, it infects everything. Even having a pilot sit next to me wasn’t enough of a safety measure.

The baby was saying uh uh, uh uh, uh uh, uh uh, which then turned into a nervous whine and then open crying. The baby’s father was saying shhh shhh, but not in a tone that I believed and neither did the baby. The pilot was looking out the window with a calm, almost-smile on his face. By this stage I was so terrified I didn’t care if he saw me crying. Poor blameless off-duty pilot. What did he know about the grief that was about to kill us all?

And then with a couple of bumps we landed. The plane did not fall apart. The monster that had been trying to kill us disappeared.

As soon as the plane slowed on the runway the baby started singing a happy baby tune. It had moved on. The way you do when you live in the present.

Seagulls

There are days when the seagulls sit on the rocks and water in the bay in their hundreds. In our family we call it a seagull conference, as though they’re there to discuss their business and prepare a plan for the future. I don’t know what they’re doing. In the summer I don’t like to swim on conference days as their feathers end up floating on the water and I have a conviction that gulls are dirty. Just as people call pigeons ‘rats of the sky’, I’ve been told that seagulls are scavengers and my mind repeats an alarming phrase when I see those floating feathers and dung-covered rocks—avian flu.

On this day, when I hope I’m recovering from tonsillitis, too sick to walk very far or fast, but plain tired of my sick bed, I sit and watch the gulls. They sit on the rocks or in the water facing out to sea and they fill the space of a large oblong paddock.

They don’t seem to be doing much, not that I can see at first. Every now and then a group will set up a call, Yaw-Yaw-Yaw, which gets passed around to another group—a circling acknowledgement determining who is here. I think of it like the phone tree we used to use at Playcentre to remind people of meetings in the days when not everyone had email or used texts. Not all groups respond, but enough for the Yaw-Yaw-Yaw to sound to my human ear as if the sound is being kicked round the paddock like a rugby ball.

Then a different noise begins in front of me, a higher pitched, agitated and agitating trill. A small gull is annoyed at another gull who has landed close to where it’s sitting. It trills and juts its head at the intruder, its beak opens as if to bite it. This goes on for a minute then the intruder flies to a rock close by, where its neighbours pay it little attention until the trilling gull flies over to continue agitating. This small gull then proceeds to agitate most of the gulls on that rock until they trill and bite back, forcing it to move to a different rock.

What is the point of all of this trilling and jutting and pecking? Who is bullying whom? I don’t think the bullying is that clear cut, I think they’re taking turns dominating each other, establishing territories. But I’m only thinking this—it’s not a fact and I’m no twitcher.

The next day I see Michael, a friend of ours who is a long-time twitcher. It’s Michael who a couple of years ago told us that the tarāpunga (red-billed gull), and tarāpuka, (black-billed gulls) were native and endangered. I’d never thought of gulls as being of Aotearoa or in trouble before.

Michael cycles the coast with binoculars around his neck. He’s out to look for birds. We regularly have shags drying their wings on the rocks, last week he saw an albatross amongst a group of sea birds when a sudden southerly current pushed them closer to the coast than you’d normally see them. We’ve also had pods of dolphins playing in the bay a lot the last few weeks. We comment on the person who’s been taking their jet ski out to ride around the dolphins.

‘What makes people think they can do that?’ I ask Michael and David.

We make the judgment that anyone who owns a jet ski is someone for whom everything around them tells them they’re right. I ask Michael what the seagulls are doing, grouped there.

‘Not much,’ he shrugs. ‘They’re just doing what they’ve done for years, sitting.’

This response is disappointing to me. I want the seagulls to be communing, to be sharing information gathered out at sea, some ancient seagull wisdom. And maybe they are.

Or maybe they’re just doing what Michael says they’re doing—hanging out.

 

---

Note to readers:

I’ve had a long break from this blog. I stopped doing interviews with workers because the interviewing and transcribing was taking up any other fiction writing time I had. Now that my book is out (it’s called Tess and you can buy it in the shops!) I’m hoping to have some space to write here again. I’m going to stick to my bay, my coastline—there’s always interesting stuff going on, and it’s a good discipline for me to watch the birds and sea and remember how fortunate I am to live here. Sometimes I’ll post photos because I have them and I want to, but mainly I intend to write without pictures, which is so early-20th century of me, I know. I remain firmly of the conviction that words paint a thousand pictures.

What Do People Do All Day? no.6

A series of interviews with people about the work they do.

Kelly McDonald is a jeweller. She was born in Moe (which means ‘swamp’ in the Aboriginal language), in the Latrobe Valley, Gippsland, Australia. Kelly has lived in Wellington, New Zealand since 2004. She teaches jewellery at Whitireia New Zealand.

---

“There’s a T-shirt somebody got printed that sums it up. It says: ‘I’m not that sort of jeweller.”

–Kelly McDonald

Kelly McDonald in her shed

---

---

 

Interviewer

What are you doing?

Kelly McDonald

I’m cleaning up, because it’s part of my process.

Interviewer

Part of your process of what?

Kelly McDonald

Of making. If I’ve got a clean, clear space then my head is clear. You know, the internal mimics the external.

Interviewer

Do you think you’re a details person or a big picture person?

Kelly McDonald

I don’t know that I could answer that honestly. I’d have an idea about it but I don’t think it would be true, it would just be me saying what made me look better.

---

---

Interviewer

But here you’ve two large white sheets of paper with things laid out on it; if I stumbled across one of these objects on the footpath, I wouldn’t even notice it, and here you are arranging lots of bits of rusty metal, stones, and these things, floats from fishing nets, and you’ve arranged them and there’s a pattern and order to this.

Kelly McDonald

It would be true to say that this is the detail of a big install. These are visual clues for me; by laying them out I start to see that I need to make more of these and I’ll build it up.

Interviewer

Do you mean the pieces will be bigger or there will be more of these things?

Kelly McDonald

More of these things. In my work shed, and quite often in galleries, I’m limited by space because I don’t do many solo shows. I tend to do big group shows or small 2-3 person shows. I’m still getting started and the idea of a solo show is intimidating, plus I can learn more from group shows. But, I’m getting closer to the idea of wanting and needing a solo show. These pieces work better when they have more space around them.

---

---

Interviewer

So they have their own margins? Their own white space? Which is how I would think of it in publishing terms.

Kelly McDonald

Yeah. I’m starting to find jewellery a little bit limiting. I’m trying to work out why and I think it is the space thing. The body is really important for me in jewellery, which is why sculpture or small sculpture doesn’t really draw me in. It’s the relationship with the body and the scale that you have to work on that interests me.

Interviewer

Do you mean that people can wear these pieces on their body, or have you just made them a size that is in scale with a body?

Kelly McDonald

There’s lots of ways you can interact with the body that isn’t just wearing. That’s the financially viable form of making, but lucky for me I’m subsidised by my partner, and I work.

The relationship with the body can just be implied through weight. Like with those stones pieces—we have the knowledge about the weight of those without needing to explain.

The other thing is that I’m moving to not wanting to lock my work down, certainly not behind glass, so that when it’s displayed you can pick up the work and try it on.

Interviewer

So people should feel okay to take it off the wall and touch it and hold it?

Kelly McDonald

Yeah. And my work’s tough. I watch this British maker, David Clarke, who is a contemporary silversmith, and his work is always for touch rather than ‘Do Not Touch’. And every gallery has to be okay with that because that’s his way of exhibiting. When I first heard that I was like, ‘Oh yeah, whatever…’ But then I went to an exhibition of his last year and walked in to the gallery and the usual reverence you have for these objects and the ‘not touching’ wasn’t there, his irreverence and the freedom of being allowed to touch actually made his objects more intriguing.

Interviewer

Is reverence part of the preciousness of the materials?

Kelly McDonald

Yeah, but then his things are three to four thousand pound! They’re hollow form, so you drop them they’ll dent, but for him that’s part of it. That’s a piece starting its life already and it’s been made for touch.

Interviewer

So it’s made for the human body, for people. Do you see it as a communication form?

Kelly McDonald

I think so, and I think that’s what all artists do—we’re communicating something. But with painting, you just look at, you don’t touch it, and it has no relationship to the body through the hands at all, it’s only about eyes.

With jewellery more senses are involved because you wear it and it’s a constant interaction with the body; having to put it on, take it off. My work looks good on a wall because it’s flat and graphic, but I’m thinking more about where the body is in wall display.

I wonder if it’s a tension in my making, where I have to work through these conundrums? I don’t always have a solution and maybe I never will but it’s one of the things that drives me.

Interviewer

So it’s part of finding a form for a piece?

Kelly McDonald

That’s what I’m working out. I’ve been back making for three years. There’s parts of it that are exciting because they’re still new. Like knowing your process and playing with it.

Interviewer

With writing, there are things that really irritate me in certain texts. For instance, I can’t bear cleverness or people who need to show that they’ve read all the post-modern books. I will always choose story above that. I’ve gone back to reading children’s novels recently because they’re often pure story, and thinking about how they work has affected my own writing, it has put more restraints around how I write, because I’m not satisfied with something just because it makes me sound funny or smart, which I might have been ten years ago, but now, anything I say must be an integral part of storytelling.

Kelly McDonald

Yeah well, separate of anything we do, we have our own core values, and honesty is a really important one for me and it obviously is for you too. So in communicating directly and honestly you can do all those fancy things like set shiny stones in a ring, or for you, indicate how well read you are through language. I guess for me that thing of putting the work behind glass doesn’t feel honest, because it’s about the touch.

Interviewer

So your values give you a set of constraints to work within and one of those constraints is ‘I’m not going to use glass’.

Kelly McDonald

If I can choose to do that, then yeah.

Interviewer

You said you’ve just come back to making for 3 years. You took time off?

Kelly McDonald

Ten years, for children.

 Interviewer

And in those years, did you feel frustrated? Or did you always know you’d get back to it?

 Kelly McDonald

Ha! Well, I had that fancy dream that we all have with our first child, ‘I’m gonna have so much time, cause I won’t be in a full time job.’ It’s easy to imagine that, so I did.

Previous to having my first child I had been working in the film industry, which is a vortex you get sucked into and don’t always come out of. Then I had a second child, and I couldn’t do it with one, so I wasn’t able to do it with two, but for some reason when I had a third child suddenly you have that level of chaos and you just jam everything in, because you realise you’re running out of time and no one cares that much.

 Interviewer

How old was your youngest when you started seriously getting into making again?

 Kelly McDonald

He must have been one and a half.

 Interviewer

In the time that you weren’t making, you were teaching?

 Kelly McDonald

Yes, so I did stay connected. I was also part of ‘The See Here’, which is a very small gallery space in Tory Street in town. It’s not run by anyone, and you don’t enter the space, you just look through the window. With one show every year there, it kept me gently tethered to making.

I also joined up with a collective of like-minded women who were in similar positions with time constraints and we found we could do more as a group than we could do individually. We all have different skill sets—one can put an application in, one can start making the work, another can photograph it, the others can add their few bits and pieces, and before you know it, we’ve got a show. Collectively, we’ve been able to stay strongly tethered to jewellery, and also build the community in Wellington. It’s small here, but with a community you can keep growing things.

 Interviewer

It sounds like a really supportive community.

 Kelly McDonald

Yeah, it is.

 Interviewer

I can’t imagine writers ever banding together in quite that way, perhaps it’s not possible. But jewellery does seem quite a solo pursuit, like writing. I guess you could share a studio space, or would that be too distracting?

 Kelly McDonald

I’m too easily distracted, and distracting, so it’s better for everybody if I keep a separate space.

 Interviewer

How long have you been making jewellery?

Kelly McDonald

I graduated from Sydney College of the Arts when I was 23 and I’m 42 now. It was a bachelor of visual arts, jewellery was my major.

 Interviewer

So how did you know you wanted to make jewellery?

 Kelly McDonald

I was ten and I decided I was going to be a nurse and a jeweller. I grew up in a small country town in Australia, and I was going to do my nursing degree at home in country Victoria at the local uni, then move to a city and study at arts school and pay my way through casual nursing, or agency nursing. And that’s what I did.

When I arrived in Sydney to start my course and find a place to live, at one of the flats I went to look at, I got talking to the woman and she said she ran a nursing agency. So I joined up with her agency within the first few days of getting to Sydney and was working within a week. I didn’t take that house but I got a job out of it.

 Interviewer

That seems exceptionally driven and clear-minded.

 Kelly McDonald

Yeah, that path was direct, but then it’s been much less direct ever since. Maybe the first ten years were all mapped out, but after that, no.

 Interviewer

What gave you that kind of clarity? Did your family give you a model for it?

 Kelly McDonald

No, not at all. But then, my father’s generation of men wasn’t encouraged to be creative through art, nor was it financially viable if you had a family. If you haven’t ever been exposed to art no matter how creative you are it’s hard to pursue. Dad is quite creative, certainly with metal, but his creativity comes through his job as a fitter and turner; his hobby is making and building motorbikes. I think that’s how that generation of man expressed creativity.

 Interviewer

So if you didn’t have any artists in your family, what gave you the idea that you could be one?

 Kelly McDonald

I liked making things as a kid; I was always making things. Mum suggested that I do jewellery. I liked little shiny things, so jewellery made sense. I couldn’t get an apprenticeship, so the other option was to go to university to learn it. As I got older the idea of arts school in a big city was really appealing.

 Interviewer

 What do you say you do when people ask?

 Kelly McDonald

I’d probably say I’m a maker.

 Interviewer

Why not a jeweller?

 Kelly McDonald

‘Jewellery’ has lots of connotations and I always need to qualify that by saying I am a contemporary jeweller. And people ask, ‘What does that mean?’ and there’s a lot of explanation you have to give. Whereas if I say ‘I’m a maker’, that word carries its own weight and you can explain your materials and then say what you’re doing. Also, if you start with jewellery there’s usually a request to fix something or you get shown a diamond ring. And I don’t do stones, I have no interest in that kind of jewellery.

 Interviewer

Why don’t you do stones?

Kelly McDonald

They just don’t appeal to me.

 Interviewer

You’ve got a bunch of stones over there.

Kelly McDonald

Yeah, they’re pebbles. Beach stones, greywacke.

Other stones, they get cut and they’re not how you find them. I really like uncut stones, they have a beauty for me that is worthwhile, but the cut stones, I mean you can do that with glass as well, I don’t see the point.

---

---

Interviewer

You call yourself a maker but do you think of your work as jewellery?

Kelly McDonald

 Only in that I belong to a jewellery community.

There’s a teeshirt somebody got printed that sums it up. It says: ‘I’m not that sort of jeweller.’

 Interviewer

Is it because there’s not a public consciousness about what contemporary jewellery is?

 Kelly McDonald

It’s growing. Wellington has the jewellery degree at Whitireia. I teach there, and we get small numbers, but every year we get five students at least and every year between two to five go through to second year. There’s growing numbers of people who want to look at contemporary jewellery and buy it. Certainly that’s the case in New Zealand. I wouldn’t say it’s so everywhere else in the world.

Interviewer

 There’s people that collect jewellery the way they would collect art?

Kelly McDonald

Yeah, and there’s an awareness too, amongst jewellers, that we need to encourage young people to become collectors so there is an investment, there’s a building of the community. I think it will continue to grow it might just not grow in massive numbers very quickly. There’s a small number of people here, but we’re always represented in the major shows overseas.

 Interviewer

Why do you think that is?

Kelly McDonald

I think our difference is interesting for people.

Interviewer

A difference to what?

Kelly McDonald

To the European aesthetic and their sets of rules. Europe is the seat of all things jewellery; there’s the largest number of jewellers there. What we do is so different to Europe—the way we express ourselves, our choice of materials, the things that we talk about with our jewellery.

Interviewer

Why do you think it’s different?

Kelly McDonald

Because we don’t have that weight of tradition on our shoulders; we don’t have this long history of how art has to be produced. We don’t have the guild system, we don’t have the hallmarking system, which is where if you want to sell or exhibit at certain places you have to send it off to be assayed then you have to apply all your hallmarking stamps. We don’t have lots of those systems.

Another thing that I see as quite different is that we don’t have a hierarchy of materials. It’s difficult to get stuff here. I had no idea, even in comparison to Sydney, where I could just ring up and have stuff on my door from the courier. But here the turn around is longer, so you make differently because you can’t get things or they’re a lot more expensive because there’s no large industry. It’s that geographic isolation at play.

Interviewer

I want to ask about the lack of guilding or standard system here. It’s fascinating because on one hand they might look at us and say, ‘Oh, they’ve got no standards’, but from what you’re saying, it actually creates more freedom.

Kelly McDonald

I think they’re both important, but the way people learn can be problematic. If you go to a traditional school, the expression of the work or the idea of the work is never put first, it’s only ever a consideration down the track or maybe not at all. This is not the way that we would think about an idea.

For example at that [a European] school you’d learn how to solder, and you’ll learn one way which is the ‘proper way’, the way that everybody has learned before, it’s the way that is financially viable and expected in a trade type jewellery shop, like Michael Hill. It’s very hard to undo that learning after and go back to freedom and a playful way of trying out new things when you already know how to solder; you can’t unknow that.

We often say that it’s like an accent, you can learn a new language but you’ll always have your accent. We show you lots of different ways of soldering, and that allows you to find your own individual way of doing this standard activity of soldering bits together. When you approach everything like that it’s a lot easier to find your own individual voice.

---

---

Interviewer

Do you have a favourite material?

Kelly McDonald

Steel, that’s been the most consistent material I’ve stuck with.

Interviewer

What’s the attraction of steel?

Kelly McDonald

It shows time. It’s a dynamic material; it takes heat in an entirely different way. Steel is a ferrous metal; all the non-ferrous metals are things like copper, brass, silver, gold. I see it as more flexible, although most people wouldn’t think of it as flexible, but when you’re making, and heat is a big part of your making process, when you can use heat in lots of different ways as opposed to one way, then that’s flexible to me.

Interviewer

So it responds differently?

Kelly McDonald

Yes. You can heat steel in one area and it doesn’t move very quickly, it doesn’t conduct in an even way like a non-ferrous metal, like copper and brass. This is why copper is used in lots of things; it conducts evenly. With steel, if you heat one corner the other corner doesn’t heat up so you can do a lot more with it, you can have cool spots and hot spots.

Interviewer

Is it unpredictable?

Kelly McDonald

Steels have different levels of carbon and iron. I mostly use mild steel. I don’t use stainless steel, or high-carbon steels, so I find it predictable, but there’s a million things I still don’t know about steel so for me it still holds new things that I can learn.

Interviewer

When did you discover steel?

Kelly McDonald

I didn’t use steel until I was in my last year of uni, and then I didn’t use it for a long time. But I do play with all sorts of materials. Steel works really well combined with other materials, you get that contrast, which keeps it interesting. The possibility of one colour with the black or greys that you get with steel… There’s also the movement and the way two materials marry—a non-ferrous metal will move around on steel, it’ll never join with it, so you can adhere it to it but it’s not like a weld of steel with steel. So that’s an exciting thing for me, at some point I’ll get a welder and do steel to steel. One day.

---

---

Interviewer

Do you call what you make art or craft?

Kelly McDonald

I think there’s crafting in what I do but I don’t think it’s craft. Craft has a different history, and I don’t feel like I’m talking that language. In my version of art, the artist shows a proven dedication over time. I’m new back to making and I think it’s going to take longer for me to talk about my work in relation to art, and about me as an artist.

Interviewer

Really? That’s interesting because while you didn’t make for a number of years, you’ve been doing it for a lot of your life, always heading in that direction. Do you mean that you think you must have sophisticated concepts before you can call yourself an artist?

Kelly McDonald

No. I think the sophistication comes with just going the distance; that being your mode of expression for a long time. After three years, I think I’d be presumptive to call myself an artist. I think that in five, six years, I’d be comfortable, maybe. You could ask me in another three years.

Interviewer

Do you feel like you’re still doing an apprenticeship?

Kelly McDonald

To some extent. The Handshake project has been fundamental in getting me back to making.

Interviewer

What’s that?

Kelly McDonald

It’s a mentor and exhibition programme funded by Creative New Zealand. It’s now in its third iteration. In Handshake One, there were 12 reasonably recent graduates and they selected a mentor anywhere in the world and the programme matched them up with that mentor and then they worked towards exhibitions with a certain amount of support from their mentor.

Interviewer

That’s a very innovative programme.

Kelly McDonald

Yeah, it’s unique. Internationally it’s being watched by the contemporary jewellery world through the blog sites. Each Handshake artist has a blog and posts their progress in relation to their exhibitions. We’re now at Handshake Three and possibly there will be a fourth, there’s a long commitment to it, which also keeps building that community, so the graduates coming through now know there’s something to go into.

It’s made a big difference in keeping me focused. Having external deadlines, which without I would have found it difficult to keep the motivation going.

Interviewer

What’s your star sign?

Kelly McDonald

Taurus.

Interviewer

Did you have any art influences as a child or young adult?

Kelly McDonald

I didn’t go to exhibitions; that’s just not what we did. We lived two hours out of Melbourne and we went to the city a few times a year. No doubt there were exhibitions happening locally, but it didn’t occur to mum and dad to take me, nor did it occur to me to ask to go. I went to my first exhibition when I was just finishing high school. It was a local painting show, and it might have even been part of our art class.

There was the Melbourne Show, which was an agricultural show, and throughout school you could make things for the Melbourne Show and I remember submitting something and I won a little award when I was 7 or 8, quite young, but that’s a stretch to call that exhibition experience.

Interviewer

And what about now—do you have other painters or sculptors that you love?

Kelly McDonald

There’s too many to choose from. I feel like I’m still new and until my voice is known as ‘Oh that’s hers’, I don’t want to talk about other artists. I’m still gathering bits from all sorts of places.

Actually, can you remove that question?

---

---

June 2016, interview by The Invisible Writer

What Do People Do All Day? no.5

Aaron McLean is a food photographer for magazines and cookbooks. He recently set up and published the first edition of Stone Soup, a free publication that covers a wide variety of issues around the production and provision of food, and food culture.

The photos in this interview are flasher than usual because he supplied them.

---

” The way that I shoot food is really simple, anyone could do it. I basically plonk a plate next to a window and take a photograph of it.”

–Aaron McLean

---

Interviewer

Do you have a business card?

 Aaron McLean

No.

 Interviewer

Do you have a job title?

Aaron McLean

No, not really.

Interviewer

So when people ask you what do you do what do you say?

Aaron McLean

I try to avoid answering that question. I look to my feet and then I usually say, I take pictures, and then they say, ‘What do you take pictures of’, and I say, ‘Food’, and then they say, ‘That’s a strange thing to do’.

 Interviewer

You sound like a poet.

 Aaron McLean

Do you think so?

 Interviewer

Yeah. Poets like to avoid saying they’re poets, because it sounds pretentious or something.

Aaron McLean

If I could call myself a poet and still be able to eat, I’d say it with pride.

Interviewer

How long have you been taking pictures of food for?

 Aaron McLean

Probably about 12 years or 13 years, quite a while.

Interviewer

How did you come to doing this?

Aaron McLean

I had worked in restaurants since I left school, then I decided out of the blue that I wanted to buy a camera because I’d fallen out of love with playing the guitar badly. So I got the camera and went around the world, then I studied in Sydney.

Actually, I didn’t study, I went and worked in a restaurant that was in the basement of the Australian Centre for Photography so that I could be in that space and use their facilities; the dark rooms and the short courses they ran.

Back then, Sydney had a pretty robust food culture and Australians were further down the food path than we are now.

Interviewer

What do you mean by that?

Aaron McLean

In terms of their food culture, the understanding and enthusiasm for good quality food was greater, people were more interested. As a by-product of that interest there were a lot of food photographers and they were held in very high regard. I was exposed to them in the restaurant I worked in, and it seemed a nice way to get out of restaurants and tie what I knew into my new-found pursuit of photography.

Interviewer

So you’re a self-taught photographer?

Aaron McLean

Yes.

Interviewer

Is that what most photographers are?

Aaron McLean

There’s an industry in pumping out photographers these days, but most of the people I know who make a living from photography are self-taught.

---

---

Interviewer

Did you have any photographers in your family?

Aaron McLean

My uncle made movies, so I guess it seemed possible, that you could do things with pictures. My cousin and both my sisters worked in film, but I was never drawn to film. Then, after I started working as a photographer, my mother told me that both my grandfather and great-grandfather had been photographers, which is a story I had never heard previously. So it’s in the genes, I just didn’t know until I’d picked up a camera.

Interviewer

What does your working day look like?

Aaron McLean

I go and take photographs, usually at the house of a food stylist.

Interviewer

So those photographs happen in their houses?

Aaron McLean

Yeah. In the era of budgets, people used studios. When I first came back to New Zealand, compared to what I was seeing in Australia, the aesthetic was still very 80s, still very entrenched in the studio.

Interviewer

What year was that?

Aaron McLean

2000-ish.

Interviewer

And it still seemed 80s?

Aaron McLean

Back then it was more about the photographer in terms of ‘look at how many lights I’ve used,’ and less about the food. Then it changed so that there was a movement towards a more photo-journalistic approach, using natural light and trying to represent the food as being real, rather than hyper-real; something that you would like to eat. So it made more sense to shoot at people’s houses because you’re using natural light and the food stylists don’t have to pack everything up, and of course publishers were even more enthusiastic about that because suddenly they didn’t have to pay for all of those things that went into doing a studio shoot.

---

Office shoot

---

Interviewer

So what does a typical working day look like?

Aaron McLean

If you’re shooting a feature for a magazine, well it’s gentleman’s hours – you turn up at ten and you’re out of there by 4 or 5.

 Interviewer

What about getting the pictures ready to use?

Aaron McLean

Yeah, I think the move into the digital realm takes up more of your time after the shoot, because if you were in the studio you could be more efficient, editing as you go, but with digital you go back home and you’ve got all of these images to deal with.

You create a selection for an art director who then chooses what they want to publish, so they come back to you with their selections and from there you prepare the images that they’ll print.

Interviewer

And do you digitally manipulate the photos?

Aaron McLean

You colour grade the photos. You do this to give it a particular feeling, but it’s not heavily retouched because food, unlike a bikini model, wants to be real. People don’t want to eat stuff that doesn’t look real; they might aspire to other things that look better than reality.

---

Set-up for a shoot

---

Interviewer

Do you see your photos as being an art or a craft or do you not draw that distinction?

 Aaron McLean

I think of it as a craft. I don’t think you should even attempt to put the art label on it; it’s a form of communication which is executed through craft.

When I came into photography a lot of people were lamenting the death of the craft of photography and it felt like they were all a bunch of old wankers.

 Interviewer

Why were they lamenting that?

Aaron McLean

Because technology makes things easier, and of course that’s still happening, so maybe I’ll join the chorus because it really is pretty easy to take a good picture these days. Cameras shoot acceptable photographs in the dark, the software makes things look pretty good. Some of the favourite photos I’ve taken have been on my iphone, but that’s good in that it’s a democratization of image making.

Interviewer

I read that David and Victoria Beckham’s eldest son is shooting for some fancy clothing label and there are a bunch of professional photographers up in arms about it. And the fancy label said, well yeah, he’s got a million followers on Instagram so of course we’re going with him.

 Aaron McLean

Yes, well, there’s two sides to it. Photography used to be the domain of rich white men because you had to have a lot of money to buy camera equipment. It cost me a lot of money to buy enough equipment to even walk in the door of a publisher and ask if I could work for them, and that’s still true to a point, but these days if you have some talent you can shoot on your phone, show people and you might get a break.

The flip side is that people are getting traction through their following on social media which might be the byproduct of being a very efficient narcissist, rather than being good at what you do. If you’ve got ten thousand followers you’re in, even if what you do is crap because publishing’s about eyes rather than the quality of your content.

Interviewer

Do you think that Instagram is for pictures of dinner or of cats?

Aaron McLean

Well, that speaks to the downside of the internet doesn’t it – the way it reinforces our own world view so if you’re obsessed with cats you’re only going to see cats. And the rest of us are going to see food.

---

Cats or food? (credit: Aaron McLean)

---

Interviewer

So do you like Instagram as a method of communicating?

Aaron McLean

Yeah I do. What I like about it is that it’s a visual medium that operates like a stream of consciousness, and because it isn’t work I can be cheeky and more reflective of who I am.

When Instagram came along it was a nice opportunity to take pictures on your phone that you took little care over. It’s a way of having a conversation with people all around the world who share your interests, which is a good thing about social media in general and an antidote to some of the conversations that happen on twitter.

Interviewer

Do you think there are attributes that a photographer should have?

Aaron McLean

There was a Magnum photographer who said you should photograph the things that you love.

The way that I shoot food is really simple, anyone could do it. I basically plonk a plate next to a window and take a photograph of it. I am moving away from natural light though because it gets boring doing the same thing all the time all day. Also, there’s a shit load of people coming in and shooting like that and so there’s a conscious effort to push back towards craft, but predominantly because it gets boring. I don’t want to do the same thing everyday for the rest of my life.

---

Seeds (credit: Aaron McLean)

---

Interviewer

Do you have a favourite food that you like photographing?

Aaron McLean

I like two extremes – I like simple, bold, still-life imagery and that could be of a vegetable that’s just been pulled out of the ground. Last year I did a series on seeds from my garden.

But then I also like what I’d call narrative photography, where you’re giving people a sense that they’re part of an occasion – a feast, with any kind of food.  And I’d like to do that in a less aspirational way.

Interviewer

That would be good. I’ve had a response to certain food magazines where I’ve actually thrown them across the room because of those pictures.

 Aaron McLean

Yeah, fuck you with your $300 plate and your $500 cutlery set.

 Interviewer

Yes, and that they’re are these very happy people, everything’s just so marvellous for them and they’re eating outside and they haven’t got any food on their shirts and no one looks harassed.

Aaron McLean

Yes, I would like to have it look more like the people that I actually entertain or have dinner with, because we like food and eat it too. But that goes back to the advertisers. We’re making content for people who can buy the Audi that’s in the ad. So we’re not making content for the people who are eating dumplings for ten bucks on Dominion Road, even though they love food just as much.

Interviewer

Do you like photographing people?

Aaron McLean

Yeah, and I’d like to do that more. I did do a phase of travel photography and that was probably my favourite thing. That’s where Stone Soup comes in, I really like stories about people and place, and food. Those sorts of stories aren’t being commissioned and I wanted an opportunity to be able to tell them.

Interviewer

Is that why you created Stone Soup, to tell those stories?

Aaron McLean

It came out of multiple things – it came out of the state of publishing and the fact that there is a whole bunch of talent that’s either idle or under-utililised. People don’t get to tell the stories that they want to tell. Instead they’re commissioned to create sponsored content and, you know, not rock the boat – don’t write about free range chooks because Rangitiki is owned by Tegal and they might not advertise with us anymore or what have you. So, we’re trying to create a platform for that sort of discussion.

Interviewer

So there’s a political intention there also?

Aaron McLean

Yeah. What was fascinating to me as somebody who went into a kind of social media political vortex is you can talk about economics endlessly, and economics are so explicitly at the root of most frustrations, and it falls on deaf ears except amongst the wonks. But food – beyond what you’re posting on Instagram of your dinner – really seems to resonate, particularly with young people.

The greatest and most positive interactions I’ve had and the real life friendships I’ve made have been around food. But not what restaurant’s hip; food security, food sovereignty, the effect of food production on the environment, our right to land to grow food…. Young people who might otherwise be politically disinterested gravitate towards it as a lens through which to make sense of some of the madness and also as a path to empowerment, a space outside of the market. It taps into the root of many real issues. And so I decided to create a platform upon which to tell very positive stories about people who think and act in that space, under a thin veil of being of the ‘food media’.

Interviewer

So who are the people you’re talking to?

Aaron McLean

They’re people who that I’ve worked with for a long time – contributors, writers, photographers – people who work in publishing but they’re all a little hamstrung by present conditions.

Interviewer

That’s a general consensus then – that these people are feeling hamstrung?

Aaron McLean

I think so, there’s varying levels of frustration. It’s not like an existential crisis, but they just think – well it would be nice to write about this and I haven’t got a platform for it within the media that I’ve found myself entrenched in because they don’t talk about those things anymore. Particularly in food where it’s become about what you can cook in five minutes on Wednesday night or what you can cook for fifteen bucks, so the food media which used to tell and which internationally still does tell more robust stories about how we produce our food and who produces it, and the environmental impacts on the production of food, the social impacts, that’s totally missing from NZ food media.

Interviewer

Do you think more of those stories are told in international media?

Aaron McLean

Yes, definitely. I don’t think it’s some sort of conspiracy so much as a self-taming, and I don’t even know that it’s conscious in a lot of instances, it’s just part of the power dynamic that exists within a publishing industry that’s desperate to hold onto its place. The advertising has disappeared. APN is in the red, these companies are only still functioning because banks don’t want to foreclose on them, and so there’s lots of pressure.

This is part of the inspiration for Stone Soup, but also it’s for me a desire to participate more in the curation and the telling of those stories rather than waiting for the phone to ring and saying yes I’ll come and photograph that lamb chop for you.

 Interviewer

Do you photograph many lamb chops?

 Aaron McLean

Well, I’ve done far too many over the years, I don’t know who gets to eat them cause they’re quite expensive these days.

Interviewer

What did you want to be when you were seven?

Aaron McLean

A ski-racer. Which, in fact, was what I was.

 

---

Stone Soup is on Instagram

May 2016, interview by The Invisible Writer.

 

What Do People Do All Day? no.4

A series of interviews with people about the work they do.

Merle Metekingi is Kaitiaki Whenua at Te Kura-a-iwi o Whakatupuranga Rua Mano in Otaki.

Kaitiaki Whenua loosely translates to English as ‘the guardian of the land’. A large part of Merle’s job involves teaching the children at the kura how to grow food. The kura has students from year 0 to 13. All classes are taught in Te Reo Māori.

This interview took place walking around the garden during term-break.

---

Merle in the kura mara, April 2016

“I really like food and I think to have good food you need to know where it’s come from and you need to have an input into making it.”

–Merle Metekingi

---

Interviewer

I see you’ve still got your beans up?

Merle Metekingi

Yeah, I like to give the ground a rest, we’ll just leave these ones. These are Holy Beans.

Interviewer

Why are they called Holy Beans?

Merle Metekingi

Cause they’re from Israel. [She opens a bean pod.] Oops, no, that’s just a scarlet runner. The Holy ones are white. They’re a nice bean.

Interviewer

What are you working on at the moment?

Merle Metekingi

This is our down time, so when the kids come back on Tuesday, we’ll prep a bed for planting broad beans.

Interviewer

Already?

Merle Metekingi

Yeah. They’re actually pretty quick to grow. They’ll be ready by August probably. We’ll harvest them just before spring.

Interviewer

So who eats the food you grow?

Merle Metekingi

All the kids here. We have a thing called hoko kai where the kids pay $2, and the rule is they’ve got to come to the māra and take one or two things, it doesn’t matter what it is, but it has to be combined in the cooking. So the kids will come in the morning and they’ll pick, basil or parsley or some silverbeet and that’s got to be put into the hoko kai.

Interviewer

What’s hoko kai?

Merle Metekingi

It just means, like paid food. It’s $2 no matter how many kids you’ve got, so it’s just a koha really to help. At the moment there’s not a lot to pick, everything’s gone to seed.

Interviewer

You must end up with some interesting dishes.

Merle Metekingi

It’s more a garnish in the end. It doesn’t matter if they don’t actually cook it, it can just be on top of the main meal. It’s more about the process, they’ve got to come over, pick it, take it back to the kitchen to be prepped.

Interviewer

Does that happen every day?

Merle Metekingi

It happens Tuesday to Friday.

Interviewer

So just Monday they bring their own lunch?

Merle Metekingi

Yeah, one day.

Interviewer

That’s amazing, you need to get Jamie Oliver here, you’ll be world famous in no time.

Merle Metekingi

Yeah, I think it’s a good process, it doesn’t pay for itself of course, but it’s good.

---

Harvest at the kura ‘kainival’

---

Interviewer

So are you employed to work in this garden?

Merle Metekingi

Yep, twenty hours a week.

Interviewer

Who employs you?

Merle Metekingi

The kura. This is the first time they’ve paid someone to actually run an enviro-science programme alongside their science teachers. We’re trying to get food as an academic subject. It’s a big move.

Interviewer

So it’s part of the kura’s curriculum?

Merle Metekingi

Yeah. It’s part of the school’s philosophy of staying healthy and eating well and being holistically well. The kids get to grow the food, look after it and eat it. It’s a whole circle. Instead of going to the supermarket. A lot of the kids have no idea really, where their food comes from.

---

 

---

 

Interviewer

Both my grandparents had enormous vege gardens and then my Mum and Dad never even grew a lettuce, but there’s been a change back to people wanting to grow their own food.

Merle Metekingi

Yeah, like my son, who’s 27 has asked me to help him put a garden in cause he’s sick and tired of the shit food from the supermarket. He was brought up on good food, cause I always grew stuff. So now at 27, he’s going back to garden planting and he wants me to show him.

Interviewer

Do you have job title?

Merle Metekingi

Oh yeah, it’s Kaitiaki Whenua, which means like, the teacher of the land.

Interviewer

What a beautiful title. What do you do all day as Kaitiaki Whenua?

Merle Metekingi

I work 9 to 2, Tuesdays to Fridays. The first half an hour while the kids are at karakia, I do prep: find out what classes I’ll have. Every day I get a schedule with which kids are going to come here – it could be five year olds up to eighteen year olds. And I’ll have different jobs for different kids. There’s some heavy lifting that the five year olds can’t do. But they love planting, you know putting the seeds in the ground.

Once the kids have left I do maintenance stuff. When you work with kids it’s very slow. So what could take me an hour alone, can take me up to three hours with kids. But you’re not just saying, do this, do that, you’re trying to teach them the process and the overall vision at the end of it, so they’re not just thinking why are we moving that pile of sawdust from here, to there and back again. So you want to show them what that cycle is and purpose of it, otherwise it’s a meaningless activity.

Interviewer

So over the year they see the whole life cycle of the garden.

Merle Metekingi

Yes, the whole cycle of growing. We also have chickens and they get to collect the eggs every morning, they feed them and water them. They’ve got the pigs that they feed. If they’re older they can watch the process of the slaughter, then the science teacher will do an anatomy lesson on the intestines of the pig. Then the pig gets taken to the chiller, then to the butcher, then it comes back.

---

---

Interviewer

And so do you have a hangi?

Merle Metekingi

Yep, we have a permanent hangi pit. We do ten to twelve hangi a year for fundraising, it can take up to 300 individual food parcels. The kids get involved and prep all the food.

Interviewer

Would all that food come from the garden?

Merle Metekingi

No. This year we’re trying to grow enough potatoes and cabbage. We grew 40 odd pumpkin but they’ve already gone, so it’s quite a lot of area needed, and help, to grow all the food. But we do try – and we’re lucky, we’re very land rich. It’s Porirua Trust land and we’re allowed to use as much as we need or want.

Interviewer

How long have you worked here?

Merle Metekingi

I’ve been volunteering for 3 years and now I’m being paid, which is quite rare. This is a whole new concept. There’s a lot of gardeners that volunteer in schools but nobody gets paid cause it’s not work that’s valued enough. So this is a real movement towards valuing gardeners more.

Interviewer

How long have you been gardening for?

Merle Metekingi

God! I’m probably going 30-40 years now, I’ve done it for a long time.

Interviewer

Is that always what you’ve done for paid work?

Merle Metekingi

No. It’s just one of those things you can pick up no matter where you are or what country you’re in. I think that’s why I started it because you can always pick up work, there’s always a need. Especially as the population gets older, people can’t maintain their gardens.

Interviewer

What does your week look like?

Merle Metekingi

I dedicate Saturday, Sunday, Monday just to my clients – I still have 24 private clients – and from Tuesday through to Friday I’m here at the kura. Probably an hour after school I’ll work privately.

 Interviewer

And what day do you take off for your rest day?

Merle Metekingi

There won’t be one now, not this term coming. It’s a really busy term because I’ve got a lot of fruit tree pruning and a lot of prep for winter gardening.

Interviewer

Do you get tired?

Merle Metekingi

No, I don’t think so. Sometimes the body gets tired but I’m always keen to keep going, I never not want to go.

Interviewer

Does the work keep you fit?

Merle Metekingi

It would have to, cause you’re walking, hauling things around. It also keeps your mind busy because you’re always thinking one step ahead of what you’re doing.

Interviewer

There’s a lot of spatial work involved in gardening too.

Merle Metekingi

Yeah, you’re always thinking if I put that plant there, how much space will that take up in five years. I think that people who can do jigsaw puzzles can have really good gardens. You know, fitting things in!

---

“We have duck eggs, and then we have duck.”

---

Interviewer

Why did you start gardening?

Merle Metekingi

I think it’s really important. I really like food and I think to have good food you need to know where it’s come from and you need to have an input into making it.We can go and buy food but we don’t know where it’s come from, how long it’s been picked for – I think it’s important to be able trace the life of your food, where the seed is sourced from, how’s it been grown, what chemicals have been used to enhance its growing. We have no idea. You can’t read that on your packaging, it doesn’t tell you. You can’t control the whole process, but if you can control where you buy your plants or seeds from and what you feed them while they’re growing that’s a fantastic things.

Interviewer

Is the soil good here?

Merle Metekingi

Yeah, we’re on fantastic soil, river silt. It’s an alluvial plane so it’s just full of nitrogen and minerals, that’s why this place has had market gardens for years and years, everyone knew it was perfect for growing; it’s light, it’s fertile, we have high sunshine hours. We used to have good rainfall but we haven’t for a while, it’s been very dry.

---

---

Interviewer

Do you have a favourite crop?

Merle Metekingi

Yeah, one of my favourite crops is broad beans. That’s a really rewarding plant – it’s nutritional and you can do lots of things with it. And the kids love podding them, they get a lot of pleasure out of growing broad beans.

[We walk over to a stand of rhubarb.] This here rhubarb has root-stock from my grandmother in Norsewood. Normally if I Ieave the country I’ll put it somewhere, so it was in my sister’s garden for a few years, and then we I came here I took root-stock and put it in my garden at the beach, then when I moved to town I put it there and now I’ve got it here. So it’s like a root-stock that’s travelled with me, on a journey.

Interviewer

What about a favourite time of the year?

Merle Metekingi

Autumn. Cause it’s the prep time. You’ve done a big summer harvest, you’ve looked after your plants and then autumn is time to get your thoughts together. The weather is settled too, so you’re not having to water anymore, you fertilise your land. It’s very peaceful, autumn.

Interviewer

Do you have any top tips for running a successful garden?

Merle Metekingi

If you can make it into a communal garden then it’s a winner. If you can open your doors and teach people the fundamentals, then your garden will take off, because you’ll get a lot of help. Gardening is high maintenance, people forget about that.

Also, shelter is probably the most important thing in a garden. Wind’s so destructive. Plants can cope with a lot of sun and lack of water, but the wind just hammers them. If you get some shelter against your prevailing wind, block it out, then one of your biggest problems is solved.

Interviewer

What did you want to be when you were 7?

Merle Metekingi

I wanted to be a vet.

Interviewer

What happened to that idea?

Merle Metekingi

I wasn’t a very good 7^th former. I spent a lot of time eating in cafes in Palmerston North and to be a vet I’d have to go back and do 7^th form and I didn’t want to. But then I went to arts school instead. I went to Ilam and did fine arts for two years, but I didn’t quite finish. I was majoring in sculpture.

Interviewer

A garden’s a bit like a living sculpture.

Merle Metekingi

That’s what I think, my garden is like a pallet, that’s how I paint now.

These are our ducks! We have duck eggs and then we have duck, to eat.

---

Not Honeydew, but a very cute kura piglet

---

 

This here is a big pile of untreated sawdust, so all our pig effluence and what they don’t eat goes into here and then it breaks down, we cover it which cooks it, and then it goes back into the mara, it’s contained recycling.

And this is Honeydew, our pig, nobody wanted him.

Interviewer

Why not?

Merle Metekingi

He just grew too big.

I planted these trees last week – this is our orchard. These are koha trees, different visiting schools have given us these trees. They’ll all have a whakapapa about them, when they came, why they’ve been donated here. Queen Margaret Girls gave us most of these trees. They come here and do a week’s course at the marae and we host them for a week.

Interviewer

What marae?

Merle Metekingi

Tainui. They can either go to Tainui or Raukawa, depending on which one doesn’t have tangi at it.

Interviewer

Do you belong to either of those marae?

Merle Metekingi

No, I’m from Whanganui, my dad’s from Whanganui and my Mum’s from Copenhagen. I’m a fruitcake. My marae is Putiki, just as you cross the river in Whanganui.

Okay, so this is the biggest project at the moment – we have got natural spring water here. We’ve stopped the neighbours pumping the water out for their water troughs and this is what we’ve been left with. We released 125 eel into here last winter and we’ve cleared it, we’ve chopped down poplars. This is a really significant stream because it meets up with the Rangiuru which is now one of the most polluted streams on the Horowhenua coast, so if we can keep this spring going and keep it clean, there’s hope that we can clean up where it feeds into.

We’ve done riparian planting, which is a planting that will keep the stream clean – Oioi which is like a sponge and stops all the bad shit going down the stream, and we’ll put flax in and we’ll create a habitat where things can live again like eel, our native fish, our crawlies.

This stream has been totally neglected for a long time, so this is the big plan. This is a project that the whole kura will be involved in. We want to turn it into a community project, it’s not just ours. This stream runs all the way down to the sea, so we want to do this part and then another kura do the next part, so we want to hikoi down. But this is what we can do at the moment.

Interviewer

Are the eels surviving?

Merle Metekingi

Some are, the kids found two the other day. Of course they can make their own journey, they don’t have to stay here, and it’s not a great habitat for them at the moment, because there’s not enough cover, so we want to get the planting up this winter.

Interviewer

What’s the best part and worst part of your job?

Merle Metekingi

The best part is working with the kids. The worst part is not having enough time with them, you only have four hours a day and we’ve got a lot of big projects on.

Interviewer

Do you feel like you can be your true self?

Merle Metekingi

Yeah, I can just be me, that’s what I love about it, I’d hate to have to put on different hats. Here, I wear one hat and it covers a big range. And I’ve got a lot of support from the kura for my vision. It’s amazing really. This kura is an immersion school so it’s mostly focused on the language. I think we’ve got the highest percentage of people speaking Te Reo anywhere in New Zealand.

Interviewer

Di Hakaraia said to me it was 50% of Māori living here were speaking Māori.

Merle Metekingi

Yeah, and that’s not counting kids, that’s just adults.

Interviewer

When you’re on the main street in Otaki you always hear Te Reo being spoken.

Merle Metekingi

Yeah. What I think about is we’ve got the language, we’ve got to look after the whenua, because if we don’t look after the whenua, there’ll be no language spoken because there’ll be no people. It’s a different head space for a lot of people to move into.

That’s where enviro-schools are really good to have, they’re an association and New Zealand’s got Māori enviro-schools. They teach sustainability, so we try and work that into lessons as well.

Interviewer

What’s your star sign?

Merle Metekingi

Capricorn.

Interviewer

If you didn’t have to work for money what would you do?

Merle Metekingi

This. I worked here for 3 years for no money and achieved this, so it’s a bonus that I can now work a concentrated 4 hours a day and get a lot more done. Yeah, this is great.

---

 

May 2016, interview by The Invisible Writer.

What Do People Do All Day? no.3

A series of interviews with people about the work they do.

Fay Far is well known in the Island Bay community in Wellington. Along with her husband, Bill, she has owned and managed the Island Bay Stationers since 1973.

Fay is 83 and Bill is 90 years old. In October this year they plan to retire and close their shop.

---

“I couldn’t hold myself back because I do love the children’s books.”

–Fay Far

Bill and Fay Far, April 2016

 

---

Interviewer

I saw the poet, Anne Kennedy last night and she said to say hello.

Mrs Far

Oh! I know Anne, she’s a local girl, Anne Kennedy. Knew her when she was a little girl and they used to live in Eden Street, then they moved down to 104 The Parade. Her father used to work in the gas company, and her mother was a lovely, lovely lady.

Interviewer

She told me you were the most beautiful woman in Island Bay.

Mrs Far

Well, that’s a bit outrageous.

Interviewer

Do you call yourself a stationer or a bookshop owner?

Mrs Far

I say, I’ve got a bookshop.

Interviewer

When did you set the shop up?

Mrs Far

The 28^th May 1973. My youngest daughter’s eighth birthday. So we know how old we are each year – she’s 53 and we’re [the shop] 45.

---

Original paisley wallpaper, Island Bay Stationers

---

Interviewer

Had you ever worked in a shop before?

Mrs Far

Oh, yes. You always helped all the uncles and aunties in the fruit shops.

Interviewer

Did you grow up working in a fruit shop?

Mrs Far

No, my father was a laundryman, in the days when the old chaps had their starched collars. I was born in Palmerston North and in Palmerston North there were a lot of Joes. I was a Joe. So it’s almost like a tribe. In Chinese you’re Wongs, or Youngs, or Yings or Yangs. You’re not related by blood, but you’re related by generations and the groups of names. A lot of them might have the same great, great, great grandfather way back. We’re very respectful of family. I had lots of older people who called me Aunty because my father’s generation was older than their father’s generation.

Interviewer

So did all the Joes work in laundry?

Mrs Far

No. I don’t have any other family. Just my father worked there. I’m an only child. But in the centre of Palmerston North town there was a fruit shop on every side of the square and they were all Joes.

Interviewer

Would people mix up where they’d shop or would they always go to the same place?

Mrs Far

Mostly they tend to go to the same place. I remember the jockey, Billy Broughton, and his wife, they wouldn’t come until about ten o’clock on a Friday night [she laughs], I don’t know why. People tend to do that. In the bookshop here, we’ll have people who come in and out all week, but they won’t take the books til Friday because they want to read them at the weekend.

Interviewer

Can you describe to me what each day’s work entails?

Mrs Far

The shop opens at 8.30am. Bill opens while I’m finishing up in the house, then he takes his papers out to the few boys that he delivers to, and then comes back. So we’re in the shop from 8.30am to 5.30pm.

Interviewer

Do you take a break?

Mrs Far

Oh yes, we have morning tea and lunch. Afternoon tea.

Interviewer

Do you shut the shop while you do this?

Mrs Far

No, we take turns.

Interviewer

Through the day what are you doing?

Mrs Far

Mondays and Thursdays are magazine day, so you have to unwrap all the magazines and price them, get them up on the shelves. Well, Bill does that. And I do the orders and I serve the customers of course. General tidying up. Cards, birthday cards and that. There’s a good business in birthday cards, hundreds of people buy cards. I sell a lot of cards. I swap things around. I generally tidy and serve. Oh, and of course I do all the paper work. That’s what kills you. Paper work. And it’s worse now.

Interviewer

Do you use a computer for your paperwork?

Mrs Far

No! I’m old fashioned. I hate the computer. That’s what’s killing me, that’s why I’m getting rid of the shop because I just can’t keep up with it.

Interviewer

How old were you when you started working?

Mrs Far

Oh, I was a little kid. We always had little jobs to do, that’s the way we all grew up.

Interviewer

So you’ve been working for a good 75 years?

Mrs Far

Oh, I should think so. Yes. I have. I’ve worked hard too.

Interviewer

What made you decide to open your own shop?

Mrs Far

Four children [she laughs]. Money. We had to make some money. My husband just worked for his father, and he’s one of eight. They came to Island Bay in 1951 and then we got married in 1955 and we lived up on the hill, but he still worked for his father. Then we moved down to Clyde St, that’s when we decided we just had to do something. We’d always wanted the bookshop.

---

---

Interviewer

You wanted to open a bookshop?

Mrs Far

No, we wanted this bookshop. It belonged to Mr, oh, I forget his name… Dallow! And on top of the building next door that’s where he originally was, that was Dallow’s Building, but they’ve taken the name off when they did some alterations.

Well, we leased the building with the shop, then this building came up for sale. And the man who owned this place, a very nice man said, come to my shop. And you couldn’t do alterations next door because there was a big step. So we came here and we’ve been here ever since. We put the concrete down, right through. It’s too big probably, because I’ve let it get away from me. I love the children’s books.

Interviewer

You’ve got a lot of children’s books.

Mrs Far

And I’ve got a couple of rooms full out the back [she laughs]. So I’ve just let it run away from me. I couldn’t hold myself back because I do love the children’s books.

Interviewer

You introduced me to Anthony Browne.

Mrs Far

Oh, I love Anthony Browne! I love the artists, the illustrators.

Interviewer

You’re a Shirley Hughes fan too, aren’t you?

Mrs Far

Oh, yes, Shirley Hughes! The children in her pictures look like kiwi children.

Sarah Garland, she’s wonderful. And her daughter lives in Island Bay. A very clever lady, an artist.

Interviewer

What is that you love about children’s books?

Mrs Far

I think the good authors can really express themselves at a children’s level. They don’t talk down to them, but they make it interesting for the kids. I really like the illustrations and I love books without words because you can make your own story and that’s what I like to see the children do. I find it very hard to choose a favourite book because there’s so many that I love.

Oh, here’s Daisy [a small dog runs up to us] and this is my brother-in-law. Daisy comes to visit a lot. She’s lovely. Eddie’s my youngest brother in law. He’s the baby brother.

Interviewer

Do you ever take holidays?

[Eddie laughs loudly.] ‘I’ll answer that,’ he says. ‘No!’

Mrs Far

We don’t. I did go away for five days at Christmas, but my husband doesn’t like holidays. So he looked after the shop and I went to see my daughter in Australia. But soon I’ll be able to have a holiday all the time. We don’t get much time for holidays. My kids always say stop working all the time, but it’s not hard work, it’s enjoyable, it’s just gone on too long.

My husband says why do you talk so much? Well, I say, you do too, he talks when his friends come in. I told him, I could be the only person that they’ve seen today, the only person that they’ve said hello to. There’s a lot of lonely people, living on their own. Some of them just come to pass the time of day. My brother in law, he was just like that in the fruit shop, he’s very much a people person too.

Interviewer

Do you need to be a people person to run a shop?

Mrs Far

Oh definitely, you need to like people. I mean, you may hate them but you still have to like them. You shouldn’t be in this sort of business with the public unless you can have a rapport with them.

Interviewer

Do you get paid for doing this work?

Mrs Far

Of course. We’re partners. I don’t get paid enough [laughs]. But it’s our business, it’s our partnership and we’ve done alright out of it. Well, we’ve worked hard at it.

My husband he’s only done retail work since he come to New Zealand. He came in 1939 from Canton and he’s been here ever since.

---

Painting of the shop done by Michael McCormick, gifted to Bill Far for his 90th birthday

---

Interviewer

Do you feel you can be your true self here?

Mrs Far

Yes, I’m just me.

Interviewer

Do you have favourite customers?

Mrs Far

Oh, lots!  I have some dear old ladies and lots of people we get on with so well. I know nearly every kid’s name in the suburb. We have watched families grow up here, know the parents, the children, and now the children’s children.

Interviewer

What sort of things do the customers say?

Mrs Far

The worst one is when they start a sentence with ‘You don’t have…?’ I say, ‘Well, that’s a very inappropriate question, you haven’t asked me yet.’

Some people always say the same thing when they come in, it’s a habit.

---

---

Interviewer

What’s the worst type of customer?

Mrs Far

People with aggressive behavior, and surly, there are not many like that but you will get some. Mostly they’re all lovely.

Interviewer

Are you good at maths?

Mrs Far

I am not good at maths, I could never understand what that silly little letter was in algebra. But I know my tables and I can add in my head very well.

Interviewer

What do you like the most and the least about your job?

Mrs Far

I just love to see the children enjoying the books and I love the enthusiasm of some parents. I’ve got one lady who comes from Christchurch and she always comes in when she’s in town and tells her children, ‘Come and see Fay.’ We’re very, very lucky. We have excellent customers. You get the odd one, but you don’t let it ruffle your feathers [lowers voice], unless you’re my husband. But we’re very lucky, as people have known us for so long.

There’s not much I don’t enjoy. I don’t like the paperwork, that kills me.

Interviewer

What sort of clothes and shoes do you wear at work?

Mrs Far

Comfortable clothes, I don’t get flash. Sneakers, because I get sore feet when I wear my heels. I used to dress up nicely. Bill used to wear a collar and tie. But not now. You’ve got to be comfortable. If you’ve got sore feet you can’t do anything.

Interviewer

What’s your star sign?

Mrs Far

Aries.

Interviewer

If you didn’t have to work for money what would you do with your time?

Mrs Far

I don’t have to work for money. But what would I do – I’d garden, like any other person. I’d like to do some of the things I’ve never been able to do.

 

---

April 2016, interview by The Invisible Writer.