Aug 20
“Don’t confuse activity with achievement.” Last week a newspaper editor spoke these wise words while I was chatting with him on the subject of being busy. But how does one define which is which? I’m obsessed (mildly) with photographing the Otamatea River, usually in the morning. It occurred to me today, months after taking this …
Aug 13
The Country Calendar camera was rolling when the farmer flung himself off the couch and started crawling towards the kitchen. He’d been quietly reading the newspaper while producer/director Kerryanne Evans interviewed me. Before filming started, we’d gone all out to ensure silence because the smallest sound gets picked up by the high-tech equipment. The fridge …
Aug 03
“I’ve got eagle eyes,” trilled the farmer in a most unfarmerly fashion while strolling down the hall and waving something small and shiny. “My watch!” I’d spent ages scouring the gravel road several kilometres from home where I was sure I’d lost it months earlier while moving bulls. Remarkably, it was in perfect condition which …
Jul 25
As we are a fully trained search and rescue team thanks to a late night request to help find a fisherman missing on the Kaipara Harbour, here are some handy hints, with the tips following the lessons and the most important tip last because that was our learning process. The farmer and I were asleep …
Jul 15
It’s commonly thought dogs are banned from beaches because they frighten some people, fight amongst themselves and leave smelly poos. But that’s not true – it’s because dogs are incompatible with fishing. They’re such greedy gutses they will nick your bait, hook, line but probably not your sinker and gobble down entire fish – including …
Jul 02
At 7.30am last Saturday I was standing on a remote corner of a gravel road along with about 20 rally spectators, some of whom were cooking a barbecue breakfast. A few hours later the Brother Rally New Zealand roared around our road and, once again, the farmer and I were helping out to raise funds …
Jun 18
Farmers use special language to speak to dogs even though they – the dogs – can work things out themselves and understand conversational English. ‘The farmer’ appears to think dogs understand expletives and he uses terms like “Git away back” and “Git in behind” which I suspect are the farming equivalent of legalese which we …
Jun 05
Ice cream that’s been in a freezer with no power for 24 hours is like eating a vanilla-flavoured cloud from heaven. That’s one of the lessons the farmer and I have been taught by storms. With wet, windy and wild weather upon us, here’s some more: How to watch Coronation St during a power outage …
May 29
Our quiet life in the country is now a deeply disturbing life in the country. On a recent sunny Saturday in the seaside town of Mangawhai, family members were painting slogans on banners for a protest march to a meeting organised by the Kaipara District Council. It attracted a couple of thousand people, for good …
May 17
For an exciting few minutes I thought my dog Floss had medicated herself, although ripping off her loose toenail was never going to be in the same league as, say, repairing her smashed bone, regurgitating chocolate cake, fast tracking staples through her gut or preventing a gaping wound from becoming infected. But even though it …
