My name is Susan and I’m rich-ist by Susan Grimsdell
I really don’t think I’m racist. As a feminist, I’m definitely not sexist, and I’m not age-ist or ??? (what else is there?). But I have now come to realise that I suffer from a different kind of -ist. The other night just as I was getting ready to go to bed, fireworks started up outside my window, which looks out over Auckland Harbour. It wasn’t New Year’s Eve or Waitangi Day or any other special public day, but it was quite a spectacular display that went on for about ten minutes…. Read More
Bread and Sausages by Angela Caldin
New Zealand has presented me with various wonderful new experiences that I’ve marvelled at since living here for part of each year: Anzac biscuits, chocolate fish, flat white coffee, the haka, the powhiri and many others besides. But there is one Kiwi speciality which is a source of much interest and amazement to immigrants like me and that is the institution of the Sausage Sizzle. Sizzle and squirt With a name containing both alliteration and onomatopoeia, Sausage Sizzle implies excitement and gastronomic delight in equal measure. The reality, however, is somewhat different…. Read More
Unaccustomed as I am… by Emily Smart
And a jolly good afternoon from New Zealand. Did you really think you could get away with getting married and me not making a grand entrance? You all know I love a warm hand on my entrance. Tom, dear brother, trusted friend and brilliant plumber – yeah, I might be exaggerating on the last two – I just wanted to take this opportunity to wish you and Sophie all the very best on your wedding day. I would have been there in person had Dad coughed up the six grand fare to… Read More
Slightly Soiled or the Tedium of Sainthood by Trevor Plumbly
The Attraction of the Dark Side It’s a strange part of human nature (mine included) that saintly people these days seem somewhat boring while those who tread the lower path on occasions get elevated to become ‘likeable rogues’. Doubtless analysts and all those other folk that earn their crust attempting to poke divining rods into our thought processes will have written screeds on this but I thought a short piece without wheelbarrow words might interest. Take cowboy movies as an example; in the early ones morality was easily defined: the good guys… Read More
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