Today is a big day, as Mum and I are getting our hair done. Mum comes into my room, puts down my tea and toast, and then, alarmingly,...

I wake poised to sneeze, which is terrifying. I don’t have any stitches but seem to have been glued together, so I have a fear of...

Last night I became an insomniac with Jiminy Cricket reminding me of all the things I must put right and all the things I have done...

I wake up in the real world for the first time since I left Leigh on Boxing Day. I lie in a real bed and stare at the trees through the...

On New Year’s Day, I walk out of North Shore Hospital. I am feeling hesitant to leave my old-fashioned spaceship, where you can’t touch...

Round about, round about ’Lo and behold. Reel away, reel away Straw into gold Rumpelstiltskin Brothers Grimm...

The birds are singing the bees are buzzing the ants are working the ducks are quacking the leaves are crunching the trees are swaying the...

Two Christmases ago, I nearly died as adhesions tried to strangle my bowel. They tried again this Christmas, but these ones were phantom...

Fleur Adcock one of New Zealand’s greatest poets died at the end of last year (10 October 2024). She was my mother’s oldest friend and...

"The approach of Christmas brings harassment and dread to many excellent people. They have to buy a cartload of presents, and they never...

I was in the sauna at the Olympic pool on Wednesday with my 67-year-old friend Nina, who used to be a Chinese ballet dancer. She is still...

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won’t either, for solitude will break you with its yearning. You...

One day, love will come in the form of somebody who wants to give more than take, and you will know why love is rare. My future...

On day one of the school holidays, I threw off my cloak of invisibility and became a superhero, a guardian of two living treasures flown...

I am innocently going to Roger’s garden centre in Mangere to buy some plants for my new gardener, Manu, who is parking his caravan...

I am sitting innocently in my car parked on High Street, talking to Gigi, when a ticket inspector with a big hat turns and looks at my...

"I never lose; I either win or I learn." Charley, Gus, and I went to watch Jamie play water polo at the AUT Millennium Pool, where...

I was walking down Hakanoa Street with a canopy and a carpet of autumn, that close bosom friend of the maturing sun. Suddenly the beauty...

To be sane, I must be mad. What I would be, I am not. JKB In Countdown the other day, I stole some blueberries. They were lying in the...

Last summer, I nearly died, so this summer could only have been an improvement. Every day, as I swam under the smiling sun in the green,...