I too was secretly taped!

This John Key-John Banks teapot tape scandal* reminds me of a time I was secretly taped. I dined out on this story for years and still find it amusing. If only the PM had a sense of humour, he could be getting hours of fun from the experience instead of feeling harassed and looking ridiculous.

I was about 17 and hitchhiking on the West Coast of the South Island with another young woman, both of us done up in full punk regalia. We got picked up by a well dressed man in a tidy car who said he had to make some deliveries and did we mind a few detours on our way? Since our appearance on the side of the road generally attracted much more insalubrious rides, we counted ourselves lucky and enjoyed a bit of sight seeing on back roads in the sunshine.

As our journey continued I noticed first that the man was wearing pantyhose instead of socks under his suit pants, and then that he had a bra on under his business shirt. When he stopped the car to hand deliver a document I mentioned these unusual sartorial details to my friend and we speculated on the implications. Meanwhile she riffled through his box of documents to discover they were a kinky sex newsletter for West Coasters swingers. We muffled our giggles as the driver returned to the car and carried on.

At his next stop I looked down by my own feet, saw a tape recorder and said to my friend, 'hey, here's a tape recorder... and he's left the recording button on...' as I turned it off. We looked at each other in guilt, confusion and amusement and decided as soon as we got back to the main road we'd ask to get out and try our luck with another ride. We feared he might be cross with us for turning off his tape recorder.

I was, and still am, ashamed for sniggering at the cross-dressing driver who'd kindly offered a us lift and feel far worse about him being hurt by hearing our prurient amusement than I do about him secretly taping me. I'd like to say that I learned a lesson about circumspection that I've never forgotten but of course I still sometimes say and do regrettable things like everyone else.

However, when I chose an action (such as mean gossip) I am choosing its consequences. Whether or not anyone records or overhears my ill chosen words I have to live with myself. I could blame or shame myself (or whoever records or overhears me, if they do) but ideally I would apologise, learn from my mistakes and move on with the intention of doing better in the future.

Making a mistake like being indiscreet is an opportunity to demonstrate one's ability to put things right. It's a chance to show you can take criticism, be apologetic, generous and compassionate. Most of all its a chance to show one has a sense of humility and humour. At 17 I failed to express those qualities in the moment when it mattered. By telling the story repeatedly throughout my life I have used it to learn and grow, as well as have some fun.

In the current 'teapot tape' situation I see a powerful public figure demonstrating hubris, defensiveness and arrogance. He looks angry and scared all out of proportion to this event. In an election campaign based on promoting his personal leadership qualities rather than party policies, his response to this event reveals (if you hadn't noticed before) that our current leader lacks resiliance and the ability to laugh at himself.

To my mind there are a myriad of other reasons not to vote this man back into power (asset sales, coal mining, deep sea drilling, beneficiary bashing, anti-arts, ridiculously old-fashioned education etc) but if one were chosing one's votes based on character rather than policy, then surely this is a deal breaker.

*If you are from beyond these shores, it might help to know that New Zealand has a national election on this Saturday and much has been made of the 'secret taping' of a media-staged conversation between the current Prime Minister John Key and a candidate from another political party, John Banks.

First Steps in Crochet and other makings

There are a few memes floating around the internet urging people to share influential books from their childhood or recent reading lives. I've never seen a 'how-to' book mentioned on any of these lists (or a recipe book for that matter) but I was recently reunited with one of the influential books of my life.


Bethwyn picked this up along with a pile of other old books to contribute to our altered book project, Frugal with the Brughel (have you noticed I spell the B word differently every single time I type it?). She had no idea that I would fall upon it with coos of delight and sighs of nostalgic rapture. I had no idea I would either, but every single spread was deeply familiar even though I can't have seen my, or any other, copy of First Steps in Crochet since at least the early 80s.


My first copy would have been well thumbed through the mid-70s, when I taught myself to crochet by laboriously following the excellent diagrams and instructions provided by the 'Editress: Patience Horne of Clackmannashire'. I don't remember actually following any of the patterns to make a 'dashing little bolero' or 'jaunty little hat'.


I suspect that even at a tender age I was more interested using traditional methods to make my own original designs. I do remember working a sky blue wool with the tension too tight, and my frustration at not having the manual dexterity at 8 or ten years to be able to satisfactorily manifest the creation I imagined. Even if all I ever finished was that wobbly-edged scarf I must have studied the whole book very closely to have imprinted it so deeply on my memory.

My first real success with a craft was knitting, which I took up some ten years later, after disappointing dabblings in sewing, embroidery and zine making etc. Penelope started making me a complicated fair isle pullover and then stopped at the sleeves, leaving the body for me to finish. So I was forced to learn to knit but at least I didn't have to cast on until I'd made a whole garment. I became addicted to knitting and didn't stop for about ten years until I'd made everyone I knew a jersey or a hat, and gave myself OOS.

Bethwyn was so thrilled at my delight in reconnecting with First Steps in Crochet, that she withdrew it from our altered book pile (one of our rules is that either of us can withdraw any book from contention for cutting up at any time) and gave it to me as a birthday present.


And then for Christmas Bethwyn gave me this even better gift, a badge made out of an old blanket label (I think it's the label from the blue blanket I used as the ocean background for Ross Island). I love it so much, even though when I wear it, everyone I meet peers at my chest and says 'Hospital? wha?'. The fabric in the background is the excellent bag that Anna sewed for me as a Christmas present. And below are some (just some) of the insane variety of cookies that my mother and I made together last week.


Happy holidays!

Ruby Anniversary

On May 12 1970 this baby-faced family boarded a plane from Winnipeg, Canada to Hamilton, New Zealand, and forty years later three of us are still here. Dad was taking up a position as English lecturer at an almost brand new Waikato University, and he will retire from there later this year. Mum optimistically thought New Zealand was New Caledonia and she could wear a bikini all year round; she's now a printmaker and community arts leader in Hamilton. Brother had turned two the day before immigrating, and now rides big motorcycles in New York City. I was, at three, a passionate consumer of books and if you read this blog you know all about my passionate productions here and now.

My parents had already emigrated once, from the United States to Canada just a few months before my birth. Then they were escaping Vietnam-era politics and the draft for my dad, who was working on his PhD about a medieval romance starring Princess Meliors (I know you've been wondering). After a few years in the snow, New Zealand sounded like a South Sea paradise, with progressive social policies.

We arrived with our North American accents and our fancy whiteware (a clothes drier! -unheard of luxury here). Hamilton in May 1970 was a dreary small town of damp, cold, little houses; the university was still more paddock than ivory tower. I think I adjusted most enthusiastically of the four of us to the culture (and climate) shock. I picked up the kiwi accent quickly (though I tried to hide it at home or be teased mercilessly for pronouncing egg 'ig'). I've always proudly and passionately identified as a New Zealander, a kiwi, a pakeha.

I'm incredibly grateful that my parents were brave enough to emigrate to the other side of the world, leaving behind their family, friends and culture. New Zealand was much further away back then: before there was internet; when long distance telephone was too expensive for more than an annual call; when airfares were too expensive for more than a seven-year sabbatical trip.

New Zealand is the home I love. But not so much for the picture postcard, tourism board reasons to love New Zealand. To be honest, the natural environment I am drawn to most is tropical rainforest. But I'm here and not there and that's because of the human environment. Our fresh young history. Our quirky inclusive political system. Our equitable health and welfare systems, that no matter how flawed are still better than most. The intimacy of a very small nation with barely a couple of degrees of separation between me and anyone else.

I love our our anti-nuclear and anti-whaling leadership. I love the journey towards each other that Maori and Pakeha have undertaken in my lifetime and that so much te reo is part of my daily life. I love that Auckland is the largest Polynesian city in the world. I love that I was exposed to more British popular culture than American when I was a kid. I appreciate the perspective provided by growing up in a small country on the edge of the planet, the outsider's and the underdog's point of view.

I've had a few tries at living in other countries, and every time I end up back here in New Zealand. It's always been the easiest place to make friends, in every new town I've moved to, at every stage of my life. No matter how likeable people are in other countries (and I do have some dear friends made overseas), I've never found such an easy abundance of close intimates as in New Zealand. Maybe it's because I'm an outsider in other countries, or maybe it's because kiwis really are exceptionally open, warm and relaxed. I don't know. But I count myself among the lucky few in the world who get to live in this beautiful, easy, caring, safe, temperate little land.

Living my dreams, living your dreams

It is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters, in the end. - Ursula K LeGuin

It's almost the end of my term as the Sunrise Waikato RotaryWriter in Residence at Hamilton Girls High School, although the Principal is letting me stay in the studio through the summer holidays. When she offered I almost cried with relief as I've been increasingly concerned about how I was going to squeeze my studio back into my bedroom and somehow carry on with the large-scale works-in-progress I started, but didn't finish, during the Residency.

I choose to rent a bedroom in a shared flat rather than fulfil my dream of living in my own house for much the same reasons that I choose not to own a car. Partly I'm trying to minimise my ecological footprint, but more selfishly I'm minimising my expenses so I can devote most of my energy to my creative work rather than toiling full time in the well-paying career I drifted away from a few years ago. Sometimes my creative work is financially rewarding (for example this Residency came with a stipend) but being paid for art or writing has been the exception in my experience so far.

Because of my low-cost lifestyle I enjoy a great deal of freedom and some aspects of my life make other people envious. I am my own boss and control my own time, in which I write poetry, make art, learn new things and am free to follow my intuition. I'm aware and grateful that I am living (at least part) of a collective dream life.

One of the reasons that I can arrange my life this way in my 40s, is because when I was young I chose a path not usually associated with fulfilling one's dreams: I was a teenage single mother. That experience taught me to be frugal, to be decisive, to overcome obstacles and to accept help when I need it. Most of all, it set me free to explore in my late 30s, when many of my peers are immersed in child raising and mortgage servicing; and look back at the freedom of their childless 20s with nostalgia.


It's no coincidence that my practice and my identity as an artist emerged at exactly the same time as my daughter was launching herself into adult independence. I had spent most of her childhood pursuing my youthfully idealistic dream of saving the world through public policy. Two degrees, a couple of government departments and councils, and something like a nervous breakdown later, I was ready to be completely selfish for the first time in my adult life. So when I discovered artist's books and that I was quite good at them, I gradually extracted myself from the public service to became a full time artist.

Of course, the reality is that fledgling artists have as much chance of making a living from their art as winning the lotto. When I eventually used up the savings that could have been a house deposit in the 1970s, I figured out a frugal lifestyle of part-time paid work and full time art work. This was so successful that at the same time as preparing my first solo show I managed to save up something that could have been a house deposit in the 1960s.


But then two years ago I impulsively decided to pursue my idiosyncratic 2o year dream of living in a treehouse in the Daintree Rainforest. I'm still making sense of how important it was for me to spend 7 months at Cape Tribulation, even though at the time it seemed like I was spinning my wheels at the end of the road. When my savings ran out and the extreme and isolated environment proved inimical with the rest of my dreams I returned to Hamilton where I knew it would be easiest to get traction towards the life I want.

Fulfilling such a long held yet whimsical dream is something that most people seem to assign to their 'if I win lotto' wish list. But to do so undervalues and undermines our dreams with really bad odds instead of intention, planning, effort and sacrifice or even trust, any of which will do more to fulfil your dreams than buying lotto tickets every week. Dreams that are worth fulfilling are worth better than lottery odds.


When I was a kid, I wanted to be a long distance truck driver when I grew up. Unfortunately, it turns out that I don't actually like driving and I abandoned that dream without a backward glance. Dreams change over time, but it's not the specifics of your dreams that matter, it's the essence of them.

As a child I thought that being a truck driver would allow me the same kind of headspace that I enjoyed on our family's long road trips when nothing was expected of me in the back seat except to sit still, be quiet, and not fight with my brother. I could just look out the window, let my mind wander and daydream.


I came out of the trees exactly one year ago with no idea what I wanted to do next. I didn't have a plan, I didn't even have a specific dream as remotely compelling as the one I had just fulfilled. In retrospect, what I did have was a renewed commitment to the essence of my childhood dream of maintaining the head space to observe the world, explore ideas and imagine alternate realities. As an adult I have set up my life so that this essential freedom of thought is manifest in creative expression: making books, stitching images and sculptures. My youthful idealism continues to be manifested in the critical environmental themes I research and interpret, and in my participation in a community of activist artists and crafters.

As my birthday, the end of the year and the decade all approach, it seems appropriate to review my dreams, achievements and plans. I originally wrote this piece for the School of Education's Professional Development Department. They had me present it on a moving bus as it travelled through the Waikato countryside. I broke up my personal story by getting them each to talk to their seatmates about their 'lotto wish list', their childhood dreams and how the essence of their dreams can be manifest in their lives now.


All photos taken by me on the Daintree Coast, July 2009

Claudelands Jubilee Bush

I am loving my life in Hamilton, very glad to be here getting to do all the interesting things I am doing. But at the same time I long for the Daintree. My body craves it, my heart aches for it, my soul dreams of it.


My skin itches for more humidity, my ears crave the sounds of the birds and frogs and insects of the forest, my eyes seek the green complexity of a triple canopy. Thank goodness the weather is still warm or this spate of tropical homesickness might be unbearable.


There's lots of lovely green places to walk in Hamilton, my beloved Gardens of course, the banks of the Waikato River and the lake which is hosting a hot air balloon festival this week. But its all very groomed. It's hard to find anything approximating wilderness. And then I remembered Claudelands Jubilee Bush, just round the corner from my place.

On a particularly melancholy afternoon last week I took my camera into the bush and let myself really notice its specialness. It's not tropical rainforest, but it is a little bit of lovely wild. And its the first forest I can remember. Our family used to come and play in this bush, back before it was fenced and weeded and boardwalked.

Kahikatea berries (I think) on the boardwalk

It's probably a lot more healthy and authentic than it was thirty-five years ago, over run with Tradescantia. It was a magical mysterious dimly lit wonderland for our imaginative games. I'm pretty sure I populated these particular roots with fairies and elves when the tree and I were both a bit smaller.

Fairy village

Happy Fourth Anniversary Bibliophilia!

Bibliophilia is 4 years old today! This is the 586th post I have published here. These days the posts aren't always so frequent, but at least they are much better illustrated than they were back in 2005.

For the past year or so Bibliophilia has averaged 170-180 hits per week which doesn't break any internet records, but is enough for me to keep going, knowing that there's folks out there who are interested in what I have to say. All the loyal readers, especially those who post comments or otherwise let me know they are following, make the effort worthwhile. Without you all, I may as well be still be doodling in my diary.

In the past four years I have blogged from homes in five regions in two countries (including seven housesits, six wwoofing gigs and a few rented rooms). Tomorrow I fly home from Australia to New Zealand. I'm not sure how long I'll be there or what I'll be doing once the first few weeks of plans run their course. I do know my internet access is going to be much less reliable over the next month at least, so there might not be so many posts. But I will eventually sort that out, I promise and be back to my normal, variable level of broadcasts.

Meanwhile, if you miss me, you can check out the other blogs I contribute to: Nourish Us, a family recipe blog, in which my quirky extended family reveals the secrets of our sweet rolls and chicken casseroles; and Response, a brand new blog to accompany a new collaborative book project (for which potential contributors are invited to contact me if interested).

MacArthur Park

I never understood the words to MacArthur Park, they seemed so silly as to be unbelievable, surely I was mishearing:

Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

Why would someone leave a cake in the rain? What happened to the recipe? Why such wrenching emotion about a wet cake? But together with high school friends I sang along anyway as I danced to the Donna Summer disco version and it has a little hook in my heart whenever I hear the soaring violins or the part where it suddenly speeds up from a slow soppy ballad to a dance beat.

Yesterday I was delighted on my way to work, and even more delighted on my way home, to see someone has staged MacArthur Park in Mander Park, Whangarei. Mander Park is one of the two parks I walk through between home and work. It is a big open square of grass bounded by two very busy roads and two very quiet ones, with a playground, some big old deciduous trees, one diagonal path through it and lots of daffodils right now.

And yesterday someone left a cake in the rain there. I always imagined Donna's cake as being a fragile yellow sponge (there's a yellow dress in the song too) melting in a drizzle, but the Mander Park cake was a big old fruitcake, the kind with about an inch of marzipan icing set like rock. The rain was pounding down on it for much of the day and it still looked as solid and impervious at 5pm as it had at 8am. I tell you, you could roof a house with that icing and stay dry inside. The fruitcake itself was holding up pretty well despite valiant efforts from flocks of sparrows and pigeons.

I imagine it as an wedding leftover that has been hanging around someone's cupboard for months or maybe years, solidifying to a stone-like consistency until they couldn't stand it anymore and took an axe to it, hacking it into chunks and then carrying the heavy, heavy sack of dismantled cake to the park before dawn and heaving each big piece onto the grass hoping the rain and the birds would just make it all go away. But that cake, man, that cake, it is shining on the grass like blocks of white marble. That cake isn't going anywhere fast.

Noisy New York

New York is noisy

we have to raise our voices

talking while we walk

through Monday night East Village.

The moon shines in slivers of a brown sky without stars

But the stores are full of sparkly costume jewellery

In Laura’s loft

even the floors tell stories,

each step a multitonal squeak .

There can be no secret movements in this place

Every trip to the bathroon is heralded by

the spongey floorboards

that bounce like a swingbridge

collecting my stories

to add to their anthology of travellers tales.

Swim Fan

I mentioned a couple a months ago that I have done an about face in my attitude towards home owning. It seems that I am in the process of overthrowing a number of prejudices that I once fiercely cherished and defended. Today's demonstration of this phenomena involves swimming.

Like many kiwi kids I was given formal swimming lessons and by about 7 or 8 years old I could manage a length or two of the school pool in a thrashing motion that bore some vague resemblance to the crawl or sometimes breast stroke or back stroke. I liked hanging out at the public swimming pool across the bridge from our house, but I didn't really do much swimming there, mostly just solitary play, imagining myself as a synchronised swimmer making endless somersaults in the water.

By high school my aversion to sports of any kind was pretty much complete, wearing a swimming suit was a source of humiliation, and my long, thick hair weighed a tonne when wet and took at least 4 hours to dry. So all in all, swimming became a rare and not very attractive activity. There was a brief interlude of early motherhood when taking my daughter to the pool was an excellent thing to do, but sitting in the toddlers pool doesn't really count as swimming for grown ups does it?

Fast forward through a couple of decades of excuses (I don't like the chlorine, the water's too cold, I won't have time to dry my hair properly etc) to January 2007. I had spent New
Year's Eve alone with a hole in my foot from falling on a pronged garden tool that afternoon. For the next two weeks I avoided walking, usually my main exercise, and while I was lying around I brainstormed alternative exercises that wouldn't involve my left foot in any weight-bearing commitments. The idea of swimming swum up from the depths of my imagination, and somehow avoided being snagged on all the reasons I didn't like it. Helpfully, the weather in Northland this month is exceedingly hot, and the idea of immersing myself in a cool, refreshing body of water suddenly had unprecedented appeal.

I found an enthusiastic buddy (with spare goggles), a mutually convenient time and made my first visit to the public pool in Whangarei. I swam six lengths of the 25 metre pool that day, with plenty of rests in between. It took a few lengths before I remembered how to co-ordinate breathing with all the arms and legs flailing about, but eventually it got easier. I was so satisfied with the experience that my buddy and I made a regular swim-date. The second visit was harder work somehow but I made it to 11 lengths (over 1/4 km!) and have set a goal of 16 for next week.

Yes, the chlorine is yucky, yes my wet hair is like wearing a horse on my head for the rest of the evening, yes I'm self-conscious about my hirsute thighs and flabby torso... but now the pleasure of of moving through the water towards my goal of increased fitness carries more weight.

Hitching Stories

I did a lot of hitch hiking around New Zealand in my late teens. It was easiest to get picked up when I was alone, but felt safer when I was with another girl- though in reality some of the worst things happened with a hitching buddy. I rarely hitched with a guy, because it was much harder to get picked up. This was in the mid-eighties and I and my friends mostly were dressed as punks or other alternative style. I used to keep myself warm and entertained by singing and dancing on the side of the road and would flash big smiles at approaching cars, hoping to persuade them to stop for me.

The first time I ever hitch hiked was with a girlfriend who had done it before so I made her get in the front seat with the business man who picked us up. They were chatting and I was dozing and then they went quiet and I woke up to see him reach across to her lap. I looked over into the front seat and saw his fly was undone and he was trying to get into my friend’s pants. It didn’t make much sense to me so I said “What are you doing?” and he angrily stopped the car and left us in the middle of nowhere. It took us a while to work up the courage to stick our thumbs out again after that, but we had to so we did. The next ride was a van and neither of us were willing to sit alone in the front with the driver (who proved to be entirely harmless, like almost everybody who has picked me up since) so we both rattled round in the back for hours.

That experience made me careful but didn’t put me off hitching. I was on the dole and had lots of time and desire to travel but next to no money so it was an ideal way to get around the country. For about two years I travelled between Dunedin and Hamilton regularly as well as exploring other parts of the country. Some of my best rides were with big scarey looking Maori guys and some of my scariest rides were with straight looking white guys. Very few women ever picked me up and they would inevitably tell me that they had done some hitch hiking at some point in their lives.

I had lots of adventures. The craziest trip was from Christchurch to the West Coast with a girl who I didn’t know very well and never saw again after we finally got back to civilization. Our ride over the pass was with a car full of young guys who were drinking cans of beer and throwing the empties out the windows. As soon as we got in and saw that there were no door handles on the inside we wanted to get out so made up some excuse and escaped as soon as we could.

On the way back we got a ride with a man who said he would take us to the turn-off we wanted but he had to do a few detours to deliver magazines on the way. We weren’t in a hurry so we didn’t mind. I sat in the front seat and my friend sat in the back. He was quite friendly and chatty, asking us lots of questions about ourselves. Eventually I noticed that he was wearing a bra under his business shirt and pantyhose under his trousers. When he stopped at the first place to make his delivery I twisted around in my seat and was telling my friend what I noticed about his clothes. She showed me one of the magazines he was delivering and it was a newsletter for people into kinky sex. Then I saw that under my seat there was a tape recorder and I said “Look its recording” as I turned it off and then we saw the man coming back to the car. We were too mortified to try and talk about any of these things with him. We got out of the car as soon as we could and exploded into giggles.

Later that day, we got dropped off at the top of the pass and went to the public toilets to smoke a joint. Just then a bus from the Girls Home in Christchurch stopped there and we found ourselves surrounded by much tougher girls than us who grabbed our joint and finished it while bullying and taunting us. Fortunately their Matron came in and my friend and I took the opportunity to run away as fast as we could and hide in the bushes until their bus had gone past us. Then just as we emerged to try and get a ride, the car with no inside handles screeched to a halt and the same group of drunk young men tried to give us a ride. We ran again!

For years after I got my own car I would stop and pick up hitch hikers, but I have grown more and more cautious, slowing down to look at their faces before I stop. Once I was driving from Christchurch to Invercargill and several times I passed this one Maori man hitching . He was big and rough looking with tattoos and I kept talking myself out of picking him up but then he would pop up again on the side of the road. Finally, just south of Dunedin I stopped and gave him a lift to his destination in Gore. We had a great chat, he was a fisherman heading home for some leave with his family, I felt ashamed that I hadn’t picked him up earlier, but the thing was he gotten so many rides so quickly that he ended up travelling all day at the same pace as me anyway.

Raised Atheist

My father was raised Jewish, my mother was raised Protestant and they raised me Atheist. Somehow as a child I had interpreted my parents’ well-meaning teaching as “religions are interesting cultural practices but really intelligent people don’t believe in God”. That wasn’t the message they intended, but it’s the one that stuck.

Despite this apparent conflict between intelligence and faith, the search for something to believe in has woven through much of my life. Unfortunately, although I wanted to believe in God, repeated disappointments made me feel that I simply was incapable of it. Like children of vegetarians who grow up without eating meat and find themselves unable to digest it when they want to, I felt as though the part of me that could be capable of believing in God had been starved out of existence when I was little. I felt like I just didn’t have the enzymes that could activate faith if I chose to, that I lacked a space inside me where God could fit.

I was attracted to my Jewish heritage but didn’t know any Jews who weren’t secular. I never saw inside a synagogue until I was in my thirties. Our family and community's Jewish religious observances were mostly fun parties which commemorated Jewish history but had no spiritual content that I could discern. So I don’t remember even searching for God in Judaism when I was a child.

There were plenty of Christian churches in the neighbourhood though, and they attracted my attention with their interesting architecture and pretty stained glass windows. Not wanting to deal with my parents’ reactions (which I imagined would be condescending at best) I sneaked off to a few church services on my own one winter in middle childhood. I did not find the spiritual epiphany I was seeking in any of the churches I visited, just a sense of being very out of place.

Another summer my grandparents visited us for a couple of months and were delighted to take me along to their adopted Baptist church every Sunday. Unfortunately, the puerile Sunday School homework just seemed a tiresome burden and I stopped attending after Grandma and Grandpa went home to the US. I was relieved to be free of the uncomfortable feeling that I was a freak for not being Christian, not being part of a church-going family and not believing in God but I also regretted losing my tenuous connection to a practice that might bring me closer to a faith of my own.

An excerpt from my memoirs

My earliest visual memory is of being in the womb: a warm red light all round me. I remember seeing a little pink hand with stumpy, finned fingers glowing in the light.

Around the same time had my first awareness of being a separate entity, of realising that the whole universe wasn’t me and I wasn’t the whole universe. Prior to this awareness of being separate I had a sense of oneness so total that concepts like ‘belonging’ or ‘connection’ seem heartbreakingly isolated in comparison.

* * *

I don’t remember anything about my birth. I was my parent’s first child, and the first grandchild on one side and the first legitimate and acknowledged grandchild on the other. I was born very early in the morning 6 December 1966, in Winnepeg, Manitoba, Canada. I imagine snow falling through the streetlights outside the hospital. While my mother laboured my father told her jokes, keeping her laughing so hard that the midwife wouldn’t believe her when she said she was ready to push. When she did check and see that I was immanent dad was banished to the waiting room until I had emerged, too soon for any interventions.

Love Child

As the eldest child of parents who didn't listen to pop music I came to the sounds of the sixties in the eighties, in my late teens. My political feminism (mum may not have listened to cool music but she made sure I had access to Ms Magazine) took as it's cultural soundtrack the girl groups of the decade before I was born: the Shangri-Las, the Ronettes, the Shirelles, the Marvettes and of course the Supremes. I played the Supremes the other day for the first time in years and had a rush of memories both silly and poignant. Love Child had particular resonance for me when I found myself pregnant and single at the age of 18 and I used to listen to it over and over again feeling a maudlin combination of self-pity and defiance.

I've noticed that as I get older I listen to music with decreasing intensity. I rarely make an effort anymore to seek out new music or follow up things I've heard and liked on the radio. What I do listen too tends to be pretty random- what I've held onto or picked up in bargain bins or am given by friends. I often don't even know the names of the songs or the singers. This casual relationship to music is mostly due to the painful lessons in non-attachment learned early by having three successive vinyl collections stolen and then the final collection made obsolete by CDs when I could no longer afford to buy new music. It's easier not to care so passionately about what I listen to.