Creative nonfiction essays
Kahil Gibran wrote that your children are not your children. Even as a student in the 1970s I recognised the truth in what he said. And it turns out, bringing up children is a series of letting go's, from taking your hands off the back of the two-wheeler bike to walking away on the first … Continue reading Letting go of the children (or, I’ve not got Alzheimers yet)
When I left my system management job at Digital Equipment Corporation, I had to leave behind the best part of the job, a brand-new mint-green Corolla. The model was dictated by my junior-level position (my boss had a Corona) but the colour choice had been mine. I certainly didn’t miss the chilliness of the mandatory … Continue reading Leaky orange Mazda, baby, and me
My efforts to pin down the family connection to the poet William Wordsworth have been like the clouds that float high above the hills and vales of the Lake District which inspired him. They're real but constantly moving; they seem sometimes to come together, then they change direction and are off again. Like family history … Continue reading Chasing clouds: tracing the Wordsworth connection
An ode to Wellington where despite the winds, spring brings quiet exhilaration and exuberance.
Two small-town girls go to stay with their Nana and Pop in the city and discover they live life in a much richer way.
Clara Wordsworth Sargood grew up in comfort and affluence at Rippon Lea in Melbourne in Queen Victoria's time. She vividly recounts stories of a happy childhood, the heartbreaking loss of her mother, and the thrills of sea voyages to England and New Zealand.
I'm glad to be rid of plastic in the home for aesthetic as well as planetary reasons. And it's not so long ago that my mother and grandmothers managed without it.
In 1912, a well-brought-up young man on a new motor cycle knocked a young boy over on an Auckland city street. And so the lives of two families from different social worlds intersected as police and civil court cases plodded on and were reported on at length in the Auckland papers.
Amongst my grandmother's papers was a photo she had kept all her life of a young soldier who served in WW1.
Fragments of an ordinary life 