Posts by Emma Hart
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Christopher: just fill in the little form on the 'reply' page and it gets emailed to Russell automagically.
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These days, I pretty much only go to Ashvegas to visit the dead relatives.
Heh, so we were driving down the road a bit back, and Karl was puzzled as to why there were so many cars outside the crematorium. I said, "Because it's Mothers' Day." He was even more confused. Not a great one for sentiment.
I take some comfort from Ferry Road being long enough, and Christchurch large enough, for a whole heap of things to happen, both sequentially and in parallel.
Indeed. See, Caroline married her second husband (after my great-great grandfather died) in a civil ceremony in her front room on Ferry Road, some time around 1860-ish.
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My great-great-granny lived in Ferry Road (not at the Holy Smoke address), and married her second husband in a civil ceremony in the front parlour in 1862.
She wasn't Caroline Webb née Adams, was she? Because that would be weird.
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I don't seem to have the same connection with the past - no idea where other than immediate forebears have had their ashes scattered or bodies interred, and no real itch to find out.
Oddly, I was born hundreds of miles from my family's traditional territory, but since then our habitual wanderings after jobs and education and houses have brought me to a point where I now live three blocks from the house where my great-grandfather lived 160 years ago, which is now the Holy Smoke restaurant in Ferry Road. I suppose because of the tendency to heritage-wank in Chch I've been quite resistent to the attraction of that past, but it does exist, it's weird being able to look at that building and picture Fred living there as a young man, when the road was dirt and all about the importance of the actual ferry.
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I recall my Chch winters as exhilarating. The sky was enormous and mostly blue, and the air was dry and thus, miraculously, so was I.
And that's how it should be, how it is in my mind when I think about Canterbury winters, and surely how it usually is. Cold, yes, but sharply, almost painfully clear. And that's fine, I don't mind the kind of bright cold you can feel on your eyeballs. This year we haven't even had a frost yet, and the cold is the kind I associate with further south: grey and dripping and dismal.
I'll admit to a perverse fondness for Christchurch's orange-skied chewy winter nights, too.
One of my favourites contains the remains of a few relatives and is here. Windy and gorgeous (if the sun's out).
Hey, I've been there! (My ex-MIL is a Southland Girl.)
Rob? Your comment is pure magic, it sounds wonderful.
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It has natural melatonin in it, which sounds like it may be of help to you.
Hey Hannah. For a while I was taking a melatonin supplement to deal with my Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, and it was really helpful - with mood too, because I woke up feeling awake.
And thank you all for your kind wishes re: the new gig. I am feeling kind of daunted.
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City Mission or something, you reckon?
A few years back, I started trying to build Matariki traditions for our family, and one of them is making a special effort to donate a significant (to our budget) amount of food to the City Mission foodbank, because it's about sharing food. Also it makes me feel better at a time of year when I really need it, so it's a win all round.
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Most weirdly of all, loofahs were said to be the secret weapon against seasonal depression. A vigorous scrub all over in a hot bath spiked with baby oil was the prescription
Curious, I looked up the winter bathing section of my American-published Book of the Bath:
It is a good idea to stimulate circulation in a winter bath. Some modern bathtubs come with built-in jets or whirlpools, but a simple friction rub will do. Try a salt rub, or use your loofah or brush
Then all the winter bath recipes contain things which are stimulating and astringent, like cloves, rosemary and ginger.
I'm not sure how much of a pinch of salt (or indeed, half a cup of rock salt and some lemon peel) this should be taken with considering the author lives in Santa Monica.
Lightboxes work for a couple of us
My friend in Toronto found a lightbox hugely helpful. My other Canadian friend with SAD suffers slightly differently: she describes March and September as "suicide months".
It came home to me a couple of years ago watching someone I loved suffer dreadfully during a winter spent working in an office with no windows. The next year, different office, north-facing, he was fine. Now I know what the problem is, it's so much easier to keep an eye out for.
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How about everyone gets to do what they want with their books?
Allow me to rephrase, because of course they can. The sexiness, for me, is diminished by the cover-curling. This is probably a result of two things:
1/ most of my book supply has always been communal - from libraries. Corner-bending doesn't bother me, but things that do permanent damage to the book do. And also people who make notes in library books correcting what they think are grammar errors. In pen. And are wrong.
2/ lending. I'm still not really over the trauma of finding about a half-dozen of my own books lying on my flatmate's floor with their spines broken and covers curled and bent in half.
So it's not that I think people who cover-curl or spine-break their own books are scum, just that I find the exercise of care over a book more attractive. I am of course completely shallow.
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Absolutely. I mean, short of tattooing "take me" on their foreheads, it's hard to see how much clearer those chaps could make their intentions.
I do have to have a slight word with the guy on the subway. Please don't curl your covers around like that. Have some respect for the book as an object.
But otherwise, the point stands.