It was early spring, the end of the August school holidays. The sky was blue. No clouds anywhere. I was staring out the window wondering what I would do for the day. I knew I would clean my room, do dishes and peel the potatoes for tea. These things I did every day. But what…
Two little girls, one wearing pink, the other wearing blue, sit together on a velvet chair staring straight ahead with no sign of a smile. They watch from behind a large wooden frame. On the back of the frame, there is a label that reads: Parker, portrait painter and general artist, Imperial Art Studio, Grey…
The instructor of a writing course I took a few years ago introduced it by noting that 60 per cent of writing was thinking. Sometimes I forget this advice and start a project without thinking. I plunge into the writing, bang out a paragraph or two and come to a halt — lost. It’s as if I…
The world was waiting for Y2K. Depending on who you listened to, we were either facing a massive computer failure or the catastrophic end to the world. But I wasn’t too concerned. Because my world, as I knew it, had already ended.
There are many words in the English language that sound alike but by changing one letter they take on a different meaning. That’s usually not a problem when you’re speaking, but it can really trip you up in written language — and spell check won’t help you. Here are 20 commonly misused/misspelled words.
It was the cusp of the Sixties. New Zealand teenagers were joining the rock and roll craze that had taken over the world. Parents who had survived the Second World War were faced with fighting another war – the war against the youth culture with its loud and inappropriate music and outrageous clothing. Teenage dance…
When I was a kid growing up in New Zealand, I had two favourite words: antidisestablishmentarianism and Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu. Antidisestablishmentarianism means, in case you don’t know this, opposition to the disestablishment of the Church of England. Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu is the name of a tiny hill in New Zealand. In English it means the place where Tamatea, the…
I hardly slept all night. The next day, I was starting my first real summer job – a salesgirl at McKenzies department store. I’d just turned 15. I begged my parents to let me interview for this job. It was a big deal. In New Zealand, especially in the rural areas, Exclusive Brethren girls were…
“The secret of good writing,” says William Zinsser* author of On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction, “is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.” This means getting rid of every word that serves no function but only weakens your sentence.
I grew up in New Zealand. I was born and raised in the village of Ashhurst, in the Manawatu district. Ashhurst is 14 kilometres from Palmerston North and about 150 kilometres north of Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city. I was brought up Exclusive Brethren, originally called Plymouth Brethren. This is a fundamentalist, Christian group that uses…