I am in the process of revamping this website to make it more user friendly, but in the meantime I’m pinning this post for those of you wanting to get your hands on my books.
I’m really thrilled with the way Ghost Bus turned out and even more thrilled so many of you are enjoying it. Below are the details for where to get both e-books and tree books.
What I love the most about these are that every bit of them is made in NZ. The cover is designed by the very clever Catherine Slavova’s Karnstein Designs , the typesetting and editing was done by Jana Mittelstadt’s Kiwiberry Editing and it was printed by Your Books.
You can get your paws on a copy here for $20 – free postage within NZ.
Ghost Bus paperback $20
For those of you who haven’t read my first book Which Way is Starboard Again? Overcoming fears & facing challenges sailing the South Pacific and extra fiver will get you a bundle of both books – free postage within NZ also.
Ghost Bus/Starboard bundle $25
For those who don’t use Paypal
For those of you allergic to Paypal just drop me a line at annakirtlan@gmail.com and I will flick you my bank account details.
For overseas readers – there is an Amazon print on demand option which might suit you guys better as the rona seems to have made international posting a bit of a hit and miss venture at the moment. You can buy it here:
Ghost Bus – Tales from Wellington’s Dark Side is available on most ebook platforms. You can check out which ones here: https://books2read.com/ghostbus
Which Way is Starboard Again? Mental Health Foundation fundraiser
A note that I still have an ongoing fundraiser for the NZ Mental Health Foundation tied up with my first book Which Way is Starboard Again? So if you are interested in that book alone and would like to donate to a great organisation, you can find out more here:
This blog is all out of order. It’s not the one I was planning to share but events have overtaken things. Sailors may want to give it a wide berth too (see what I did there?) as it is about the opposite of water, it’s about *shudder* being a dirt dweller.
Our home
About three years ago Paddy and I bought a house on a piece of land (and before any of you lot start on about me making him swallow the anchor, he was the one who suggested it and he is very happy here – he has a very large garage!)
It has a substantial amount of regenerating scrub behind it, sadly mostly broom, blackberry and Old Man’s Beard, due to years of neglect from being a rental for a decade. It needs a bit of work but its ours and we love it. I called it a forest and Paddy called it a jungle so we compromised and have name it ‘the frungle’.
The frungle when we first moved in – unfortunately, despite our best efforts, the blackberry and gorse has overgrown a fair bit of this
A bit of bush bashing into the frungle shows old farm tracks with a lot of clear space under a canopy. One day it will be an amazing place for us to wander through and have places to just sit and be. It will need work to get there though, access cleared and I have a vision of a nice terraced garden leading up to it.
Inside the frungle
We’re not afraid of the hard work needed to get there. When we arrived the garden in front of the house was a mess of infill soil, rocks and tree roots. I cleared the roots, ripped all the rocks out to make a rock garden and have created a lovely flowering area that all the neighbours comment on. We love our little patch of dirt and are doing what we can to make it better for everyone.
Before
After
The council
Last week we received a flyer in our letter box from the council, with one of those cutesie brochures with cartoon people holding seedlings that you would have to be a nature hater to object to.
It said they wanted to redesignate part of our property as a Significant Natural Area (SNA) and include it in the district plan. The flier included a map that was so tiny it was impossible to tell where our property was on it and a phone number that went straight to an answering machine. When Paddy finally found a copy of the map online that he could expand we discovered they wanted our frungle, the entire section next to us and most of the property our neighbour lives on, along with other neighbouring properties. There are nine of us affected locally. One is away overseas and one threw the flier in the bin because she doesn’t read English. Hardly the most robust consultation.
According to the ‘Our City Tomorrow Planning for Growth’ website there are 160 properties in the Wellington City area affected. Around 50% are owned by the Wellington City Council and the rest is private land.
So why worry about a new property designation? Well this would put our little frungle in the same category as the nearby park filled with walking tracks, wind farms and other areas of special significance – all of which we thoroughly support the need to protect. When Paddy spoke to the council they said not to worry, we can still do what we like with our land – and that might be true, for now. But all it will take is one change in the district plan affecting all the significant natural areas and it’s no building and predator baits in the backyard, and if we complain we don’t have a leg to stand on because it will affect all significant natural assets.
Our family
This is where I know some of my green friends and I differ, and that’s okay. I’m a big fan of live and let live. When I discovered some of the people behind this move were involved with Predator Free Wellington a few alarm bells began to ring.
I love and will always have cats. Cats are family to me and one of the reasons we bought where we did was because it was a cat friendly area. It’s off a cul-de-sac, away from traffic with a decent enough sized backyard to keep a meow happy and not prowling.
I wake up every morning to the sound of birds not being murdered by my cat. She is well-fed and drugged (catnip) and gets lots of love and attention. In the year plus we have had her here her prey count has been zero birds and one live mouse I had to move to a safer location myself. She is a menace to anything stuffed with catnip and and utter thug when it comes to other cats. There are actually less moggies in our frungle since she arrived.
The great grey hunter
Before Tilly (aka Dingbat) arrived there was Ollie. In 16 years his bird count was two and one we are pretty sure flew in the window, got stunned and was passed off as his own catch. He was so proud when he did find something (live mice usually) that I find it hard to believe he led a savage, bird corpse-strewn double life. Once, when moving flats, we discovered a massive mouse hole behind the beanbag he slept on. Not only that, the mice had also been pulling rubble from inside the walls to build a little ramp for easier access. I had to respectfully ask him to hand in his cat card after that.
The goodest boy
The mouse highway we found behind Ollie’s beanbag
I find it hard to believe that I have had the only two dud cats in the world when it comes to hunting and I think if you make sure they are well-fed and entertained your backyard tuis will be safe. Ours certainly are.
It sounds a bit paranoid but there are areas around the country now where you can’t replace your cat when they die and I suspect those places probably started their lives as SNAs.
Treating everyone like an arsehole
Don’t get me wrong, I have zero issues with council land and reserves being declared SNAs. I just want to know that we can keep our own piece of dirt, the one that we pay a mortgage and rates on, safe for us and our family and protected for the future. I would like us to be trusted to look after our own backyard.
One area that has managed to work with its community and agree to voluntary protection of privately owned natural resources is the Hutt City Council. Their mayor apologised to the community for the distress the situation had caused and committed to working with them to protect their natural resources rather than doing it to them.
“With the involvement of mana whenua, land owners and other groups, we will be able to lift the profile of this issue and it will give us the opportunity to understand more about the importance of biodiversity to our community, as well as what we can do as a community to protect and enhance it.”
For this the council is now being sued by Forest and Bird.
According to Forest and Bird’s North Island regional manager “Voluntary arrangements on their own won’t be enough to protect and restore our native bush and wildlife. The good efforts of the majority can be undone by the reckless actions of a few.”
Their solution appears to be that, to get the best out of human nature, you need to treat everybody as though they are going to behave at their worst. Someone might be an arsehole so we will treat all of you like arseholes to make sure that doesn’t happen. That really does seem like flawed logic to me.
This is not what I want to be doing
This whole situation makes me really sad. I am not the sort of person who regularly complains to councils. I used to be a council reporter back in the day and spent just about as much time in council chambers as they did. I know how hard they work and I know you can’t please everyone..
I am a greenie. I never, ever thought I would be in a position where I would be opposing Forest and Bird. I am for policy about protecting the environment. Paddy and I often have spirited discussions about banning plastic bags. I’m all for it and he reckons noone has ever asked a dolphin whether they like the taste of plastic or not (don’t worry he’s winding me up – he uses reusable bags!). I am for protecting the planet for the next generation.
I’m a dirty leftie. I am all for public health and public education and putting my taxes towards benefiting all of us, particularly those worse off. I don’t believe in holing up in our private worlds, doing what we want and not caring about anyone else, but we need to do this together.
To the Wellington City Council,
If you come between me and my home and my family, I will fight you. And I don’t want to fight you, I want to work with you. Considering local body elections are coming up really soon, I would hope you feel the same.
The petition
As a group of concerned residents we are starting a petition on behalf of our community and those around the city who may not be aware of what may be happening to their land. We hope the council will take notice of this and work with us rather than against us. If you would like to support us, please visit the Welink below
Nearly 16 years ago I got into an argument with my flatmate (housemate or roommate for non-Kiwi readers) about whether or not we should get a cat.
“Don’t be ridiculous!,” I said (in a rare moment of sensibleness). “We are going to go our separate ways in a year. Who is going to take the cat? Who is going to pay for the food and the vet bills? We are not getting a cat. End of story.”
It was not the end of the story.
Around midnight said flatmate woke me up to say she thought she had heard an injured cat in the back yard. I muttered something about her probably being high and turned to go back to sleep when I heard it too. A woeful yowling noise that could have woken the dead.
We woke another flatmate up and the three of us headed out to the back yard, armed with a cigarette lighter, because students didn’t have useful things like torches. We followed the noise into the bushes down the back of the property and when I thought we were close I grabbed the lighter. After burning my fingers several times (I didn’t smoke) I found the source of the caterwauling and tried to grab it before it could run away. Still thinking we were hunting for a wounded adult cat, I was shocked when my hands closed on a ball of fluff the size of a regular cat’s head. Where was the rest of the cat? How could it still be meowing? Once my eyes got used to the light I realised I had captured a tiny black kitten. I was amazed that something so small could have made so much noise.
The first thing we noticed when we got the poor thing inside was that it absolutely stank, like something had peed all over it. We gave it a bath in the sink, dried it off and popped it in a shoebox with a towel and a hot water bottle. A fourth flatmate woke up. “Is that thing staying?” he asked. We shrugged, if we couldn’t find an owner, then probably yes. We popped the shoebox in the bathroom, where we surmised there would be less damage if its occupant peed everywhere, and went back to bed. As soon as the lights went out the howling commenced in earnest. “Is that thing staying?” flatmate became “if someone doesn’t shut that thing up it’s going out the window” flatmate and Anna the sucker stepped in. I picked the kitten up and popped it on my pillow, where it promptly fell asleep. The choice was taken out of my hands, I was Mum from that night forth.
The next day we tried to deduce gender, but the kitten was so tiny it was almost impossible to tell. We couldn’t spot any boy bits so we declared our new friend a little girl and named ‘her’ Holly because we found her just before Christmas. A check up at the vet some time later told us a different story, our little fleabag was actually a little boy, and we might want to consider a name change. To keep things simple we just decided to drop the H and Holly became Ollie.
If Harry Potter was the boy who lived, then Ollie was the cat who lived. Right from the start we were told not to get attached to him because he probably wasn’t going to make it. He was only about three weeks old and we were told by various well-meaning cat people that if his mother had abandoned him, if he had been peed on, if we didn’t have a heatpad or fancy food then he was probably going to die. Nevertheless we purrsisted, feeding him kitten milk with an eyedropper and keeping him warm. Before long he was drinking milk from a dish by himself (give or take a bit of faceplanting) and using a litter box. Score one for the cat who wasn’t supposed to make it! Since then Ollie made it through a lot, getting hit by a car, a dicky thyroid, getting lost at new homes. He was the poster child for a cat’s nine lives.
I’m a big kid now! (blurry pre digital camera shot of Ollie graduating from bottle feeding. Note milk beard.)
Because he was so young when we found him, Ollie didn’t really know how to cat. This meant he was a terrible hunter. He knew he should chase things but he had no idea what to do with them if he accidentally caught them. Other than the 3am live mouse chases after having them proudly delivered to the foot of my bed, this was something I didn’t actually mind that much.
Because he wasn’t weaned properly Ollie also sucked his tail. It was kind of adorable when he was a kitten, curled up like a tiny doughnut, but not so cute when he was still doing it three years later. We tried to stop him, but if you pulled his tail out of his mouth he would just slurp it back in like a piece of spaghetti. It was really quite gross. His tail was crusted and pointy like a paint brush (in fact somewhere I have a tail painting where I gave in to temptation and dipped it in some water colours). At one point the tip of his tail became ginger. I kid you not. I have no idea what is in cat saliva but he actually managed to suck the colour out of his tail.
Students. I don’t actually have an explanation for this photo.
Then there were the wet patches. If you tuned out the weird slurping noises and let him stay in your lap for too long he would leave large drool spots in rather embarrassing places. He did it in the bed too, necessitating a few awkward conversations with new boyfriends.
Blep!
Our first real challenge came at Christmastime when we were all going to go our separate ways. Who would take the kitten? As predicted, it turned out to be me. I put him in what from memory was a bird cage and took him to my Mum and Dad’s, where we separated him from our adult cats Pirate and Topsey. He took it all in his stride, getting cuddles from my little sister and posing for a family photo. By then it had been unofficially decided that the fuzzball was mine.
Ollie’s first Christmas
Mum only just told me recently that when I turned up with Ollie she thought it would be a disaster. “Oh god, she’s got a cat. How is she going to cope with that while she’s flatting?” she said to Dad. After a few years of watching me with Ollie, she quickly changed her tune. Yes I saved him initially, but he saved me in so many ways. Those were her words, and they are so true. Through struggles with mental illness, messy breakups, living arrangements falling to bits, work and study stress, Ollie stuck to me like glue. I was never really on my own. He never judged and he was always there.
Renting with a cat isn’t easy (that’s a subject for a blog all of its own) but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Ollie and I have lived all round the country – several flats (and a brief stint in a friend’s Kombi van) throughout Christchurch, another few rentals down south in Timaru when he went with me to journalism school, a number of homes further south in Oamaru where I worked for the local newspaper and we lived on our own like grownups, and finally across the Strait to Wellington where we moved about a bit before buying our first house together (with the help of some bloke called Paddy).
It felt like Ollie and I against the world for such a long time but when we allowed Paddy into the mix, we became a funny little family.
Meeting Ollie was a pressure moment for Paddy. He knew that if the cat didn’t like him it would be a deal breaker. In fact I’m pretty sure I wore a black cat T shirt on our first proper date, just to hammer the point home. Luckily for Paddy Ollie was a bit of a hussy when it came to men and he let him cuddle him straight away. A couple of years later and they were best buddies. Ollie even came to stay on the boat a few times.
Bros
When Paddy first met Ollie he was a little rotund (Ollie not Paddy!). At one point the vet told me if he got to 7kgs we were going to have to talk. Unbeknownst to me Paddy had a history of renaming people’s cats and this time took to calling mine Mr Pies (as in who ate all the…).
Annoyingly, the name stuck. Mr Pies, Pies, Pie-eater, Piesy, Pie pies, His Royal Pie-ness. Ollie started coming when called Pies, he knew that ‘pies’ equated to food and that ‘pie time’ was dinner time. In the end I was calling him Pies too, despite my concerted efforts to call him by his real name.
Sadly every story does have an end and Mr Pies’ was just over a week ago. It wasn’t a shock, he wasn’t in pain and he let us know when it was time for him to move on. We knew our time with him was coming to an end, it just happened a little quicker than anticipated. Ollie’s 16 years made him quite an old man in cat terms and unfortunately his kidneys had just worn out. Right up until his last week with us he was just as playful as when he was a kitten. A miracle kitty arthritis drug had given him a new lease on life. He would hurtle up two flights of stairs and be squawking at me from the top to get up there and feed him in the time my creaky knees had got me a third of the way. When he started struggling with his favourite thing (eating) and started pooing in strange places though, we knew something was up. He was so thin too. From his fighting weight of nearly 7kgs he had dropped down to 3kgs.
The vet told us we might have a couple of weeks, but unfortunately we had just days. The morning I woke up and he was still in bed with me not demanding breakfast I knew things weren’t good. When I popped him down and he was wobbly on his feet I knew they were even worse. We’d read that with kidney issues they aren’t in pain, their bodies just aren’t processing toxins and it is a little bit like being very drunk. Sometimes they just naturally go to sleep. Paddy told me to stay at home with him that day and if things still weren’t good we would take him in to the vet. Ollie and I snuggled all day; He rested his paws on me and purred. When his breathing started to get shallower I told him it was okay, he didn’t have to stay, he could rest now – but if my boy was anything it was stubborn. He started hassling me like he wanted food (he was on a special diet for his thyroid but by that point we decided he could have whatever he liked. Raw eggs and bacon flavoured baby food were his favourites – thank you internet!) I carried him upstairs and we sat in the sun (it was a rare sunny Wellington winter day) and he had a good chow down. The little bugger kept wanting to wander off though and he kept falling over. His body wasn’t doing what he wanted it to do. He let out a yowl of frustration and I knew. It wasn’t fair, he was in distress. I called Paddy and he came home early. Ollie cuddled up to him and started purring, which he hadn’t done for a while. When I said to Paddy we should try to get an earlier vet appointment he started purring louder. I am so sure he was telling us yes.
I sat in the back of the car with him and we cranked up the tunes. Ollie was a bogan, he liked car rides but only if accompanied by loud music. Like his Dad he was a bit of a fan of Tom Petty, so that is what he got. He didn’t want to be in his carry cage and I figured this time he didn’t have to be, so he sat on my lap, peering out the window and watching the traffic go by. When we got to the vet it was amazing. Pretty much as soon as we put him on the table, he fell asleep. It was like he had waited until we were all together and decided ‘okay, it’s time for me to go now’. When the vet put him to sleep we didn’t even see him take his last breath, it was so quick and so peaceful, it was obvious he was ready to go.
I’m crying as I write this, but I am also grateful. I am grateful that we got to say goodbye as a family. I am grateful for all those wonderful years, for all the times he drove me insane, for all the times he made me smile. I’m grateful for the friends we made together and the adventures that we had. I’m grateful for all the times he was there for me when times were dark, when the responsibility for a little animal that loved and trusted me helped keep me going.
As my little sister said, I was literally with him from the beginning to the end – and all the highs and lows in between. As a kitten he used to eat my books. As a cat he is immortalised on the cover of my first published book – pride of place, exactly where he belongs.
Om nom nom!
Cover cat
I am a witch without a familiar. He was my best friend. I am bereft but also so glad he was a part of my life for so long.
We buried him in a grove in the forest out the back of our property where he liked to lurk. Eventually we will clear a path down there and put in a bench so we can hang out. He’s got his blankie and his mousies and a tonne of catnip to keep him company in kitty cat heaven.
When I broke the news on Facebook it was really lovely. People from so many different parts of my life who remembered him from different times got in touch. It made me sad, but it made me smile.
So goodbye Ollie, Mr Pies, Piesy, Wolliver, Woozle, Mow mow, Boop Kirtlan. I will miss your chattiness, your attitude, your cuddles, and your incredible ability to find the most noisy thing in the room at 3am. I will miss seeing you at the door when I come home from work, having you steal water from any unattended glass an typing my blogs from underneath your furry butt.
You were the handsomest, bravest, loyalest, craftiest, naughtiest, most loving cat in the world and I will love you forever.
I will end with a million photos of Ollie, because he deserves a million photos.
It was a pile of socks I had been staring at for more than a year before finally trying, and failing, to do something with.
I used to have a system. When an odd sock came out of the wash I would put it in a basket in the corner of my room. Periodically I would upend the basket and paw through it, reuniting them with their mates.
I don’t know when the basket became a monster.
One day the multicoloured mess became insurmountable. I had so many socks I couldn’t close my sock draw and the unmatched pile had become a semi-dormant cotton volcano threatening to erupt.
Some of the culprits
The odd sock basket came with me when we moved to our new house – and sat there for a year.
It would glare at me malevolently, reminding me that we had been in our new home for 365 days and I still didn’t have my shit sorted.
The sock pile embarrassed me. I would shove it in a corner and forget about it for a while – then another odd sock would turn up. I would promise myself I would take the basket upstairs, sit in front of the telly and sort the damned thing out – but then I’d be too tired from work, I’d have to cook dinner, there were cat videos on the internet that needed watching…
Yes I realise I was projecting onto the basket. My socky nemesis became a representation of all the things in my life I had been putting off doing. If I could conquer the pile of socks, then everything else would follow.
So that was what I was going to do last weekend. I was finally going to slay the sock monster.
I had a plan. I was going to watch Guardians of the Galaxy in preparation for seeing the second film before it finished in the theatres, dump Mount Socksuvius on the floor and sort it out while watching something that made me smile.
It all fell to pieces when I couldn’t make that happen. I missed the film being on television and was annoyed with myself for that, but that was okay because it was on Netflix -I’d checked the night before. Only it wasn’t, it was only on Netflix US not NZ. I tried TV on demand, nope. Lightbox, nope. It was a 2014 film for chrissakes, it should’t be so hard!
This upset me much, much, more that it should have.
The problem with being a functioning nutbar is that you often have no idea what silly little thing will make that functioning stop.
OCD is like that for me. Most of the time I’m pretty flexible. If situations change on me I can go with the flow and find a way to make things work. Other times I plan things meticulously in my head and if things don’t conform 100% to that plan I get really upset – irrationally so. The worst part of it is, I know it’s irrational. That’s why it’s so frustrating. I know it doesn’t make sense to feel so upset, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to stomp my feet and pull my hair out.
There doesn’t always have to be a reason, but this time I think there was. I was a bit stressed, my circadian rhythms were only just starting to sort themselves out after returning from my first (non-sailing related) OE, I was trying to start a new writing project (more detail on that, and the OE, in the next blog) and it seemed my house and garden were falling down around my ears. I was trying to do all of things and achieving none of the things and now I couldn’t even watch my movie and organise my damned socks.
Chucking them out and starting again wasn’t an option. I have issues letting go. I like my socks – they’re interesting. They have cats and boats and skull and crossbones, stripes and spots and so many shades of orange.
Of course you can match cats and boats or spots and stripes, I do that all the time – and I have done that with as many as I can, but some are different sizes or different types. Some are gym socks, some are socks to wear with boots. It doesn’t always work.
One of the upsides of having OCD is that, usually, this sort of thing is fun. I love organising books, sorting out nuts and bolts on the the boat, colour coding buttons – but for this one I have a massive block.
And what did I do with the ones that didn’t match? I didn’t want to put them in the landfill, I don’t think socks are recyclable and odd socks are a pretty stink thing to donate to an op shop.
Paddy, who had been stoically coping with my irrational anger and looming tears, came to the rescue with that one. Car enthusiasts use a lot of scrap material as cleaning rags when they are tinkering around with their automobiles. I could put the ones I wasn’t going to keep in a rag bag and chuck that in the clothing bin. No sock left behind!
As I sat there contemplating the pile in the middle of the floor and I had a sock-related epiphany.
The sockpocalypse (asockalypse?) I was staring at was a perfect metaphor for my own brain. It’s exactly what I imagine it looks like in there – an unruly pile of colours and textures that don’t always always do what they’re told.
A bright, beautiful pile of crazy that’s sometimes impossible to keep under control.
I love it and I hate it and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
The best socks I have ever owned have all been bought for me by my Mum. They come in packs of three and either all of them match or none of them do. They’re interchangeable so it doesn’t matter if you lose one and I think they’re the answer for me.
The socks, like my brain, are a little bit different and help me do things in my own way.
Don’t pair? Don’t care!
I went out yesterday and bought Guardians of the Galaxy on DVD so I can watch it any damned time I please.
The giant pile of socks is still there, it’s in the middle of the lounge so I can’t miss it. I know it’s silly, but I feel like if I can get that under control I’ll be able to handle everything else.
I’ll get the house and garden sorted, I’ll start exercising again and I’ll write – a lot. Watch this space!
Last mental health awareness week I recycled my coming out of the cray cray closet blog but a lot has happened between then and now so I think it’s time for a new one.
One of the drawbacks of writing a book about being a functioning nutbar is that it puts a whole lot of pressure on you to be exactly that.
You’ve just gone and revealed your biggest weakness to a bunch of strangers.You have told people they can get through it because you have gotten through it. You’ve told them you’re okay so you have to be okay. Otherwise you’re a big fat fraud.
The funny thing is I was okay. Everything was going great. I’d had a book published, I’d made my dream come true. I’d been getting all sorts of great feedback, I’d been in the paper and on the radio, I’d done a bit of public speaking. My life was full and busy, but it was full of good things. There was absolutely no excuse for my brain to break.
In hindsight the warning signs were there. Things had been going so well for so long that I had slipped back into bad habits, I was staying up too late, drinking far too much coffee and having energy drinks for breakfast. Then I was wondering why I wasn’t sleeping. I was permanently wired – jumpy, paranoid, clenching my teeth and counting on my fingertips (an old OCD habit). I was getting slack about remembering to take my meds.
It’s exhausting being on edge all the time. Eventually you are going to crack – and I did quite spectacularly.
It had been a great day. I’d caught up with some very dear friends who were visiting from overseas. It was lovely and sunny so we started the day with a boozy brunch and went from there. We ended up back on the boat that evening. We had a brilliant catch up and loads of fun. Then everyone went home – and I kept drinking (I’m not a big drinker so this is quite unusual for me). I had decided I wanted to turn my brain off and that was how I was going to do it. When Paddy tried to get me to stop I shut myself in the bathroom with a bottle of wine (again, this is not normal behavior for me).
The night ended with me lying on the floor of the boat screaming unintelligibly and refusing to move. It have been quite frightening for poor Paddy. Eventually I crawled into bed, freezing cold, and passed out.
No surprises that the next morning I felt awful. But it was a frighteningly familiar kind of awful – the thick, black hole in my stomach told me this was no ordinary hangover.
I spent the day alternating between feeling like my heart was going to pound out of my throat and just feeling leaden. I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to move. I felt empty and numb.
I finally had to admit it to myself – I was not okay.
I talked with Paddy, who had noticed I hadn’t been ‘present’ for a while. Like I was going through the motions but I wasn’t really there. It was such a relief to finally admit it.
It is so important to let people know when you are not okay, but it can be a massively hard thing to do. When I was a teen living with mental illness I didn’t know how to. I have a letter a friend wrote me when I was about 15 that I keep to remind me how important it is to communicate. It says “it’s like you are lying on the floor crying out in pain but not telling anyone where it hurts.” I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. But for the first time my friend got me thinking about how what was going on with me was affecting other people. I thought by bottling it up and keeping it to myself I was protecting my friends from having to deal with the mess in my head, what I didn’t realise was that what I was doing was even more frustrating and confusing. It took a long time and a lot of trial and error before I felt safe and comfortable sharing with people I cared about, but it was definitely the best thing for all of us.
So here I was admitting defeat and calling in the professionals. I called in sick at work the next day (one of the few times I have ever let myself do that for because of my mental illness) and visited my GP. I would have had no qualms taking the day off if I had the flu or a tummy bug but, despite my preaching in print, this was so much different. I couldn’t possibly show that kind of weakness, what if people thought I wasn’t going to be able to do my job?
There was no choice really. I had to go private. I could have gone into the public system but would have ended up on a waiting list – and when you are a sweating, shaking, twitchy mess, a waiting list just isn’t going to cut it. I was lucky,I could afford it. So many people can’t and that’s so wrong. I won’t start ranting about the state of our mental health system or I won’t stop, but I will say everyone needs access to this type of lifeline. There are good public services out there – they just need money and support so they are available to everyone, everywhere in the country.
My nerves about talking with my work about things proved utterly unfounded. They were great, and totally fine with me leaving an hour early once a week to take my brain in for a tuneup.
So I sat down with the head doc to see what we could do. We decided not to mess with the meds because they seemed to be doing their job, it was just me being rubbish about taking them. Instead we tried to unpack some things. We talked about what was going on in my life and every time I went down a new tangent she would gesture towards the carpet and mime putting something down. ‘Okay we’ll put this one in that basket and come back to it later. By the time we were done I was convinced she was going to run out of space on the floor for all the imaginary baskets.
“So basically you’re saying I’m a basket case then,” I dad-joked. This was to set the tone for most of my visits. We would talk about stuff, I would get uncomfortable and start cracking jokes. By session three she worked out we weren’t getting anywhere. Every time we scratched a surface I would throw walls up by trying to make her laugh.
In the end she said to me “you seem to have a real problem with having a mental illness”. I was outraged. “Don’t be ridiculous! I’ve written a book about having a mental illness, I tell people there is nothing to be ashamed of because, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Of course I don’t have a problem with having a mental illness!”
But I had to be brutally honest with myself – I did. I had to be okay because I had told the world I was okay. I’d told everyone that battling with your own brain does not make you weak – but I wasn’t drinking my own Koolaid. Do as I say don’t do as I do. It’s okay not to be okay, but not for me.
Realising that was a turning point for me. I actually started working on things. We reached a natural conclusion where most of the baskets were empty or at least only part full. I was looking after myself, taking breathers, easing up on the coffee and booze and getting my medication levels up again.
I still get twitchy at times but I am on top of it now. I’m enjoying life and I’m healthy again.
I guess my messsage is- and it really is – it’s okay not to be okay. The busiest, toughest, most outspoken of us are all allowed not to be okay and realising you aren’t okay is the first step towards fixing it – no matter how many invisible baskets you have to use.
PS – this is not a recipe to follow for everyone by any means. Talk therapy works for some people and it doesn’t for others, medication works for some people and doesn’t for others, exercise, getting out in nature, eating and drinking healthy -it’s the same deal. I find a combination of all three – meds, talking and making time to get out and about works for me, but none work on their own. It’s a process of trial and error and whatever works for you is totally legitimate.
Six months ago I lost my idol. The man very much responsible for me being me. I was devastated at the time and so was much of the world. David Bowie was such a huge part of so many lives – it was impossible to believe that someone who was so brave, intelligent and downright magical could be gone.
I said everything I needed to say in a blog I wrote at the time but what I didn’t share was a tattoo I got two weeks after.
It didn’t seem right at the time, the internet was wall to wall Bowie and it just seemed a bit soon and a bit twee. I got it for me, it was part of my grieving process and I wasn’t ready to share it with the world.
It all just sort of came together. The idea popped into my head fully formed while I was talking to my Mum on the phone. I wanted the black star from his final goodbye album, but that on its own was too dark for me.
Then the Aladdin Sane lightning bolt flashed through my mind, cutting across the star.
It represented everything that was sparkly and spiky and magical about him, that was it. That was my tattoo.
A friend of mine recommended a tattooist (Craigy at Union Tattoo) who just happened to have a cancellation, so what I was expecting to wait a while for happened within two weeks.
(Unfortunately the only decent pic I have of it is the one taken just after it was done. Have you ever tried to photograph your own wrist?)
It’s only little but it’s perfect. It makes me sad, but it also makes me feel strong and I smile every time I look at it.
It also turns out to have a very practical purpose.
I wanted the design on my wrist but didn’t really think too much about which one. In the end I just went with the one I didn’t wear a watch or fitness tracker on. It wasn’t until I was doing pilates (yes I do pilates – I may not be particularly good at it but I do it!) and I was having my usual issues of working out left from right, that I suddenly thought – I can use my tattoo!
It turns out it’s on my right side – my starboard side. I suddenly had an epiphany – I have a star on my starboard side. I wrote a book called Which Way is Starboard Again? and Bowie has answered that question for me forever!
Next time I’m out sailing, if a boat is heading towards Bowie I’ll know to keep clear.
I also conducted my own nerdy celebration of Bowie on the six month anniversary by helping orchestrate an augmented reality tribute. Before there was Pokemon Go there was Ingress (and before that Geocaching) – both are GPS based games that get you out amongst public art and sculptures and places of significance. My Dad got me into both, being a retired airforce navigator and fascinated with that sort of stuff.
I won’t go into too much detail but basically two warring teams united to create a digital lightning bolt across Lyall Bay.
The details are here (you don’t have to understand the lingo – the pictures say it all.)
Bowie was always an early adopter of new technology – I like to think he’d get a kick out of it.
I’ll end on a quote from a book I have recently read – Simon Critchley’s On Bowie, which sums him up perfectly for me.
“Bowie has been my soundtrack. My constant, clandestine companion. In good times and bad. Mine and his.
What’s striking is that I don’t think I’m alone in this view. There is a world of people for whom Bowie was the being who permitted a powerful emotional connection and freed them to become some other kind of self, something freer, more queer, more honest, more open, more exciting…He was someone who made life a little less ordinary for an awfully long time.”
PS. SHAMELESS PRODUCT PLACEMENT! Which Way is Starboard Again? the book is on sale $19.99 for blog readers. Free postage within NZ
So, rather ironically given I work in communications for a living, it turns out I am a bit of a rubbish self promoter. I need to try harder to let people know Which Way is Starboard Again? the book is out there.
To that end I have spruced up the blog and transferred it from the basic seamunchkin.wordpress.co to seamunchkin.com. If you already follow the blog your subscription has been transferred and nothing will change – it just means it’s easier to share and buy through the website.
I’ve put up a page about the book here and even have a dinky PayPal button
which you can also access here for people who would like to buy signed copies with special messages directly from me.
All the Facebook, Twitter, G+ links have been updated and I’ll put a redirect on the original blog so, other than the new look, it’s pretty much business as usual.
So if anyone you know is interested in reading about sailing, anxiety, projectile vomiting and ant wars I would really appreciate it if you could point them this way.
Thanks for bearing with me – back to your regularly scheduled programming!
I don’t want to write this. I don’t want to write this. I don’t want to write this.
If I write this it makes it real.
But if I don’t write it I feel like I will burst.
It’s ridiculous really, it’s not as though I knew the guy, but a huge part of my light and life has left this world.
David Bowie has been with me since he first mesmerised me in the Labyrinth when I was a kid (and caused me to force my parents to repeatedly hire it from the video store, though I knew it word for word.)
He was with me through my awkward teenage years – when I was at my most scared and isolated telling me I was ‘not alone’
Oh no love! you’re not alone You’re watching yourself but you’re too unfair You got your head all tangled up but if i could only Make you care Oh no love! you’re not alone No matter what or who you’ve been No matter when or where you’ve seen All the knives seem to lacerate your brain I’ve had my share, I’ll help you with the pain You’re not alone
As a young adult navigating the murky waters of mental illness at a time when nobody talked about it All the Madmen from The Man Who Sold the World was a two-fingered salute to the rest of the world. It was okay, he got it. It was our secret.
‘Cause I’d rather stay here With all the madmen Than perish with the sad men Roaming free And I’d rather play here With all the madmen For I’m quite content They’re all as sane as me.
David Bowie taught me that it was okay to be different. He taught me to embrace it, to run with it and see where it led me. That if I wanted to dress in orange paisley dye my hair blue and do ridiculous stuff on stage I bloody well could. If I wanted to blast Aladdin Sane when everyone else wanted to be the Spice Girls then I should, and at maximum volume.
I was fascinated by his influences, I discovered new (and old) writers, new music and art.
He was, he is, my best friend. He taught me to be me.
I have never met the man before but he has been with me for my entire life. Through gleeful celebration and abject misery. He graduated university with me and held my hand through journalism school. He’s sailed across the South Pacific with me and celebrated the publication of my first book.
In a way he also helped develop my writing style.
Back in the days of dial-up internet that sounded like R2D2 in a blender I discovered a world much bigger than my own. In trying to navigate this exciting new place where you could easily talk to people on the other side of the globe I joined a mailing list (do those even exist anymore?) called BowieList where, through group emails I was able to banter with a bunch of intelligent, funny and eloquent people from all walks of life, with the connection of our mutual admiration of Mr Stardust. I really looked forward to those emails, spending quite a bit more time on the university computers than I needed to ‘study’.
I enjoyed and appreciated the way these people wrote, the way they made me smile. I magpied the hell out of them and discovered a wittier more confident version of myself in the process. I made friends with some wonderful people who, while we are not in touch as often now, I still think about a lot.
I graduated to other Bowie groups, The Man’s own website Bowienet and even a proto virtual reality chatroom with avatars (Bowie did everything first) and I think this is where I developed my conversational writing style. I have so much to thank him for.
I also very much associate David Bowie with my Mum. It was her ‘best of’ album that I loved (and nicked) that led me to discover him.
We were lucky enough to see him in concert when he came to Wellington for the 2004 Reality tour. It was the most amazing night of my life. I don’t think I have ever felt that high. We’d gotten seats right up the front (of course) but as soon as I heard his voice I screamed like a banshee and ran for the stage – poor Mum managed to grab the back of my shirt and go with me, narrowly avoiding being left in the dust.
We were right up the front. There was a barrier, a security guy and then my Main Man. We couldn’t have gotten any closer if we tried. Typical inhospitable Wellington it was hosing down with rain but, while the band stayed where it was safe and dry, Bowie was out on the apron prancing about, getting soaked and having to have towels regularly thrown to him. He dedicated Heroes to us for sticking it out in the rain, but he was the hero.
Mum snuck a disposable camera in and managed to sneak a couple of pics before we were stopped. That’s how I will always remember him, looking right at us with that spectacular smile
Just last year Mum and I took a girls trip to Melbourne to see the David Bowie Is exhibition and I am so glad we did. It was incredible, everything I hoped it would be. We had a wonderful time.
Just yesterday (before I heard the news) I was blasting out his new album Blackstar, marveling at how he was still making such challenging, haunting yet gleeful music. That he was still experimenting, still twisting and changing, still messing with our heads.
When my sister told me last night I couldn’t breathe, it was like all the air had been sucked out of the room. If it wasn’t for Paddy letting me blubber all over him like a trooper I probably would have had an anxiety attack then and there.
I had to get out of the boat, I put my headphones on and walked round the waterfront playing Blackstar and finding new meaning in the lyrics. I oscillated between feeling completely numb and sobbing to myself like an idiot.
But even then I wasn’t alone. He was singing to me. It sounds silly but it felt like he was holding my hand.
I didn’t want to write this, but I feel a bit better now I have. I am also really touched by the messages I have been getting from family and friends who know how big the part he played in my life really was. I love that my facebook and twitter feeds are filled with Bowie, I love that everyone has a song that is special to them and they are all different ones. Everyone has a different place and a time where he really spoke to them and that makes me smile.
This isn’t goodbye Mr Bowie, Mr Stardust, Mr Jones. You will continue to be the soundtrack to me life and so many others. You have shaped who I am and that is never going to change.
You left the world on a spectacular note, you played us right to the end you clever boy. Keep on creating wherever you are, you’ll keep on inspiring down here.
‘This way or no way You know I’ll be free Just like that bluebird Now, ain’t that just like me?’
If the above upsets or offends you, you can stop reading, you have that right – a right that has been taken away from a bunch of young Kiwis who may want to read a book called Into the River .
For non-New Zealand readers, the book – an award-winning novel aimed at young adults – is at the center of an embarrassing furore after being removed from the shelves following a complaint by conservative lobby group Family First. The group is concerned about some of the book’s content, including drug taking, language and sexual themes.
While it hasn’t been officially ‘banned’ as such, at the moment it is illegal to buy it, sell it or loan it to one of your mates until a classification decision is made on it. In this case they are looking for an age restriction.
I’m not a huge bandwagon jumper, but I am on this one boots and all – and not just because I love books and am a writer myself.
Civil disobedience through silent reading – a protest reading of Into the River held in Wellington
Firstly, encouraging young people to read is a huge thing. It helps them learn about themselves, empathise with others and start thinking about their place in the world. If we can’t give our young people enough respect to make their own decisions about reading and learn for themselves what works for them and what doesn’t, that says a lot more about us than it does about them.
And how dumb do we think these kids actually are? Do people really think that they would never have thought about having sex or taking drugs if they hadn’t read about it in a book? What about the TV shows and films they are bombarded with? What about life? You can’t ban that.
All Family First is going to achieve is to make a book many kids had probably never heard of seem that much more attractive.
When I was in primary school a ‘helpful’ librarian wouldn’t let me take Anne of Avonlea from the school library because it had ‘adult themes’ – so I turned around and got it out of the local library instead.
The same librarian blocked me from taking out the Lord of the Rings trilogy because it was deemed too ‘difficult’. We had a ‘five finger word test’ where if you got more than five words wrong reading a passage aloud, you weren’t allowed to take that book out. (It was the 80s, they had some strange ideas.) And being Tolkien of course I had pronunciation problems and failed miserably. In the end I borrowed a copy from one of my Mum’s friends – gleefully announcing which page I was up to at silent reading time “page 1015 today Miss” (yes I was ‘that’ kid).
I pinched my Dad’s copy of Jaws (sorry Dad!) when I was about 10 or 11 because word around the school was that it had rude bits in it. I wasn’t particularly interested in the book but I got kudos from some of the standard 4 boys for having a copy. In the end I ended up secretly reading the whole thing and rather enjoyed it (and didn’t really understand the rude bits anyway).
Of course libraries and librarians have changed a lot now. They are still careful about what they lend to who but they are realists and their main goal is to encourage reading. As a school librarian said on Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report yesterday there are books available in school libraries that have much dodgier content – The Game of Thrones series for a start – good luck getting that banned!
I have read the supposedly dodgy bits of Into the River and didn’t find them terribly shocking. I had read much worse myself as a teen. In fact one of the scenes refers to a girl ‘floating away on a Lilo of pleasure’ which just made me giggle and want to go for a swim.
Funnily enough, despite the mind polluting material I read as a teen, when it came to writing my own book I ended up censoring myself. I wrote a chapter about utterly losing it around half way to Tonga and originally used the phrase “I want off this effing boat!” My editor came back with a simple suggestion – “why don’t you just say fuck?”. I was a little taken aback, but he had a point. At that point of the story, I was really really upset. There was no point in beating about the bush. Because there weren’t a lot of swears in the book when they did appear it gave the scene that much more impact. We weren’t going for shock value. It was a way of illustrating that something was really scary or frustrating.
Today a group of like-minded book lovers (including the fabulous NZ writer Elizabeth Knox) demonstrated the ridiculousness of the situation by holding a silent reading of Into the River in protest outside Wellington’s Unity Books . The books had to be read outside the store or the shop could be considered to be ‘displaying’ them and risk a fine. Those tempted to let somebody read their copy over their shoulder were also technically in the gun for $10,000.
Kiwi writer Elizabeth Knox takes a stand against censorship
Brown paper packaging – Sarah and Steph from the NZ Book Council smuggle in their own banned books
It was great to see such a good turn out on a grey Wellington day, fighting censorship and supporting a Kiwi writer.
Civil disobedience through reading is awesome.
Discovery through reading is awesome.
Reading is awesome.
And as far as I am concerned anyone who tries to fetter access to that is the enemy.
The last couple of weeks have been an amazing, exciting, terrifying blur.
I nervously presented my book-baby to the world and so far the reaction has been really positive.
I even had one lovely reviewer describe it as a “Monty Python sketch come to life” (see lovely review here) which is more than I could ever ask for!
Of course being me, I wasn’t going to do anything by halves (or the easy way) – so instead of one terrifying book launch, I decided to have three.
The first launch was at Wellington’s Unity Books – which is an amazing independent book store and my local. Having a launch there was the pinnacle of book-geekdom as far as I was concerned so I was absolutely rapt when they agreed to do it.
The elation turned to terror when I suddenly realised that I had signed myself up for getting up in front of a group of people and talking about sailing, the book and mental health.
They billed the thing as an ‘event’ which made me even more nervous. It sounded like people were expecting a song and dance routine!
Lunchtime ‘event’ – complete with book boat and sea monster!
It’s rather ironic, given that my day job involves advising people on how to present themselves to the public and deal with the media, that I am terrified of public speaking (and don’t even get me started on media interviews) myself.
I’m the person behind the notepad, I do writing, not talking.
Despite my misgivings, launch number 1 went really well. Aided largely by the fact that I was standing behind a desk so people couldn’t see how much my knees were shaking
Proud Book Mummy
This is the face of fear
We had a great crowd of people (they even had to get more chairs!) including my lovely supportive workmates (who totally weren’t frog-marched over from our office across the road) family members who I hadn’t seen for years, friends and even a few random strangers. The guys at the book store told me afterwards that getting randoms to a first book launch is quite a good sign!
The real star of the show however was my dress. A fabulous cat in the hat number designed by Catherine at Caff10. She’s a Hamilton-based clothing designer who does really funky, really reasonable stuff. Check it out for yourself .
Cat in the hat frock – courtesy of Caff10
The Captain and I (he scrubs up alright doesn’t he?)
Kirtlan whanau represent!
Signing my life away
I read a chapter called I Want My Cat! and got to sign lots of books for people, which was brilliant. Signing a copy of a book you wrote is the most amazing feeling which I am certain will never get old.
The folks at Unity were brilliant. They made me feel really welcome, helped calm my nerves and even did a really cool write-up afterwards which you can read here:
The second book launch was a necessity. A boatie book had to have a celebration at a boatie place so I did a signing and talk at the Evans Bay Yacht Club.
When I first told people I was having a launch at a yacht club they thought it would be really snobby, all boat shoes and suits.
Evan’s Bay isn’t like that though. As well as a base for learning to sail it is a working boat yard, full of some of the most amazing, down to earth people I have ever met.
The whole thing was a much more relaxed affair (the two beers and a wine I had before doing the talk may have gone some way to settle my nerves too). I read different chapter called Floating Trailer Trash about how yachties looked out for each other and I think that went down pretty well. I also got to sport another lovely Caff10 dress – this time covered in cat faces with love heart eyes (yes there is a theme here…)
Note the nerve steadying wine
As the yachties asked questions, heckled Paddy and gossiped with my parents I felt more and more at home. Several came up to me afterwards to share boating stories and a couple even quietly pulled me aside to say they lived with anxiety too and thanked me for speaking out.
I left with a huge smile on my face thinking “these are my people.”
Dad and I (with fab Caff10 dress)
Book launch number three had been in the making since before I’d even finished the book. I was on a regular pilgrimage down to Oamaru (where I lived and worked for a few years at the Oamaru Mail) when I came across a store called Adventure Books. It’s a gorgeous shop that specialises in adventure and travel books and it has its very own indoor boat. I immediately decided I had to have a launch there.
The boat at Adventure Books
A few Oamaru connections making a few inquiries later and it was all on. I even did an interview with the Oamaru Mail which felt very surreal I can tell you!
Oamaru Mail story
The plan was I would do a reading and a signing and take part in a ‘slide night’. It was the first time I had done my book spiel with pictures and I was a little nervous about how it would go, but I needn’t have worried. The shop was awesome, the crowd was awesome and having photos to talk to meant I could relax and ad-lib a bit more.
Lots of locals came up to chat and ask questions afterwards and it felt like a real success.
Bill from Adventure Books and I
Old friends
Another thing I got a kick out of was seeing my poster all around town, in cafes and shop windows and in the historic precinct. It felt pretty cool to be world-famous in Oamaru.
Nothing says you’ve made it like a poster in the historic precinct!
Next to World Book Day even!
Of course when in Oamaru you have to do as Oamaruvians do – so here are a few random steampunk pictures
Steampunk HQ train skulls
Infinity portal at Steampunk HQ
Steampunk HQ boat
And another shot of the Infinity Portal because it’s awesome!
So that has been my mad couple of weeks. Thanks so much to everyone who has been part of it – I can’t wait to see what comes next!
