Five quick questions
1 What are you most proud of with Masher?
I’m delighted with so many things about it: that I wrote it over a month, that I got a publishing contract, that I worked with a fantastic team on it, that the cover has embossing and over glossing! But really, I think the biggest thing is that everyone who read it in its first drafts laughed out loud. I also made an actual glove puppet of Masher (the glove puppet) in lockdown and I am very proud of him, he will be visiting many schools with me.
2 Are school visits as much fun as they sound?
I love school visits and I have missed them so much during Covid. The kids are totally gorgeous, every single one of them, and we have lots of laughter and keen engagement.
The funniest visit for different reasons was when I turned up at a primary school and there was no one to meet me, so I made my way to the library. The librarian seemed quite surprised that I wanted to set up there and asked if that was usually the case. I assured her it was and started taking out my books. The penny dropped and all was explained at morning tea time over coffee and sausage rolls when the visiting health nurse (there to do a head lice inspection) said she’d never been met with a powhiri at the school gates before and smiling eager students willing to carry her bags. I guess all middle-aged women look the same to 10-year-olds; she offered to trade jobs.
3 You have been a World of Wearable Arts finalist 27 times. Which of your creations was the most challenging?
Every piece of mine has an emotional challenge and deep story attached to it, but the most exhausting one had to be Lady Curiosity, inspired by Rachael King’s brilliant novel Magpie Hall. It’s all very well to
have a great idea but sometimes the execution can have you tearing your hair out. It was an engineering nightmare. I glued entire parts upside down late at night only to have to rip them out the next day. Transferred images didn’t stick, varnish didn’t dry. The packaging up of it to send to Nelson for judging had me lying in a heap on the floor. But she did me proud by winning prizes and then going on tour around the world for five years in international exhibitions. So I forgive her everything.
4
Of your creative pursuits — illustrating, writing, costuming and prop-making — which is dearest to you?
Choose? How can I choose? They are all connected! My first love was all of those things — as a child I wrote, I drew and I made things. Drawing got me the biggest compliments and an illustration career earlier in my life; time and practice gave me technical skills in costuming and props. But writing is a tough one, you put your words out there for everyone to judge. There are so many knock-backs — for every novel published there are at least three you have written that are dear to your heart. For every picture book published there are a dozen manuscripts rejected. It’s easy to get discouraged, you have to be very thickskinned to be a writer but I don’t know any who are, we all take it very personally. I can paint and draw my way out of rejection though, so I’m lucky.
5
I am one of those mad converts. I used to listen to them on RNZ talking about it and thinking to myself, “Yeah right, like I’d get in the water if it wasn’t midsummer and waaaay up north, or Rarotonga even.” But here I am in Wellington, still bathing in May, the water is 15C and dropping. I’ve been doing this since December and haven’t stopped. There’s a group I belong to who meet two mornings a week before work in Seatoun and I dip locally at Hataitai Beach on other days. We go whatever the weather, in togs, non-wetsuit. This Covid era has left a lot of people feeling quite powerless over their lives for one reason or another and, I tell you, wading into cold water and dipping in up to your neck and treading water just out of reach of the sandy bottom gives you a feeling of power over yourself like nothing else. Your arms start to warm up, you laugh in the choppy waves or sigh with the beauty of calm water, you give thanks to Tangaroa. I get out, wrap up warm and pour coffee from my Thermos and smile from ear to ear all the way home.
You are a cold-water bather. People swear by this — what does it do for you?