Helen Lehndorf

Tag: book-review

  • Making the most of 24 hours in Carterton

    (Sign in Paul Melser’s yard. It looks convincingly like a NZ street sign but Paul’s wife told me an artist friend made it for them.)

    I intended to write this last November after appearing at Wairarapa Word but a week after this event I suddenly lost my dear friend, a close family member got very ill and everything ‘normal’ was dropped.

    I thought I’d write about it now, though, because it was a delightful dash down to Carterton and I also want to publicly acknowledge Wairarapa Word for their kind invitation.

    I was very excited to be a double-bill with the inimitable force of nature that is Jo Randerson under the title:

    Jo’s latest book ‘Secret Art Powers’ is a must for any creative person. It’s full of inspiration, pep talks and courage and is a big boost to the spirits if you’re flagging. I read it before the event which made me all the more excited to be working alongside Jo.

    While Carterton is close enough to Palmerston North that we could have ‘down and back-ed’ the journey, I booked us an Air BnB for the night so we could do a few touristy things as well.

    There had been a massive storm shortly before Fraser and I drove down for the event and all the way along the road were giant wind-blown trees, their massive roots in the air. There were many farm workers out, chainsawing the felled trees, there were many post-storm burn-ups happening. It gave the trip quite a spooky feeling.

    I love studio pottery and it is what we mostly use as dinnerware in the kitchen so we always stop in at Paul Melser Pottery just south of Masterton if the studio is open.

    I love his studio shop with it’s glass walls. Peace washes over me there.

    I forgot to take a picture of our purchases -we got a wonky cup and a bowl- but here’s a glimpse of Paul’s shop. It’s a little off the beaten track but definitely worth the trip:

    Once we arrived at Carterton, we popped into Aunt Ginger’s Cafe which a Wairarapa friend recommended. It’s a very good spot. Hearty, flavourful food and a great vibe with vintage kitchen ephemera providing a feast for the eyes:

    (Above: cute details from Aunt Ginger’s Cafe in Carterton.)

    Apparently Carterton has a long association with daffodils and has an annual daffodil festival. This pretty street art reflects that.

    I was starting to get the impression that everything Carterton is sweet and characterful and the little Air BnB carried on that impression. It was a dear tiny cottage and a fun place to lay our heads for the night.

    The next morning we looked up somewhere to get a dose of forest and found a nearby reserve which has a short loop track which we took slowly, sitting along the way to enjoy the manifold native birds.

    Below: l love the font on the (1980s?) sign for the reserve:

    Thank you, John Fensham, for your thoughtful gift to nature lovers.

    Above: My travel companion having a sit amongst the trees.

    After our bush wander, it was time to lunch and then Wairarapa Word.

    Meeting Jo was wonderful and we soon realised we had a similar energy and way of spontaneous riffing. We fed on one another’s rebel spirits and the talk ended up being feisty, energetic call-to-action. Wairarapa Word director Madeleine Slavick must have spotted something simpatico in Jo and I. Afterwards, I felt it had been a good pairing.

    Above: Afterwards, Madeleine took this photograph for us. How lovely, hey?

    Here’s a photo of Jo and I with Madeleine and some of the lovely audience members.

    (Above: front left is Jo, then me in the green pants, then local legend, Helen Dew (more on her later) and Madeleine is behind Helen Dew wearing black.)

    Afterwards, Wairarapa Word took Jo and I out for Turkish food before we headed home. Sitting next to me was a wonderfully opinionated and eccentric man with a long white beard. I had a feeling from the way he conducted himself he must be some kind of artist and as our conversation carried on it transpired he was Burton Silver! aka, a very fun dinner companion.

    Madeleine has written a fantastic book about her hometown of Carterton featuring short snapshot like stories and her beautiful photography. It’s a sardonic, moving and insightful book which really captures small town New Zealand life.

    I came away with a warm impression of Carterton and it’s residents. It also reinforced my firm belief that you don’t have to travel far to have an adventure.

    Big belated thank you to Madeleine and the Wairarapa Word committee, to Almo’s Books for selling books at the event, and to Jo Randerson for a heartfelt and incendiary riffing!

  • somehow, ‘a forager’s life’ is two

    On March 18 my book ‘A Forager’s Life’ turned two!

    The two years since it emerged into the world have been, frankly, mad.

    I’m a person who enjoys a slow, simple life and lots of huge (for me, anyway) and exciting things happened with the book since it’s release. In this space, I’m going to share some of the things that happened…even though they are old news in terms of the pace of the online world. They are still very much with me.

    (Above: I threw a morning tea for the staff at my wonderful local bookshop, Bruce McKenzie Books on the day the books arrived in store, March 2023.)

    I was unkind to myself and, freaking out about money once my book manuscript was delivered, started a new job before the book even came out. At the same time, my younger son who has a disability was finishing high school and in a massive phase of transition into post-school life. I had underestimated how intense of this phase would be for him, resulting in a high-pressured time where I was trying to enjoy the opportunities the book bought my way, learn and hold down a new job and be there for the kid. Oof.

    It was all too much and, coupled with the NZ government’s slashes to disability support last year, I only lasted two years in the job before something had to give and I left it so I could adequately look after my boy.

    Now I’m out the other side of the intense part of the booky fizz, the job debacle, am still navigating the kid’s shaky steps into adulthood (I guess I always will be), plus I’m in the midst of the intense mind/body/spirit shake up that is menopause.

    I’m sitting here, a bit dishevelled, trying to put myself back together. It’s been a very strange time of immense, beautiful highs and difficult, fractious lows. (Then there’s everything going on in the world beyond my front door where the world appears to have gone completely mad.) Therefore, I’m hoping this winter is very boring and nesty so I can read mountains of books beside the fire and journal a lot (on paper and here) and let it all integrate into me at a pace I can cope with.

    So, interspersed with posts about other things, there will be the occasional retrospective post my experiences with ‘Forager’s’.

    I hope it’s interesting for you to read about such things from a writer’s perspective? As writers we are supposed to act very cool and nonchalant about the occasionally great things that can happen if you write something that people respond to…but I have never managed to be cool…I’m an awkward, nerdy, sensitive person who gets overwhelmed easily. I’m not at all nonchalant…I get very revved up about exciting things. In fact I get excited about non-exciting things, like the shape of a dried fennel seed head, finding a particularly niche-to-me second-hand book, or sampling from a pan of sun-ripened then slow roasted cherry tomatoes.

    & I know blogging is long dead but (see above point about not being very cool) however I’m hoping if I write here, the right people will find me, despite claims that blogging and personal websites have been made irrelevant by speedy old social media and peoples’ diminishing attention spans. ‘The right people’ are folks who like reading longer form than an Instagram caption and appreciate the reedy, faint voice of a shaky woman trying to lure kindred people into giving their precious attention to her personal website rather than further furnishing the pockets of tech billionaires.

    If that’s you, warmest of welcomes aboard.

    (Do leave comments if you feel moved to. I read everything and promise to respond.)