​Dear Bookshop, 

I love you.
I love you because you are full of words and people who love words.
I love you because I always feel at home in you.
I love you for the company you offer.
I love you because you contain multitudes.
I love you because you've got room for everybody.
I love you because you are a time capsule, a storehouse and a treasure chest. I love you because you are a mirror and a window.
I love you because you are a magnifying glass, a microscope and a telescope.
I love you because you contain maps and guidebooks and sign-posts.
I love you because you contain prayer and poetry.
​I love you because you contain much that is strange and fabulous and yet you remain so familiar.
I love you because you are full of questions. I love you because you are full of answers.
I love you because you are full of voices. I love you because you are full of listeners.  
I love you because you harbour surprises, and jokes, and silliness and general foolishness.  
I love you because bookshops have survived book-burnings and censorship, war and economic upheaval, and
​might survive digital technologies too.

I hope so.

Yours very faithfully

Ro

​A couple of years ago I wrote a profile of Hone Ma Heke AKA Lewis Stanton in this blog and in my Nelson Mail column.  He'd been a controversial figure for so long I was curious to find out more about him. At the time, he was camping with his Horse in Neale Park and so was actually a neighbour. 

Clive now camps out on Nelson's main street (minus horse and cart) and has become the subject of renewed controversy during the lead up to the City Council elections. This republished profile is my contribution to the debate.

​City dwellers like me do a lot of our living and working in cafes these days. They are neutral places to conduct business and provide a home away from home that is (in my case at least) far less cluttered and messy. They also have better coffee and magazines and someone else does the cooking and the dishes. 

​​I was thinking these thoughts on a brisk Nelson morning at the Red Gallery Cafe as I sat at a little Formica-topped table tucked into a corner next to a gently simmering oil-heater. On my table was my laptop, a celadon-blue plate bearing a perfect cheese scone and a coffee mug of the same delicate blue-green, sitting on a bright red saucer. There was a glazed turquoise jug of flowers on a neighbouring table, a patch of urban sky just visible through the window beside me. On the window ledge there was a pile of magazines and a clutch of colouring pencils jammed into a jar. Colour me happy - in my little cafe with still life.