In part, bodies have been on my mind because I have been observing my own body as it responds to a dietary experiment I have been conducting upon it. In a month it has grown lighter, pain from a long-standing inflammatory condition has all but disappeared, and so have the fluctuations in my mood and energy levels. It has been good to feel so well, to experience the plasticity and responsiveness of my body even though it is no longer young.

I have also been thinking about bodies because I have been looking through “Visible: 60 Women at 60”, a book of photographs of New Zealand women who are all the same age as I am. Wellington photographer, Jenny O’Connor who took the photographs and published the book earlier this year, is at the Arts Festival in Nelson this month to give a Workshop and to talk at the Page and Blackmore bookshop about the process of transforming creative ideas into a tangible outcomes. 

On the eve of her own sixtieth birthday O’Connor discovered that 1952, the year of her birth, was also the year with the highest birth rate in New Zealand’s history. She began to wonder how other women of her cohort felt about turning sixty. Her way of finding out was to invite sixty women, all aged sixty, to have their photographs taken with whatever clothing and props they desired.

Taken collectively the photographs are a portrait of a generation of New Zealand women who are daughters and sisters, wives, lovers and mothers but are also rescue workers, scientists, political activists, mountain climbers and artists. This generation, O’Connor says, “have done things that other generations of women have never done”.

The photographs are also of striking portraits of different quite individual women. They are of all physical types and cultural backgrounds and dressed in everything from body paint to Lycra, from hi-viz jacket to top hat and tails. Some wear hardly anything at all. Amongst the tools and talismans they have been photographed with are musical instruments, maps, bolts of cloth, flowers, a wheelchair, golf clubs and a jewelled skull.  

Valerie Smith who has “a rather odd disability” (her description) is perched on a high stool in pillbox hat and fur stole. She looks as pert and as elegant as the bone china tea cup she has in her hand. Jennifer Shand, stands hands on hips, in jodhpurs and suede knee-length riding boots. Sue Bradford wears a lumber jack shirt and jeans. Taape O’Reilly brandishes a mere. Wendi Wicks appears as enigmatic as the yellow-eyed black cat she holds in her arms, while Julia Bracegirdle is a one-breasted Amazon astride her bicycle. All of the women are strikingly visible in both a physical and psychological sense.  

It is common for women to feel less and less visible as their bodies age. I know a woman of a certain age who claims - only half-jokingly – that she is now so perfectly invisible that even automatic doors fail to register her existence. 

Sadly, many women have an ambiguous and not altogether happy relationship with their bodies. They feel uneasy when their body is the subject of attention, especially the often unforgiving male gaze of the camera. For many women, therefore, becoming invisible is a relief and a liberation. 

With the photographs in this book Jenny O’Connor has managed to give women a different kind of visibility, to become visible on their own terms. Being photographed for the book was certainly a liberating experience for me, and I suspect for all of Jenny’s other subjects. 

What made the experience so wonderful? Well, firstly, the eye gazing through the camera’s eye was female. The body behind the camera, and the body in front of it, had the shared experience of living sixty years in a female body with all its waxing and waning ambiguities.

Secondly, Jenny managed to create in her studio - a plain wood-floored space containing just cameras, lights and a blank backdrop and a box of dress-ups -  a safely theatrical atmosphere in which the private and inchoate and unexpressed rose effortlessly to the surface and could then be made visible on film.

This thinking about bodies – the joys and the pains of this vehicle in which we spend our lives – 
brings to mind a poem by U.S. poet Jane Kenyon:

At the Election Cafe on Saturday night, Head Chef John Key, aided by his sous chefs Judith, Cameron and Jason amongst others, served the country a plate of dirty politics fried in whale oil. This poisonous concoction, served on filthy plates covered in greasy fingerprints should have been one of the least appealing choices on the menu but we lapped it up. We should have seen red. But no, we turned around and handed New Zealand to the National Party on a silver platter. It’s no use crying over spilt milk, but on Saturday night I felt like crying. If I hadn’t been into my third week of eating a diet heavy on saturated fats and light on carbohydrates I might have felt much, much worse. 

As it was, there was only some sautéed pork belly and vegetables standing between me and the likely onset of a persistent depressive episode. More about the pork belly later, but first a bit of context. 

This week I am going to be digging my grave with my teeth. 

Or, just possibly, I am going to be eating food which will miraculously improve my health by reducing inflammation, stabilising my blood sugar levels, improving my mood and sleep, and give me better teeth and clearer skin into the bargain. 

Yes folks, I am joining the Clan of the Cave Person and eating a (liberal) version of the Paleo Diet, known in some circles as a low carb/high protein diet. This will involve eating large amounts of saturated fats (including butter, cream and cheese), meat, fish, leafy greens and a few nuts and seeds. I am turning my back on the poly-unsaturated fats, fruits and whole-grains so beloved of the New Zealand Heart Foundation. 

In a nutshell, the Paleo diet is restricted to the types of food eaten by hunter-gatherers of the Palaeolithic area. The advocates of the diet do not suggest that we abandon the supermarket for the savannah, but they do suggest that modern man and woman would be healthier eating only the foods which our distant forebears gathered and hunted: meat, nuts and berries.  They argue that as soon as our cave-dwelling ancestors began growing and consuming grains their health deteriorated. Humans got shorter and had more tooth decay. 

I'm off to Auckland. My carryon is stashed in the overhead locker. I'm buckled in and carefully not listening to the safety instruction from the air hostess about what to do in the “unlikely event” of an emergency. 

I'm doing this for two reasons. Firstly, it reminds me that I'm about to fly and that’s not good for my nerves. Secondly, given the lack of space between my seat and the one in front, it’s impossible to adopt the brace position she suggests: any panicked attempt to do so could only result in concussion. 

Besides which, I know that surviving a crash is unlikely whatever posture I assume - even if it’s on my knees, babbling. The only possible advantage of cracking your head on your seat tray is that you’ll be unconscious during the plummet earthward. But I digress. This isn’t meant to be about fear of flying. It’s meant to be about food ...