When insomnia strikes, I listen to audio-books, avoiding thrillers which, if they do induce sleep, also tend to induce nightmares.

If you are looking for audiobooks to fall asleep to, you can’t do better than listen to stories written and read by Garrison Keillor about his (fictional) hometown of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota where nothing overtly dramatic ever happens.

Keillor, who has an unhurried delivery, begins and ends his stories with phrases which I’m now so familiar with I could … well … recite them in my sleep. “It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown” he says as begins another story about decent and hard-working folk and of small-town happenings which are both funny and full of pathos. “That’s all the news from my home town” he intones at the close of each tale, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." 

Actually, the citizens of Lake Wobegon are lugubrious folks of Norwegian extraction and Lutheran beliefs who are suspicious of happiness and overt expressions of emotion. Minnesota’s long, harsh winters only exacerbates this disinclination to light-heartedness: they gather for coffee and delicious homemade rhubarb pie in the town’s Chatterbox Cafe but they definitely don’t chatter.   

I thought of Lake Wobegon and the Chatterbox Cafe last week as I sat in a Westport cafe with a friend after a couple of days staying at a bach near Punakaiki, with a roaring fire and a view of the sea crashing spectacularly below. 

​In The Polysyllabic Spree, his account of a year-long reading binge, Nick Hornby declared that “books are simply better than anything else.” He gets no argument from me. The book, as companion, stimulant, and entertainment is without equal as far as I’m concerned: I belong to three libraries, I cache books around the house the way a dipsomaniac stashes alcohol and in emergencies I resort to reading the labels on jam jars and shampoo bottles.  

I and fellow book-mad locals borrow well over 2 million items from our libraries each year, fossick through 50 tonnes of books at the Founder’s Book Fair and buy enough books to keep local booksellers (somewhat) solvent. We also attend book festivals like the Volume Mapua Literary Festival last month, or the upcoming Page & Blackmore Pukapuka Talks (previously Readers and Writers) at the Nelson Arts Festival in October. 

Why? On the face of it the answer seems obvious: we like books. Don’t we simply go to book festivals the way rugby enthusiasts attend rugby matches, or music lovers attend concerts? 

A week after my thought-provoking interaction with a herd of cattle,
I witnessed an interesting overture of friendship between two non-human mammals: my dog Rosie and a ram.

​The dog and I were walking in Wakapuaka Cemetery, a cool and lovely retreat on a hot summer’s day with banks of purple agapanthus in bloom, and a view over the sea and the Boulder Bank. 

A flock of sheep were grazing in a field behind a double wire fence. All of the sheep - except a big ram - moved nervously up the hillside at our approach.

​My dog seemed quietly interested in the ram and so I allowed her - still on her lead - to sniff her way towards it. 
​The ram watched the dog for a moment, and then to my great surprise, leaned awkwardly down on one shoulder so he could get closer to the dog.  

​My dog responded by calmly putting her head through the wire of the fence and touching the ram's nose with her own. The two animals communed through the fence like that for a long, long time, noses touching, exchanging breaths. 

It wasn’t until I found myself to be the subject of the frank, inquisitive gaze of a herd of cattle, that I realised how casually I assume that I am always the observer, not the observed, the watcher not the watched. 

At the time, I was walking with my kind ex-husband around the perimeter of his small piece of rural paradise in Mahana which he’s planted entirely in trees, including sugar maples.

Our ramble began in deep tree-shade. Drifts of fallen leaves and pine needles crunched under our feet. Then, as  we reached the back fence-line we stepped from shadow into sunlight and a bucolic landscape worthy of a Constable painting: a gently rolling patchwork of fields, small clusters of trees, the roofs of half-hidden houses and farm sheds, and tracks created by the movement of animals and humans over generations.

A small herd of young steers grazed in the neighbouring field. We paused taking in this appealingly domesticated landscape which, for us, included these handsome, sturdy animals. And then almost imperceptibly, the cattle stopped being simply part of the landscape ... 

​​Mothering has got a whole lot more complicated since I became a mother in the mid-1980s. The ante seems to have been upped while I’ve been otherwise occupied and wondering vaguely if my daughter would have children, and  what it would be like to be a grandmother.  

I noted the rise of the Yummy Mummy, grateful that I got my mothering in before she appeared in the centre-folds of women’s magazines, baking cupcakes from quaint retro recipes, and serving herself up just like a cupcake - sweet, highly decorated and very edible. So delectable did the Yummy Mummy seem that laddish social media soon featured references to MILFs. Google MILF. It’s not nice. 

When I was a young mother you were still allowed stretch marks, exhaustion and rumpled, dribble-stained clothing. If you whipped up a batch of Anzac biscuits, this was not understood to be a culinary triumph, or a piece of vintage whimsy. You weren’t expected to look fabulous while cooking or spooning mashed vegetables into a reluctant tot. It was accepted that most young mothers don’t feel glamorous or sexy, they mostly feel tired and emotionally preoccupied with their baby.  I remember being too scared to look “down there” for weeks after giving birth, fearful that I’d be wearing my insides on the outside for the rest of my life. Sexy this was not. 

There’s a lot of formication going on at my place at the moment. It’s a condition which should not be confused with fornication, which is something quite different (if you don’t appreciate just how different, the right kind of therapy will improve your sex life beyond your wildest dreams).

​Formication, from the Latin for ant, is the feeling that insects are crawling over your skin, a tactile hallucination which can be a symptom of fibromyalgia, Parkinson’s disease, drug withdrawal or severe anxiety.
 
In my case, it isn’t the anxiety that’s causing the formication. It’s the formication that’s causing the anxiety. And it’s no hallucination. Over the last month or so, implacable hordes of Argentinian ants have invaded my home.

It’s bad enough to find them in the dog’s bowl, the microwave, or swarming on the bench. It’s really infuriating to have them crawling and nipping at you in bed, or clambering up your arms and down your neck when you are innocently reading a book or working at the computer. 

In an effort to find a peaceful solution - Donald Trump take note - I’ve circulated the following Open Letter in English and Spanish to all ants:

​It's a Monday at the Classic Comedy Club in mid-town Auckland. It's the night when beginner comedians gather to test their comedic talents in front of a live audience.

Comedy Director, Geoffrey Scott Blanks, who was made an Officer of the NZ Order of Merit for his services to comedy in the last Queen’s Birthday Honours is busy selling tickets to the 2-hour “Raw” show in the club’s bustling foyer.

​At 8pm the doors to the high-ceilinged performance space swing open. A friendly usher directs us to seats clustered around tables, cabaret-style. Candles flicker on each table. The red brick walls are hung with posters advertising comedy shows past and present. There are a few grey heads in the audience, but it’s a youngish crowd and the atmosphere is warm and convivial. 

I'm on my own so I’m pleased to be seated at a table with four other women with whom it’s easy to strike up a conversation.  It turns out they aren’t just here for laughs - they have skin in the game. The young woman on my left, has Nihilist printed on her T-shirt and Hysterical Feminist on her tote bag. She's here to suss out the comedy scene before making a leap from sit-down wannabe, to stand-up comedian. ​