Presents and Peregrinations

Christmas is coming and Aotearoa is entering summer.

Not, mind, without its usual capricious approach to the temperature. Wednesday was cardigan weather, yesterday was delightful, and today has been grossly hot with a howling norwester. On Sunday, it was relatively mild, and I seized the opportunity to do the last of my Christmas shopping.

First stop was Spotlight, where I grabbed an item for a Secret Santa, and a giant colouring-in poster with dinosaurs for my nephew. Gritting my teeth against Christmas traffic, I continued on to the parking lot under the Christchurch Art Gallery, then up the elevator to the gift shop there, where I purchased a paper model of a honey bee, also for my nephew. He's more of a bug boy than a dinosaur lad, but I think he'll like both.

After a momentary inner struggle, I also picked up a card with Francis A. Shurrock's Poppies for myself.

The problem with art gallery gift shops.

Next, my niece. I hit up Telling Tales, the kids off-shoot of Scorpio Books, and got her what I have termed the Rachael King starter pack - The Grimmelings and Violet and the Velvets #1.

Rachael is a bona fide rock goddess and horse girl

At that point I took a deep breath and plunged into the lunchtime crowds at Riverside Market, where I non-Christmasly acquired seeded sourdough and a restorative blueberry danish from Bellbird, and scored a big bag of hazelnuts in the shell from the Riverside Pantry. Those were a Christmas purchase--I needed to get my cake in the oven, and shelled hazelnuts have reached astronomical prices in the supermarket.

Emerging from the hot crowds of Riverside, I went down the block to the more air-conditioned, slightly more spacious Christchurch mainstay of the moneyed set, Ballantynes. I am not particularly moneyed, but I was looking for a small quantity of cake-appropriate whiskey and dried fruits. I found neither, so thanks for nothing, Ballys. Someone dropped a box of crystal wineglasses on the floor, with an a holiday-esque tinkle-smash.

And that was shopping over. I drifted past the bougie chocolate stands (a trap) and back outside to Cashel St where I found a place to eat my danish, and drink a takeaway coffee. And read Violet and the Velvets, taking advantage of the other good reason to buy books as gifts. (After I'd finished lunch and made sure my hands were food-free. I'm not a monster.)

It's a great book! I teared up a little in the final battle of the bands scene. Get it for your tweens, and anyone who sympathises with them, or for your own inner child with ADHD.

I went back to the art gallery and wandered through the excellent Whāia te Taniwha exhibit. My favourite piece was Aratohu, a film by Lisa Reihana charting the surreal (possibly hyperreal?) journey of a woman on a night of travel and transformation. It's gorgeous and clever and painful and the costumes are so good.

On Monday, I made candied orange and lemon peel because, I shit you not, there wasn't any of the weird plastic stuff in the supermarket, and I thought how hard can it be? And for once, it turned out, not that hard!

Also got me a whole glass of orange juice

In the afternoon, I cracked many hazelnuts. Every bad one felt like a personal affront. Every time I got the nut out unblemished, I felt triumph fill my soul.

I watched Charade while I did it. I love that Cary Grant (then 59) made the writers put in some dialogue about how his character felt very uncomfortable romancing the then-33-year-old Audrey Hepburn.

Monday was also the 1st of December, aka my completely arbitrary tree raising deadline. I got the tree out of its box and erected it, and decided that decoration could wait.

On Tuesday I strung lights, wound tinsel, and hung ornaments.

On Wednesday I chopped up candied peel, toasted hazelnuts, and baked two enormous Christmas cakes. My Christmas cake is basically a pound cake batter holding together an enormous quantity of fruit and nuts. I feed one with booze, and divide the other into halves, one half for me and the other to serve to people who don't like booze. I do not cover either with marzipan or royal icing. I like marzipan, but many don't, and royal icing is an excellent way to make a perfectly decent cake a sticky, sickly grotesquerie.

I forgot the mixed spice. It still tastes good.

It is now Friday. My last day of work at school for the year is next Tuesday, and my duties are largely confined to ushering and applauding at the junior prizegiving ceremonies. Then it's staff lunch, and six glorious weeks of summer, late night sunset walks, family visits, never getting up before 9 a.m. unless it's strictly necessary, lovely get-togethers at cafes and theatres, finding new and probably alcoholic ways to use all the citrus-flavoured simple syrup I have leftover from my candied peel experiment and lots and lots and lots of writing.

As soon as I can get over the Term Four Tireds, it's all going to be so much fun.

I hope that wherever you are, and whatever holidays you do or don't celebrate, that you're having fun too!

Love,

Karen.

That Healey Girl is the newsletter of Karen (or Kate) Healey, a romance and speculative fiction author who lives in Ōtautahi, New Zealand and shakes plots loose by wandering along the river. Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you think might like it!