 Janet Hart
...what do you do, after, let’s say, having written a piece in what you think is straight nonfiction? (Well… with only few, minor embellishments!) How do you react when you submit the piece to a magazine - a light hearted essay, a story woven with dreams and desires round the behaviour of bidders at junk and antique auctions? And the local editor phones you. “Is this fiction?” |
| [
Read more... ]
|
|
Graham Reid Three days before he was sentenced on firearms charges, I was looking Tame Iti directly in the eye, his stare unblinking. The room was all but empty, just my wife and me, and his was the first face I'd seen when we walked in. Oddly enough, his familiar, assured but also rather gentle gaze seemed welcoming, given we were in the Amsterdam Tattoo Museum on the other side of the world while he, at the time, was in custody in Auckland... http://www.elsewhere.co.nz/travelstories/5209/amsterdam-holland-ink-on-skin/ |
|
Brad Page
...by nightfall the party was humming.
After an hour or so I found the pounding music, together with the fetid smell of alcohol and tobacco, quite overpowering. Just the time, I thought, to have a short time-out in ‘Brad’s room’.
As I turned on the light to my room I got the shock of my life. There were two large Fijian women having a menacing fight – a real all-in-brawl by any measure.
These ‘Pacific Amazons’ were huge in all respects, with gigantic muscles and thighs the size of tree-trunks. [Think Jonah Lomu in drag!] Next to them I felt like “Mr Puniverse”! Stepping between them was therefore not an option. Fortunately, the sight of me led to a brief cessation of hostilities. ‘What’s going on?” I asked in a squeaky voice. “We’re just fighting over who should sleep with you first.”... |
| [
Read more... ]
|
|
Two of our writers have enduring memories of The Cooks for reasons other than holidays. Here’s the latest from Janet Hart who was there in August…
|
| [
Read more... ]
|
| |
|
 Graham Reid
In these minutes before you realise how foolish you are being, you could imagine yourself as Martin Sheen going up-river to seek out the mad Marlon Brando: the prow of the longboat pushing through muddy water; humid jungle steaming its way down to the riverbanks; bowing branches and vines hanging so low you sometimes have to duck beneath them . . . The sudden and unexpected clearings, smoke from unknown fires exhaling through the jungle canopy, and a fleeting glimpse of a wooden hut on stilts. A shadowy figure disappearing between an impenetrable barricade of trees . . . Read more… http://www.elsewhere.co.nz/travelstories/5214/sarawak-borneo-hotel-headhunter/ |
|
Janet Hart What a generous welcome from Stella in Page and Blackmore’s book shop on a midwinter’s afternoon. Afternoon tea they said in the ad. Afternoon tea with biscuits - and read your favourite poem... |
| [
Read more... ]
|
|
Graham Reid A few kilometres south of the busy and breezy port town of Essaouira on Morocco's Atlantic coast is the dusty village of Diabat, famous for one thing. In mid 1969, Jimi Hendrix didn't go there. Not that the owner of the local cafe would admit to that. Quite the opposite in fact. Read more: http://www.elsewhere.co.nz/travelstories/5153/diabat-morocco-and-the-wind-cries-jimi/ |
|
Valerie Davies The plum tree outside the kitchen window is smothered in tiny pink blossoms. Yesterday bees were snuffling in it, scattering petals like pale confetti all over the steps and courtyard. Two monarch butterflies chased each other through the blossom, and a couple of tuis, ruffling their white neck ties, sucked the honey and plunged around from bird bath to plum tree, chasing each other in their spring mating games.... But best of all is the news which has sped round the village that some Southern Right whales have been seen. They’ve been making their way up the coast, and were seen in the bay further south, and are now heading up towards the bay north of us – a mother, nudging her calf along on the journey.
|
| [
Read more... ]
|
|
Kate Frost recounts the last days of her travels in South America |
| [
Read more... ]
|
|
|
<< Start < Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next > End >>
|
| Results 11 - 20 of 231 |
