More new pictures

Yesterday a reporter and photographer from The Aucklander, a free community paper delivered every Thursday with the New Zealand Herald, came around to take my photo. They're doing a piece on the ongoing problem of drinking in city parks. We found a nice smashed sign (one of the Alcohol Ban in the CBD notices, naturally) and, tucked into a tree, an empty bottle of Jim Beam. Much later, ie during the middle of the night, I was woken by guys shouting outside my window, hurling bottles into one of the art gallery's trash cans. I guess I could have leaned out the window and reminded them that it was not a recycling bin ... but I did not. At least they didn't leave them lying around on the lane, like everyone else does.

A different picture of me appeared in the western edition of yesterday's Aucklander; it's a happier piece about how I'm hard at work here in the Sargeson flat, and the photo shows me in the window, semi-smiling. The window's quite low, so I had to kneel on the floor. Maybe that's why I was only semi-smiling, or maybe it was because I knew, intuitively, the article would refer to my first novel as "Beauty Queen" rather than Queen of Beauty.

Meanwhile, on another continent, T. Middy is showing troubling signs of having been left home alone too long. We've been talking online via Adium, the symbol for which is a wild-eyed green duck. Despite allegedly being busy at work, TM found time to download and print a picture of the duck, enlarge it, cut it out, and pose for a computer shot with his new friend, looking eerily similar in expression.

This is why I have to go back to New Orleans next weekend for a quick visit, to restore sanity.

Comments

[Grendel]

That's a cry for help if I ever saw one. And I would have thought Kiwis had better taste in liquor.

[Brando]

If you need an intervention, we can fly down. I will bring good Scotch.