Trendy But Casual

New Pictures

Photographs: preferable to words, I'm thinking, though that may be because I've had to write too many of words over the past month (one novel manuscript and a Listener article: the latter pushed me over the edge). I've changed my author picture to a charming self-portrait taken this evening in the Sargeson flat, complete with TV in the background. I did this in part because a student who I will not name (PETER WILEY) told me the previous picture made me look twenty years younger than I appeared in person, and must have been taken a very, very, very long time ago. In a more complimentary vein, Steve Braunias once referred to it as my "hot author bint" photo.

(The TV show in the background is a re-run of "Home Improvement". I was waiting for the ads to come on so I could phone my sister back, because she watches the show and I didn't want to interrupt her. This is a long way of saying: I do not watch "Home Improvement".)

Today I had my photo taken by an actual professional, Robert Trathen, because I need some new publicity shots, and because I wasn't very happy with the results of the photo shoot a couple of weeks ago. Rob took my photo last year for Sunday magazine, and I liked him a lot, not simply because he's taller than me. I have a bad track record with short photographers. They tend to shoot me from below, and get touchy when I ask them to stand on a step ladder (or similar). Also, some photographers see me and think: aging person, writer, not a model, not beautiful, not thin, looks twenty years older than photo on blog would lead one to believe, etc. And then they produce photos in which I either look a) old and serious; b) old and frumpy; or c) old and manic. If I express any disappointment, to the photographer or the person who commissioned the photo session, the response seems to be: what's the big deal? Writers aren't supposed to be attractive; they're certainly not supposed to be vain.

Some photographers don't seem to understand that despite my world-renowned glamour, I am not a model, and cannot strike numerous fierce poses in the manner of a protege of Tyra Banks; I cannot do different faces. I can only do my face! When I used to do voiceovers for commercials at BMG, to save the company money, one producer asked me to re-read the copy in an Irish accent. I had to explain I was an employee, not an actor.

Some photographers don't realise that non-models need some time to relax, so our eyes don't look anxious in all the photos. They don't realise that orders like "do something with your hands" makes me want to clasp them behind my back like a child in a china shop (well, my brother at any rate, as ordered by my mother). They don't realise that saying "this will only take a few minutes" makes me absolutely certain the finished product will be terrible, because I will still be looking stiff and anxious (see above). They don't realise that when they order me to laugh I will not look "natural"; I will look like a gummy, wrinkled hamster. They don't realise when I point out my good side and beg them not to shoot from below, it's because I know what the results will look like. Or maybe they DO realise all of the above, and they just don't care. That's why, perhaps, most of the best pictures of me are taken by T. Middy, because he gives a damn.

This is why I like Rob. He's an excellent photographer who takes time and care. He persuades rather than commands. He tells me when something makes me look slimmer, or softer, or warmer, or more natural. When we went through the pictures at the end of the session today, there were more than a dozen we were both really happy with. There were some pictures that will work really well for upcoming Buddle Findlay Sargeson Trust ads; there were some good head shots for book promotion. The photographs look like me, without looking like me at my worst. He seems to get that some writers WANT to look like a hot author bint, not a bedraggled harpie.

My Sister's Birthday

Yesterday we held a party to celebrate my sister's 50th birthday, so today we're all completely exhausted. I managed to put of starting any work today until it was almost dark outside.

The party was hosted by her good friends, Lindsey and Tony, who have a beautiful contemporary house on Marine Parade in Herne Bay. At any given point during the party, it seemed as though half the guests were there simply to nose around the house, with various tour groups traipsing around from room-to-room. I was trying to get trays of food out of the oven while two guys examined the stove, splashback, drawers, cupboard finishing, etc. I had to burn them with trays to get them out of my way.

The party managed to combine two typical New Zealand pastimes: nosing around open homes, and eating. As expected, everyone stuffed their faces as though they'd been fasting all week - even though the party was in the afternoon, after lunch and before dinner. We served up platter after platter of sushi; blinis with hot smoked salmon; risotto cakes; meatballs with barbecue sauce; rosti with various dips and toppings; and the red pepper tarts I've been making, to an increasingly approximate remembered recipe, for years. All were scoffed by our apparently near-starving guests. I had four young helpers, all of whom did an excellent job passing around food; my niece and her friend, Kate, were flopped on the sofas like rag dolls by the end of the party. My nephew tended bar, and was last seen heading off into the night to watch the rugby with his friends, a box of Coronas under his arm.

Lindsey has an amazing piano, so my brother-in-law was charged with hiring a pianist. He didn't just get any pianist: he got Billy Joel. Deryn was really good, especially when he played "Comfortably Numb," one of my favourite songs. (He didn't sing at all until the end, when he did "Piano Man," after which we managed to herd everyone but the serious overstayers out into the rain.)

I wish I had some photos, especially of the flowers by Leaf and Honey, which were SO beautiful, or the giant yummy chocolate-and-whiskey cake from Rocket Kitchen, on which my sister's complicated name was, fortunately, correctly spelled. But my camera was hidden away upstairs, and I was too busy feeding the starving millions. It reminded me of the endless weddings my parents used to attend, and their verdicts afterwards, which were always based on food, quality and quantity: "not much to eat" meant an unenjoyable wedding. Hopefully everyone enjoyed themselves. Some people enjoyed themselves so much they trampled chocolate cake all over the floor, which I enjoyed scraping off later.

My brother-in-law put together a slide show we played on my computer - pictures of my sister through the years. There were some of the two of us, and, in the absence of anything more recent, I include them here. The first two were taken in my grandparents' front garden, at the old house, now gone, on Ponsonby Road. The third is of us with my brother at Auckland Airport, I think, in the days when my mother forced us to dress nicely, in the manner of visitors from the Austrian Tirol. And the last is of the two of us at Fox Glacier in 1981, when I was 15 and she was 22, and I looked like a boy giant with a Lady Diana hair-do.