It's Tuesday, so I must be in Auckland. I'm sitting at the desk in my niece's bedroom in Mt Albert, looking out the window at yellow flowers in a hanging basket, a blue sky, the tin roof of the house nextdoor, the top of a cabbage tree. My niece is in Germany right now. 'Don't mess up my room,' she ordered yesterday, via Skype, from her university hostel. Stuck on the wall behind her: a giant All Blacks/World Cup chart.
When the final was happening, I was on a flight over the Pacific, waiting for middle-of-the-night text updates from a member of the crew on our TV screens. My niece went to an Irish pub in Heidelberg to watch the final. After the game, she had an 'Irish breakfast' of bacon, eggs, sausages, toast and baked beans. I just tried, unsuccessfully, to go back to sleep.
Yesterday afternoon, when 100,000 crammed into Queen Street to watch the All Blacks parade by, I was asleep on my niece's bed in Mt Albert - like Goldilocks with dyed hair, jetlag, and too many SIM cards.
Apparently everything fun and festive to do with the World Cup has now closed or been trashed by drunken revellers, so I have nothing to distract me from the tasks at hand: promoting RANGATIRA. It's my fourth novel for Penguin NZ, and comes out next week. I have various interviews to do this week, and an article to write for a magazine, and arrangements for the launch to complete.
For those of you longing for dispatches from the Scudder Road Circus, TMiddy is off to St Louis while I'm away. He needs a break. The Rugby World Cup made him WAY too strung out.
He wore a different AB shirt for each game.
I'm off to my parents' place now. My father, who is about to turn 78, recently joined Facebook. This led to the following conversation between my mother and sister.
My mother: What is Facebook?
My sister: [gives long speech on how Facebook is a sort of noticeboard which allows you to post photographs, updates on your whereabouts, and information about what you're doing, all for your friends and family.]
My mother: What a good idea!
With my mother's endorsement, I believe that Facebook will now really start to take off.
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