Two weeks as a writer.

In which I settle into a long-awaited writers’ residency.

Day One.

It’s my first day at the Michael King Writers’ Centre, where I’ll be for the next two weeks as their early summer resident. There’s a photo of me in the hallway already, with a snippet about the book I am supposed to be writing. But I wrote the application for this residency well over a year ago and since then a much more urgent, fully formed idea has emerged, so I’ll be working on that instead. It’s another novel for children, set in the same universe as my last one, Red Rocks, which was a retelling of the Celtic selkie myth, transplanted to Wellington. This time I’m using a different creature from Scottish myth, in a different part of New Zealand.

Yesterday I arrived after a plane-bus-ferry-car journey, much of which was spent masked, which is a novelty for a South Island resident but which is business as usual for Aucklanders (I thank them for their service — wearing a mask sucks). In the evening I sat on the balcony overlooking the ocean, with a glass of wine and some dinner, listening to the calling tūi. A kākā also squawked past — a rarity I am told, so I like to think it’s Dad coming to check up on me.

Today I had the most old-school Auckland literary scene moment I could have hoped for. I walked the six minutes down the hill to the supermarket, and as I was leaving I bumped into jovial Kevin Ireland, who hasn’t changed much in the 20-odd years since he passed me in High Street one day after one of his well-watered literary lunches and shouted, “Your marvellous hair! It’s red, like a sunset!”

As we were talking, Shonagh Koea came walking up. The first time I met her was at the Frank Sargeson house, at what must have been the launch of Dad’s biography, so around 1995. While there, I sampled Lamora (disgusting), and caught Kendrick Smithyman as he fainted in front of me, just as everyone was leaving. When I was introduced to Shonagh, she grasped my arm and then made a joke about her wizened claw wrapped around my (then) young wrist. I swear she still looks exactly the same.

Today I made a major faux-pas and asked her what you should never ask a writer (someone once said it’s akin to asking someone “how’s the cancer?”): I asked her what she was writing at the moment. “Shopping lists,” she shot back immediately, her eyes narrowing.

Kevin’s neighbour, a woman with a neat blonde bob, chimed in, “I love being old. You can just give up.”

Day Three.

In my haste 17 years ago to leave Auckland, a city I grew up in and have spent most of my life, I forgot how beautiful it is. Coming in from the airport the other day the overwhelming sense I had was of lush greenery. Tropical palm trees as tall as houses in front yards. Streets lined with huge plane trees, susurrating in the wind. I mustn't have spent much time in Devonport, though I am from the North Shore (well, I spent ten years here growing up, so I’m not sure if I can say that any more — the Shore has well and truly been taken out of this girl). Devonport has a sort of casual affluence, verdancy, fecundity. The houses are unexpectedly huge, a few of them eccentric, shabby boltholes with rioting fruit trees, but most the crisp clean of new money and landscaping, pools, and ‘sympathetic’ renovations. I feel like I’m in a different, much more glamorous country from the one I usually live in.

Yesterday I moved into the writing studio with its cute sash window and a view out over the garden. A rosella hung upside down on the thick black stem of the harakeke flower, while waxeyes took a dip in the bird bath. Every now and then a thrush would arrive and the waxeyes would all get out of the pool, waiting on the nearby hydrangea and watching for it to leave.

The writing is going slowly but I can feel the momentum starting to build. Two weeks on my own seems too much like bliss and I am terrified I will fritter it away on the (necessary) trappings of falling into a novel — walks, sleeps, listening to music, reading. My cousin has lent me an e-bike and I feel an immense freedom whizzing around the quiet streets of Cheltenham, stopping to watch the calm water. I can’t quite work out where all the people are; I guess I’ll find out in the weekend.