Taste of Kiwi: Blog of Author Shelley Munro

This story hit the news in New Zealand yesterday. An Auckland primary school has decided to adhere strictly to the new national healthy eating guidelines and will ban birthday cakes from the school.

My initial reaction was WHAT???? How can they take this polictical correctness and adherence to stupid rules so far? What harm does a slice of birthday cake do to a kid? Frankly, I was horrified.

I happened to catch an interview with the school principal on the news last night. Yes, it’s true. They are banning birthday cakes from the school and part of the reason is because they believe in the healthy eating guidelines. However, the main reason is the entire birthday cake thing has turned into an expensive competition between parents. Evidently the kids prefer expensive cakes purchased from a bakery and when the cake needs to be big enough to feed 30 children, that means serious money. Some parents couldn’t afford to pay for a cake and others, with busy lives, didn’t have time to bake a cake. The school took the decision to ban all cakes and remove the extra expensive from the parents’ budget, because after all, educating a child these days is expensive enough without adding extras.

The owner of the local bakery was also interviewed. Won’t it cut into profits? the reporter asked. No, not really. Parents still purchased cakes from her bakery but the cakes were shared after school with close friends and family. Wasn’t that what birthdays were about? No, the bakery owner wasn’t concerned in the slightest.

After hearing all this, I was much happier, but I notice that most of the media still chose to highlight the healthy food guidelines rather than the commonsense rationale behind the decision.

You can read the story here.

We never had birthday cake at school. We had after-school parties where we invited our friends. What do you do with regard to birthday cakes?

A kakapo is a New Zealand flightless parrot. It’s an endangered species because of its vulnerability to predators and of course, the inroads made by man into the parrots’ natural habitat. Until this week there were only 86 living kakapo but after a bumper breeding season five chicks have hatched on Codfish Island (a sanctuary for the birds). Kakapo need special conditions to breed and plentiful food, which means that not every year is great for breeding. The last good year was 2005. Here’s the story here plus a photo of a kakapo.

In a small promo, I included the kakapo in my very first book, Aislyn. The baddies were conducting a scavenger hunt and one of the items they needed to collect was a rare kakapo egg.

In writing news I wrote the last words on my first draft of another Middlemarch story. It’s tentatively called Cat Burglar. I’m going to let it sit for a couple of weeks and start yet another Middlemarch tale – this time it’s Leticia’s story, a character from Stray Cat Strut. I’m really thrilled with my progress, because after stopping the Sven challenge and taking almost a week off writing, I’ve still managed to write 50,000 words.

Tomorrow Christina Phillips is my guest blogger and we’re giving away a prize. I hope you’ll pop back to say hello.

I’ve been thinking about women and politics recently – for two reasons. One, Hillary Clinton is currently campaigning and two, New Zealand has elections this year. Our current prime minister is Helen Clark. Ms. Clark is New Zealand’s second female prime minister.

New Zealand’s ten-dollar note bears a picture of Kate Sheppard. To be honest, I don’t ever remember learning about her in history at school, and I actually liked history so I’m sure I didn’t forget. But Kate Sheppard is an important New Zealand figure and her efforts were far reaching.

Kate Sheppard was the driving force behind obtaining the vote for women in New Zealand. For a little country we’re very progressive. We were the first country in the world to award women the legal right to vote. Before 1893 only men over the age of 21 could vote.

Kate Sheppard was born in Liverpool, England and came to New Zealand in 1869 with her mother and other family members. When she was 24 years old she married Walter Allen Sheppard, a storekeeper in Christchurch.

In 1885 she joined the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. (An organisation of women formed to work towards moderation or restraint in things, especially drinking alcohol.) Kate became the leader of the fight to win the right for women to vote in elections. She organised petitions to Parliament asking for the right to vote for women and persuaded Sir John Hall, a leading member of Parliament, to support them. She wrote a pamphlet called Ten reasons why the women of New Zealand should vote to support the campaign. The suffrage bills were defeated in Parliament in 1888, 1891 and 1892, but despite this Kate continued the campaign for the vote. She used public meetings and letters to the newspapers to gather support, and her last petition to Parliament had nearly 32, 000 signatures on it.

Finally, on 19 September 1893 women were finally given the right to vote in elections. When the next general election was held ten weeks later, 65% of New Zealand women over 21 voted. New Zealand had become the first country in which all women had the right to vote.

Kate Sheppard later travelled overseas to England and America to help the campaigns there. She died in July 1934.

Source: Christchurch City Library

I think Kate Sheppard was an amazing woman. She believed women should take part in society and politics, rather than stay in the home and she believed that woman could not make any of the changes needed in society without first winning the right to vote.

So next time there’s an election, no matter how big or small, think of Kate Sheppard and her friends who helped women world-wide obtain the right to vote. Exercise your right. Vote and have your say.

Ideas – they come in the strangest places at the funniest times. A writer’s life is never dull that’s for sure!

Mr. Munro and I were catching an Air New Zealand flight from San Francisco to Auckland. We hadn’t been on the plane long and I was settled back with my inflight magazine. It’s always the first thing I read when I get on any plane since they have interesting travel articles. Air New Zealand have this new products section and one of the items shown was a vibrating condom.

“Oh,” I said to hubby in a loud voice. “Look!” (and I have to point out hubby is always growling at me for muttering. I don’t but that’s another story. Anyhow, I spoke rather loudly.)

“What?” he asked.

“It’s a vibrating condom. Hmmm, I wonder how they test them?”

“Shush!” he said glancing at our neighbors who WERE looking at us.

“But it’s a vibrating condom!” I said. “Let’s buy one. How do you think they test them? Do you think people test them?” I asked, full of questions. The muse was at a full gallop, considering all the possibilities.

“Shush,” hubby said again. “I’m trying to read.”

“Oh, but don’t you think it would make a great story?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“All right,” I said, a trifle grumpy now. “I’ll think to myself about how they test the vibrating condom.”

“Good idea,” hubby said.

So, I did. All the way back to New Zealand I thought about condoms and how they’d be tested. I thought about the possibilities of a girl inheriting a condom company and the rest, as they say, is history. I wrote Fancy Free, a story about a girl who inherits a condom company and is heavily involved in testing…

If you’d like to learn how my twisted mind works Fancy Free releases from Ellora’s Cave on 7 March 2008 – next Friday!! And meantime, if you’d like to read the blurb and excerpt go here.

In honor of my recent visit to Wellington, THIRTEEN THINGS about WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND.

1. Wellington is the captial of New Zealand.

2. It is VERY hilly, even more so than Auckland and San Francisco. After a day spent exploring, I woke up the next day with sore thigh muscles. No need to buy a thigh master, just visit Wellington!

3. The city of Wellington is known for its wind. Evidently this is because of its position to Cook Strait. (the passage of water between the North and South Islands of New Zealand. The prevailing North-West winds accelerate through the strait giving 173 days with winds greater than 60kph (32 knots) each year on average.

4. There’s an inland island rare bird sanctuary only 5 minutes drive from the center of Wellington, which is pretty amazing. See yesterday’s post.

5. The parliament buildings are known as the Beehive because of their shape. The Beehive is the newer parliament buildings while the old building is the elegant one alongside.

6. People seem to build their houses on top of hills and they balance precariously. Many of the homes are original Victorian buildings.

7. Wellington is home to Peter Jackson and sometimes called Wellywood.

8. Our national musuem Te Papa is in Wellington. My favorite part was about our animals and I really enjoyed the section on our geology. Mr. Munro and I went into the earthquake simulation, which was amazing – an old building that shook and trembled. The earth moved! In fact, the earth kept moving for a while after we left. It was neat but weird, too.

This is one of the Maori panels plus a model of a moa and our local hawk. Both birds are extinct now but were the largest birds in the world at the time.

9. Wellington sits on a fault line and they have lots of earthquakes.

10. Mt. Victoria gives a scenic view of the city and harbor. I’m glad we could drive up rather than walking! This is me up the top of Mt. Victoria.

11. There are quite a few vineyards around. We went to Martinborough – a relief to walk around here since it was flat!!

12. All the vineyards are close to town. We hired bikes and rode around the vineyards.

13. And we stopped to have lunch and sample some of the wines. This is me relaxing at lunch. We rode around 10kms on our bikes before heading back to the hotel to soak in a spa bath. A very relaxing weekend.

During our recent trip to Wellington we visited the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary. As the name suggests, it’s a special sanctuary for some of our endangered native birds. The 225 hectare site includes two dams that used to supply the city of Wellington with water. It was decided that the dams might break during an earthquake and a decision was made to lower the dams and use the area as an inland island. The first step was to fence the area with pest free fences.

These fences stop possums, stoats, weasels, ferrets, rats and mice from entering the sanctuary. Once the fences were installed a pest-control plan was put in place. A year later all 13 major pests in the area were fully eradicated. Thousands of native trees were planted (the area was previously all in pine) and this planting continues. The long-term vision for the project is to return the area to its original undisturbed state and this will take around 500 years.

Some of New Zealand’s endangered wildlife has been released in the pest-free area including brown teal ducks, the little spotted kiwi, giant wetas, tuatara, stitchbird, North Island saddleback, weka, North Island robin and bellbirds to name a few.

On entry to the sanctuary staff checked my bag for mice, cats, rats and other pests. Thankfully, my bag was found pest-free! I know I would have been more shocked than anyone if a mouse had jumped out. We explored some of the many paths, pausing to peer through the treetops searching for birds.

We sighted saddlebacks and bellbirds, lots of tuis and fantails as well as some kaka (NZ variety of parrot). I’d never seen kaka up close so was fascinated to see them at the feeding stations.

This photo shows two kaka. They’re a green parrot and blend in quite well with the trees, although they’re easy enough to spot because they make an awful screechy noise.

I would have loved to see a tuatara but since it was overcast they were all in their burrows, but we saw native fish and green geckos along with lots of our songbirds.

They also do a nocturnal tour where you can hear the evening song before the birds go to sleep and then go out hunting for the nocturnal kiwi. Maybe we’ll do this during another time. I’d highly recommend a visit to this sanctuary, if you’re ever down this end of the world.

I’m off for a long weekend. Hubby and I are hitting Wellington, the capital of New Zealand and also Martinborough. Some of you might recall Lily and Alex from Never Send a Dog to do a Woman’s Job visited both places…

…which, leads in nicely to the fact that I’m the Spotlight Author at Author Island today. I’m giving away a print copy of Romancing the Alien.

How are you spending your weekend?

The well-known game Monopoly is going global with the World Edition launching soon. Currently there’s a worldwide online voting campaign to select which cities will fill the 20 available spots on the monopoly board. Queenstown, located in the South Island of New Zealand, is the only New Zealand city on the leaderboard and is competing with 68 other finalists for a spot.

I love Queenstown. It’s not far from where the fictional Mitchell family lives (my Middlemarch series) and my next release in this series, ASSASSIN is partially set in Queenstown. It’s a tourist mecca in both summer and winter, the town dominated by the beautiful lake Wakatipu and the majestic Remarkables mountain range. This photo was taken from the gondola on the way up to our dinner at the hilltop restaurant.

Queenstown is currently sitting in 18th place.

Vote for your favorites here.

Which cities do you think should be on the World Edition of monopoly?

I’m guest blogging over at JL Wilson’s Crimespace blog today.

Here’s the link.

The weta – it’s a large and primitive insect, native to New Zealand. The reason I chose to write about wetas today is so more people know what they are. When I used a weta reference in my book Talking Dogs, Aliens and Purple People Eaters my editor didn’t know what I was talking about and I had to rewrite slightly to describe a weta as a prehistoric cricket-like insect.

There are five broad groups of weta:

1. Tree weta
2. Ground weta
3. Cave weta
4. Giant weta
5. Tusked weta

Wetas are nocturnal and live in a variety of habitats including grassland, scrub land, forests and caves. They live under stones and in rotten logs or in pre-formed burrows in trees.

They are mainly herbivores in the wild but are known to eat other insects. They can bite but are not poisonous. Species of weta are still being discovered and several are endangered. In the wild they were traditionally eaten by the tuatara (a prehistoric reptile native to NZ) but these days many are destroyed by rats, cats and dogs and of course, humans encroaching on their habitat.

The weta sheds its exoskeleton when moulting.

At 18 months the male weta selects a female and they spend time together in the male’s territory. (Romance in the insect world!)

At around two years old the female will lay 100 – 300 eggs. The parents die before the weta eggs hatch 3 – 5 months later.

The Department of Conservation in New Zealand is currently involved in weta breeding programs and translocation to safe sites such as protected islands like Tiritiri Matangi and Little Barrier Island in the Hauraki Gulf. The weta respond well to a captive breeding program.

The following photo is of a giant weta.

I’ve never seen a giant weta but have personal experience with both tree and cave wetas. We often find tree wetas in our garden and will return them to live in peace. They can nip and look creepy but I don’t mind them. My experience with cave wetas is a bit more spooky. When I was a kid my girlfriend lived on a farm with limestone caves. It was a favorite pastime to visit the caves and wander through them with a candle and maybe a torch to search for stalactites, stalagmites and glow worms. When I think about our cave visits now I can see how dangerous it was but for us it was an adventure – an hour or two of wandering through pristine caves. One day we discovered a new tunnel and were all set to charge into it to explore. I happened to shine the torch over the ceiling and it was covered with huge cave wetas! Really covered. I think I let out a screech and dropped the torch and we all decided to explore another part of the cave. I also took to checking my gumboots carefully and shaking vigorously before I put my feet in them. This lasted for a few weeks until the initial horror passed. I’ve never been bitten by a weta but I’m always careful not to get too close either. I can appreciate them from a distance.

How are you with insects? Do you like them or hate them with a passion? Do you have any insect stories to tell? What do you think of New Zealand’s weta?