I first read the NZ Listener in the 50s when they published columns by a writer called Jillian Squire. She wrote about things I knew about, kids, domestic life, day by day stuff. It was a bright funny spot in a magazine that published mainly male writers, who seemed to me then to have no idea about what real life was about. I guess if you’ve never had a period, been pregnant, or experienced menopause, you don’t see writing from those who do as important. Was it Rex Fairburn or Dennis Glover or another member of that group who described Robin Hyde’s work as ‘outpourings of menstrual rubbish’?
This is the problem with history – its mainly been written by one particular gender so we get that particular point of view. If the situation had been reversed and only women wrote history, our idea of it would be very different although still one–sided. We need both. The Labour History Project does a great job of recording working class history, Broadsheet has notched up a heap of well–researched articles on the history of women in this country but just think – if Jesus had had periods … yes well, mustn’t get too carried away but the gospels (and the world) would have been different if two had been written by women and two by men.
I have a wee link with the NZ Women’s Weekly too because they published an article about Eve Ebbett from Hastings who wrote romance novels for Robert Hale Publishers in the UK. In the interview Eve mentioned the New Zealand Women Writers Association which, until then, I’d never heard of, so I found her number and rang her and asked if we could meet. We discovered we had two things in common. Her father repaired shoes and so did my brother at an early stage of his working life, and we both liked jazz piano. We became good friends and in These Two Hands, I talked about when in 1979, everyone crossed me off their Christmas cards list, Eve remained staunch.
So, unless new financial support comes along, both these two publications (and others owned by Bauer) will cease. Ihope a solution is found that makes it possible for people to keep their jobs. Hard enough to be organised your life around Lockdown without having to organise your life around the fact that you now have no job.
A great–granddaughter and a great–grandson are learning to be magicians. Her auntie and grandmother and his mother and grandmother, demonstrate their prowess on video. Given that I can get lost on a street that I know well, I think I can say goodbye to any dreams of a career as a magician. You’ve got to be quick and know the moves perfectly. Now you see the pencil, now you don’t, then – aha – there it is somewhere else and I simply cannot work out how they do it.
Fun though and we all need a bit of that…
Renée
