Tsunami alert eye-opener

Arrowtown book buyer Miranda Spary continues her regular column about her recommendations for a good read and life as she sees it.

An American friend stayed a week or so ago after setting up all the tsunami warning systems in the South Pacific.

As a thank you for a rather bigger-than-necessary night out in Queenstown with my brothers and sons, he not only sent me an email with the subject line "sober and a bit frightened" but also a free tsunami alert on Sunday morning.

Very early on Sunday morning, so I had to get up to see what in the world had happened for someone in the Wakatipu Basin to be getting a tsunami alert - free or otherwise.

We are a family of people who always seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, so I wasn't too surprised to have an email waiting from No 1 son in Santiago just letting us know there'd been a crazy earthquake there.

It sounded terrifying and makes me very glad that the only time my neighbours fall on me is late at night at parties, not falling through our roof in a big shake-up.

Being out of lovely Queenstown is very bad for your health - poor James Parker has been working on an aid project in Ghana and is now in intensive care in a British hospital with a particularly unlovely type of malaria.

Luckily, he has the world's most persuasive mother in Kaye, and he will soon realise it is much easier just to do as she says and get better rather than try to resist.

In the meantime, a huge team of people are working to make Kaye's Wakatipu Trails Trust Trailblazer on March 25 the same huge success it would have been if Kaye had been here to take charge. You better get better fast, James - we need Kaye back in the Basin.

The only real health dangers here are granny haircuts and sticky bottoms.

Our own very famous Sam Neill has turned his talented hands to jam and chutney making but does suffer badly from the dreaded summer sticky bottom syndrome - the quickest cure is to use a SimmerMat so the sugar in the pot doesn't stick.

You get one free with a Fisher and Paykel oven, but it's probably cheaper just to buy the mat. There's a handy money-saving tip!

Another handy hint is not to let your grandmother cut your hair even if you are a student with no money. Our No 3 son gave in to pressure from his grandmother and let her do her worst. He's expecting great exam results this year now, as he says the haircut will ruin any chance of a love life.

He's also feeling very sorry for Emily Gibbon's baby when it arrives as it will be the first grandchild in the district to be born to our book club, so the poor little beast will have 15 overeager would-be grannies all knitting and hair-cutting and giving unsolicited advice. I can't wait to be a granny but I am not so excited about turning 50.

Even the word "fifty" smells of whiskery upper lips, dentures, big underpants and sensible shoes.

Unless you are Josie Waters, of course. Still on crutches after falling off her horse in November, she is the most glamorous, brand new 50-year-old I've ever met, especially in her long, silky, yellow evening dress at her birthday party on Saturday.

Half of my readers (well, the ones that write or speak to me) say that nobody is interested in the book bit of this book column, but the other half say they love the book bit and they want longer reviews.