Wintry Wakatipu magical

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

Thanks so much to everyone who has been sending me photos of wintry Wakatipu - it looks so magical in its smart new fluffy white outfit.

It's especially lovely to look at them when I reach my melting point (it happens at anything over 30degC) and I can sit in the shade and imagine feeling cool.

From all the emails, it seems everyone and everything has perked up enormously since the long overdue arrival of snow, thank goodness.

My darling and I are back on the boat after two huge and different weekends.

One of the things we like to try to do to keep our family a happily blended one, rather than a curdled one, is to make sure we each have a little time with our own progeny.

My plan had long been to take my two to Istanbul for the weekend prior to putting them on their plane back to their sunny Dunedin flats.

My darling's plans are ever unpredictable.

I left him for an hour in pretty Fethiye - he and his boys were looking at what they would do for the weekend - maybe get scooters and go exploring in the mountains near here?

Take the ferry over to Rhodes for a night?

By the time I found them, they were booked to go to Bulgaria for a week.

Our ever-patient skipper finds his English tested to the limit.

Part of learning a new language is grabbing hold of any words you recognise and trying to work out what the other person is saying.

As far as he was aware, we had been discussing scooters and Greece, so it took a while for him to work out this new Bulgarian tangent.

We flew to Istanbul on Pegasus Airlines.

They have unfortunately chosen to write "fly pgs" on the side of their planes, which looks suspiciously like "fly pigs".

The hostie also thanked us in English for flying with "pig's arse", but the best thing about this budget airline was the sticker under the windows that looked exactly like an air-conditioning control panel.

So much cheaper than a real one ... Istanbul was its usual ridiculously exhilarating and exotic self.

I had booked with something called BNBair, where people rent out rooms in their houses.

Our new flatmate, Fatih, was fabulous and took us around the local area pointing out the best places.

He told us he really liked New Zealanders and had had a great family staying a couple of weeks before.

Who should it be but Biz and Ben Calvert from Lake Hayes!Several people have emailed to ask if I had read Babysitting George by young journalist Celia Walden.

George Best was writing a column for her newspaper and she was sent to keep an eye on him and keep the other papers away from him.

It's hard to imagine anyone not knowing who George Best was, and even I, who know nothing, and care less about his football career, couldn't help but be intrigued by the doings of this notoriously big-drinking, womanising superstar.

It all sounds terribly exciting and titillating, but I found this book unbelievably sad.

Celia Walden paints a perfect picture of this charismatic, charming and manic man but, as with all alcoholics or addicts of any sort, they are committed to their addiction far more than to anyone they love.

Celia says: "It is to women's credit, and perhaps our detriment, that we can never quite allow ourselves to stop wanting to effect positive change".

Anyone who loves an addict of any sort knows how depressing and demoralising it is to wish you could help, but know that you can do nothing.

Having said that, it is a fascinating and fond - not to mention a very close - look at a very troubled man.

Our new batch of guests have arrived bearing the gifts I love most - books and magazines.

I am struggling to write this as Owen Marshall's The Larnachs and Atka Reid and Hana Schofield's Goodbye Sarajevo are winking at me and begging me to read them.

- miranda@queenstown.co.nz