Arrowtown book buyer Miranda Spary continues her regular column about her recommendations for a good read, and life as she sees it ...
Leaving Queenstown is always traumatic and this week was no exception.
We had a midnight flight to Hong Kong and made the unwise decision to check out the new Botswana Butchery in Auckland.
It's right at the ferry terminal and even more beautiful than the Queenstown one.
The trouble is that my brother takes sadistic pleasure in getting my darling to behave as badly as possible.
He got a lot of pleasure that night!I took the gabbling wreck I'm married to back out to the airport with so little time to spare that we were alone among the cleaners as we hurtled through.
Air New Zealand was so apologetic that we couldn't sit together because of our lateness but I could barely contain my delight.
I could hear my darling snoring from three rows away.
I've got the most terrible FOMO (or fear of missing out).
Apparently, Joe Bennett was fantastic last week and I wasn't there.
And I wasn't there to see Sophia Taquet steal the show of the Sound of Music.
I've been in London catching up with friends and family and getting jubilee fever.
There's not a bus or biscuit or shopping bag without an image of the Queen to be seen and with that and the Olympics coming up, in true British form, they are planning for disaster.
The civil servants are all going to work from home to ease the congestion and lots of Londoners are heading away to miss the chaos.
Joan Collins was moaning (she's famous for that!) very publicly about immigration queues at Heathrow, but when we arrived, all the problems had been sorted.
This summer will probably turn out to be the dream time to visit.
It's amazing anyone can afford to go to see any of it - tickets are all hundreds of pounds and scarce as hens' teeth.
As a closet sports hater, stories like this make me shiver with pleasure.
For pure pleasure in London, nothing but nothing beats Matilda - the musical of my favourite book by my superhero Roald Dahl.
My clever sister managed to get me tickets but unfortunately only got me them for one night.
I could have gone again and again.
Miss Trunchbull is more frightening in looks and attitude on stage than even in the book, and the child actors are phenomenal.
Even though the first song about parents who always think their own offspring are the loveliest, cleverest beings alive was wonderfully cynical, the parents of these children have every right to feel that way.
It's all nonstop nonsense and action with ear stretching, Latin dancing, disastrous tightrope accidents and hair dyeing complications.
London is such a different place these days - everyone's got much more outdoorsy and healthy somehow.
We biked to the excellent Petersham Nurseries for lunch through green and gorgeous Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park.
The restaurant had said that as part of their planning consent they would encourage their customers to come by foot or bike or public transport and it is obviously working wonderfully.
And if all their customers are like me, they will all order far more food than normal, since they can justify their greed with all that exercise.
Greedy old Adolf Hitler's urge to "acquire" all the greatest art of Europe for himself forms the plot of The Art Lover by the unlikely sounding Andromeda Romano Lax.
Young Ernst is given three days to collect the large marble Discus Thrower and get it home to Germany from Rome.
It was probably achievable if only Germans had been involved but add Italians and everything gets tricky.
It's a very funny story set in unfunny times.
And, of course, I had to read Matilda for a hundredth time.
It's just as good each time.
Find a child and spend a happy time reading it together.
