Arrowtown book buyer Miranda Spary continues her regular column about her recommendations for a good read and life as she sees it . . .
Seems as if last week's snipe at New Zealand Post struck a loud and resonant chord with a lot of you.
So many of you have agreed with me that buying a stamp is a contract to have a letter delivered, but my darling thinks comments like mine will ensure we never see another letter delivered to us.
He was very nervous on Saturday when he discovered his partner in the Cure Kids golf was the lovely Pip, a director of NZ Post.
So nervous, in fact, that he played like a complete ninny.
If only I had known, I could have given her some good advice about running mail services.
I'm having a week of feeling very old again.
The big cheeses were here from Dunedin - the regional editor, who is a mature sort of chap and into golf and flowers and Enid Blyton.
So imagine what the biggest cheese is like.
No doubt he is a whiskery gent with bifocals and full of the sort of Presbyterian fun and verve that our early Otago forefathers displayed.
Wrong.
Editors are meant to be serious and solemn and wise and to pontificate on weighty matters. AND OLD. They are not meant to be younger than I am. He hasn't even got a beard.
And on matters hairy - thank goodness Movember is over.
All the handsomest men in the town have spent the last month looking tatty and grizzled.
Goodbye to all those nasty little ginger and grey fuzzy things.
Why isn't beard hair nice and sleek and glossy? If you had a fur coat that looked like most beards, you would throw that balding, mangy thing out.
A big congratulations to Geri Elliot, whose painting will be gracing the next Otago telephone book.
She is now going forward to the national competition so give her a big hug and wish her all the best if you see her in the street.
Our own dear Ruth Douglas died last week and the Arrowtown Church was never going to fit in half the crowd that wanted to come and say goodbye on Saturday.
She was such a cheery, lovely lady and a sensational baker.
At pony club each weekend, I always tried to be close to the Douglas' blanket when it came to afternoon tea time.
My mother's best efforts were jam sandwiches and vanilla wine biscuits, but Ruth would have masses of tins with pies and cakes and all sorts of goodies.
The Douglas, Dagg and Dennison families were a huge part of the Arrowtown community way back then and their community-building efforts have made Arrowtown what it is today.
It is a wonderful place to live and I thank them all.
I sneaked into museum director David Clarke's inner sanctum last week to see how the new art exhibition is coming along.
When he asked the community if people had any great paintings they would like to share with everyone, he was inundated with offers.
The opening is tonight and is featuring favourite works owned by residents.
There are some stunning works and some great stories behind them.
Get along and see it.
And do go and see An Education, which is absolutely delightful.
Pushy parents are desperate for their daughter to go to Oxford and keep her nose to the grindstone.
That is until she meets an older man and her education becomes much more rounded than they had ever intended.
Everyone's loving it.
I wish I had taken my darling but it only had a little bit of sex, no violence and no bad language - nothing to interest him at all.
So he was delighted by Looking for Eric, which had plenty of everything and a lot of football as well.
And I must say, I laughed all the way through as well.
Fabulous night out.
Even though it had sport in it . . .
I'm applying for a journalism course at the moment and had to fill in the pages and pages of utterly tedious and pointless information.
"List your sporting achievements."
It is a journalism course, for goodness' sake, and I can't think of a single reason why I need any sporting achievements for it or why I should list them.
If I had any, that is. I haven't. But I have got some great books to recommend.
Thank you to Hana Sullivan for dropping me a copy of Fishing from the Boat Ramp - A Guide to Creating, written by her mother, Jillian Sullivan.
Unfortunately, it has got an angel/guide called Godfrey in it, which rather put me off at first, but I kept reading and it is just a sweet and gentle collection of stories about writing.
And I loved, loved, loved Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, including Books, Street Fashion and Jewellery by Leeanne Shapton.
It is in the form of an auction catalogue and it charts the history of a love affair using the objects and letters accumulated during the relationship.
Gorgeous writing, wonderful vintage clothing and all sorts of interesting bits and pieces.
Anne Zouroudi's The Messenger of Athens is a detective story with a difference.
A dead woman is found on a Greek island and a stranger turns up to investigate.
Zouroudi explores the reality of living on a picture postcard island and the myths and history that influence the lives of locals.
She has a great eye for detail and her descriptions of the island and its people are brilliant.
And I'm halfway through Barbara Kingsolver's latest novel, The Lacuna.
I want to escape all my duties and snuggle up with Barbara as I am so enjoying it, but I promise to tell you all about it next week.
