The Orrs' National Lampoon Christmas Vacation
Usually New Year's Eve is a time for reflection on the past year, and certainly Nim's Island has made mine one of the most memorable of my life.
However the last week has been such a comedy of errors it's difficult to remember back any further at the moment. All ran smoothly on Christmas day - right up till I opened the oven, half way through cooking the turkey, and discovered that the oven had died about an hour earlier. A slight panic when we discovered that Tom's new barbecue had no gas, and there were no fire lighters to start the briquettes in the Webber.... but we lit it with sticks, chopped up the turkey, even eventually managed to buy gas for the other barbecue and had a great meal a couple of hours later.
It wasn't till after dinner that I dropped a hot, heavy glass saucepan lid on the floor - which shattered into several thousand pieces and nicked my sister-in-law's foot in several places. Some of them bled quite a lot. Did I mention that she faints at the sight of blood?
She was fit for the hike the next day, though: down to Cape Schank Lighthouse, on a trail well known for spotting wildlife. We saw over 100 kangaroos, two echidnas, and...
About half way I felt something warm around my legs, looked down and saw a huge (deadly) brown snake twining through my legs. Of course I know that the thing to do is freeze - and I'm sure that Nim, or Finn from Spook's Shack would have done this - but by the time my brain registered that it was a snake my body was already leaping into the air. Luckily the snake decided to just continue on his way and didn't turn around to strike me. I'd actually felt his head knock my left leg as it went past, I suppose a fraction of a second before I felt the heavy warmth of the rest of his body, but it was fairly obvious he hadn't bitten me. ( (And since I didn't fall down unconscious within minutes, I was obviously right.) I wasn't as upset as you'd think, and was very intrigued by how warm it felt - I know logically snakes aren't cold but I still expect them to be. I admit I looked very carefully at every twisted branch across the path after that, but it certainly didn't spoil my walk.
So my New Year's Wish for everyone is: may all your mishaps be comedies, all your disasters slide on past – and may we all learn to enjoy the moment as it is.
(And carry a snake bite kit when you're hiking!)
Labels: happy new year; snakes
Happy Holidays
Happy Holidays to Everyone! And here are pictures of Nim showing off her Girl Scout sash - she is an honourary member of the Girl Scouts of North East New York, the troupe that initiated the Nim's Island patch. They sent me her official sash a couple of months ago (unfortunately I mislaid my camera battery charger for a while - it was still in the suitcase from the premiere trip!). But now that my camera is functioning again, Nim wanted to show off her sash. Her patch is on the other side of the sash, and these badges are all ones that the girls of her troupe felt that she'd earned during the course of the book. I understand that they had to prove their decisions to the leader and that it led to quite a lot of animated discussions!
And since it's Christmas, here is Bear, aged 16 1/2, dreaming of what's going to arrive under the tree. (And yes, that is his basket under the tree, and no, he doesn't like to sleep in it at night - so we finally gave in and cover the couch with old sheets at bedtime...)
So I'm sending a wish for everyone to have a Christmas, Hanukah, or whatever festival you celebrate, that's just as peaceful as Bear is here.
Labels: Holiday wishes, Nim's Island girl scout
Peeling the Onion flashback
A couple of months ago, 17 years to the day after the car accident that I based Peeling the Onion on, the current affairs program Today Tonight interviewed me about the near death experience that I'd described in the book. It's something I'm still not comfortable talking about, but now that I've seen the finished piece, I'm glad I agreed to do it; it was respectfully and sensitively done.
Coincidentally, I was staying with a wonderful physiotherapist friend when the interview was done. She's treated me often over the years, and each time I've had great results. Of course medical wisdom will tell you that there's unlikely to be any improvement more than two years after an injury... luckily, this therapist doesn't believe that, and neither do I. For the first time in 17 years, I'm walking without pain.
So there are many questions in life that I can't answer - and some that I don't want to. I prefer to accept what happened in my accident as it was, without trying to analyse or explain it. Peeling the Onion describes it as fully as words can describe an experience like that, and for me, there's no point in discussing it more.
Radical Makeover
The Turkish edition of Nim's Island has just arrived - I always love seeing the new cover and have fun trying to work out the words in the title and first sentence of a new-to-me language. Every edition is slightly different - it's not just the language and cover,it's whether it's hard or soft cover, the size of the book, the font, and even the paper.
And sometimes they include an author photo; the Turkish edition has a nice touch, with a picture of Kerry Millard, the illustrator, as well.
But there was one just one little surprise... I've apparently had a radical make-over, and look surprisingly like Paula Mazur, the film producer. I guess it's one of those things that happens with good friends - over time, you tend to merge...
Labels: author photos, Turkish Nim's Island
missing messages
I've just discovered that most of my emails have been blocked from November 23 till today. (I wondered why I was getting so few!) So, if you've emailed me, or posted a comment here that hasn't been accepted, please try again. I try to answer all my emails within a week, so if I've ignored you, there's a good chance it's because I didn't get your message.
