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Jan 11, 2025 | 
nzherald.co.nz | Michele Hewitson
Michele Hewitson: "I had broken my shoulder, or at least chipped a shoulder bone. I felt like a decrepit old fool. I moaned like a decrepit old fool." Photo / Getty Images ‘Don’t pack too much,” Greg said. “You’re not going on holiday.” He meant my wheelie suitcase, the little blue travel bag I regard with an unaccustomed emotion: nostalgia.
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Nov 30, 2024 | 
nzherald.co.nz | Michele Hewitson
Duchesse de Montebello: Heavenly for humans and sheep. Photo / Greg DixonI am the least competitive of people. If you can hear guffawing, it is coming from one Greg Dixon – the author of last week’s column, which was the greatest amount of codswallop ever to appear in The Good Life. And that’s saying something. The issue of competitiveness has arisen because we still haven’t finished playing the game of Wairarapa Monopoly. Or rather, we are not playing.
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
nzherald.co.nz | Michele Hewitson
Gretchen Albrecht at Piha in West Auckland: "Painting is an essential part of me being a human." Photo / Nikki Barrett When the artist Gretchen Albrecht was at Auckland’s Mt Roskill Primary School, “There were great end-of-the-year sort of grand marches and fancy dress things. And I went as a daffodil.” Her “darling” mother made her a costume out of yellow and green crêpe paper, “with petals and a little cap for the stalk.
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Nov 16, 2024 | 
nzherald.co.nz | Michele Hewitson
If it weren't for your gumboots, where would you be? Photo / Greg Dixon Okay, you might have heard enough about lambs for a bit. Tough luck. This is about my last lamb. And as The Good Life functions as a sort of Births, Deaths and Marriages chronicle of life at Lush Places, I am compelled to write about him. Also, I am feeling quite sad about the prospect of next spring not having a new lamb to welcome. Properly, this lamb is the last for my bottle-raised pet sheep Elizabeth Jane.
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Nov 11, 2024 | 
nzherald.co.nz | Michele Hewitson
Home / The Listener / BooksBy Michele HewitsonContributing writer·New Zealand Listener·11 Nov, 2024 11:00 PM11 mins to readSaveShare this articleReminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read. Television seemed like magic to journalist Diana Wichtel. Her words were like magic to Listener readers over decades, but she had her share of hate mail, and she’s kept it all. This is quite strange.
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Nov 1, 2024 | 
nzherald.co.nz | Michele Hewitson
The first peony of the season. Image: Greg Dixon. One of my favourite sentences of all time comes from English diarist and playwright Alan Bennett. It is, “One of my real regrets is that I have never kept a donkey.” I have never kept a donkey, and never will, but I don’t have to. Our friend Pru, El Presidente of the Donkey and Mule Protection Trust, has more than enough donkeys to go around should anyone have a desire to stroke a donkey’s soft ear.
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Oct 28, 2024 | 
nzherald.co.nz | Michele Hewitson
Claire Achmad: “Every child should be able to grow up loved, safe and well.” Photo credit: Hagen HopkinsHere is something really quite charming about the Chief Children’s Commissioner, Claire Achmad: at 41, she loves “a good playground”. She is particularly fond of having a go on a flying fox, which gives rise to a happy image.
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Oct 19, 2024 | 
nzherald.co.nz | Michele Hewitson
Christmas queens: Portia and Lacey. Photo / Andie Noon I had dug a big hole. This was the hole for the lovely rose Janet had given me for my birthday. She has it in her gorgeous garden and I have often admired and coveted it. It is a floribunda, a lemon rose with hints of lime. I like any plant with hints of lime. It has a silly name: Lemon ‘n’ Lime. Roses often have silly names. If I was in charge of bestowing silly names on roses, I’d have called it Gin ‘n’ Tonic, with a Slice of Lime.
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Oct 15, 2024 | 
nzherald.co.nz | Michele Hewitson
Jennifer Ludlam as Captain Hook. Photo / NightsongActor Jennifer Ludlam has the distinction of being constantly in work since age 17, and the thrill of acting is just as keen as she takes on Captain Hook in Peter Pan. Jennifer Ludlam is very excited. She often is. She is playing Captain Hook in the Auckland Theatre Company and Nightsong’s production of Peter Pan, adapted from JM Barrie’s book about the boy who never grew up. In many ways, she is the girl who never grew up.
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Oct 5, 2024 | 
nzherald.co.nz | Michele Hewitson
The blossoming pear trees. Photo / Greg Dixon It is a beautiful spring here at Lush Places. The avenue of trees framing the long driveway is a leafy tunnel. There is new growth: the lime green blossoms of the golden elms; the fresh new leaves of the claret ashes. We see, from the kitchen window, tiny lambs leaping and playing. They run together, springing in the air, often sideways. It makes for a pretty pastoral scene. So does this. We have pots of the nearly black tulips.
