Christine Hunt Daniell - Just an Orange for Christmas: Stories from the Wairarapa

History is dead people talking. This is live people talking. Everyday people revealing details of what they did, but also of how they spoke and thought and felt over their three score years and twenty, or even forty.

E VIE , 100

Im not frightened to die. Deaths just a tidy way of getting rid of us.

And its good we dont have to hang on a fence like an eel!

F RANK , 82

As kids we just had newspapers for tablecloths Going to Featherston I thought that was London!

L ORRAINE , 93

Id have to say that I wasnt a very good farmers wife. I went docking lambs at the start there, got splattered with blood and said Goodbye!

My motivation in writing this book is to capture the flavour of life in New Zealand, then and now.

I sat and talked with old people, unravelling memories, making notes, shaping stories. Deliberately fossicking out ordinary men and women; we already know the facts about the important ones. Yet the next layer down, the colourful personal detail of everyday life, holds a deeper fascination. One astute yet bashful old character, at first reluctant to talk because I know nothing, nailed this concept: Yes, all those blooming personal bits and pieces theyre important too. After all, we dont know what William the Conqueror had for breakfast, do we? It had to be thought valuable and handed down by word of mouth. Then we would know. We dont know what Captain Cook had for lunch!

So I sat for days with old people in their kitchens, gardens and porches, sometimes in their final rest-homes, occasionally by their final beds. I attended two one hundredth birthdays last year! We downed copious cups of tea and scones while I listened, questioned, scribbled notes. Later came the hard part: shaping a character who speaks straight from the page. Dredging through wads of notes, retaining the germ of each persons life story, discarding the inevitable minutiae of their arthritis and grandchildren and why this years tomatoes are rubbish. Creeping inside and trying to remain faithful to the voice as well as the memory. My focus is to extract the essence, as well as the history of these lives. To crystallise character.

I have never used a tape recorder a foreign gadget for a ninety-year-old, and an intrusion. Archie insisted, Ill clam up if you bring in one of those blimming machines. Others would have talked happily into a microphone or an ice cream cone! Some thrived in the limelight, others lacked faith in the importance of their memories. Many cherished privacy. So apart from two who chose to keep their real names, the stories and illustrations remain anonymous. Though the locals will know!

My stories describe how it felt to live in the Wairarapa over the past century, how it feels to be near the end of life, how todays world measures up. Each character is a survivor, recalling often raw or touching personal details: a young boy sleeping in a shed with snow coming in under the eaves, or chained to a fence, or whipped and starved in an orphanage; a teenager push-biking fourteen miles to town and back to have all his teeth pulled out; an old man never learning to trust a car or shampoo!; women trapped, or flourishing, or pragmatic: If you were having a baby, you didnt go to a doctor at all. You just got pregnant, stayed pregnant and then had the baby!

These stories reflect our spirit: a carefully unravelled web of fact and feeling, earthy yarns, shrewd perceptions, tomfoolery, fantasy and faith.

Stories about ourselves.

One perceptive old lady concluded: What youre doing in this book, its like lifting up a lid. Its like people who have old tin trunks full of crochet and stuff; they put the lid down on it, and its dead. But you need to open it up and let people see inside, then it stays alive. And thats like our old memories: the lids left down on them and theyre dying. But when you start asking us old ones questions, its like poking a fire. All sorts of things slowly come back to life again.

The woman was both ordinary and a precious tin trunk of memories. She embodied our legacy of folk history. And my feeling for it.

This book has an obvious layer: stories from the Wairarapa. But the core must be essential New Zealand experience. Reflecting something universally human. And we clearly need to capture this material before its too late. How many of us harbour regrets? I really wish Id written down my nans stories

We also have a unique opportunity to reach back to the earliest days of European experience in New Zealand. Ninety-five-year-old Harry recalled his grandfathers story: When he was a boy of twelve or thirteen, a Maori lady put him into a canoe, covered him up with a flax mat and pushed him out into a lagoon to save him from the fighting that day. She gave him some water, told him not to lift the mat and to stay out there till dark. Granddads family had given her people timber and stuff. That was her way of showing gratitude. And thats why Im here today!