Steve Braunias - Smoking in Antarctica: Selected Writing

By the same author

How to Watch a Bird

Brauniass wit and charm are put to work to explain in easy non-scientific ways why looking at the commonest birds can be such a pleasure

The Dominion Post: Best Non-Fiction of 2007

Prize-winning journalist Steve Braunias is standing on the balcony of an inner-city apartment on a sultry summer evening when a black-backed gull flies so close he is instantaneously bowled over with happiness. I thought: Birds, everywhere. I want to know more about them. This highly engaging book is the result a personal journey into an amazing world. Its also a New Zealand history, a geographical wandering, and an affectionate look at the tribe of people ensnared, captivated and entranced by birds.

Braunias has touchingly brought love and bird-watching together in a book that stalks sewage ponds and grey warblers with curiosity and affection, and ends with contentment, bliss and a baby born. A lovely book

New Zealand Listener: Best Books of 2007

A small and perfectly formed jewel

The Sunday Star-Times

Awa Press plus Braunias plus birds makes for a tantalising literary marriage

New Zealand Life & Leisure

Roosters I Have Known

Classic Steve Braunias provocative, literate, disrespectful and eminently readable some of the best writing you will read this winter

Christopher Moore, The Press

In 2007 Steve Braunias embarked on a series of 27 interviews, one a week, profiling New Zealanders famous and infamous, both publicity-seekers and those desperate to hide from the spotlight. His startling survey of the national psyche ranged from the neuroscientist Richard Faull to rape survivor Louise Nicholas, from actor Adam Rickitt to TV star Paul Henry, from Cuisines Julie Dalzell to Fox Televisions Anita McNaught in Iraq. He also took us to our leaders Labours Helen Clark, Nationals John Key, the Maori Partys Pita Sharples and a miscellany of mayoral wannabes. You may never vote again.

Braunias proves that he is our best newspaper feature writer

Warwick Roger, North & South

Opinionated, prickly, sometimes fevered, often affectionate cranky vintage Braunias

Lindsey Dawson, Plenty

Funny, touching, smart ... Recommended

Sam Finnemore, Craccum

Fish of the Week

If you are ever feeling blue, read one of these delicious essays. The sun will soon shine again Every one is a gem

Graham Beattie, Beatties Book Blog

Steve Brauniass satirical and closely observed writings have driven readers to drink, God, lawyers, and sometimes to the shops to shower him with gifts. In this lascivious selection he addresses the state of New Zealand steak, the beauty of mangroves, the lunacy of film festivals, the attractions of small towns (There is no statistic that says a village can accommodate only one village idiot), the charms of Cambridge University and the strange habits of the English, and more as well as his own intimate, seesawing, surprisingly vulnerable life as a writer and lovestruck father.

Diverse, whimsical, clever absolutely recommended

Sonja de Friez, Radio New Zealand Nine to Noon

Braunias has intelligently wormed his way into my heart, stirred me with his gentle eloquence, bowled me with his wit damn funny and insightful

Matt Rilkoff, Taranaki Daily News

A brilliant and eccentric collection

Philip Matthews, Your Weekend

First ebook edition published in 2012 by
Awa Press, Level 1, 85 Victoria Street
Wellington, New Zealand

Copyright Steve Braunias 2010

The columns and articles in this book originally appeared in The Sunday Star-Times .

The right of Steve Braunias to be identified as the author of this work in terms of Section 96 of the Copyright Act 1994 is hereby asserted.

Copyright in this book is held by the author. You have been granted the right to read this ebook on screen but no part may be copied, transmitted, reproduced, downloaded or stored or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system in any form and by any means now known or subsequently invented without the written consent of Awa Press Limited, acting as the authors authorised agent.

Cataloguing-in-Publication Data for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.

Cover photograph by Jane Ussher

Cover design by Spencer Levine

www.awapress.com

About the Author

Steve Braunias writes a weekly column in The Sunday Star-Times , and his articles are syndicated in newspapers across New Zealand. A frequent speaker at conferences and writers festivals, he has written for TV series Eating Media Lunch , and has been awarded a Montana Book Award, fellowships to both Oxford and Cambridge universities, and the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship, and has won over 20 national writing awards. He was appointed editor in residence at the Waikato Institute of Technology in 2010. He lives in Auckland with his family. This is his fifth book.

E. delivered of a son. Received green swallow from Jamaica.

Edmund Gosse, Father and Son (1907)

To E and M

Introduction: A Brief History of Happiness

These are the finest times of my life. The two years covered in this selection of writings 2008 to 2010 already stare back at me like a series of cheerful postcards sent from a land of myth. I flew to Antarctica and found the strangest smoking deck in the world. I commuted by train to the even more far-flung and far-fetched destination of Hamilton. I climbed the stairs of a tree hut in Aucklands Albert Park and attempted to write a novel. But most of the time I stayed at home, adoring and agog, as the capital city of my life took on a new, complex shape. I was like all parents of young children. I fell wildly in love with my daughter every day.

She doubled her age overnight. She turned two years old, and celebrated her birthday by running naked in the backyard with her cousins. She turned three years old, and celebrated her birthday by running naked in the backyard with her cousins. Her reliable nudity was one of the few constants. All else was revolution.

She has two working parents. Like most couples, we arrange our work around our child. Its the usual whirlwind of the morning shower for us and the bath before bedtime for her, and the dishes and the dollies and the sobbing demands. Its happiness. Its everything. But how strange it is, with every passing day, to know that well never see her again. That fat-cheeked lump, dazed and incapable of a civilised conversation, who was taken home from the maternity ward to sleep in a bassinet in our bedroom gone, lost. An ex-baby. The one-year-old and two-year-old, too, are ancient history. Children disappear. Its the greatest magic act in the history of the world. They do it right in front of your nose but you never see it happening until the rabbit is out of the hat and is dressing itself. The columns about her here are backstage reports.

After the birth of his children, C.K. Stead wrote in a poem: I do not want my life back. The question is how to manage the rest of it. Im too busy being a happy parent to know whether Im a good parent, and how does anyone measure that? The least you can do is provide. My daughter was born in February 2007. I quit my job at Christmas that year to stay home and look after her while my fiance returned to full-time work. I continued to write my weekly column, and sometimes accepted other assignments. I thought of myself as semi-retired; officially, and with hilarious timing, I was unemployed just as the recession moved its way towards New Zealand.