Diary of a House: The Bibliophile Sisterhood

It's the week before Christmas and everyone is rushing to get their in tray cleared before we begin our longest shared national holiday. New Zealand downs tools for three weeks but to make that work we have to speed up beforehand. Even though I'm already on holiday, I participate in this curious rat race. My first job is paying for the decking wood. It's only on special till the end of December...so I have to sort it....now. I call in at Trinity Glass to confirm lead lights and, to keep Kay sane, offer to deliver a package of glass. Paying back time- she's stopped work often enough to talk to me.
I forage broad beans and peas from the school garden then drive out to Kenneally Timber where things are going mad. I try to finalise my order but give up as Dianne and I don't have the skills to calculate the correct quantity of Tasmanian Blackwood from the plans. And everyone else is busy. While I'm out that way, I drop in on Lila who's had a double hip replacement and bed ridden. Her home is now Australia where her son is, but home is also here.
Book group at the end of the day is down time, finally. We're loosely but expertly organised by Naomi whose enthusiasm got this group started and whose aroha ensures that everyone finds and gets to the meet ups. We volunteer our homes and so have come to know and understand each other intimately. Everyone's living room tells a story, while our food offerings reveal common proclivities: cheese, hummus, Whittaker's chocolate, cake. And the idiosyncratic array of plates reveal differing tastes: china, pottery, glass, Crown Lynn, op shop finds. We car pool and pass around clothes we have grown out of or no longer wear. At 22 College Ave I've held a couple of summer meetings under the stars round a fire in the back yard. And there was the night nobody turned up. The evening I was the only one who arrived at Sarah's, a week early. We see each other at book festivals and writers' talks and spell binding vocal and dance performances starring fellow bibliophiles. While books were the glue initially, five years later our meetings are based on real affection stemming from the laughter, tears and philosophical questions elicited by the stories we read. And life goes on. In the past year we've rallied round for the death of a partner, a scare with a sick baby, and the demolishing of a home. Tonight is the last meeting of the year at Julie's house, sequestered down a tree-lined lane by the Avon. We are surrounded by her surrealist art, figures half human, half animal. It's raining but we're making merry round the Christmas tree.
The sisterhood of the book fans. I love meeting, eating and drinking with this unique group of talented, intelligent, articulate women. We're so diverse: singers, actors, dancers, festival organisers, academics, artists, teachers...but so similar: mothers, daughters, lovers, friends. And we love books.