Arrowtown book-buyer Miranda Spary continues her regular column about her recommendations for a good read and life as she sees it...
By the time you read this, Britain will have voted. It's all got so close that now the PR people have started wheeling out the leaders' wives, who claim their husbands are perfection personified. Anyone with a husband will know what a load of nonsense that is!
While you were all getting ready to do the Noah's Ark thing with all that rain last week, we were basking in beautiful sunshine, but as soon as the Bank Holiday weekend arrived, so did the obligatory downpour.
It was my idea of bliss being snuggled up inside with piles of British newspapers.
The real luxury about being here is the clatter and bang at 6am as the newspapers get pushed through the letterbox - what heaven!
The letterbox - actually letterhole - is the source of enormous excitement here. You can order almost anything you want and it gets delivered right inside the house twice a day.
That miserable excuse for a mail service we have, NZ Post, should shrivel in shame compared with the British version.
The downside of big-city living, of course, is all those people. And all that security.
Even in my sister's house, the second ugliest in a beautiful, quiet residential street near the bit of Wimbledon famous for tennis and the Common, where the only person who looks a bit scruffy and likely to steal things is me, we have to unlock two separate locks and a slidy hook and chain thing just to put the rubbish outside.
Funny how more security always makes you feel less secure.
My darling arrives tomorrow, which will be very exciting.
Looks as though the 5kg I planned to lose before he arrived is still safely attached to me.
It is far too easy to trit-trot along to the village and forage in the fabulous delis and specialty shops and as far as I can tell, British food is only fabulous these days.
Apropos of fabulous food, I opened one of the Sunday supplements and saw what I thought was a photo of our own famous local French chef, Jean-Francois Taquet, but it was Daniel Boulud - a total look-alike famous French chef who is just about to open a new restaurant in London.
Google the image and see if you agree.
Although I am having no difficulty finding food to enjoy, my annoying nephew is not such a good eater.
While I watched him gag and choke on the minute specks of broccoli he was meant to be eating, I told him he wouldn't turn out as wonderful as me if he didn't eat it.
I now know that "ambitious" was one of his spelling words, but I was the one gagging and choking when he answered that turning out as wonderful as me wasn't a very ambitious goal.
The newspapers have sucked up a lot of my reading time, but the very effective saleslady in Wimbledon Village's brilliant bookshop is keeping me well-stocked with new titles.
She told me I had to read Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's The Most Beautiful Book in the World, a collection of eight novellas.
He wrote the desperately sad Oscar and the Lady in Pink and this book has been translated by the woman who did such a great job translating The Elegance of the Hedgehog.
These are all deceptively simple stories - very easy, uplifting and totally unforgettable.
And I finally read Rose Tremain's Trespass, set in the south of France.
It's that perfect mix of chill and thrill in a beautiful setting - you just know you are feeling uneasy for a reason.
She's a great writer and her Music and Silence is still one of my favourite titles.
If your life is lacking in tragedy and comedy, go to the Two Paddocks blog.
Honestly, there's sex and death and all sorts of mayhem going on down there.
Movie stars naming themselves after famous sheep and all...
