Arrowtown book buyer Miranda Spary continues her regular column about her recommendations for a good read and life as she sees it ...
New Zealand's done so well at the Olympics that even after the closing ceremony, we still got another gold. We've been getting great reports on our sportsmanship in the media everywhere.
The Turks are so happy for New Zealand and they think it is very funny that their 70-odd million get two golds and our 4 million get however many we've got by the time this goes to print.
Who knows if they'll find more for us?
We tried to watch the closing ceremony in town.
Watching TV requires a lot of organisation here.
First you have to know which bars plan to show which programmes and then you have to make sure there are at least 50% of the crowd wanting to watch the same programme you want.
The bar that promised the closing spectacular turned out to have huge numbers of Turks wanting to watch the biggest football game instead.
I hope I'll still see a repeat of the British show, but watching the spectators rather than the football must have been just as good.
They support football very passionately here, with lots of singing and standing on tables and shouts and cheers.
At the game, alarming clouds of orange smoke appeared in the stand and flaming things landed on the field.
All normal fun and games.
Players yell and scream at each other and the ref and stomp off in high dudgeon about things.
So dramatic.
And even more dramatic last week was the Edinburgh Tattoo. Perched on top of the Mound, with that fabulous castle and brilliant light show, there's no better setting in the world for a show.
My heart nearly stopped as the guns fired and a Tornado jet fighter rocketed overhead, and a poor old dear behind us did something that made all the emergency services think hers really had stopped.
Some of the stretcher bearers looked as if they might need to be stretchered out themselves after climbing up to the top row (it's really high up there).
Happily, a happy ending and the show went on.
All the shows were great apart from the Australian effort which one Australian attending said was "a real Julia Gillard affair - naff and nasty".
And it was - they played music from tacky Oz soap operas with none of the slick, smart choreography of the other countries.
Scotland was a joy. It was very nice to be by the sea in a jersey and jeans and still be a little chilly - just like Lake Wakatipu.
We stayed with friends at Elie and while my darling burst with joy playing golf in Scotland for the first time, I fossicked around in the little harbours dotted up and down the coast.
Our friends made sure we found all the local delights, like the fresh cooked crab stall and Scottish fudge.
Everywhere I go, I see how brilliantly we do tourism in Wakatipu. Our food is sensational and I keep trying to see how tourists could find the good things more easily, but really I think it's pretty foolproof.
There are always some fools, though ...
One thing I love to do in new places is see how people live, and in a town near Elie they hold an art week where people in historic cottages or other interesting houses are invited to host a Scottish artist and display their work for sale.
People come not just to see and buy paintings, but to have a jolly good snoop inside local homes. I'm sure such a show would work brilliantly here, as well.
They raise loads of money for the community and everyone enjoys the week.
We don't use our tourists enough for fundraising or for learning.
In Turkey, they always hold the school art shows and concerts in the centre of town and it looks to me as if there are loads of tourists lapping it up and paying up too.
The schoolchildren are often interviewing visitors mainly to practise their language skills, but I'm sure some of the information would be useful to the tourism body as well.
And I'd love to copy London's grand plan and make Wakatipu car-free for two days sometime.
Imagine how many people would want to come and ride bikes, horses, walk or whatever?
Do get along to Pat Jones' exhibition at the Lakes District Museum this week - on a cold, grey day, this big blast of cheer and colour will brighten things up considerably.
And for some more cheer and colour, do read Michael Frayn's Skios.
It's a surprising long-lister for the Man Booker - they would not normally choose something so frivolous and summery but they are trying to make the prize a bit less highbrow.
This is a farce, but quite a clever one.
A naughty, playboyish chap arrives on a Greek island and thinks it is fun to let the pretty PA meant to be collecting a world famous guest lecturer think that he is that man.
It's all quite unbelievable, but then we are all guilty of believing what we want to believe at times.
It's pretty funny and silly and a perfect holiday book.
