Common touch
By Nicky Pellegrino, Herald on Sunday Aug 29, 2010

Two friends who lead very different lives but have a great deal in common talk to Nicky Pellegrino about their latest book.

Every Saturday morning South Island farmer's wife Virginia Pawsey switches on the radio and, with Kim Hill chatting in the background, she kneads a mountain of dough for the week's bread.
At shearing or crutching time there can be 10 extra mouths to feed at the Pawsey farm, which lies in the North Canterbury hills beyond Hawarden, and there's no shop nearby if she needs fresh loaves.

Meanwhile, in her little cottage in inner-city Wellington, children's book author Janice Marriott might be clearing up after sociable Friday night drinks or planning an outing to a cafe for lunch.

The two old school-friends lead starkly different lives these days, but they bridge the gulf between their rural and urban worlds by regularly writing each other letters.

Their first collection, about a year in their gardens, was published as a popular book, Common Ground, and now they've followed it with Common Table (HarperCollins, $36.99), written around friendship and food.

"If anyone had told us when we were in the seventh form that we were going to write books about gardening and cooking, Janice and I would have fallen about laughing," says Pawsey, a former occupational therapist.

"Even when I started writing the letters I had no idea they'd be published. Janice might have considered it but I was just enjoying the writing."

Several years ago, the two women rekindled their girlhood friendship after a school reunion.
The letters they've exchanged since reflect the ups and downs of their everyday lives.

None of the recipes in Common Table have been carefully planned. They're simply the things Pawsey and Marriott were cooking for dinners and picnics at the time they wrote the letters. "I did wonder in hindsight if we should have thought more carefully about the recipes we wanted to include," Marriott says. "It's serendipity what happens to be there."

To read Nicky Pellegrino's excellent full story and to check Janice's pumpkin & coconut cream soup recipe link here to the Herald on Sunday.

About the authors:

Janice Marriott is an audio producer of children’s songs and voice recordings and an award-winning children’s writer. Thor’s Tale won the Junior Fiction category of the 2007 New Zealand Post Book Awards; Soldier in the Yellow Socks: Charles Upham, our finest fighting soldier was a finalist in the Non Fiction category of the 2007 New Zealand Post Book Awards; and Crossroads won the 1996 Aim Supreme Award and Senior Fiction Award.


Virginia Pawsey trained as an occupational therapist in Auckland, worked with intellectually handicapped children at Templeton in Christchurch, then travelled overseas and worked at Harrod’s in London, and then with the British army, winter warfare training in Norway. Virginia returned to Christchurch to work as an orthopaedic occupational therapist, and now lives and works on Double Tops, her family's farm, in the windswept North Canterbury hills beyond Hawarden, where they still use horses to muster.

Footnote:
One reviewer when writing of Common Ground wrote - 'These two clever, articulate interesting women offer us a grand tour of their respective gardens and little glimpses of their private lives ... It’s a wonderful read.’

Well The Bookman reckons that these " two clever, articulate and interesting women" have done it again. Common Table, like its predecessor, is utterly charming - warm, funny and entertaining.
And most usefully the 40 odd recipes that are scattered throughout have been indexed at the back of the book.