Living in New Zealand: There Are Good Independent Breweries Here and One of Them is the West Coast Brewery in Westport
West Coast Brewery (Click to see options for using the image)
If you are a beer drinker, you can't go to Westport without stopping in at the West Coast Brewery. It doesn't make the sweet dishwater that passes for beer with the big NZ breweries and it is still independently owned. If you want to taste the beer, you can get it straight from the tap without getting a “flight' of beers served in fancy glasses that disguise the fact you have paid good money for sips of substandard beer.
And at $18 dollars for a pack of six beers of your choice, it's worth taking a few away.
Part of the range of West Coast Brewery’s beer
New Zealand Garden Diary: Growing Sunflower Seeds to Feed Birds
Growing your own bird seed (Click to see options for using the image)
When the weather gets colder, I will be buying seedy fat balls from the Lyttelton farmers market to hang out on the bird table I made. I also put out seeds, grains and water. But in the meantime I am happy to let the birds fatten up on the sunflower seeds from the heads I saved. I think next year I will grow a lot more sunflowers as I love the look of them and I love watching the birds.
Living in New Zealand: Pies are an Important Fast Food and Essential on Road Trips
Hope River Pies
Before I came to New Zealand, I very rarely ate pies, especially savoury pies. But savoury pies are some of the best fast food you can get here. We're really lucky in that we have an artisan pie shop in Lyttelton itself. Our friend Craig is the pie maker extraordinaire at Hope River Pies and sells them out of his commercial kitchen on Norwich Quay on Thursdays and Fridays (and some Sundays). He also sells at many of the farmers markets in Christchurch, including the Lyttelton farmers market. His pies are great, especially as he does a lot of vegetarian and vegan pies.
But when I am on the road, I sometimes cheat on Craig to stop for a pie elsewhere.
Pies are an important part of any New Zealand Road trip. Click to see options for using the image
Most of those pies just fill a hole, but I can recommend the pies at the cafe in Hampden, Otago and now at the pie shop in Sheffield, Canterbury. This is a traditional place for my friend Crispin to stop when he heads out to his family’s bach on the West Coast. That was where we were heading a couple of weeks ago to do some work on the bach. A pie is just the ticket when you are on a long road trip.
Truckies are some of New Zealand’s better drivers and often pull over to let people pass on the narrow roads. Click to see options for using the image
Newsletter Extract: Time management when time is running out.
I'm a big fan of the late Randy Pausch who was excellent at getting a balance in his life. If you haven't seen his talk on time management and you need more time to do the important stuff in your life you should check it out here on YouTube (although it takes an hour to watch, it is time you will save after watching it!). When I'm in need of a refresher, I listen to it when inking.
One of the things I think (I definitely need to listen again) he mentions in his talk is Stephen Covey's Urgent vs Important Matrix:
Stephen Covey wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People . I haven't read his book, but I use his matrix all the time. Basically, you need to work on the things that are important first and let go of the things that are not important. With the constant barrage of information from the likes of social media, it is worth bearing in mind.
Forget Kids– Get a Dog is something that's not urgent but it is important to me. Working on it this week is sad in a way because so much of it reminds me of Billie. And he was the reason for writing it in the first place, as he brought so much joy to our lives (hey, I love my niece and nephews, but...). Also, when I showed fellow cartoonists some drawings from the book way backin 2011, it had a lot of resonance. So I want to put it out in the world before it's too late.
And that's where we get to the next thing that happened this week…
Head to the archive to read more here.
This is an extract of my Illustrated Epistle, which goes out in the middle of the month. It is a behind-the-scenes look at the life of a cartoonist (specifically, mine). I'd love it if you signed up at the bottom of this page, or here:
http://eepurl.com/cCOOeD