Angela Barnett

Writer. Wig Wearer. Speakerupperer

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Fitful writer. Over Enthusiastic Dancer. Speakerruper

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  • An Utterly Terribly Horribly Awful Brain Fart

    Mother’s Day began with my first tick bite, which is not in any way like the love bite I was expecting. The woods are full of deer ticks right now, carriers of Lyme disease with startling symptoms like facial paralysis – whilst tempting with no Botox clinics in the forest, other muscles and the brain…

  • Mean Girls has got nothin’ on our chickens.

    On our second night with six baby chicks, we couldn’t hear the TV. “Can you turn down the chickens,” said the Dimple. Peering into their box I found blood down the spine of one of them and the brood kept pecking the same bloody spot like it was pasta carbonara. I believe I squealed. Tedium…

  • It’s wader, Mom, not water.

    Last month, as we stood under the carved archway dividing Duty Free and NZ Customs listening to Haere Mai, I felt overcome with emotion. That silly happy song I’ve never given two hoots about before was making me feel nostalgic for my country. Home. Bob and the ‘Dactyl watched some loutish lads pose underneath the…

  • The Cabin

    When you die, Mummy, we’re going to put you in bags and eat you,” said our four-year-old. He had just seen what happened to the pigs: they arrive, we feed them, they die and come back in small packages labeled Chops, Ribs and Jowls. After seeing a dead fox last week Bob’s been obsessed with…

  • I Said A Kitten, Not A Baby.

    “I can’t smell the cunt!” said our daughter, feeling left out. We could all smell it. There’s nothing like the pong of freshly killed skunk. Being only two she still struggles with her ks and sks. Her parents, being only four, find it hilarious. The Dimple didn’t realize a family of skunks had built a…

  • I’m Strangely Obsessed With Seeing A Bear.

    We’ve got new neighbours. They’re big, black, hairy and often scary. Ursus Americanus (Black Bears) are lurking in our woods. Bears used to hang around here but were hit hard by the recession. What with recycling and composting it’s slim pickings at Camp for food scraps these days. Word in the woods is that they…

  • Even Murderers Were Five Year Old Boys Once.

    It’s over. The Murderer is dead. For once, I understand the rush media must feel, chasing a story that keeps getting more extraordinary. Crazed murderers who think they are starring in their own Rambo movie don’t come along every day – especially in your own back yard. We, the homeless ones, drifted back to Fort…

  • Middle-Class Refugees Is Our New Theme Song.

    It’s been twenty-four days since we had to evacuate our home. Never before have I heaped such violent thoughts upon a man I will never know. Our woods, dubbed Too Dangerous, are still a no-go zone. US Marshals have moved into Camp with infra-red gizmos, weapons, whiteboards and night cameras. They can confirm a cougar’s…

  • You Know It’s Serious When 911 Calls.

    “It’s like we’re on the run except we haven’t done anything wrong,” said the Dimple, on our first night in a cheap motel. We were running, and there was a crime –shocking murder– but it wasn’t our doing. 911 called. They left a message that an armed and dangerous man was in our forest and…

  • Summer Of Lovin’ And Not Being A Dick.

    When a couple of eight-year-old mouthy boys starting fighting around my four-year-old, I watched intently –through the camera lens– to monitor exactly when I needed to sprint over and save him. Bob, unaware the big boys could pummel him to a pancake, put a hand on each arm and commanded, ‘Freeze!’ It has been his…

  • Cinderella Was A Veterinarian

    Last summer, the Camp staff knew me as, ‘The Dimple’s Wife’. I hated it. Call me The Kooky Dancer, The Girl That Likes Math, The Enthusiast Wine Drinker but not just The Wife. As proud as I may feel to be married to the fine specimen, being defined solely as an appendage to him stripped…

  • Forty-Year-Olds Don’t Make Friends As Quickly As Four-Year-Olds

    Before we left New Zealand, a friend of my Mother’s said, ‘You’re brave taking off to America with two small children.’ I attempted to smile, then burst into tears. I didn’t feel brave. For the first time in my life, I made a travel decision based on what was best for somebody else – my…

  • I Forgot To Pack My Diphthongs

    I love being a New Zealander, but after listening to a lift full of Auckland Grammar school girls in Hawaii, last week, I finally admitted I speak fonny. My kiwi twang –the kwang– sounds lazy, as if my tongue is allergic to vowels. My great, great English grandparents are to blame; they lost some semantics…

  • Storm Party!

    “I’m not risking the lives of my wife and child… we’re not coming!” was our most dramatic rejection. We were having a party for our four-year-old and hadn’t planned on killing the guests before the treasure hunt. It’s our road in. People have slid off it before and dangled over cliffs. But not very often.…

  • If Scarcity Is The Mother Of Invention Then Darkness Must Be The Father.

    It’s very strange, watching your country from another hemisphere take up the evening news. Our only surreal comfort with the Christchurch disaster, was that we had our own little earthquake – 30 miles away – on the same night. Somehow it was reassuring; the long fault fingers of the Pacific Rim were stretching up to…