Writer, journalism teacher, coffee aficionado, movie addict, artist, mother - labels that have all applied to Puke Ariki writer-researcher Virginia Winder. RACHAEL MURPHY slowed her down long enough for an interview about a busy life:
Falling in love again...and again
A woman who falls in love with a different person every week is usually at risk of being called promiscuous, or at least upsetting her husband. Not Virginia Winder, she considers it an essential part of her job.
Each week, the Puke Ariki Taranaki stories writer transports herself into different cultures, different times, listens to different music and has different backgrounds on her work computer. She is obsessed and totally immersed…and she swears she's in love.
“I can honestly say that when I'm finished writing for the day I'm so involved with my headphones on and I'm writing and nothing else exists. I've taken off my headphones and looked around and thought ‘Oh, my God! It's 2004, it's not 1881!' and ‘Oh! I'm working on a computer. Where's my slate gone?'”
Writer and researcher at Puke Ariki, Ron Lambert, believes Winder has brought something new to the website and stories she writes.
“She's a very talented writer…and this position has given her an added string to her bow. She puts a different spin on things, including personalities and individuals into the historical stories. “She is unique, and I mean that in the nicest possible sense of the word.”
Winder has known that she was going to be a journalist from the age of 12 after a school project presented her with the idea of being able to ask any questions she liked of anyone. After passing her pressure-cooker journalism course at ATI in 1983, Winder was the first one of her course to get a job, at the Stratford branch of the Daily News. “I worked there for a year and played lots of pool and snooker. When the subeditors used to want to find me, they'd call the Stratford Club before they called anywhere else.”
She has also had stints at the main Daily News office, picking kiwifruit after her ambitious New Zealand tour failed at Tauranga - her first destination - with the breakdown of her newly purchased 1963 Bedford van, the Bay of Plenty Times, the Mountt News, the Taranaki Herald (under the formidable June Litman), Energy FM, Surf Lifesaving New Zealand, UK News, freelancing and working as a sub-editor and tutor for the journalism course at WITT.
Immersing herself is a approach she applies not only to her work, but to her life as well.
This is apparent from the first time you set foot in her house. From the outside it looks slightly rundown, the garden overgrown – which is ironic, as at one point she wrote the garden and lifestyles feature for the Daily News – nothing particularly special. She opens the door and the décor jumps right out at you. In every room New Zealand art works are splashed everywhere over glimpses of brightly lacquered walls. Even the bathroom is full of pictures, paintings and strange motifs.
Her home is testament to where her heart is and where her passions lie. Coffee is definitely one of those passions. “Now there's a drug of choice!”
Winder's love of coffee came from when she was backpacking in Miami. Cuban coffee was ordered, but she demanded it came in a cup instead of a thimble. After spending a sleep deprived night staring at the roof, dawn crept through her window and she decided to go for a walk to relieve some of the energy and alertness. Walking down the street, she spied a black "plasticine man" with elongated limbs leaning against a lamp post, and he said to this innocent-looking kiwi girl: ‘Hey baby, you want some crack?'. The hyper, sleep-deprived tourist just started to laugh. “Who needs expensive street drugs that can screw you up, when you can just have caffeine?”
Her tastes, of course, have developed since her backpacking days. “I call myself a coffee wanker. It's the only thing that I'm really discerning about. I'm not discerning about anything else in the world. In fact, I'm probably pretty unsophisticated, but when it comes to coffee, I know what I like.”
Family is a huge part of her life. She was brought up with eccentric parents whose house was covered in photos of Barbara Streisand and Frank Sinatra, or Uncle Frank as he was more commonly known. “It wasn't until I was 10 years old that I found out that he wasn't really my uncle.”
She says that she received her feistiness from her mother and her sense of humour – which is something she values above most things - from her father.
Sadly, in 1999 both of her parents were taken away from her in a traffic accident. “I was in full grief mode and while I put on a happy face a lot. It really took it's toll and I think there were periods were I basically burnt out. I filled my time with work.”
Family life is a lot happier for Winder now. Husband Warren - or chili-head, as she fondly calls him because of his more-than-passing interest in using chili in all his cooking (including ice cream) - supports her completely in all aspects of her life and passions.
“She's a perfectionist. She tries to make things as wonderful as she can and that is reflected in her art and work In the garden pages, if she found a mistake she would agonise over it for days. That's why the website is good. If she finds a mistake, she can change it.
“She is a very generous, creative, warm and loving person. She also has got an easy ability with people that makes them feel at ease.”
One she gets along with well is Daily News features editor Peter Watt, who has spent many an hour editing her copy for his pages. "One of the most colourful people I've ever met, she's enthusiastic to the point of being dangerous.
"She has a personality, an eye for the colour of language and puts it together in such a way that is pleasing to the mind."
V irginia and Warren grew up together attending the same schools and were friends right the way through. They met up again in London, both on separate OEs. They have now been married for 14 years. They have two children, Clementine (10) and Nelson (7).
“They're fantastic," she says. "Nelson is very off-beat and Clementine has a great sense of humour. I want interesting kids, and they are interesting. I would like them to be obedient when I tell them too, of course. They've developed a sense of humour. I joke about putting them in dungeons and things. We haven't got any dungeons, but sometimes would be a good idea.”
Even with Winder's positive outlook on life, it sometimes isn't that easy for her to be so enthusiastic. “It's really important to know that human nature is not all up. It can't possibly be.”
Winder has been battling with clinical depression for the past 14 years. She sometimes finds it hard to go to work and do what she loves because the way she is feeling, although she went to a course that allowed her to understand the illness and cope with it better.
“I hold really fast to what the existentialists believe and that is, the sure things in life is that you will be born, you will die and you will suffer pain during your life – anything else is a bonus. That sounds really depressing, but it's actually the opposite, because you think pain is normal.”
Even though she knows and likes that fact that the future is uncertain, Winder knows that she is going to be a novelist. “I have stories in my head that sometimes overwhelm me because they are so powerful and I need to get them out before I go mad.
“I believe that the people who really succeed in this world have to be obsessed with what they do. I am obsessed about the Taranaki stories, I live and breathe them, and then to switch off and go to a fictional world may or may not work.”
RACHAEL MURPHY is WITT journalism student