Steven Dromgool: How to support your partner with postpartum depression

A sister to her previous album, Norah Jones has released her 9th studio album ‘Visions’.  

The album consists of a vibrant and joyful twelve tracks, celebrating the rollercoaster of life, feeling free, and wanting to dance. 

It's a stark contrast to her previous album, 'Pick Me Up Off The Floor', released early in the lockdown of 2020, foreshadowing many of the dark emotions that period invoked.

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The Women by Kristin Hannah 

An intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.  
Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path. 
 
As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over- whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost. 
 
But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam. 

End of Story by A. J. Finn 

“I’ll be dead in three months. Come tell my story.” 

So writes Sebastian Trapp, reclusive mystery novelist, to his longtime correspondent Nicky Hunter, an expert in detective fiction. With mere months to live, Trapp invites Nicky to his spectacular San Francisco mansion to help draft his life story . . . living alongside his beautiful second wife, Diana; his wayward nephew, Freddy; and his protective daughter, Madeleine. Soon Nicky finds herself caught in an irresistible case of real-life “detective fever.” 
 
“You and I might even solve an old mystery or two.” 
 
Twenty years earlier—on New Year’s Eve 1999—Sebastian’s first wife and teenaged son vanished from different locations, never to be seen again. Did the perfect crime writer commit the perfect crime? And why has he emerged from seclusion, two decades later, to allow a stranger to dig into his past? 
 
“Life is hard. After all, it kills you.” 
 
As Nicky attempts to weave together the strands of Sebastian’s life, she becomes obsessed with discovering the truth . . . while Madeleine begins to question what her beloved father might actually know about that long-ago night. And when a corpse appears in the family’s koi pond, both women are shocked to find that the past isn’t gone—it’s just waiting. 

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Career progression seems to be on the back burner for many kiwis. 

Randstand’s latest Workmonitor report found that employees are prioritising flexibility and mental health over career progression. 

Over 27,000 people were surveyed, a thousand of whom were kiwis. 

Dr Dougal Sutherland joined Jack Tame to talk about this new data and offer some tips for businesses who want to proactively address these new priorities. 

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"Situated on the largest island in the archipelago, Grand Terre, New Caledonia’s bustling capital proudly flaunts its oh là là influence as a French overseas territory, where European chic mingles with laid-back Melanesian charm, set amid coconut palms in the swagger of a sea breeze. If you want a tropical island getaway with a little Parisian panache and the best baguettes in the South Pacific, you’ve come to the right place."

Read Mike's full article here.

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I remember Jack telling me he’d harvested his tomatoes in February and was pleased with the crop. 

I reckon that —especially in the North— tomatoes can go on and on and on; here in Canterbury they grow well into autumn (April, May) until the frosts start to play havoc. 

In my tunnel house I carry on harvesting them till June, sometimes July! 

This is what they look like in February/March:  

The green tomatoes are still on the plant. 

These will easily ripen as long as you water and fertilise the plants with a fruit-fertiliser (sufficient Potash – K). Keep trimming the laterals and keep tying up the vines to the stakes. 

Each week I do a thorough harvest of all the tomatoes that are ripe or almost ripe. 

Pink Berkely Tie-Dye is quite lovely coloured and firm, great for fried tomatoes with eggs. 

My biggest crop is F100 (sweet cherry tomatoes) that come in red and Brown-ish hues; The original F 100 is really long-lasting on the plant and keeps going the longest. It’s my standard variety that is best represented in the tunnel house. It’s also the basic tomato for roasted tomato sauce, creating the Bolognese for decent Italian meals 

Another good general processing tomato is “Tigerella”, this one goes on till May at least – sometimes well into June. 

Roasting them is a piece of cake; olive-oil over the top, plus some onions, paprika and later, basil. Not too high in temperature (150 is usually enough), blitz them when done, if you like, and freeze them in ziplock bags and you’ll have tomato sauce for the year. 

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With everyone talking about mortgages and interest rates, it's easy to forget that property is just one part of your overall wealth plan and strategy.  

Hannah McQueen joined Jack Tame for a chat about the considerations people should have towards long-term wealth creation and what homeowners should be preparing for once the housing market has settled again. 

And, if you're not interested in property, how to choose your investment strategy while the markets are down.   

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Xtra says there are 260,000 email accounts which will need to start paying.  

From May 16th, 2024 Xtra Mail will be $9.95 a month, or $5.95 a month if you're a Spark customer with broadband, a monthly mobile plan or a landline (That works out to be $71.40 per mailbox per year, almost $18 million a year for all those customers). 

So where to from here? What are your options? 

If you choose to go somewhere else, Xtra says it has a free email forwarding service. Free services are available from Gmail or Hotmail/Outlook, you may get ads or your data may be used for targeting ads. Microsoft Outlook has the option to go "premium", which is an ad-free experience for $3 a month, or you can bundle it with a Microsoft 365 subscription for $129 a year, or $179 for a family plan. 
 
A .nz domain name is going to be about ~$20 a year, then you need to pay for a mail service on top of that.  Fastmail is an option for US$2.50 a month, there are also offerings from Proton Mail (Swiss based), Hey (US based) or Zoho (India based). Google Workspace is US$6 per user per month, and Microsoft 365 is NZ$9.70 a month. 

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Curb Your Enthusiasm  

The final season of the long-running show sees Larry David star as an over-the-top version of himself in this semi-improvised comedy series that shows how seemingly trivial details of day-to-day life can precipitate a catastrophic chain of events. (Neon) 

James Must-A-Pic His Mum a Man  

Imagine being tasked with finding your mum the love of her life in front of the nation. That’s exactly what comedian James Mustapic sets out to do in his new show James Must-a-pic His Mum a Man. Alongside his mum, Janet, the 2023 Celebrity Treasure Island winner will vet potential candidates in the reality/comedy series, ensuring hilarity ensues along the way. (TVNZ+) 

The Regime  

The Regime is an American political satire television miniseries from HBO starring Kate Winslet, depicting a year within the palace of a crumbling authoritarian regime. (Neon) 

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Named by IndieWire as one of the best actors to have never received an Academy Award nomination, Guy Pearce has had quite the prolific career.  

The Aussie actor has stared in over 400 episodes of Neighbours, L.A. Confidential, Memento, and The Time Machine, but his breakout role was in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert back in 1994.  

He’s returning to kiwi cinemas in a week’s time with The Convert, the third collaboration between director Lee Tamahori and producer Robin Scholes. 

The film is a historical drama, depicting pre-colonial Aotearoa New Zealand and Māori Culture. A lay preacher arrives at a British settlement in 1830s New Zealand, his violent past is drawn in to question and his faith is put to the test as he finds himself caught in the middle of a bloody conflict between Māori tribes.  

Pearce plays preacher Thomas Munro, telling Newstalk ZB’s Jack Tame that he found the script very raw, moving, and fascinating. 

“It was just very emotional, and I could really see myself as that character.” 

The film is set in a New Zealand context, but the content translates to an international audience, Pearce telling Tame that no matter what the narrative is the idea of a white colonial man taking over or delving into indigenous culture is something that people in many countries can relate to.  

The Convert is more than a two-dimensional depiction of colonialism, director Lee Tamahori aiming to take that narrative and make more of a human story, centring connection and compassion regardless of culture, history, and background. 

For Pearce, the crux of the story was his character’s development. 

“We’re finding a character who’s been traumatised and is looking to find himself and in, in discovering this other culture, he is, he is allowed to then find himself and he therefore owes this other culture.” 

“His life was the crux of the story in a way,” he told Tame. “Certainly for me, selfishly, it was the crux of the story.” 

This project wasn’t the first time Pearce met Tamahori, but it was the first project they’d worked on together, and Pearce said it was beyond his expectations. 

“To witness that wonderful, brilliant intelligence, inspirational kind of outlook that he has, to witness that on a daily level and to be a part of it, and to, you know, he’s so joyful.” 

“He’s got such a beautiful kind of energy, and an inspiring quality that you just want to be around him.” 

Pearce has had an extensive career, and his success means that he can now be discerning in the projects he chooses to be involved in. 

“I just do the things that move me, you know. I’ve always done that.” 

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How To Have Sex  

Three British teenage girls go on a rites-of-passage holiday - drinking, clubbing and hooking up, in what should be the best summer of their lives. 

20 Days in Mariupol  

As the Russian invasion begins, a team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting the war's atrocities. 

Quick mention  

The Oscar’s are on March 11th - we can watch them on Disney+ in NZ.  

Red carpet 11.30am and ceremony 2pm. 

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