Margaret Wilson - riveting raconteur, sophisticated wickedly wonderful woman....that’s not really me. I’m almost opposite extremes: short attention span but attention to detail, love reading, but can’t always remember what I read, or the author, or the book title. I love food and wine and expect a trip to the gym to be a quick fix resulting in immediate and considerable weight loss. I love a story with an unexpected twist that makes me laugh and I cry at sad news. I spend hours in a shopping centre, but buy practically nothing. Sirens, traffic, city lights and loudness appeal but so does mountain air, trees, morning dew and birdsong.
Chris and I met in Mallorca, Spain, fell in love and bought a stone hut on the top of a terraced hill. Renovations included rolling the rocks outside, laying concrete over the dirt floor and putting in a door. Gnarly old tree trunks formed beams which held the roof up. There was no electricity, and winter heating came from a pot belly stove. The toilet was an old telephone box over a hole in the ground.
Water was stored in 44 gallon drums. Sometimes during the hot weather the tar lining the drums formed black bubbles that floated in the water – delicious!
My next book is about the renovation and the mildly epic undertaking to make it habitable, or the trip to Cuba, or the 42,000 km, nine month trip around South America!
It’s not that I didn’t want to walk the Camino de Santiago, but I couldn’t see the point. Why would anybody want to walk 800 kilometres? I wouldn’t walk from Sydney to Melbourne. Chris wanted a mildly epic adventure. I wanted wine. He told me we would walk through vineyards. That did the trick. We had a perfect pact!
We live in Australia in northern New South Wales, combining rural town living and small acreage inside the rim of an extinct volcano in a region of rich dairy, sugar cane, bananas, coffee and macadamia nut farming.
In December 2009 I won first prize for the first chapter of The Great Gold Coast Novel – A Tale of One City published in the Gold Coast Bulletin. The pen I won will come in handy for signing autographs one day! Years ago Diane James and I established Santa’s Mail Service, a response to children writing letters to Santa. She bought a microwave with her earnings the first year. I bought red wine every year.
Please find me on facebook
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mildly-Epic-Traveler/128931277153005?ref=hl