Jenny – Part 2/2
Family is really important, and I don’t think we would be here if we didn’t have family here.
We have our four daughters in Christchurch, and we have six of our seven grandchildren in Christchurch. We’re very family minded.
Trevor and I were on the committee to arrange the first international family reunion.
We started writing ‘Merchant, Miner, Mandarin’ in about 2016. We were absolutely delighted when Canterbury University Press said, ‘Yes, we’d love to do your book’, because they don’t take just anybody, and history books are really hard to sell. But that went into a second printing. It started really with the reunion.
We wanted it for 2019, which was our sesquicentenary, 150 years of the Sew Hoy’s being in New Zealand. Because we’re so green, we didn’t know that publishing took a long time. We finished the book in 2019 and thought it was just a matter of passing it over and the machines would churn it out.
Honestly, funny things have happened with this book. We were well into our 70’s – it was a retirement project. And as a result of that, we each got a QSM, we went to Government House and got our gongs, which was lovely.
I can’t play music anymore because of my vision problems, I can still listen to it. I belong to three book groups, one of them is a blind book group that is marvelous. It’s called the alternative book group because we read by alternative means. So audio books, ebooks are the two main things.
Every day almost, or every week at least, we’ve got something on. That’s why we still keep diaries. We go to church twice a week. We love the Court Theatre. We’ve done talks at U3A on our family tree book. U3A is the University of the Third Age, it promotes continual learning, learning for old and retired people.
One of the most important things to do when you are old is to socialize with your peers, but also with strangers going around on your day. Being out and not sitting at home, that’s often the secret of a long life.