We believe IN Christmas Presence

Actively investing in the health of our marriage is an ongoing focus for Adam and I. Long term relationships are easy to just relax into and assume everything will take care of itself. Our goal is to continuously find ways to spend productive time together, sharing new discoveries, creating little traditions and maintaining a regular routine of physical and mental exercise. We prioritise good health as a means of being together longer.

Putting specific time aside to read prepares us for an evening meal where we excitedly share all of the new ideas we’ve gathered. As often as possible, we nominate the end of the week as Analogue Sunday. It starts off with a bike ride or a hike on one of our beautiful trails in the Wairarapa, followed by an afternoon of reading and completed by a Sunday Roast at home or at one of our lovely country pubs. Our conversation during those meals is always animated and bordering on competitive! Reading introduces many good new thoughts to package up with a personal interpretation for gifting to our beloved. Analogue Sunday comes with a simple discipline of no screen time. Phones off for one day of each week isn’t such a big sacrifice. Instead, it feels like we have more energy, we’ve learned something new and we feel closer.

Being a bookseller for a year now has substantially broadened my reading range by being regularly exposed to a whole store of interesting titles. The ‘to read’ stack seems to grow daily while the ‘completed’ pile can never keep up. It’s helped me realise that the quality of what we choose to read matters. Learning from expertise, instead of opinion, is a recent conscious decision I’ve made that helps me feel more fulfilled by what I pay attention to.

We love the bustle of Christmas holidays in Greytown. Helping our customers find the perfect gift for their friend or family member is a real skill the whole team at Mrs Blackwell's Village Bookshop is becoming quite astute at. A carefully chosen book says that you have taken some extra time to think about the person you are buying for. Aside from helping you fine tune your gift buying, this year we’re also offering a gift wrapping service in exchange for a gold coin donation to Trees That Count. It’s a circle-of-life idea we feel is a good match for our particular line of work.

And when we close the doors late on Christmas Eve, Adam and I plan to bring our analogue routine back for the holidays. There’ll definitely be a martini (gin, dry, with a twist) prepared by our resident cocktail master to take the pain out of a game of cards where I’ll beat him mercilessly, several bike rides around the beautiful country lanes of Greytown, a homemade picnic lunch and a deep reading dive into a brand new title or an age-old classic. Phones off. Total Christmas presence, fully focused on each other and what we are doing.

We wish you and your families a joyful summer season. If you find yourself in Greytown, please pop into the bookshop to say hello.

M. Blackwell

MILLIE BLACKWELL PROPRIETOR

93 Main Street, Greytown 5712 Open 9am to 4pm every day www.villagebookshop.co.nz