Fame, Fortune and French Tarts

And then it was Monday. In the space of a weekend, the world had changed.

My English Class had been practising School Certificate personal writing starters the week before, but I had never believed that I would be able to write truthfully about this one. But the weekend starting 23rd September changed all that.

On that Saturday morning I received a letter from the New Zealand society of Woman Writers telling me that there was a query about my entry into the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Memorial Writing Awards, 'Little Red Riding Hood.' The letter instructed me to phone Mary Logan in Wellington as soon as possible.

It being a Saturday, I realised that I could not be charged any more than $5 for any Telecom toll call, so I rung straight away. Mary Logan informed me that I had in fact won the Young Writers' award, and that as well as receiving a $I000 prize I would be flown to Wellington for the awards ceremony, and my mother and I would stay at the James Cook Centra hotel.

There was one drawback, however. After breaking the news Mary Logan informed me that I was not to tell anybody outside my immediate family! For a few minutes I knew exactly how Clark Kent (a.k.a Superman) must feel. How could I keep such a secret? I was soon calmed, however, by the realisation that surely my best friends counted as family. Little did I know how big my 'immediate family' was to grow in the next few weeks.

The world had changed indeed. For the next three weeks until the presentation on October 12, I compiled endless lists of things to buy with the money. This is something that I have always enjoyed doing, but never before have I had the means to actually carry out my plans.

Of course I would buy a modem (Internet, here I come!) perhaps a television, a digital diary, earphones and tapes for my Walkman, a microphone for my computer - The list was as long as the distance from my feet to the ground.

October 12 came sooner than I expected. and soon I was literally on cloud nine, on board an Ansett New Zealand aeroplane.

The flight was disappointingly short, but it was a while before my feet touched the ground. We were met at the airport by Rebekah Holt and Vivien Clark from the Bank of New Zealand, and took a taxi to our hotel, where we met the other winners - Maurice Shadbolt, (1st prize, Katherine Mansfield award) Dawn Davies, (2nd prize) Tracey Hill (Novice writers' award) and Andrew Hatton, who won the Non-fiction award.

My mother and I were then taken to our room, and shown all of the weird but definitely wonderful gadgets that the hotel had to offer - air conditioning, Sky TV, minibar and many other luxuries. After settling in I also discovered cute little packets of anything from sewing kits to shoe cleaners. Souvenirs galore!

Not long afterwards we went to have lunch with my uncle - a step up from morning tea on the plane but not as good as the dinner to come. Then to the hairdressers, and finally to the BNZ building itself.

As expected,the room was completely different from what I had expected. Chairs full of interesting people lined the walls sipping orange juice or wine. I joined them and talked to Tracey Hill for a while, until the speeches began.

After being introduced by Ross Stevens, the first to speak was Rob Fyfe (BNZ General manager, marketing and distribution) followed by Doug Graham, (Minister of arts and culture) who was to present the awards.

Before each award was presented the judge spoke about the stories in general, and after the presentation came the nerve-wracking part - the winner was invited to speak! Perhaps this is easy for professional writers like Maurice Shadbolt, but not for me.

I managed to get out a few sentences, sentences which a lot of people told me afterwards were part of a 'good speech.' People also, naturally, congratulated me. I met a lot of interesting people, such as the founders of the New Zealand Women Writers' Society and a man who writes short films as well as sketches for the television programme 'Skitz.'

At around 8:00 everybody trickled into the dining room to begin dinner. This proved to be more of a continuation of the talking and congratulations of before, except with the occasional bite of food, although there was some discussion over the 'arrogant French apple tart,' which we ate for desert.

My mother and I arrived back at the hotel close to midnight, and fell asleep quickly to wake up to a deliciously huge breakfast. Later in the morning Tracey came to our room to read my story and swap addresses, then we went to cash the cheque.