Although I'm trying not to do any MCing this year, I couldn't turn down the opportunity to help the New Zealand Herald celebrate it's sesquicentennial birthday. I also relished the opportunity to use the word sesquicentennial - something I haven't been able to do since the nation celebrated this milestone birthday in 1990.
The Herald and I go way back. My first published work appeared in the Herald when I was 5 years old - a poem I had written featured in the children's Christmas holiday section.
I believe I was paid the princely sum of a $5 book voucher - and as a columnist I can tell you that pay rates haven't changed all that much since then.
Still, it helps pay the mortgage on a home in an area of Auckland that, 150 years ago, my forebears would have worked five jobs to get their family out of.
And it's thanks to the Herald I became a page 3 girl. When I proposed to my long-time partner on leap year, the Herald featured me in a story of leap-year proposals and plonked a big picture of me alongside it.
