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Kia ora tatou, um, welcome to Lilac, uh, Wellington's Lesbian Library. Um, I'll just go through, uh, sort of the order of proceedings, because there aren't many, but it'll make, maybe it'll make sense. Um, we'll, uh, have our guest speaker, and, um, I'll introduce Jan properly, and, uh, Jan will do [00:00:30] some readings and then we'll have questions if you've got any questions. And, uh, then we'll have a sort of a more informal gathering around the cake and there's some, some other snacks and some drinks behind you. Um, and Alan will actually talk about, um, the beginnings of, uh, lilac. 30 years ago, this is, this, hence the cake, our 30th [00:01:00] anniversary. Um, so, then we'll cut the cake and, uh, uh, eat it and, um, drink and be merry. And, uh, but before I, um, I begin, um, I'd like to make some acknowledgements of, um, of lesbians who've passed. And, uh, Pauline Simmons. who was, um, very important collective member and quite an activist, [00:01:30] lesbian activist, over the years. Uh, Pat Rosier, uh, who started the first book group. And, uh, in the last few weeks, Alison Lorry, who wasn't a collective member, but she was a very firm supporter of Lilac. And Interestingly, there's a link between Jan and Fran and Alison, because I'm told that in 1989, Alison [00:02:00] delivered a series of lectures for continuing education on lesbian her story. And, uh, the three, three plus a few other lesbians who actually came out, um, enjoyed Alison's talks. We're delighted, actually, that we're finally talking at, um, at LILAC. And, um, uh, I've just briefly [00:02:30] introduced you. I know people, many of you, actually, here know Jan Jordanis, but, um, uh, she's, um, Emerita Professor at, uh, Victoria University, um, Te Hongaringa Waka, and She's a noted criminologist, uh, author, and some, done some amazing, valuable work on the survivors of rape and sexual [00:03:00] abuse, amongst other things. Um, and now she's the, um, author of these memoirs. And, um, this is an amazing book. It's, um, I think the, the clue is in the subtitle One woman striving to survive, fighting for survivors. And there's some, you know, to be honest, there are some dark passages in this. [00:03:30] But as a reader, I felt you, I was a willing reader to survive. And it's a very compelling read. It's, uh, but gradually, um, step by step. Um, you, uh, worked a way to, um, self preserve and, um, and to survive. And I suppose it was learning to navigate [00:04:00] the abyss. And you returned to university and had a very successful career. So, um, I, um, before I finish the introduction, I must say that I never expected to read in this book mention of Mr. Lee Grant. Ooh! A New Zealand pop singer. I actually was at school with someone who was dead keen on Lee Grant and actually cut her hair in the [00:04:30] same style. So, it pleased me no end. And the other thing was that, um, I appreciated your tips on snorkeling. Because I, um, I've always panicked a bit, so I knew I just had to, I have to stick with it. Absolutely. So it's over to you. Okay. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much, Valda. And, um, I have a question thanks to [00:05:00] Robin who's not here today, but who was the first, who, um, yeah. Rang and, and invited me and then Valdas been wonderful at briefing me and, um. And yes, keeping me warmed up for today's event, which I'm delighted to be at, um, because it is such a memorable occasion. I'm strategically positioned for the cake at the moment, which is, which is a work of art. Um, and I also, I too wanted to acknowledge the passing particularly recently of Alison Laurie, because Alison was, [00:05:30] um, really important for me in those coming out days, as was Prue. Um, and lesbian radio. It was, um, was such an important kind of touchstone in a way, um, in the eighties and Alison's passion, her zeal, her commitment, um, were a real inspiration. So I just wanted to acknowledge her, her passing as well. Um, and thinking about today, I, I go off sometimes on little tangents [00:06:00] and I met up on a tangent about the name Lilac and I thought, okay, so we know it's the lesbian information library and archive centre. Yep, um, but I really got into thinking about the color and the color lilac or lavender, purple, whatever you want to call it, And of all colours, that lavender purple colour is that most associated with lesbians. And it crops up again and again in Lesbian Her Story in relation to joy and [00:06:30] activism, affirmation of identity. Um, you know, it goes way back. I mean, we can recall Sappho's case. poems about violets and, um, her wearing garlands of purple flowers, um, and in the early 1900s, lesbian women would give violets to the women they were wooing, which is a rather nice custom. I think that's one we could reintroduce. Um, but the association wasn't always positive. Um, in the mid 20th century in the U. [00:07:00] S., The Lavender Scare saw gay men, lesbian women removed from government jobs out of fear that they posed a threat to national security because they were vulnerable to blackmail. Um, and in the early 70s, lesbians were referred to even by some feminists. As the Lavender Menace. Um, out of fears that they were too radical, and basically that they'd give feminism a bad name. Um, the term lavender, I didn't know this [00:07:30] one before I started looking it up, was even applied to men at times. Um, in 1926 there was a biography of Abraham Lincoln that described him as possessing a streak of lavender. Um, implying he had homosexual tendencies, or perhaps we might more likely say today bisexuality. And then of course we've got Alice Walker's the Color purple, which, you know, big celebration of, of that color. So lilac and purple are now really proudly associated with lesbian [00:08:00] empowerment, and it is a color that connects us, connects us, and I think it's, you know. No wonder that it's embraced by lilac, um, in the name. Now I grew up unaware of all of this, um, I didn't know growing up the term lesbian, what a lesbian was, let alone suspect I might be one. Um, and as Valda said, last year I brought out this memoir with Cuba Press about the importance really of connecting all the different parts of myself into [00:08:30] a whole. Um, and for me, I felt as if I had a very mixed up me who'd nearly killed herself. Um, birth name, Janet Robinson, and another older me who was known as an academic and criminologist, Jan Jordan. And as Prue said coming in, she really, I think I need you were meaning you only knew the Jan Jordan. You had no idea there was a Janet Robinson lurking in the wings. So I wrote the book to bring these two identities [00:09:00] together because I felt like there was a bit of a split inside of me. I felt like these two actually needed to be integrated. I needed to integrate them into one. And so the book is my identity. integrating of those two identities. And of course, part of that journey for me involved, um, accepting and becoming proud of being lesbian. And like many women, I was a late bloomer. And I can still remember the encouraging talk from The straightest talking [00:09:30] lesbian I know, um, on a, on a bus after a women's studies conference where she basically told me to stop mucking around and just get on with it, um, which was very sage advice and, um, I was terrified of Prue back then so I followed it. But if I look back to the high school me. I can see it was all there, um, I just didn't have a framework at the time for recognising it. So I want to read a piece from, [00:10:00] um, that's about my, me in my fourth form years at high school. So we can just find where the fourth form me is hiding. So, as my self hatred intensified, I responded by putting special friends and teachers on pedestals, developing strong crushes. All but two of the Westlake teachers were women, with the majority of the senior staff [00:10:30] unmarried. We romanticised that this was because they were grieving for fighter pilot fiancées who'd tragically been killed in the war, later realising they weren't old enough. The teacher I became most fixated on was Miss Ryburn, my social studies teacher in the third and fourth forms, before she became our school headmistress. Girl's diary entries of few words conveyed the strength of my adoration. Miss Ryburn, the most tremendous teacher ever. [00:11:00] Miss Ryburn blew school up with just cause at assembly. Looked gorgeous as usual. Lovely facial features, especially eyes. Miss Ryburn, she's the greatest thing since God. I hate it bad. I stayed up late at night to make my workbook for her immaculate. I drew maps of Mesopotamia, found pictures of Japan, added clippings from newspapers, stenciled title pages. Anything and [00:11:30] everything to impress my adored teacher. In her classes, she whisked us away to faraway places and took us time travelling through history. One day we were standing past Egypt's pyramids, the next marching through Nazi Germany. By now I was working Friday nights and holidays in Preston's bookshop in Takapuna, spending my meagre wages on modern history books. When Miss Ryburn came to the shop one evening, I turned a brighter shade of red as sweat [00:12:00] dripped from my brow. I could barely bring myself to serve her. Later I cursed myself in case my discomfort made me appear rude. Her classes allowed me to conceive of a life different to my own, which helped me manage the everyday pain I felt at being alive. What would life have been like if I'd been born into a Viking family in the 11th century? Or being a lady in waiting to Queen Elizabeth I. I knew better than to want to be any of [00:12:30] King Henry VIII's wives, maids or mistresses. The possibility of life being different, and my experience of it being different, gave me hope that my own could change. Even though I felt imprisoned, I could see out between the bars and imagine a different place, a place where I might connect and belong. Later in the book I talk about my first lesbian relationship that occurred at a time when we actually felt the real [00:13:00] pressure to keep it hidden and secret. We were both working as postgrad students and tutors in the same university and department. The intensity and the lack of space, huge. We moved in to live together. We marched against the 1981 tour together. We kept studying together, working together, but it became too turbulent to be sustainable. Trying to keep living as friends was also a disaster, and amidst huge angst, [00:13:30] she moved out. The next couple of years, I lived alone in that house. I struggled to understand what it all meant. Was I a lesbian? What was a lesbian? Four years later, I was still mystified, and I wrote, What was that all about? The passion, the fervor, the sheer intensity of it all, stifling each other, loving each other so possessively, [00:14:00] throttling each other emotionally. Is that a pattern for relationships? Is that what being lesbian is all about? Or is that what being insecure in any relationship can lead to? I sensed some of my confusion stemmed from the vast transition I made so quickly. I said, I feel so very mixed up again by all that happened there and why I seemingly went from Christian fundamentalist to lesbian [00:14:30] feminist overnight. No wonder, there was a bit of a culture shock going on. Eventually, I ricocheted back into relationships with men, none of them lasting or successful, and didn't live with another partner until Chris and I got together. More on that later. So I had to overcome, um, a hard journey to overcome the insecurities I had and just to accept that, that I was in fact lovable. I had to do what I call [00:15:00] snorkel the abyss, the abyss of despair that I felt at times I came close to, um, being swallowed by. And the younger me, um, was very full of misery, self loathing, and as well as various suicide attempts. I often use cutting to release the emotional turmoil inside, sometimes needing more than 40 stitches at a time just to knit me back together again. And today I'm really grateful that friends, [00:15:30] supporters reached out at different times to save me from my own destructiveness during those days and from that very sort of self sabotaging part of myself. And a lot of healing and recovery was needed before I could have a successful relationship. And that included finding feminist frameworks that actually helped me make sense of my life and understand so much more of it. And my growing confidence and strength has really evolved in the context of my relationship with Chris. And we've been together now 32 [00:16:00] years, which is amazing. No, Chris is down the back with the scarf on. That's Chris. Right. You've been outed. Um, it's not surprising we had a pretty rocky beginning and it took me a long time to learn to trust in her love and steadfastness and the strength of our lavender connection. And that strong connection is part of what helped me connect with myself, find ways to make sense of who I am. [00:16:30] And very early on, I found it really hard. I had to go to the US to a conference. And before I left, Chris gave me a little bear to take with me to the States. And I still have this little bear. Oh my goodness. Anybody want to guess what her name is? Lavender. This is Lavender. So, she started life being very, you know, she's not doing well, is she? Given that she's more than 30 and she started life scrunched [00:17:00] in a suitcase, bundled all the way to the States and back. It's frameworks that really help us make sense of our worlds. Frameworks are really important, I think, and they help us make meaning of what we see and what we experience. And they help us discern what's important and what's not. And they're powerful, and they can also be seen as challenging to those who don't share them. And I've been thinking a lot about how we're living in a time when there's a lot of talk about diversity, but in [00:17:30] ways that seem divisive. And I think it's really critical that we hold on to our distinctiveness as lesbians, and to not have our identities dissolved in what I call a soup of queerness, or lost beneath a cloak of inclusivity. We can be queer, diverse, and inclusive lesbians. And that's because I think being lesbian is both personal and political. And it's about our identity and our right to be recognised for making the [00:18:00] choice to actually love women. And it's really important, I think, that this library, this archive, continues to exist and retain its lesbian identity. And so on that note, I really want to thank all those who've worked so hard for 30 years to found this place, keep it going, put the energy into this place and bring this gathering together today as well. So congratulations on 30 years to Lilac and here's [00:18:30] to the next 30 of strong lesbian identity. Thank you. That was brilliant. Thank you. Thanks. Are there any questions, comments? I still, I've, I got completely caught up on the question why. I mean your, your parents were pretty. So so. [00:19:00] For parents, obviously. You couldn't really have released it in their lifetimes, I wouldn't have thought. Because it's pretty damn critical of them. But they didn't seem to me to be so terrible. It seemed to me to be much like a lot of them of that era. They didn't beat you, they didn't sexually abuse you. You got sexually abused later. Yeah. They, and, uh, I mean I wanted to [00:19:30] slap you. Yeah. I wanted to say, for God's sake, step out of it. Right. You're not much worse than me. Most of us had, or a lot of us had, my dad committed suicide when I was nine, I was sort of, had some trauma, and I didn't go that way, and I wonder, was I, you know, particularly insensitive, and you were particularly sensitive, and I was thinking, God, you used up all the resources of the National Health Service, didn't you? LAUGHTER I just [00:20:00] wondered how you got out of it, really, and, uh, yeah, maybe, um is Maybe I should have got it more from the book, but the integration of the two halves I found a bit hard to. Okay, so the first bit, the bit that made you want to slap me, um, I mean, there were times I felt like slapping me too, um, too many of them. Um, I think it is hard, hard to explain. I think [00:20:30] we talk a lot about, um, the abuse that comes that's overt and that's committed. And it's a little bit like when you think about, um, like neglect and omission. are also abusive. So things that aren't given and aren't made available and aren't, aren't there, are also damaging and destructive. And for me growing up, um, I was an only child with these [00:21:00] older parents, with a mother who was locked still in her own grief. So, um, and a father who had been emasculated by. Um, very much by my mum's mum, who'd provided the house and ruled the roost, etc. He basically absented himself in all sorts of ways. Mostly down, down to the garage. Always a lot. When he was up in the house, he wasn't really there. He was behind a newspaper. So he was absent. My mother was absent with her [00:21:30] own grief. So for a child growing up, There was no touchstone in that house at all. There was a lot of swirling emotions, and family members would be silently exiled in and out of the house, but nobody would talk about what was going on. Um, grandparents would die, you wouldn't really be told, you wouldn't be allowed to go to the funeral. Everything was pretense. And for me, I suppose, now people talk a lot about gaslighting. There was nothing, you know. There was nothing [00:22:00] solid that I could hang onto to form my identity around. And there was nobody emotionally who was available at all to um, give love, express love, um, people provided and they were loving and that yes, they put food on the table. They said, how was your day at school? And did you come top again? You know, there was that kind of loving, but in terms of. What are you feeling? Or why are you [00:22:30] upset? Or, this is just happening and this is why I'm not going to be much cock to you tonight because I've just had this happen to me as a parent. There was none of that. So, for me growing up, I got lost in that. And I didn't know what was real, who to trust. I thought everything was a world of pretense. And part of the cutting in some ways for me was to. Slash through the pretense and say, you know, one stage I wrote, I've got insides, I can see them [00:23:00] because I felt that I was living as this surface dweller in a pretend world where nothing could be trusted, nothing was real, and no one really cared about me emotionally at all. Okay, so that, so that's, yeah, okay. Um, in terms of putting it all together, in a funny way, the Christians helped. It's a transition thing, because at least they tried to say God loves you, Jesus loves you. Um, [00:23:30] and so for a while there was that as a bit of a touchstone, but I couldn't really believe it. And if you've read the book, then you know that what happened was because I couldn't believe it and trust that completely. Then I went through exorcism rituals where they tried to cast out the demons of doubt and despair and all the rest of it. So, um, so that kind of fell apart a bit, but at least the people, like there are some of those people I still have huge respect for, for the way that they, they did care [00:24:00] and they did listen and they did want to know what was going on. Sure, I didn't buy their answer, but They were prepared to listen to what was real, so, so that was, that was an important part of it. But I think, I think, you know, knitting, knitting myself together was, it took a long time. I think writing helped. I used to write lots and lots of journals. So, and in some ways I kind of wrote myself together. Um, I Your [00:24:30] memory's amazing. Well, that's because I had all these journals. Yep, I had, I had all these journals. Yep, I, I know, living in a small house, they're one of the banes of our lives, is that I've got boxes of journals from, um, I had my diaries from, you know, I've got my diary that I wrote in the fourth grade. form, you know, like, um, you know, like writing helped writing. I mean, I had to, you know, I was asking the question why, and I was trying to [00:25:00] answer it back to myself and it wasn't very successful, but it was a way of asking it, it was a way of putting it out there. Um, you know, so there was a mix of, of people in connection of the writing, um, later of psychotherapy. You know, which, um, which I found really, you know, really important as a way of trying to make sense of some of, some of the past. Along the way, I tried all sorts of other things because I got, you know, I was desperate for, you know, for answers, etc. So there's all [00:25:30] kinds of things that fed into that. Um, and I think in terms of the transition, for me it was when I started feeling like I could have a successful career and the book, Working Girls, which was, um, the first bit of real research that got published came out. It was a book of interviews with sex workers in New Zealand. It was research I kind of fell into, um, literally kind of fell into because I'd done some historical work on sex work and then was asked to write a chapter for a book. And I thought Sheda Cox was asking me to write a chapter for a book. [00:26:00] On the historic woman in the 19th century that I'd done university research on, and she said, no, I want you to write about contemporary sex work. And I said, I don't know anything about contemporary sex work. And she said, I didn't know anyone better to go out and find out about it. And next thing I'm in a message parlor in Wellington going. Anybody want to have a chat? And so, so that was unleashed. When that book came out, people said to me, you've got, I [00:26:30] was talking about changing my name, and they said, if you're going to change your name, you really have to do it now. Um, and so that was when I decided to, changed my name and, and embraced Jan Jordan, Jordan being my grandmother's maiden name as far back as I could kind of go. And I liked it as a name and it's watery and I'm Pisces and all those sorts of things. Um, so, and in a sense, that was an important thing too. And, and that sort of journey was taking on a [00:27:00] name that Yes, that I claimed as my own. So that was, that was actually an important thing. And then the 90s, you know, went forward from there and during that time Chris and I got together and I felt like I cemented a bit more of my career and what I was doing and, you know, well, you know, you knew the history from that time anyway. Yeah, so there's that. Answer that bit a little bit too? Yep, okay. It's such a contrast. [00:27:30] Yeah, um, it is a huge contrast, um, but I think just like I kind of sank slowly through childhood into it, it took me quite a long time to rise as an adult out of it. It wasn't, it wasn't like a Christian conversion experience, you know, it was. Yeah, a lot of it doing the hard work and a lot of it being dependent on love and support from people around about me as well. And just on friendship and I'm kind of just having a and [00:28:00] learning to trust that what people said was actually real and that people could would tell you the truth. You know, just trusting. Trusting emotional connection. Um, did you grow up in a Christian household? Not really. Um, I went to Sunday school and my mother was Anglican, um, church at Christmas and Easter. Um, but not really. I mean, we didn't talk about God around the table or. No. Pray. No. No. To thank God for the food. [00:28:30] Not, maybe when my godmother came, once or twice, but. She was a devout Anglican. My mother, my mother was an Anglican, not devout. No, your grandmother. My god, my godmother. Oh, your godmother. No, not really, but she was called the godmother, she was supposed to be looking after my godly welfare. Maybe, yeah. Ha, ha, ha. Just on that bit about religion, because that features, um, Well, first of all, I'd like to say what a good reader it was, and I think you've been very brave [00:29:00] writing it. Oh, thanks. And I thought it had a lot of integrity, in terms of you being very honest about, you know, what happened to you. But, of course, in that, what features quite a lot, is in fact the, um, the religious aspect. And you do say in the book, something along the lines of, well, when I found feminism that, you know, I jumped from that to that. Where does God [00:29:30] sit with you now? I mean, do you still have any leftovers from that time? You know, I'm not even sure. I think I'm probably just in that agnostic kind of, no, not really. Um, no, I think, I was never totally convinced at the time. Like I tried to convince myself and I thought that, My surviving depended on my being convinced by it at times. But [00:30:00] no, it doesn't, um, yeah, you know, I sort of No part in your life now? No, um, God's, she's a black feminist lesbian, you know, I mean, you know, who is God? What is God? No, not for, not for me. Is there one God or more than one God? I'm agnostic, I don't know. It's, I, I don't know. Um, I think. Rather than worrying about, now I'd rather than, I [00:30:30] suppose, rather than worry about whether there's a God or not, I'm much more concerned about worrying about what we're doing to our Earth. So, um, I guess for me, um, I found feminism, like you mentioned, mentioned feminism, feminist framework helped me make sense much more of my experiences in life. And anybody who's ever been to any of my lectures is probably sick of hearing me go on about the patriarchy and the fact that [00:31:00] that, you know, for me, that whole conceptual apparatus that feminism gave me around understanding, you know, why I'm We have, you know, so much gender, you know, inequality, and the lives of women and the lives of lesbians as women. That framework, for me, has probably given me the most powerful tool to make sense of my world. More powerful than what the religious talk gave me. In your world, it's a cruel God. [00:31:30] No, there is, there is. God's not necessarily responsible. People have, people have, have been cruel and people are being cruel, you know, I mean, I, I want to look and put responsibility on humanity for actually being far too often inhumane. Um, and that's, I think what we need to address is, you know, inhumanity, the lack of human rights and the need to actually. right our relationship and our [00:32:00] connections, not just with each other, but our connections with with this planet that we're living on and slowly destroying. Yeah. Yeah. Hi. I was really struck by what you said about structure, like needing structure. Could you say a bit more about that? Because what I heard was no structure, nothing to cling onto for Janet Robertson. Yeah. At all. Or something that didn't really hold, and then I'm kind of interested in, [00:32:30] and then you said structures of relationship, work, I'm kind of interested too in what your structures are now. Well I think in a way you could, I mean another word around that I suppose is like, you can, loosely say, like having boundaries around as well. So boundaries that help to kind of contain and frameworks, I guess I'd, I used to be strict, but I'm sort of thinking to a frameworks more frameworks to make sense of meaning. And like, [00:33:00] when I was growing up, it felt like, um, there wasn't, there was no container on the emotion in the, in the house. And there was no. framework to make sense of what was swirling around, unsettled the time. Mm-Hmm. . And there was, I mean, yes, there was, it's not that it didn't have structure in that. Yes, we had a pattern. We got up and, you know, I mean, it was a routine. We had routine, we had the, we had a [00:33:30] structure each day, but that structure masked the fact that there was nothing beneath it that was tangible at all and nothing. And nothing to, that could be related to. It's a hard thing to explain. I'm asking because I slightly relate. Right. That's why I'm asking the question. For me growing up, I grew up in a Christian household. Ah, yep. So that was the container. Right. And it felt safe for a long time. And then I just identified with you let [00:34:00] something go, and then you find something new. Yeah. Like you found lesbianism. Yeah. Yeah, and so then you find other things like work. And other things. So it's just kind of an interesting idea. And yeah, I wondered how other people feel like, do I need structure? Do other people, do we all need some kind of structure to kind of make sense of living? I'm here. That's what I was interested in. I mean, I'm not sure about other people. I know for me, I really needed some kind of framework.[00:34:30] Like one of the big things I got obsessed with was asking, like, why and everything seemed. And the thing that really preoccupied me as a teenager was that life seemed essentially meaningless. There was no fundamental, there was, there was nothing. That gave any of it meaning. And then I thought I'd do philosophy and then of course I read existentialism and you know, by then I was thinking, it doesn't matter, you know, whether I pull the kid from under the bus wheels or [00:35:00] whether I throw the kid in front of the bus wheels. It's, it's all meaningless. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or throw myself under the bus wheels. It doesn't, you know, nothing mattered. So for me, I, I Are you that suicidal at the moment? No. No. No. You do not need to worry. I haven't been suicidal for a long time. Many a long time. So, yeah. No. I'd like to just, um, talk a little bit about, um, travel. [00:35:30] Yeah. You seem to have travelled an awful lot, a lot, but sometimes in not very good state. Yeah. And It gives a certain momentum to the book, but it's, I saw it also sort of as a metaphor of your, you know, your journey looking back. Um, that, uh, there was, as I say, there's a lot of travel, not just in Europe, was it because it was easy to travel, or in, you [00:36:00] know, the Indian subcontinent, um, and more since. So. Did that, were you, was that a device you used or was it just something that happened? It's a good question, Valda, because I think travel for me as a kid growing up, like, my earliest books that I started saving collections of were all about children in other countries and other lands. So I bought, I was focused, you know, from a four year old at least onwards, with how kids lived in other parts of the world and what their [00:36:30] lives were like. And. So I think from an early age, I did use travel as a, as a device. Um, and I was curious, you know, like part of me just felt so trapped and stifled in this world. I just used to sit and spin my globe and just think, you know, there's something else out there, you know, I just need to find it, you know. Um, and so travel was really important. And then, you know, the desperate travel that you allude to really was throwing [00:37:00] everything, including enough. pills to top myself with into a suitcase and going to the other side of the world. And just thinking, you know, I mean, I didn't believe in a geographical fix, but then another part of me hoped that, you know, it was really depressed when I got off the plane and found myself waiting there to greet me, you know, it was like, ah, you know, you're still here. So travel had always had a hope, I guess, for me. Um, But also an [00:37:30] intrigue, because I think I was always really curious that other kids had different kinds of lives in other places, you know. Um, and I grew up in a very white part of Auckland, but I got, you know, I had kids about Māori children growing up. I had, you know, I All kinds of kids I wanted to know about, what was life like. Um, so yeah, it was, yep, it was an important part and travel's still an important part. Um, Chris and I have just come back from, finally, after 30 years since we ever first got together talking about it, [00:38:00] we've been on safari in Africa. So, yes, so, um, travel's still important and, and that was affirming in terms of just, you know, like conservation and the environment and what's being done to try and protect a lot of the endangered animals on the African continent. So yeah, so that was amazing. So travel is still important. I'd travel more if I could. Any more questions? On behalf of the collective Jan, I'd like to thank you very [00:38:30] much. Oh, thank you. Oh, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. It's lovely.
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