Doctors didn’t know how to stop the ’flu. Mr McDougall told us how places were set up where people could have their throats sprayed. Sports games and films and concerts — anywhere that people might accidentally pass the ’flu on to others — were banned. Everyone was afraid; nobody knew where the sickness might strike next. There were stories of how some victims turned black, how so many people died in the worst places that they had to be buried in mass graves. None of this was true, but it made people even more frightened. Finally, the ’flu just seemed to stop by itself.

More magpies flapped and squawked in the plum tree as Whina and I finally got the ladder in place. One of them swooped down towards us, its big pointed beak gaping open, then veered away. ‘Scram, you pakeha bird!’ Whina yelled.

Mr McDougall’s son, Robert, gave a morning talk at school about magpies one time. They were brought to New Zealand to get rid of pests like caterpillars and wasps. Now they’ve become a pest themselves. They’re noisy; they kill smaller birds; they sometimes attack people who come too close to their nests.

Robert said the stories about magpies stealing shiny things aren’t really true. Huh! He doesn’t know everything! Father likes birds, but even he complains about magpies. Everyone’s heard stories of them being shot for food during the Depression. Some people were so hungry then that they’d eat anything.

I climbed four … six steps up the ladder while Whina held it, and began dropping plums carefully into the sugar-bag around my waist. ‘Hold it steady!’ I called, as the wooden rungs shifted beneath my feet. ‘I am!’ Whina called back. ‘You stop dancing around on it! You think you’re Jean Batten or something?’ We both began giggling.

Actually, I wouldn’t mind being Jean Batten, all by myself up in the sky. When she made her record-breaking flight, all the way from England to New Zealand (it took over two weeks), Mum said: ‘See? Women can do anything they set their minds to. You remember that, Florence!’

Our sugar-bags are old and patched, but Dad and Mum keep them to remind us of the Depression, the years when there were hardly any jobs, when some people didn’t have enough to eat. Men tramped around the country, begging for work, or else were put in camps, living in tents while they dug railway tunnels or roads for the government — anything to feed their families. We were lucky, living on a farm. At least we had food.