The Web was invented a few years ago, and it’s so brilliant for learning stuff. Mum’s always been interested in ideas, so she was keen to get it when the internet came to our part of the valley. But she keeps trying to use the phone while she’s on the computer, which you can’t do on dial-up, of course. So I’ve been showing her. Grandad Alan and Nana Beth have tried it, too. Grandad’s still teaching at Waimoana School, and he says it could be useful there, ‘if computers ever catch on’. But he reckons he’s a bit old now to understand all this new stuff.

I love it. I want to be a writer sometime, or maybe a doctor. Computers and the Web are going to be so important for studying. Plus they’ll help me, since I can’t do some stuff other kids can.

I read books, too. I’ve even read the history of our valley that Great-great-uncle Robert McDougall wrote, before he died about ten years ago. Some of it’s a bit dry, but it’s got lots of stories about my family and people around here. I learned heaps!

This morning, I was showing Mum how to look up stuff about Scotland on the Web. Some of our family came from there, about 110 years ago. Incredible, eh? Mum’s name — Ailsa — is Scottish. So is mine. I’m Maggie, partly after my Great-great-great-(I think I’ve got the right number!)-nana Aggie. She sounds amazing; she went blind when she was just a girl, but she could do almost anything, like all girls. Thinking of Aggie makes me feel better about what’s happened to me.

My brothers Cameron (older than me, and a big pain), and Sholto (younger than me, and another pain) have Scottish names, too. My dad Robbie’s family came from Scotland, too, almost as long ago as Mum’s. I’ve got heaps of cousins on Dad’s side, and some of the guys are quite cute. Don’t tell anyone I said that.

Dad doesn’t live with us now. He and my mother met on a protest march, would you believe! They were demonstrating against the 1981 Springbok rugby tour of New Zealand, because South Africa still had laws segregating black and white people then. Afterwards, they went on heaps of other protests. They demonstrated against nuclear tests and spy bases in New Zealand, in favour of gay rights and Maori land claims. Some people in the valley didn’t like it; said they were just stirrers. A few people even reckoned I got sick because Mum used to take me with them, and the stress must have affected me. That’s so stupid. It really sucks.