Like I say, it’d be brilliant to write a book, the way Uncle Robert and Finola did. Or to be a doctor. Whatever I do, I want to help people. Such a lot of them have helped me.

There’s one place that always changes, yet it stays the same. I’m talking about the cemetery. I spend a lot of time up there. If that sounds sick (me sick? Haha: sick joke), then Mum says she used to wander around there when she was trying to sort things out after Dad and she split. She and Grandad Alan, and Great-nana Florence until she died, keep it tidy. Uncle John sprays the weeds; even Cam and Sholto help sometimes, when they’re not being stupid boys.

Just about everyone who’s died in our valley is in our cemetery, though more Maori people are buried in the urupa up the hill near their marae. Quite a few people get cremated now, but they usually still have a plaque or something. I like reading them; I know some off by heart.

It’s peaceful being up there. You can still hear tractors and haybalers working in the paddocks, or rumbling over our ‘new’ bridge. There’s even a few hoon cars come tearing through. That’s another change in the valley; I’ll talk about it later.

Magpies and other birds tell the world they’re in charge. Some days, the wind booms in the macrocarpas nearby, and if it’s rained for a while, you can hear the river rumbling along in its bed. I think of Grandad Alan and Tipene when that happens. But the cemetery always seems quiet.

Walking around and reading the graves makes me feel better, somehow. There’s people here who drowned or died in a big ’flu epidemic years back, or were killed in farm accidents. There’s a headstone for a guy who died in World War One. My Great-great-uncle Angus, who was killed trying to help people in the Tangiwai train crash, is here. I’m lucky.

And I feel like I’m surrounded by friends. Yeah, that’s really sick, but when I see the names of all our family, reaching back over a hundred years — Duncan … Lily … Jess … John … Niall … Aggie, who I’m named after … Big Angus (those last names are hard to read now), and when I read the names of their friends: Whina … Rawiri … Ahorangi … Hahona, I know that every one of them would be on my side, would want to help me if they could.