All Those Yesterdays

This is a story many New Zealand women - particularly those who grew up in the country - will identify with. Elspeth Biss was brought up on Hawke's Bay farms in the 1940s; attended boarding school in the 1950s; trained as a nurse, married, and brought up a family in the 1960s and 70s on farms in the Wairarapa. As she writes: The 1960s may well have been 'the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius', as the popular song had it, with the Beatles, Mary Quant and the mini-skirt, but for me and most of my friends it was a decade of child raising, washing nappies, Plunket and kindergartens. In her absorbing memoir, Elspeth Biss evokes the way things were during 'all those yesterdays'. She is fiercely proud of her Scottish heritage, going 'home' for the first time in 1946. Passionate about horses and hunting, she is also always looking for a new challenge - 'retirement' is an opportunity to sell cosmetics and learn to kayak at an age when most prefer sedentary pursuits. All Those Yesterdays celebrates a life well lived away from the headlines and the city lights.