Happy Birthday Margaret Mahy!

It's Margaret Mahy's birthday. (At least, it was yesterday if you're in New Zealand, but there are still a few hours to celebrate in this time zone.) Margaret Mahy... my literary hero... passed away last year. Right now I really hope she's up in heaven having tea with W. S. Gilbert. I wish I could be in the heavenly audience when they start collaborating. Has there ever been such a meeting of like-minded poetic geniuses on earth? Well... hardly ever! It is fun to imagine what their combined wordsmithery, wit, irreverence and humour would produce. And you know there'd be pirates.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall during that conversation. For now maybe I'll just re-read "Portable Ghosts" while listening to The Mikado at the same time. Not quite the same, but it'll do for now. (Actually, that might seriously mess with my brain.)

By the way, "Portable Ghosts" is about a couple of ghosts who haunt (respectively) a book and (eventually) a laptop computer. Portable ghosts... get it? It is nice to think that Mahy's spirit is just as portable - inhabiting every one of her many great books and leaping out to astonish her readers every time - just as it did while she was still alive.

In case you're interested, I've written a bit more about Margaret Mahy here in this blog. And here is a comic strip I wrote about her. I've written about Gilbert & Sullivan here and there in The Drawing Book, but I don't think any of that stuff is online. Ah well... I'm sure it's only a matter of time!