Remind me, why are we doing this?

Two grown women sit transfixed in a caravan in a paddock, four hours drive from the remotest capital city in the world, watching a red line move angonisingly slowly from left to right on a computer screen.

The adventure had begun nine months ago in the same caravan hundreds of kilometres to the north. Nerys asked me if I would help her write a book of recipes and hints for travelers. On a sunny winter’s morning, it seemed like a nice little hobby activity.

The difficulties of living hundreds of kilometers apart became obvious in the size of our telephone bills and the number of emails that flew back and forth. I bought and learnt to use a new camera, updated my computer programs and ate many wonderful stone cold meals beautifully arranged for photographs. There was so much food being cooked, I had large dinner parties and sent out doggy bags to grateful friends.

Early in 2009, Easy! was launched as an E book. It wasn’t long after that Nerys decided that as not everyone traveling had access to a computer, we should look into self publishing a hard copy. Let the fun begin!

Gremlins in the system ate full stops from the ends of sentences, photographs that had been square now all needed to be redone in another format, spaces appeared where none had been before. The questions came faster than we could figure out the answers and there were more problems than there seemed to be solutions for every day. Many times we were heard to comment that we would rather burn the damn book rather than do another final final final proof read.

It's nine months since we had that original discussion and the red line was our baby winging her way through cyberspace to be printed. Our sanity was sorely tried but in our best professional manner, buoyed by endless cups of tea, liquorice allsorts, extreme silliness and Prakash's great lunches we persevered. Sanity and serenity had to take a back seat with everything and everyone else.

The message on the screen read “Your message has been sent.” One day soon the cartons will arrive and like all mother’s we’ll soon forget the labour pains.