Dunedin Botanical Gardens – Buy or view the Ōtepoti | Dunedin gallery

I’d spent the previous day doing my best baked lobster impression. At some point before midday I’d covered myself in sunscreen, sat back in a deck chair and opened a book. There I stayed for many blissful hours enjoying every second in the Dunedin sun. I had found myself curiously fascinated by author Patricia Cornwell who was providing a portrait of a killer. Her theory was that German-British painter Walter Sickert was the elusive serial killer Jack the Ripper. The strangely intriguing aspect of this book was not that Jack the Ripper had been uncovered, but the fact that we were to believe that an author had succeeded in unraveling a mystery that had baffled experts across the world.

Now, twenty four hours later and with Dunedin’s summer sun having been replaced with low cloud and rain, my intrigue into Cornwell’s theory had been replaced with confusion. This left me with three choices. The first was to persist with Cornwall’s wildly speculative theory, the second was to use the book as a doorstop, the third was to walk in the rain around the Botanical Gardens. I chose the gardens and now have a very useful doorstop!