SPIRITED AWAY
Jo James was… well, she doesn’t like to reveal exactly how old she was when a babysitter introduced her to gin, but she was amazed by how much it tasted like hairspray.
“I remember wondering why people drank this stuff, then thinking, actually, it’s curiously delicious hairspray.”
Let’s just say her youthful flirtation with “Gordon” pre-dates her relationship with husband Dave James, who she first met on her 16th birthday, although they’d once lived on the same street in New Plymouth as younger kids.
It wasn’t until the early 80s that they officially became a couple, while studying at Massey University (science with a double major in microbiology and genetics for her; food technology with a major in engineering for him). But there was a certain symmetry to the path their life took in 2016 when they decided to move home to Taranaki after 18 years in Australia and learn something new. “We wanted to be back in our own place, with our own mountain,” says Dave, who was working as a sustainability manager for Fonterra in Melbourne.
He was keen on ballroom dancing; they toyed with the idea of growing dahlias. Then Dave got quite serious about
