Editorial: Leave Margi to rattle her pen

Simon Waters

MARGI Keys stands accused of being over-exposed.

"The tall poppy syndrome," she tells her friends on social media "came out, with one or two people talking about how over-exposed I was."

"If you raise your head more than three times, some people think you are too much," she commented.

I met Margi for the first time when we met to talk about her ambitions to become Whanganui's "Apostrophiser", a fixer-upper of bad grammar. And I have always been fearful of having to report on her again, as we might do with a school examiner looking over our shoulder as we desperately try not to make a single mistake.

But I don't mind Margi growling me. On both our first meeting, and indeed our second at the recent Feijoa Festival, Margi exuded something I can't describe, except perhaps to say a genuine-ness (that's bound to be wrong, sorry Margi), and a warmth of spirit that made our interviews most enjoyable.

Yes, she's been in the news a bit lately through us and on our website and social media feeds, but also on radio and through other social media channels. And, as Margi points out, about an array of different things. There's no correlation between bad grammar and feijoas that I can see, except that feijoas is quite a tricky word to spell.

So leave Margi alone, you social media bullies.

Maybe her causes aren't your causes, or may not seem important to you. But she's out there rattling her pen to make this a better world and, I suspect, without a single thought to herself.

It's not easy putting yourself out in public, and I applaud Margi for her bravery.

And I look forward to interviewing her again one of these days.