"Tragic" cases ignite public like no other

As I'm sure Ewen Macdonald is fast discovering, there is no court in the land so damning as the court of public opinion. And, as I have taken pause to mention recently, there's nothing quite like having your life story laid bare in column inches.

On that front, I can to a certain extent relate. Given I have spent a decade writing weekly instalments about my life and the people in it, I have to concede that my ability to drift anonymously through the machinations of provincial New Zealand life is surprising and happily pleasing.

Most people who see me tossing up between two-ply and three at the supermarket don't know me, don't recognise me or (best of all) don't care.

Those who do and say hello are, for the most part, friendly and have a shared sense of affinity with the observations I make about the randomness of life.

Occasionally, however, there are those who take exception and don't just think it, but say it. Hearty debate and the right of reply is an important part of our social fabric and I consider myself fairly lucky to have had only one stalker and received one amusing hate letter in all of my years writing often controversial and frequently indulgent opinion pieces.

But no one until this week has ever told me I'm tragic ... or that my writing is.

Sure, if you take away the parts from the sum and examine them under a rather dim and gloomy light from a low angle, there have been some sad and bitter moments. Over a decade, all of us have them. But tragic? Me?

From any angle other than the one this critic was looking at, it might even seem I was living the dream: A lovely home, a gorgeous boyfriend whom I adore, a professional life as a photographer that sees me spend my days documenting joy and love. So why don't I write more about all this?

The honest truth is that happiness is boring. And if we're honest, often annoying.

One of the first things I learned from the seasoned hacks when I started in television news is that "if it bleeds, it leads".

It's an interesting (tragic?) flaw in the human condition that while we tune in to trauma, we have limited interest in the shiny and happy.

Sure, not everyone wants to read about my dramas and gripes about what's wrong with the world but I can assure you fewer still would wish to hear about how blissfully happy I am.

One thing I share with the bulk of the well-fed and satisfied populous is a tendency to whinge when the chips are down and just get on with the business of enjoying life when they're not.

As a fairly typical emo teenager, I churned out page after page of poorly written poetry and prose about my bleeding heart and tortuous existence. Looking back many years later, I wondered why I never wrote about the countless highs (very occasionally literal) experienced during the wonder years of youth. The reason, of course, is that at those times I was far too busy having fun to be bothered picking up a pen and writing about it.

Apparently (if one is to believe some of my readers) very little has changed. But to assure you all as I assured him, there may not be much content that escapes the very public diary of Eva Bradley over the years - but what does is, I am very pleased to report, blissfully happy.