A English actor was quoted in the 1960s as saying "I once visited New Zealand, but it was closed".
I know how he feels.
Just after Xmas, there's a huge sucking noise and a version of musical chairs for 4 million people - plus a few hundred thousand tourists - ensues.
I think that most of them go to Nelson.
So it's only reasonable that the local ISP down here closes up shop and goes somewhere else to avoid the crush.
I guess they took their WiFi server with them, because their hotspot - which I can access from outside the Internet cafe - doesn't bloody work anymore, either.
Sod 'em.
And you can't buy any decent fish in the biggest fishing port in the southern hemisphere.
Guytons, the really good fish people, have 3 suppliers.
Two of them have packed up their nets and buggered off elsewhere until the end of January.
Sod 'em, too.
"The one who's still fishing isn't very good" she said. "We just take what he can give us"
I went looking for haloumi cheese in Push'n'Shove in Richmond today.
The guy who appeared to be in charge reckoned that "the closest they had was havarti". Alphabetically, I guess.
"It's probably one of those foreign ones", he said.
Yeah right.
Like parmesan.
The ladies at Fresh Choice next door laughed themselves silly.
Especially at the last bit.
Awa Press in New Zealand publishes the ultimate in DIY instructions in its "Ginger" series.
For example:
How to catch a cricket match
How to gaze at the southern stars
How to drink a glass of wine
How to listen to pop music
(My favourite, so far. Pop music is one of the few things I know anything about, although I'm quite adept at drinking wine. And I can even be persuaded to use a glass on occasion)
How to catch a fish.
And so on.
Borders - in their infinite wisdom - has a post-Xmas sale with 15% off virtually everything. And they obviously can't program their cash registers to deduct 15% from virtually everything, so they've reverted to the pre-1970s trick of labelling virtually everything with 85% of the pre-sale price.
And in their infiniter (sic) wisdom, they've emasculated the title of virtually everything with labels on steroids
Making things very interesting:
How to cricket
How to stars
How to pop music
How to fish
How to drink
Not bad titles for a new series, actually.
Although I don't need the last one.
I'm OK on my own.
Especially without a glass.
My mate Houghton has had a 3-Series BMW under wraps for years.
I'm not sure if he's waiting for it to become rare and cash in or just hoping that it will decompose into a residue of mag wheels, spoilers and skirts and save him the trouble of recycling it.
But today, it had a certain erotic flair about it...........
(And it's his - Houghton's - 50th birthday today, so have a good one, son.)
Homo sapiens walkshortsii, a species thought to have become extinct towards the end of the last millenium, has been sighted in a remote area of New Zealand.
It appears closely related to Homo sapiens waitingforthewifeii, commonly found in the north of England.
A common factor in both subspecies is a tendency to congregate at watering holes called "Malls" and decorate their nests with shopping trollies.
Unfortunately, ultimate extinction apppears likely due to the fact that both subspecies appear to populated with specimens that are well past breeding age.
Small-town New Zealand, actually.
And Tasman doesn't even qualify as a town. It's more of a cluster of houses, with a school that covers Year 1 through 8, a winery and Steve Fullmer's pottery.
They used to have a store, but that got burned down at the beginning of the month and the two ladies who'd just taken it over lost everything
So the town got together and put on a fundraiser last week.
They had a couple of people singing on a flatbed truck, hotdogs, hamburgers, raffles, wine and beer, one guy selling apples, people going round with a hat and school kids selling lemons.
And an auction.
People donated what that had and what they could - 2 hours of gardening, an All Black shirt impregnated with genuine All Black sweat ($400 or so),paintings from seriously good artists ($1000+), a family portrait sitting by Elspeth Collier, one of NZ's top magazine photographers, weekends away at luxury lodges, olive oil, wine, makeup sessions......
Tasman has about 100 inhabitants and loads more of us turned up and together we raised over $13,000.
That's what I really really like about this place
It must have been the Korean scallops. Or oysters.
Gloves might have been a good idea?
You think Germany has rules?You have to go to the strawberry farm on the Upper Moutere highway for rules.Pedestrian clearway. No parking. No Eftpos. Report to shop before picking. Angle parking only. Return strawberry clippers. Do not pick unripe fruit - it will not ripen. Do not step over rows. Absolutely no children allowed on this block. No exceptions. All rules must be obeyed.And the best one of all.All fruit must be weighed and paid for before eating.At a PYO berry farm.Yeah right.
Before
Scoff
After
The weather forecast this morning started off with the comment "This is like Groundhog Day - you'd think we were back in July"
Continued with the formal stuff, sprinkled with gems like "You had a nice week, Gisborne - it's all going to change now" and - after forecasting snow down to 600 meters in Christchurch, where New Zealand's playing the first cricket test of the season - "The Sri Lankan's are going to like this".
All this interspersed with suppressed snorts and chuckles. And the longest day - which as far as I'm concerned means something like summer - is only 2 weeks away.
Went into a Honda dealership to find out how much a towbar for the CRV's going to cost.The guy at the service department slowly takes a piece of paper and starts writing.Finishes, looks up and says "Go and see these guys. Mr Honda will charge you 800 bucks, they'll do it for 300"Q: "Are they any good" A: "They make towbars for Mr Honda"Cool.
I watched a house burn down today. It was fucking frightening. Called in to see Steve Fullmer in Tasman just before lunch and watched him turn quite a promising jug into an ashtray, before we headed upstairs for a cup of tea.
At 12:16, Robin, Steve's wife, looked out of the kitchen window and said "There's smoke coming out of next door's roof".
"Next door" is the Tasman General Store. Built in the early 20th century, it's mostly held together by a thick layer of paint, applied by a long line of owners.
You can buy groceries, organic veges, newspapers, local wines and ice-creams, collect mail and catch up on the local gossip. There's a petrol bowser and they do fish and chips on Friday nights.
"Next door" is a driveway plus about a meter to the northeast of Steve and Robin's house and gallery.
There was northeasterly blowing.
Steve grabbed fire extinguisher and headed down the stairs and into the store. Peeing on the flames would have had more effect than the fire extinguisher did.
At 12:18, I called 111, we got everyone out of the buildings and tried to get some water from Steve's garden hose onto the building.
Useless. They're not on mains and the pressure's crap.
So we stood and watched the place burn down.
At 12:30, the volunteer fire brigades from Mapua, Upper Moutere and Motueka started arriving and they'd almost run out out of tank water and foam, with the flames lashing out over towards Steve's house, by the time they got a hose into the neighbour's dam and the fire under control.
By 2:30 most of the walls were down and they were dampening down the hotspots. The heat had cracked windows in Steve's house.
Matt, the Incident Officer from the Mapua Volunteer Fire Brigade who's an apiarist in real life and our new neighbour said "It was bloody, bloody close"
The people who ran the store lost everything. They'd just moved in. They'd just finishing renovating.
Including a new coat of exterior paint.
