What a storm in a teapot!!

It begins with all of the anticipation - …will he won’t he will he join the dance… - but not a sign of a lobster at all. For two weeks the media waited agasp for their invitation to the event of all electoral events; the expected invitation for Banksie to share a pot of tea with none other than the PM and the acknowledgement that Banksie was in fact a Nat in all but name for electoral purposes. Not only that, but the pot of tea was to come with shared electoral biscotti. In return for an undertaking (always an interesting word that, in circumstances such as these) to provide stable government the PM himself would ensure that his party would not actively contest the seat in which Banksie is standing.



The appointed day arrives. A media scrum is put down in a café on Broadway – another of those interesting coincidences that passes everyone by - the limousine draws up, the Banksie appears magically with entourage who dust the pavement from car to café and Banksie and PM repair to a table for a nice cuppa.



Once the media have played their part in supporting the election campaigns of the two, they are ushered out to press their noses against the windows and wonder just what PM’s talk about over a nice cuppa. Well, one industrious member of their number found out by (inadvertently) leaving his radio-mike in a bag on the table.



Since then, all manner of unprintables and several hundred tumbrills full of printables have been flying through the air.



Quite amazing then that no one has asked what the PM and Banksie were drinking. Choysa? Bell? Twinings? Or did the PM go the whole way and treat Banksie to a pot of Uncle Don's Best?

On matters of free speech... and letters to Editors

Its funny (peculiar) sometimes how things pan out in life. The letter I sent to SST was published (with some fairly injudicious editing. At least I can thank my lucky stars that they published it without (as TFS is always complaining) leaving out all of the sense of it. They did remove the “potty jockey” crack I had at Michael Laws. All in all it was about a half of what I had originally writ.

And therein lies the funny. Printed in small red letters above my contribution (as printed in SST) were the words “Winning Words”. Now if you look down to the end of the letters space you find a little note to the effect that you may win a ball-pen… It is now Friday and I haven’t yet seen it.

Not, you understand, because it is coveted; far from it as at work I use a very simple slim ball-pen refill (no cover or cap), a practice which stops me from walking out the door with it in my pocket and stops anyone else from knicking it off of my desk. I also have a very nice “special” at home which includes a wood barrel and cap turned by a very good friend and given me for my 60th. The wood is swamp kauri, reputedly (from the certificate Len gave me) aged at 6,500 BPE. Was there a hint there, old Len? It is a thing of beauty indeed and thus far unused. That might change when I renew my Will in a few weeks’ time. I also have (somewhere in the laboratory) a very expensive Scheaffer (like this one) fountain pen. Last time I used it (to sign my Marriage Certificate and the Register) I needed an ink cartridge for it and I ended up refilling the old empty with ordinary cheap ink.

I am wondering if the Subbie who re-wrote my contribution has claimed the pen as his own in return for the work he put in to get my letter published.

"Boy"

The Mrs probligo and I went out to one of our occasional forays to the picture theatre last week. To bear in mind here, there were probably no more than 15 in the theatre at the session we went to but it was announced this morning that it has already overtaken "Sione's Wedding" as the highest grossing NZ film. We are a fairly stubborn nation; the creations of ex-pats like Jackson just do not count as "NZ films".

This one by Taiko Waititi definitly qualifies as NZ grown.

The film gets promo'd in the press as a "comedy". I can't agree with that. It has some light moments but that is all.

It is a topical and backward looking excerpt from the life of an 11 year old boy living in back-country NZ. I think that is where I start getting uncomfortable about it; it is about where I come from, it is about people I have known, went to school with, played rugby with, swum in the creek with, fought with, gone fishing with...

Will it make an international hit? I think not.

But for all that, keep a weather eye out at the festivals that come to your town. One never knows, you might get the chance to see it.

Link to home page in the header...

A holiday to remember...

One of the more amusing little items in the news this past week concerned a young Australian man who was visiting one of NZ's more well-known winter resorts.

After a very good day's ski'ing, he met up with a nice young lady in a bar. They agreed to repair to her room and after an evening of adult recreation fell asleep. Some while later he awoke, wandering around the hotel corridors stark naked and somewhat confused.

After fumbling around for a bit he discovered a door that was not locked, entered after assuming that the only unlocked door was the one he had left, and crashed out on the end of the bed.

He was roused by a woman's screams.

Wrong room...

A Material(istic) difference...

This little tale comes from a friend of my wife; a lady whose opinions and outlook I respect as much as I do her husband’s.

The conversation was about parties, barbeques of the summer variety, and some of the people that you meet.

This lady invited some friends over for a barbeque (the story is second hand from my wife); friends whom the hosts knew had guests in from San Francisco. The husband of the lady telling the story was a keen angler and had had a good catch the day prior and was happy to share some of our freshest and finest seafood.

After the meal had been downed, accompanied by some very good wine I do not doubt, the hostess was in the kitchen clearing up and was stacking the plastic plates used for the barbeque in the dishwasher.

The female half of the San Franciscan couple came in to assist and was quite astonished that the plastic “throw-aways” would be re-used. “Oh! We haven’t washed dishes in years! Everything is delivered in disposables, and we use disposables at the table!”

Ah, the pleasures of life...

...is sitting here, thinking of as little as possible having dined very well on my wife's cooking - lamb shanks is red wine - and listening for the first time to El Misteri d'Elx.

Beautiful music, written in the 15th Century but the recording made from a Renaissance document.

The CD? Veritas 7243 5 45239 2

Recommended!