You Must Be From Away

>New Zealand is on holiday.

There are no news bulletins on TV until 6 p.m.

And they start with the story that a cattery has lost 2 kittens over the Xmas period and has had its licence revoked.

Hallo……?

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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.

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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

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It must have been the Korean scallops. Or oysters.

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Gloves might have been a good idea?