You Must Be From Away

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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.

>This syndrome is also know as “Looking Over Strange Terrain”

The map said “Turn right off the Moutere Highway and do a right onto Old Coach Road.”

I know Old Coach Road.

It’s sealed.

And down she went……

And up she went………

I think there might be two Old Coach Roads…….

>This is Katchafire – roots reggae from Hamilton.

And this is the Windy City Strugglers – roots blues from Wellington.

Just goes to prove – good music always looks the same…..

>

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.

>

I like cheap.

I like fast.

I like free even better.

I like fast and free best of all.

I like Orcon’s hotspot at the Richmond Mall a lot.

>I like Steve Fullmer.

He’s a brilliant potter, a really nice guy and he lets me watch the All Blacks on his plasma TV.
Even at 4 o’clock in the morning.

But I think I like his wife Robyn even better.

She makes me whitebait fritters while I’m watching the All Blacks on Steve’s plasma TV.

To be honest, there’s no contest.

Sorry, Steve.

>It wasn’t difficult to spot him.

Propping up his shovel on the side of the road, sporting a nifty digital camera and keeping an eye out for the next photo op, while the rest of his crew slaved away, patching up State Highway 3 in a very professional manner. So it’s no wonder that he cuts such a fine figure.

I’d have expected a more weather-worn character, but it just shows how wrong you can be. But his mates had the highway well up to scratch for our inspection – some token rock falls , the Awakino river nicely viscous as it transported a few up-country farms down to the Tasman somewhat earlier and more rapidly than their owners had anticipated and a goodly-sized washout.

Given the advanced notice, I thought they could have arranged a decent slip , though.