Shop Assistants

 Hi there

I know I've gone on before about being annoyingly greeted by shop assistants, but it  still irks me.

Forget about them calling me 'Sweetie", "Dear", "love" which I detest, but at a very small itty-bitty tiny pinch, I can live with that.  What really riles me up is assistants who have obviously all been schooled on how to feel at one with a customer by pointing out that they love a piece of your jewellery, or clothing, or accessory.   Anything to get you onto their side, to cement that bond so that you'll buy out the entire shop.

"Oh, I just luuuurve that skirt.  It really suits you...."

... but sometimes the assistant just can't find anything you're wearing that they could even consider putting on their Top Ten.  Last week, a young male shop assistant said to me, "I like your, er, um...tan?"..

Lots have liked my watch.  My sandals.  My winter woollie beanie.  The actual colour I'm wearing actually sets many assistants on a lovefest:  "What a beautiful green!  Blue!  Red!

Once, I wandered into a clothing shop directly after a long hike when I'd been sweaty and tired, wearing rumpled clothes that even charity shops would turn their noses up at.  The assistant went into raptures over my hiking stick.

Another time, in an exclusively posh dress shop on Waiheke Island, when I wasn't clad in the most-ironed of blouses. the plum-in-her-mouth assistant exclaimed rapturously over my wonderful choice of top.

Triumphantly, she ended up on "You'll never guess....?  I have the exact same blouse!"

Now, my top was colourful and it had pretty-patterned birds all over it, but I knew something that this desperate-for-a-sale expensively-dressed woman would never have known in a month of Sundays -

"Yeah, I bought it at The Warehouse, " I said.

The look on her face was priceless...  

"

Stingray at Hataitai Beach

HI there

The first stingray for the swimming season was spotted yesterday, near the deck steps.  It was bad enough that we had those little bitty seaweed things in the water last week....  The saucer-sized clear jellyfish with the orange middle haven't made their appearance yet. 

a NIWA guy once told me not to step my feet when walking in the water but to scuff my feet in the sand.  This way a stingray knows you're approaching because of the sand flurry.  By stepping, you could step right on him (they like to burrow under the sand).

My love for Elvis

 Hi there

From about age 12 until, well ... now, I have loved Elvis.  That love was all encompassing when I was a young teen, and nowdays it's more a nostalgic memory kind of love

I do remember thinking "What will I do when he gets engaged?  Married?  Aw, no...    Oh, my goodness, I'm not even going to think about any of that...

Rumour had it that he was going to marry Juliet Prowse, his co-star in "GI Blues" and I was positively devastated.  But that rumour went away.  Phew...

When he did announce that he was marrying Priscilla, my heart gave a little skip for the past and I just thought "Oh, that's nice.  She's pretty."

On the day Elvis passed away, the 'girls' in the typing room told me that they'd taken bets I would wear black the following day.  I did wear black, but I don't think it was to do with Elvis.  I wore mostly black every day because shades of that colour made me look thinner.

And now...  Lisa Marie Presley has died.  Elvis's daughter had such big shoes to fill.  

I went to Las Vegas about five years ago when there was an exhibition of Elvis memorabelia, provided by Priscilla.

above: Lisa Marie's baby clothes.

RIP Lisa-Marie

Swimming over the holidays

 Hi there

The first part of the public summer holidays was great.  Lovely swimming, beautiful weather, really hot (for Wellington).  But the second part went down a rating level or two.

The weather was dull.  And wet.  And on one day, cold (I knew the cold weather was coming because I got rheumatism in my knee).  The worst thing was probably that the sea was inundated with those little bitty rice-like thingees, of which the official name seems to have permanently disappeared from my senior mind.  I think they're some type of seaweed.  

As I'm swimming, I'm surrounded by these tiny clear jelly-like things.  I accidentally catch them in my hands.  They bang into me.  I hate the feel of them.  They're completely harmless.  Sometimes, they grow bigger than the size of a rice grain, and  sometimes with squishy little 'tails'.

 Often I do a little swim in a circle and hastily exit the water.  One of my friends at Hataitai Beach was peeling off her bathing suit in the changing shed and lots of these little things dropped out of her top.

In my quest for a clear swim, I went to Worser Bay.  Oh dear, the 'things' were there as well.  In abundence.

Earlier, over the holidays, I walked to Scorching Bay.  I didnt walk there via the sea-front, but instead up and across the hill that leads me down the zig-zag track that finishes up at the side of the cafe at Scorching Bay -

above:  Scorching Bay from zig zag path.  All photos taken in the past, a day after a ferocious storm at sea which left Scorching Bay beach cluttered with sea gravel.