Out for a Walk

 Hi there

I walk a lot.  In my mind, I'm speed-walking, but the weirdest thing happens:  people amble past me....

Last week I walked from Hatatai central, where the shops are.   I walked straight up the hill and over to Oriental Bay, turning left at the top where the school is.   I love this walk, the view from the top of the hill is great.   I love looking at the view over the inner harbour and the Miramar Peninsula.  When I come to a big fork in the road, I go left for a couple of minutes till I get to the zig-zag downhill walk getting me to Grass Street, Oriental Bay, roughly opposite the Rotunda.  From Hatatai to Oriental Bay takes about 45 minutes.

Below.  View from the top of the Hataitai hill -

below.  The fountain at Oriental Bay

Still swimming

 Hi there

I'm still winter swimming at Hataitai Beach, my 15th winter-swimming year.  

Jay, The Young One, and I swam together for ten years . For a few years after my swimming friends' lives had gone in other directions, I swam in the lonely cold winter sea all by myself.

But then Covid came and the whole country was shut down. No swimming allowed.

Freedom came in the month of March and, suddenly, the beach was crowded.  Under normal circumstances swimmers would all but have given up with the onset of cooler days.

But this time, many never stopped swimming.  It was as if having lost their freedom during a covid summer, they were going to make up for such an outrage by swimming through the winter. 

Today, there are lots of swimmers, all of them bubbling away with the joy of a cold winter sea.  And me?  I'm getting jaded because of ...

being dictated to by the tide times, and the sea and air temps;

the gradual  disappearance of the sun on the deck;

the winter shadows that completely cover the water in the bay;

the aching coldness of the sea;

the absolutely freezing changing sheds where after a swim my fingers are so numb I can't hook up my bra, do up buttons or zips, or pull up sleeves, and all this forces me to  stay longer in the shed, getting colder by the minute;

the bone-chilling cold that is often inside me for a couple of hours post-swim if I don't make it home fast enough for my hot shower, 

and

the fact that I have to give up so much of my ordinary life because I'm ruled by my swims...

Hey ... Do you think I will be swimming next winter?

sorry for moaning...

"Thank you, driver"

 Hi there

I've often wondered if people in other countries do what we do, when they get off a bus.

Maybe it's just Wellington?   

As I exit a bus - be it via the back or front door -  I call out, "Thank you" to the driver.  Some people are extra polite and they shout "Thank you, driver".  There are bus riders who mumble it so low that the driver wouldn't be able to hear it, and others who bellow the words.

It's an expected thing.

Also an expected thing is the little wave one gives to the driver of the vehicle that stops to let you pass on a pedestrian crossing.  I often think this a bit weird as cars are by law expected to stop anyway for me when I'm on a crossing.

The little wave is also a thing when a driver approaches roadworks.  Oh, look, here's a guy holding up a 'Stop' sign.  He turns over the sign to read 'Go', and as I drive past him at a crawl, I flick up my hand in recognition.   He flicks his hand back....

Getting 'The Strap' at School

 Hi there

When I was a child - between the ages of eight and thirteen - I got strapped at school.  A lot.

I was a talker.  Still am.  I babble away contentedly to anyone.  On the bus.  In the theatre.  In cafes.  My friends roll their eyes and put up with me.  That's what friends are for....

My father got transferred a few times, so I went t o schools in and out of Wellington.  Here are the schools where I got strapped:

Newtown School, Wellington (attended twice)

Bell Block School, Taranaki

Central School, New Plymouth, Taranaki

Central School, Palmerston North

South Wellington Intermediate (attended twice)

Manukau Intermediate, Auckland...

...and then, mercifully, by the time I reached Wellington East Girls' College, we pupils were considered too mature to strap.  It was detention instead.  At South Wellington, I had received both the strap and detention; South Wellington's idea of 'detention' was sweeping the classroom floor after school...

Some children receiving the strap were so scared that after  the teacher told them to stretch their arm out to the side, palm up, the kids jerked their hand away at the last second. Because I was strapped almost every school day, I put on childish bravado as I walked up to take "the cuts', but it always hurt.

The strap was flat-looking, leather, and well-worn.  It would probably have been over twice the average width of a man's belt.  Once I was called out to take the strap when it wasn't me that was talking, and that truly rankled. I was so cowed by the teacher that I accepted  'the cuts'.

Children who rarely got the strap or, indeed, had never been strapped, took it really hard when they were called to the front.  The teacher would pull out his desk drawer and seemed to take forever to gather up the strap and march over to the wrong-doer. 

 I never sobbed after getting the strap because I was used to the sharp pain as the strap landed - thwack! - on my hand, but others sobbed their little hearts out.  Most kids massaged their hands through the rest of the lesson.  I only remember being strapped by male teachers.

Quite a few times extra-naughty children got two straps.  Out would go one hand - thwack! - and then out would go the other hand for yet another thwack!  Sometimes the teacher wasn't all that expert with the strap, missing the palm and scraping the strap across the fingers.

Looking back, I am horrified by how barbaric it all was...

above:  I had a hard hunt for photos on the web of The Strap as used by New Zealand schools in the 1950s.  Noone seemed to have taken photos of the thing; this photo of a pristine strap is the closest I could find.  Oh, sure, there are lots of pix of modern-day 'straps', but they are usually reserved for naughty pleasures in houses of ill repute, and they vary greatly from the school strap.  Our school straps were extremely worn.  I had no idea what the hand-hold of the strap looked like.  It could have been as the above.  Or not.