Beware of breakfast buffets (but only if you are near the baked beans)

 Hi there

I was at a hotel breakfast buffet last week, looking down at what was on offer.  I thought that okay, yes, I was going for scrambled eggs.  The eggs were in a deep warming container, right next to an almost empty container of baked beans.

I hated baked beans.  Baked beans always reminded me of that farting scene in the spoof western movie, "Blazing Saddles".

Just as I was scooping out my scrambled eggs, a chef arrived and dumped a whole  bowl of baked beans into the baked beans container.  Actually, it was more liquid orange than beans.

With a nonchalant who-cares action, the chef tossed a soup ladle into the beans container - a toss, incidentally, that if Baked-Beans-Ladle-Throwing been an Olympic sport, this guy would have won a gold medal for it.

In magnificent synchronisation, a half dozen splashes shot out from the bean container, right into my hair, onto my sweater, and across my face.

 "Hey," I called out, after the guy's retreating back.  He didn't even look around. I wiped my eyes and shook out my hair.  Bright orange liquid was rapidly blending in with my sweater of almost  the same colour.

It wasn't until I rushed back to my hotel room (oops, did I forget to mention I was in  New Plymouth again?) that I faced a mirror.

Oh no ...  I was an Oompa-Loompa.

Inkwells

 Hi there

When I was 11 years old, at South Wellington Intermediate School, we were beginning to write with ink pens.  We had started off with what amounted to a short wooden stick with a nib attached to it.  Every sentence or two we had to dip the nib of the scratch pen into an inkwell.  The round enamel inkwell sat in a cut-out circle at the top-right side of our desks.  We would be lucky to write more than two sentences before having to dip the pen back into our inkwells.  

By the time we got to secondary school, after two years at intermediate, we were using fountain pens.  Same type of ink-well, but now fountain pens held more ink than the scratch pens; there was a tiny lever on the side of the pen that would allow us to fill it up with some ink that, if we were lucky, could keep us going the whole day without re-filling.  Ah, luxury...

My mother told me about when she was at school.  The boys would love to grab an inkwell and dip the end of a girl's plait in the ink.

Doesn't matter what generation, but boys will be boys, yeah?

above:  South Wellington Intermediate.  Just about the only piece of architecture I recognise.  But then doesn't every school in the whole world look the same?

above:  at the side of South Wellington Intermediate is what used to be called Waripori Street, but now is Te Wharipouri Street, going back to the original before Europeans ruined the pronunciation.  

A small piece of interest:  my mother's family lived in Waripori Street.  I have a photo of my mother standing on the doorstep of their house in her 1930s wedding dress, before leaving for the church for the ceremony.  South Wellington tore down several houses in this street to make a side entrance to the school.  I don't know if my grand-parents' house was taken.

The Name's The Thing....

 Hi there

When I was intermediate school age my friends and I were at the beach.  With my mother, who sat a discreet distance away because we had begged her to pretend she didn't know us. But mothers have magnifcent hearing and I was sure she was listening.  After a time though, she tootled off along the sand.  I guessed she was "promenade-ing".

Shirley gave a long pre-teen sigh, and said she hated her name.  "There are two other Shirleys in the class," she moaned.  "Every one of us named after Shirley Temple."

"I hate my name too," said Nicky.

"Nicky?" I queried.  "I like that name."

"It's good," agreed Shirley.  Cynthia and Linda nodded.

"No, my name stinks," said Nicky.

Mum interrupted us with five ice creams, all dripping down her wrists and brought across the road from the Worser Bay dairy.

"Is Nicky your real name, Nicks?" she asked.

"Of course it's her real name," I said. 

"Um,,"  Nicky's ears went red.

We waited....

"It's ... Victoria."

Shirley, Linda, Cynthia, and me. well, we all sat there open- mouthed.

"That's a nice name," said Mum diplomatically.

We four kids rolled on the sand in hysterics.  "That's a terrible name," laughed Linda.

"The worst," said Cynthia.

"It's worse than 'Shirley'".

Why are you lot laughing? Mum said.

"Oh, Mum...".  I rolled up into a sitting position, still giggling. "It's an old maid's name. You know, a spinster's name?  Like ...like .... Mabel.."

"And Edith," said Shirley.

"And Matilda," said Linda.

"Like Agnes."  Even Nicky had joined in.

And here's where the years have gone by ... And gone by ... And gone by....

Today, Victoria, Mabel, Edith, Agnes, and Matilda, are not even thought about as 'old maid' names.  They are trendy, cool, the tippy-tip of great names for daughters.  Whenever an old-fashioned name is mentioned, I still visualise a vicar's middle-aged frumpy dependent daughter sitting by the fireplace, darning socks, and obeying her elderly parents' every wish...

above: ok, you're going to have to turn this photo around. You know me, the ex-typist-in-charge who now can't do one thing that's technological; how ashamed can a person become?

Over on the left, it's Nellie and Rosie, two daughters of my great-great grandfather.  He had a store, and later a hotel on the West Coast goldfields, in an area called Boatmans. Photo taken some time between 1888 and 1900.   Nellie?  Rosie?  Are these names now trendy?