Just try Windy Wellington in the rain??

 Hi there

Yesterday (Saturday) I went to the beach.  As I was walking away from Hataitai  Beach after my swim, it started to drizzle.

Luckily, I had brought my umbrella, so I kept walking in the rain.  I was aiming for the number 2 bus stop, perhaps a 20 minute walk away.

There was no wind to accompany the rain.

What?  I will repeat that:  I was walking in the rain with my umbrella up, and there was no wind.  My current umbrella may be just one of about thirty that I've had over the years that might not get wrenched from my hands by gale-force winds, instantly turn itself inside out, or blow across the harbour to land in a tree on Somes Island.

I couldn't remember the last time that Wellington wasn't windy.  I revelled in the  fact that I was totally dry under my brolly  (Brolly? For heaven's sake, where did that come from?  I'm not British...).

Even when that light rain turned into a heavy torrent, I wasn't clinging to the edges of the umbrella's canopy with frozen wet fingers and using every ounce of strength  to stop it blowing away.  My hair wasn't in wet stringy rat-tails, my clothes weren't a sodden mess.

I will repeat yet again... There was no wind.

I'd never before known what it was like not to get soaking under a Wellington umbrella.  We are not called Windy Wellington for nothing.

I was so ecstatic, I wanted to be Gene Kelly tap dancing in downpour and puddles.  I broke into song.  Not Kelly's one - 

"... if you like pina coladas

     And getting caught in the rain ..."

It was the song "Escape", commonly known as The Pina Colada Song, written by Rupert Holmes.  

I'd never tasted Pina Coladas but, goodness, here I was 'getting 'caught in the rain". And staying dry under my umbrella.  And enjoying the experience. 

I guess I will never see the like of windless rain ever again.

above:  Hatatai Beach.  Taken from across the road.  Okay, you can't actually see the beach from this angle, but there's the deck and the steps from where we elegantly enter the sea, like the aristocratic gentle folk we obviously are; no hot sand, pebble-scratched feet for us.  The deck is where we lounge about. The changing sheds are there too.

Comments

 Hi there

Thank you for comments about my posts.  What kind readers....

Lorraine

One Year on

 Hi there

This month, November, is exactly one year on since I had to give up my beloved and beautiful 25 year old Mazda Demio.  She reached the stage where it was not worth it to keep her any longer.  She didn't go to automobile heaven but to my Mazda mechanic who had admired her for many years.  She'd done 160,000 kms and rarely had anything wrong with her.  It was like losing a member of my family.

My friends said "Buy a car straight away."

I said, "I will wait until April, my next birthday, when my license is due for renewal.  I'm at the age when I need a cognitive test and an eye test. Who knows, there's a slight chance my eyes may let me down?"

And  ... as my 4 readers know, I was rejected for bad eyesight.  There was a huge backward-and-forward message exchange, and a few more tests and opinions.  Finally, after one hospital eye doctor told me I couldn't even roller skate or ride a bike, let alone drive a car, my license was taken from me.  

The Transport Department appeal period passed. Then ... the top honcho at Wellington Hospital Eye Department told me that the previous doctor had been wrong and he wrote to the Transport Department to say I should have my license back.

Too late, said the Transport Department and I should apply next year.  I would have to sit everything again.  My eyesight was borderline this year but I know by next year, it will be worse.

So ... I pulled back from it all...

It's welcome, Lorraine, to Intercity and local buses...

above:  Hataitai Beach.  This photo of my Mazda Demio and me was taken three weeks before I gave her up.

xxxx

I've been informed by Blogger/Blogspot that 17 of my past videos have been taken off my blog, dating back from many years ago.  I agree with them.  I put on adverts and songs that would have been copyrighted, even though I'd acknowledged where I got them from.  Sorry.  Apparently thousands of blogs are affected.

Our birthdates

 Hi there

My friends like to tell me of famous events that happened historically on their birthdates.  I can never find anything decent that happened on my birthdate.

Oh, but wait, I've just remembered?  Prince Charles married Camilla on my birthday.  Yippee, the King and I share a special day!

My friend, Shirley, said to me, "Charles and Camilla didn't get married on your birthday. "

 "Huh?  What do you mean?"

" It might have been the 10th of April in New Zealand. It was the 9th in England. "

 "You mean. .... that ...? "  My mind was a muddle.  And then a thought struck: "Goodness, does that mean lhalf the world's fortune tellers get the working dates of their clients wrong?"

 "Maybe," said Shirley.

 I do worry about this.  A horoscope chart written specifically for me when I was in my early twenties was centred around my (Southern Hemisphere) birthdate.  Being an astrological groupie at the time - it was the hippy era - I also had a chart done when I went to England the following year. One of those two fortune tellers must have been working with the wrong birthdate because the whole of the Earth does not go by the same date at the same time. 

Nostradamus would be turning in his grave (that is, if he'd ever predicted the future of someone from Down Under)

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

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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?