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

 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?

Sitting on the bus

 Hi there

I clambered up into a Wellington Metlink bus the other day. 

I looked down the bus for a seat. 

The seats at the back of the bus were full.  At  the front there were four rows of double seats on one side of the aisle, and three rows on the other side. 

Three of these rows had a passenger sitting in the aisle seat, and with a shopping bag taking up the window seat.  

Four rows had a passenger sitting by the window, with a bag taking up the aisle seat.

I had been caught by a replica scenario a few weeks before:

 "Excuse me." I had said politely to a woman passenger, " Can I sit here please? "

 "No."

 "Pardon?

"No...

I stood up in the aisle for that journey....

... and I wasn't going to give in to another double-seat hogger.

This time I stood just behind the bus driver and called out, "Is anyone going to unblock a seat for me?"

 Silence for quite a few seconds.

And then a young man sheepishly lifted up his Specsavers bag from the adjacent seat. The bag was only a fraction bigger than his hand.  Perhaps his lap had been too fragile to take the weight?

 "Thank you," I purred.  I plonked down on that now spare seat.

Victory!

above: a mural of a tram on a wall in Kilbirnie, Wellington.  We had trams before buses were adopted.

'I love your cardy...."

Hi there

Years ago I read an article that said British people are pretty bad at accepting  compliments.  And by 'British' I lump kiwis into that statement.

When a person says to one of us, "Oh, I love your cardy...", we shrug and answer something like "This old thing?  I've had it a while. "

Whereas Americans would declare "Yes, my cardy is really lovely, isn't it?  That's why I bought it."

***

A 'cardy' is short for 'cardigan'.  I guess an American would never say 'cardy'.  Oh well...

Where exactly is 'Down Under'?

 Hi there

I was reading an article the other day where the two main characters went first of all to Asia, then to New Zealand, and finally these intrepid travellers ended up 'Down Under in Australia'. 

Hey, wait a minute - my hand is up, waving frantically....   New Zealand is 'Down Under' too, it's not a title exclusively designated to Australia.  I blame that music group, Midnight Oil, for much of the confusion.  Their song about being 'Down Under' sort of misses us out completely.

In fact, I don't hesitate to say that we are more 'Down Under' than Australia.  Look for New Zealand on a map, you'll see what I mean.

 Okay, sometimes maps do leave New Zealand out completely.  There will be a big patch of blue sea beneath Australia.  The cartographers who made these maps were obviously more into kangaroos and koalas than kiwi birds and rugby.

Several years back there was an upside-down map tea-towel that some clever person put out.  New Zealand is at the top of the world on this tea towel map.  I guess for once we were 'Top Over', not 'Down Under'.  Yay!

The only place 'Down Under' beneath New Zealand is Antarctica.  And that place is never mentioned as being 'Down Under'.  I would say Antarctica is the most Down-Under-est country out of all of us fighting for the crown...

above: web photo of the International Antarctic Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand.  See what it's like to be in the Antarctic without actually going there.  You can dress up and play in the snow, ride the maxi tractors, sometimes meet husky dogs....