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....

New Zealand t-shirts

 Hi there

A few years back when I was down in the tourist mecca of Queenstown I bought a New Zealand-orientated t-shirt.  It featured a sheep and a kiwi dressed up as astronauts:

I wore the t-shirt when I was visiting Las Vegas.  And I thought everyone would get the joke about two iconic NZ creatures dressed in space suits.

But every American said to me something along the lines of: "Like your alien t-shirt."

They hadn't even registered they were looking at a sheep and a kiwi; they just thought they were looking at a couple of aliens in space attire.  Made me realise that New Zealand is not exactly as well-known as we kiwis think we must be.

And let's talk about the bone tiki I wore around my neck, also in Las Vegas.  This guy in a queue behind me pointed at my pendant and happily shouted, "E.T.", at the top of his lungs...

Stripper names

 Hi there

A while back I was watching TV.  A Drag Queen was talking.  She said her drag name.  It was Annette Curtain.  Which was about the funniest thing I'd ever heard.

And my mind shifted quite a few degrees away to to my stripper name.   You know the thing: it's where you combine the name of a street you've lived in and a pet's name.

My stripper name is Treacle Columbo.  I love it!

Why do People always laugh over a broken toe (I've laughed too, lots of times)?

 Hi there

About 8 weeks ago when I was at the Devon Hotel in New Plymouth, I stubbed my big toe on the caster foot of a room chair.  It was a heavy chair, the sort of a chair I can imagine a Bond villain lording in.  I was trying to move the chair.

My toe bled, it hurt...

It hurt for the next 8 weeks.  The blood was under my toenail. My toenail looked horrendous.  But being the brave, heroic person I am, I gritted my teeth, and lived with it all.

Finally when I couldn't stand the blankets across my toe when I was trying to sleep, I went to the doctor.  

He sent me for an x-ray.  Yes.... a broken toe.

Out of all the bones in a person's body, the toes must be the bones that attract the most hilarity.

"Hahahaha, you've broken your toe.  You're hobbling.  Don't expect sympathy, it's only a toe..."

I'm sure my friends really love me...

I have to bind the big toe to it's immediate neighbour, which is more trouble than it's worth. It's a difficult exercise, this binding-bandaging thing, and I can never get the binding to stay in the right place. 

The binding is either too tight or too loose.  I can't pull the sticky bandage stuff off without fighting over it for about 15 minutes and causing more pain than the original toe trouble.  For comfort, I have to put a thick plaster or cotton wool between the toes, an operation that I've mucked up so many times. In just 4 days I've gone through two balls of plaster wrappings. Believe me, it's so hard to become a professional toe-wrapper-upper...

above"  the hateful chair that attacked me. The room I stayed in.

I'm a Terrible hand-writer. Did Pitmanscript help?

 Hi there

Way back in secondary school I got the dubious title of being The Worst Hand-Writer in my class.  I was the only pupil to fail the Chamber of Commerce Hand-Writing Exam.  I have always been a sloppy hand-writer.  Or 'joined-up writing' as teachers in primer classes tend to call it.

When I grew up - I was in my late thirties - I took up the then 'new' style of shorthand called "Pitmanscript",  My hand-writing became worse; I had been warned this would happen before I started teaching myself the subject at home.  My already terrible penmanship did deteriorate at a rate of knots.

The other day, I decided to hand-write a letter to a friend.  It was an important letter, on real lined writing paper.  I wanted to show her exactly how important I felt about all the work she had put into being my friend.  I wasn't going to buy a card, or telephone, or email, or text....

But then came the realisation.  I couldn't do joined-up writing anymore!  Pitmanscript had ruined me.

Pitmanscript has gone the way of the earlier Pitman's shorthand and Gregg's shorthand processes.   I think Pitmanscript was Pitman's last stand at trying to keep the process going.  I did pass the Trades Certification Board Shorthand Exam. 

But my hand-writing, now, is terrible.

          above:  the english version, plus the Pitmanscript version.  Book 3. The english take actually goes over the page, and is quite long.

The great thing about Pitmanscript, and unlike original Pitman's shorthand, is that there are no strict rules about what you must put down.  If you can make up something so a sentence is faster, easier for you, just do it.  This worked for me. By the time I sat my TCB exam, a lot of the original learning had disappeared.  I wasn't judged for doing it differently.

above photo: from the 2000 Most Common Words book. I learnt all the words off-by-heart, studying them every day.

above photo.  the very first exercise in Pitmanscript Book 1

As usual, sorry about the photography.

Singers wearng sunglasses on stage

 Hi there.

When I was young in the early 1960s, I went to pop shows.  Kiwi entrepreneurs like Harry M. Miller were beginning to realise there was a market in New Zealand for overseas pop idols.  They started bringing in these singers by the plane-load.

I was miffed that out of dozens upon dozens of singers that I saw, there were two who wore sunglasses on stage.

The first was Roy Orbison. I found out later he truly had bad eyesight so I can forgive him now.  But it wasn't so much the dark glasses that were annoying, but also that he never moved.  Never so much as the proverbial muscle.  Orbison, in front of thousands of fans, was like a statue the entire time he was on stage which, in those days, was probably 20 minutes to half-an-hour. And every fan had paid about 30 shillings for a seat.

Fans want to see a singer's face.  They want to see movements, head turns, legs jiggling, greetings to the crowd, foot tapping.  They can see statues in their gran's front garden. Or at Zombie-Con.

Another star who wore sunglasses on stage was the singer Billy J Kramer ("Little Children").  I was in love with the music of the time and very impressionable.  When I couldn't properly see Kramer's face because of  his sunglasses and also poor lighting, I sprang from my seat and ran into the aisle of the Wellington Town Hall auditorium, along with hundreds of others.  We didn't want to rip him apart, we just wanted to see his face more clearly. Apparently, no overseas singer had caused such a commotion before.  Seat-leaving was a giant no-no at the Wellington Town Hall.

The show was shut down.

Later, I read that the reason Kramer had been wearing sunglasses and the lighting was more darker than usual for a pop show was because Kramer had got in an altercation the day before. The sunglasses and dim lighting were to cover up that he had a black eye.

I felt I never got my thirty shillings-worth at either Orbison's or Kramer's show.

 

Bermuda Triangle

 Hi there

I am positive that my house is the South Pacific branch of The Bermuda Triangle.  Things go missing. A lot.

Pens, especially.  And combs.  I am forever buying new ones. 

The weird thing is that, unlike the original Triangle, my pens, combs, what-have-you, usually turn up again.  As if by magic, they appear at the back of a cupboard, in a bag I haven't used for years, under the computer keyboard, amongst my bedclothes....

When visitors come to my place, I always warn them -

 "please check thoroughly that you haven't left anything behind."

 " No, no, " they always say.  "I have everything."

 " Are you sure? "

 "Yep." 

 And my visitors go on their merry way.  Later, I discover their sun- glasses.  Or a jacket.  Or a ream of business papers.  My Miramar branch of the Bermuda Triangle  is snaffling up objects like nobody's business...