New Plymouth images

Hi there

 I came back yesterday from four nights in New Plymouth.  I really like New Plymouth.  I stay at the Belt Road Seaside Holiday Park in a small en suite cabin, and with the most magnificent view from the deck; I sat on the deck for hours, just watching the ocean.  I walked The Coastal Walkway every day and goodness I was tired by each day's end.  

I took three photos.  Interesting?  Disturbing?  

above: sculpture of four sitting nudes, with a gap between the third and fourth nude, leaving room for a person to sit and be photographed.  I saw a guy being photographed.  He was fondling a big and beautiful sculptured breast.

above:  something on the menu called a Sambo? 

above:  an Indian restaurant called "Arranged Marriage".  We have a campaign in the country at the moment trying to stop overseas arranged marriages of  child brides.

Future artefacts

 Hi there

Whenever I'm wrapping up leftovers to be put in the rubbish bin, or throwing out my old treasures,  I often wonder if some archeologist in a future millenia will dig my stuff up, analyse it, and put it in a museum, with completely the wrong interpretation of its history.  

What will historians make of my 1958 Cliff Richard & The Shadows Fan Club badge?  Will they think it's about a group of fan collectors wanting to keep cool?  

And how about all those diaries of mine?  Will my diaries end up like those written by Samuel Pepys, revered by generations because I wrote about normal everyday happenings?

I'll just bet the rubber wristband with "Live Long and Prosper" circled around it will really and truly stump future archeologists.  Maybe they'll think it a religious mantra?  And ... goodness, perhaps it is.

my fat diaries

 Hi there

I was cleaning out the garage, and came across decades of my old diaries.  I started a diary when I was about twelve.  I kept diaries till I was 40.  

What I can't get over is that practically in every entry in all the diaries, over all those years, I mention my weight and how I want to lose it, and I'm too big, and "I put on a lb today, oh no!".   Umpteen times, I write that I bought, say, a doughnut (that's how we spelt it in the 1960's) and felt so guilty after a mouthful that I threw the rest in the rubbish bin.  I rarely succeeded with any long-term dieting, putting on the pounds extremely quickly.

In a photo taken of my cousin and me at the beach - me, aged 13 - I tore off the bottom half of the photo, at the time, because it showed my "big fat thighs". 

When I retired I made a decision.  I threw out my measuring tape, my scales, and diet books.  I'd never eaten carrot cake in my life, never bought a block of chocolate, hadn't scoffed down a pie since I'd been at the Winter Show in 1960.  I didn't know what a brownie tasted like,  But everything was going to change.  I was going to taste forbidden fruits...  And I have done!

And that brings me to Judith Collins, leader of the National Party, and up for election this Saturday.  She intimated this week that fat people should use discipline when eating.  I tried discipline for forty years and was sad, hungry, and let watching-my-weight all but ruin me.  Sure, I'm fat now but I go to the gym every week, I walk almost every day, I swim in the sea in the middle of winter, I can bound up 40 steps with hardly a puff.  And how many other senior citizens can do one-arm push-ups?

  

Evans Bay Marina

 Hi there

I often walk around the Evans Bay Marina.  There's an overnight motor home park there now.  I think the drivers can only park for a couple of nights, but the carpark is near bus stop to town, short walk to Kilbirnie or Miramar shops, there are new toilets.  Oh, and on a wall, there's a mural of the cheekiest little Orca -

  

below: you can see the masts of the yachts in the background of the motor home park.

Swimming

 Hi there

A friend joined me swimming last Sunday.  Glorious.  I've been swimming solo since June but for various reasons, my friends couldn't join me this winter (first time in eleven years).

The water had been extremely cold over winter but with my friend last weekend beside me I didn't really notice the freezing seas.  it was because we were laughing and splashing and once my friend reacquainted herself with  the cold ("OMG, this is  FREEZING!!") we had fun.