Forgetting words as you get older

Hi there

Sigh, with age comes forgetfulness.  My friends and I "lose" words.  In mid-conversation, words suddenly  disappear from our heads. However, about 2 am, maybe a good half-a-dozen hours after such a conversation,  I will wake up with a start and triumphantly shout "Crumpet"!   It's so good to know the word has not gone forever.

I have just watched veteran actor Ian McKellen talking to tv chat-show host, Graham Norton.  McKellen hesitated twice while he searched for words and I thought of a phone-call I'd had this morning with my swimming friend, J.  I was trying to get her to identify an object with a name to it that, all at once, I couldn't remember -

"It's big.  It moves around a warehouse.  A guy sits on it," I said.

She didn't have a clue.

"It carries cartons.  It's got prongs."

"Prongs?  Prongs..."  my friend ruminated for a time.  Then she screamed, "A FORKLIFT!"

"Oh, yes!"

What are friends for if not to help you out in a word-forgetting crisis?  I swear I will repay her.  Just wait until she has such a memory block - I will be there in a trice with my Pocket Oxford, if not my memory...

Russell Crowe and me (plus Hobbit stars)

I felt sad when it was announced that film actor Russell Crowe and his wife had split.  I never used to think much of Crowe's telephone-throwing and tantrum antics.  In other words, I paid attention to the press who must hound Crowe all the time. 

A year or so ago, he appeared at a charity cricket match at the Basin Reserve in Wellington, in aid of the Christchurch earthquake victims  (his cousin is a New Zealand top cricketer).  Crowe was also born in New Zealand.  Many of the Hobbit cast took part in the cricket match.

I was standing by an enclosure when Crowe went past.  I asked the woman standing next to me if she would take a photo of me with Crowe in the background.  From halfway up some steps, Crowe noticed what was going on.  He came back down and over to me.  He asked the woman to take a proper photo of us.  After she'd done that he said, "Let's take another one, just for luck.".

He was a true gentleman.  And here's a photo.

I also took this very (very) long-range photo of  Ian McKellen (Gandalf), Mark Hadlow (dwarf), and Martin Freeman (Bilbo).

and just for your viewing pleasure, here is picture I took of Ian McKellen.

Corvettes at the Roxy Theatre

We have this picture theatre on my  Miramar Peninsula (in Wellington, New Zealand).  The Roxy.  It's owned by Richard Taylor, Tania Roger and Jamie Selkirk. (all oscar winners).  With the aid of Weta designers they have made the theatre up to resemble a theatre from the nineteen-thirties.  The ceiling on the first floor looks a bit Sistine Chapel-ish, except there are robots instead of biblical characters and gods - though, I guess, some folk might think robots are gods.

Today, was Fathers' Day so in their cafe and restaurant (Coco) the Roxy had a Corvette and Beer day for the dads.

Eleven Corvettes rolled up. Jamie Selkirk owns the blue Corvette..

Here's a very small portion of the Roxy first floor ceiling

After eating at Coco, my friend and I went along to the Weta Cave, (Weta movie products shop and /a tiny museum of Jackson/Taylor movie props).. I was trying out my new camera.  I held the camera at arm's length away from me, and I could see my picture on the front of the camera as well as it coming up on the screen at the back, thereby making sure it's not just my nose I get in the shot like I used to with my old camera where I couldnt see me at all (goodness all that sounds complicated).  I posed beside a replica of Gandalf - Ian McKellen -  from "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.