Saturday’s smiles

A young bloke booked himself on a cruise and had the time of his life, until the ship sank. He found himself on an island with no other people, no food except for bananas and coconuts.

After about four months, he is lying on the beach when the most gorgeous woman he has ever seen rows up to the shore.  

In disbelief, he asks, “Where did you come from? How did you get here?”  She replies, “I rowed from the other side of the island. I landed here when my cruise ship sank.”

“Amazing,” he says. “You were really lucky to have a row boat wash up with you.”

“Oh, this thing?” explains the woman. “I made it out of raw material I found on the island. The oars were whittled from gum tree branches. I wove the bottom from palm branches, and the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree.”

“But, where did you get the tools?”  

“Oh, that was no problem,” replied the woman.

“On the south side of the island, a very unusual stratum of alluvial rock is exposed. I found if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into ductile iron. I used that for tools and used the tools to make the hardware.”

The guy is stunned. “Let’s row over to my place,” she says. After a few minutes of rowing, she docks the boat at a small wharf. As the man looks to shore, he nearly falls off the boat. Before him is a stone walk leading to a bungalow painted in blue and white. While the woman ties up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope, the man can only stare ahead, dumb struck.

As they walk into the house, she says casually, “It’s not much but I call it home, would you like a drink?”

“No! No thank you,” he blurts out, still dazed. “I can’t take another drop of coconut juice.” “It’s not coconut juice,” winks the woman. “I have a still. How would you like a large Pina Colada?”  

Trying to hide his amazement, the man accepts, and they sit down on her couch to talk. After they have exchanged their stories, the woman announces, “I’m going to slip into something more comfortable. Would you like to take a shower and shave? There is a razor upstairs in the bathroom cabinet.”  

No longer questioning anything, the man goes into the bathroom. There, in the cabinet, a razor made from a piece of tortoise bone. Two shells honed to a hollow ground edge are fastened on to its end inside a swivel mechanism. “This woman is amazing,” he muses. “What next?”

When he returns, she greets him wearing nothing but vines, strategically positioned, and smelling faintly of gardenias. She beckons for him to sit down next to her. “Tell me,” she begins suggestively, slithering closer to him, “We’ve been out here for many months.  You’ve been lonely. There’s something I’m sure you really feel like doing right now, something you’ve been longing for?” She stares into his eyes. He can’t believe what he’s hearing.

“You mean…” he swallows excitedly and tears start to form in his eyes…  “Don’t tell me you’ve got Sky Sport as well”

Time and gravity

Friends who are celebrating their silver wedding had their photo albums out last night.

We laughed at the amount of hair, not just on top of the heads, but on the faces, of the men in the late 70s and early 80s; we admired some of the fashions and cringed at others and we couldn’t help but realise that time and gravity had left their mark on all of us.

Then we noticed that we were all thin – and that at the time most of us women had thought we were fat.

Sigh.

Humming

This Friday’s poem is Humming by Hone Tuwhare from his collection Oooooo…..!!!  published by Steele Roberts.

 

I’ll leave it to you to find – or not – a message for Waitangi Day in it.

 

Humming

 

It is a house to be constructed with care

      for it has no confining walls

     thus permitting expansion: vertical

 

    growth is not inhibited for there is no limit to the height of the ceiling

    stretching to heaven. This house

    can endure given a chance, that’s

    for sure  … H m m m m

 

But since it is of earth its foundations may be

     built of sand: and because there are

    no confining walls this fragile house

    of love may be seen as layers of light

   and colour – a feeling tone – warm, purple

   orange grey hot and cold with lots of blue

   and yellow to make it green – green

   was predicatble … H m m m m

 

Fleshed out though, this house of love isn’t

     ageless, but ages old. It has form; contour.

     It has presence; a brilliant arc uniting

    heaven and hell; love-thoughts in pursuit of

    a physical expression – a noisy, gloppy

    proclamation –

 

                 Aha   Aha – Aha – Aha   Aha

 

    … and horses, huffing and pounding into

     the straight, riders snarling, cruel whips

     flailing – the anguish of stretched leather

     reeking sweetly of sweat … And reason? Ahh.

 

    Reason is a hunchback of irrelevance backing

    quietly out the door.

 

But where are the flowers – the select flowers

      of endearment, soul-food to dazzle the heart?

 

    O, they’re here, all right: there, there

    and THERE … H m m m

 

             - Hone Tuwhare –

Gone and already forgotten

Anyone know what the Growth and Innovation Advisory Board did?

Anyone going to miss them now the government’s dis-establishing them?

Glimmers of hope for dairy industry

Fonterra may not be flavour of the month but that hasn’t put investors off.

The company has raised $800 million in less than a week with a bond offer that was oversubscribed by 267%.

This is a sign that investors have more faith in Fonterra and the dairy industry than the doomsayers who’ve been prophesying disaster by focussing on the difference in this year’s payout compared with last years without pointing out that $5.10 is still the third best payout the company has made.

Those whose glasses are perpetually half empty also don’t take into account that while the figures in the income column are smaller, so are those in the expenditure one thanks to big drops in interest rates and the price of fuel and fertiliser.

We may not be rolling in clover, but we’re still growing grass and converting it to protein and while the world may not be paying as much as it was a few months ago there’s still a market for milk.

Rabobank’s senior analyst Hayley Moynihan  says the medium to long term outlook is still good and that global supply is contracting in Europe and the USA  while falling prices are making dairy products more competive which will increase demand.

There’s another glimmer of hope for us from DairyCo which reports that the British  milk supply is declining.

It’s too soon to break out the champagne again, but there’s enough hope there to postpone the order for hair shirts.

Employment and unemployment up in December 1/4

Employment growth last year was concentrated in service industries, notably education, transport, storage and communications while fewer people were employed in agriculture, construction and manufacturing, government statistician Geoff Bascand says.

I’m surprised by the decrease in agriculture because the December quarter is a busy one on farms and the number of new dairy conversions last year would have created more jobs in that sector than were lost from sheep and beef farms which were converted. This is confirmed by the grapevine which is full of stories about the difficulty of finding staff.

Primary industries in Australia have also been struggling to recruit employees and a prawn fisherman we spoke to when we were there a couple of weeks ago said the announcement of 350 redundancies  at BHP’s Townsville refinery wasn’t all bad news because it might make it easier for farmers and fishermen who hadn’t been able to compete with mining when looking for workers.

The household labour survey showed the number of people unemployed in New Zealand reached 105,000 in the three months to December last year, the highest level since September 2002.

Unemployment rose by .4%, or 10,000 people, to 4.6% in the December quarter.

The number of people employed increased by 21,000 which was a .9% increase and the labour force participation rate increased by .6 percentage points to 69.3% .

On a related matter, Lindsay Mitchell compares unemployment benefits and superannuation in New Zealand and Australia.

Cattle herding all in day’s work for MP

While Paula Bennett created headlines  when she broke up a fight at a mall,  her colleague, Waitaki MP Jacqui Dean’s cattle mustering skills have gone unheralded but she recounts what happened in her latest newsletter:

Being an MP has its lighter moments as I discovered after stopping to check out what appeared to be a solitary steer emerging from the safety of a farmer’s driveway. I soon realised he was only the lookout. On his heels and equally intent on escaping to greener pastures were another 20 or so like-minded adolescents.

Fortunately my truck is bigger than most and proved up to the task of persuading the mob to retreat up the drive. After consultation with the farmer, a paddock opening off the driveway was chosen for their custodial detention while the truck, with doors open to reduce the size of the gap, was positioned part way down the drive as a deterrent should they decide to head that way.

For a brief moment I thought it might be all on but that was until the unsuspecting leader of the pack came face to face with the larger-than-life portrait on the truck door. With a look of horror he turned on his heels, taking the rest of the mob with him, and leaving me with the distinct impression that a term of imprisonment at the farmer’s pleasure was more palatable than a one-on-one encounter with a blown up likeness of the local MP.

Provisional tax changes small but welcome difference

Provisional tax is the business equivalent of PAYE on wages and salaries with one significant difference.

PAYE is levied on money actually earned, provisional tax is paid on a best guess of what will be earned and there are financial penalties if  your income is higher than expected.

That means businesses are caught between the rock of paying more in advance than they need to by overestimating their projected earnings, and the hard place of paying the penalties if they underestimate their end of year’s financial situation.

It’s not easy for any business to accurately predict its income and it’s particularly difficult for primary industry where the weather and markets can vary so much but the government has announced two changes to provisional tax today which will reduce the costs:

* Removing the 5% “uplift” rate that businesses pay in advance on provisional tax instalments throughout the year. To calculate the provisional tax they must pay in any given year, most businesses use the previous year’s income and add 5% to cover likely growth in the new income year – this 5% uplift will be removed for the rest of this year and next year.

*Reducing the “use of money” interest rates on underpaid and overpaid tax. The rate for underpayments will reduce from 14.24% to 9.73% and the rate for overpayments will fall from 6.66% to 4.23%. These changes will apply from March 1 2009.

These and other measures announced in the small business relief package are, as the NBR says more evolution than revolution but what else can they do?

The domestic constraints on business have been evolutionary too and there is no fast or simple remedy for them. Added to that is the global financial situation which will impact on us but is beyond any government’s control.

However, while the measures announced today may be relatively small they are significant in that they show we at last have a government that understands the importance of businesses and is prepared to cut some of the ties which have been holding them back.

There’s a story about a man wandering along a beach littered with starfish stranded when the tide went out.

He comes across a boy throwing them into the sea and says,  “There’s so many nothing you do will make a difference.”

The boy bends down, picks up a starfish, throws it back and says, “I made a difference to that one.”

The government must feel it’s facing a similarly impossible task, but Keeping Stock says today’s measures have made a difference to him.

ERO to focus where needed most

A press release from Education Minister Anne Tolley announces that the Education Review Office will review schools with good records less often and schools which aren’t performing well will be reviewed more often.

That leaves schools which are performing well to get on with teaching and provides closer monitoring and more help to those schools which have problems.

That sounds like a very sensible move to me.

I used to do evaluations of residential services for intellectually disabled people for the Ministry of Health and that’s how we worked, visiting service providers with consistent records of high standards less often and keeping a closer check and offering more help to those which had problems.

Too much too soon

If there’s one thing more likely to stop me buying than the appearance of Christmas decorations before December  -first tinsel spotted in September last year – it’s the early appearance of Easter eggs and hot cross buns.

Easter Sunday isn’t until April 12th this year but I noticed Easter eggs in the supermarket in the middle of January and saw the first hot cross buns last week.

Once upon a time hot cross buns were a once a year treat which appeared just in time to be toasted on Good Friday and Easter eggs were similarly special to be eaten in moderation (one or maybe if we were very lucky, two) on Ester Sunday.

Those were the days when treats were restricted to Chirstmas, Easter and birthdays.  Now all there’s a whole lot of manufactured celebrations which merge into one big commercial mess from one excuse to buy, eat and drink to another, origins forgotten and devoid of meaning.

Last year I launched a one-woman protest when I saw the first foil covered eggs in the supermarket in January and the buns a few weeks later, with a pledge to neither eat nor buy any until Easter.

I’ve made the same vow this year: no spicey buns and chocolate and marshmallow confections will pass my lips until the appropriate time.

Building regs go too far

A builder told me that recent increases in building regulations had added about $10,000 to the cost of a new house.

We ran into a relatively minor bit of extra red tape when we put a new house on the dairy farm.

It’s got a French door from the living room and the distance from the house to the path was a little higher than comfortable. I suggested raising the path but the builder said he couldn’t because regulations in the wake of the leaky homes saga required a minimum height.

He had to add a step which gets in the way of children wanting to ride bikes on the path – and this is on the side of a hill in North Otago where, with an annual rainfall of just 20 inches, leaky homes have never been a problem.

Even relatively minor alterations can turn into major ones because of over-strict regulations. Close-Up  last night told the story of a locksmith who wanted to put a shower in for employees and found the $2,000 budget would blow out by another $8,000 because the building code requires wheelchair accessibility.

The requirement for disabled access and loos in public buildings is understandable but the need for a wheel-chair friendly shower in every little business is going too far.

However, New Zealand isn’t the only place this happens. We visited a sheep feedlot in northern New South Wales which was built on stilts to keep it cool and make cleaning up the droppings easier. During the plannning the building inspector told the owner it would have to have a ramp so the loo could be accessed by workers in wheelchairs.

She pointed out that the nature of the work, which included shearing, meant it couldn’t be done by people with that sort of disability but the council wouldn’t budge because every workplace had to have wheel chair accessible loos. She finally got around the code by putting the loo under the shed at ground level.

Blackout blues

There’s no convenient time for a power cut and it’s small consolation for the individuals and businesses inconvenienced by the loss of supply  in Auckland today that it happened while it was still light.

The power went off in Northern Queensland  from Ayr to Cooktown just after we arrived in Townsville 12 days ago. It was early evening which wouldn’t be quite so bad here as it was there where the sun goes down about 7pm.

I had to drive to a hen party and had a local navigating who helped me at intersections. My brother got safely to the stag party by luck alone because he drove through the city oblivious to the fact that the traffic lights were out.

No-one will be impressed by the explanation for today’s power cut – one transformer down for routine maintenance and a problem with a second which put two much pressure on the third.

But that’s probably not as bad as the cause of the problem in Queensland – bird droppings  from nesting eagles.

Piper bagged by noise control officer

Dunedin’s reputation as the Edinburgh of the south is under threat after a busking bagpiper  was silenced by a noise control officer.

There’s something wrong when people can disrupt the peace with noisy vehciles which endanger themselves and others night after night untroubled by the law, yet a lone piper with a busking licence and the permission of the shop outside which he stands is banished with the threat of the consfication of his $2500 pipes.

Robert Burns who sits in the Octagon not far from the street from which Simon McLean was banished might have said: the best played schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley. . .

Jim Mora  has just finished interviewing Simon about the ban – but he didn’t invite him to give us a tune.

RMA changes improve process still protect environment

There are sound economic, environmental and social reasons for protecting and enhancing our air, soil and water which is why the general thrust of the Resource Management Act – the sustainable development of physical resources –  is good.

However, worthy though the intentions of the RMA are it’s implementation leaves more than a little to be desired so National’s plan to streamline it are welcome.

The changes are to be announced today and the NBR reports they’ll include:

* Major projects to be considered by a board of inquiry headed by an Environment Court judge or a retired judge replacing two hearings – at local body then Environment Court level. There would be limited appeal rights.

* Measures to crack down on vexatious or frivolous objections and attempts to misuse the process to get delays.

* Changes to allow local councils change plans faster and remove the requirement that those making submissions on proposed changes had to be given the opportunity to comment on other submissions.

* Tougher fines for major breaches up from the current maximum of $200,000.

I don’t think any of these will threaten our air, soil and water quality but they should reduce the time and costs involved in applying for consent.

We had a very expensive experience  with a vexatious objection when we applied for consent to take water fromt he Kakanui River.

But a two year delay, $20,000 in direct costs and more in lost income when we had to dry cows off early because we ran out of irrigation water part way through the season was minor compared with what many other applicants go through as an NBR opnion piece by Hamish Firth on the good, the bad and the costly  illustrates.

Do you want food safety with that?

Australian fishermen get $15 a kilo for prawns landed on the beach and it costs locals $12 a kilo to get farmed prawn to the weight required for sale; but Chinese farmed prawns land in Australia for $3 a kilo.

With that price difference I can see the attraction of the imports and that’s not the only food that comes from China.

The Land  reports that Chinese food is flooding into Australia:

It includes nearly 250 tonnes of fresh or chilled garlic, 67t of broccoli, 400kg of flour, more than 38t of preserved tomatoes, 1085t of various types of peanuts and 160,000 litres of apple juice – all sent here in the second half of last year.

Who knows how much Chinese food comes into New Zealand too but more to the point how safe is it?

We are in no position to complain about the quantity when we send mega tonnes of meat, dairy products and fruit to other countries, but we have a right to question the quality and safety. Food produced here and in Australia has to meet strict standards, but regardless of what’s required in China the poisoned milk scandal is proof we need to be very wary of their produce. 

 China is a huge market, we can’t afford to ignore them and if we want to sell to them we have to buy from them in return. Australians face a similar situation and Michael Thomson, editor of The Land’s FarmOnLine says they have to Trade with China but do it right.

That’s easier said than done and Bernard Hickey warns of the dangers of trying to do business in China

 However, food standards and unscruprulous business practices are not just a problem in the developing world. Frenemy  found an article from the Huffington Post:

You’d think the Peanut Corporation of America was headquartered in China. They discovered salmonella twelve times over the past two years at a Georgia plant, yet they chose to ship out contaminated peanut butter regardless. Sounds a lot like the Chinese dairy company Sanlu that knowingly sold melamine-laced milk powder. In both cases, kids died. In both cases, the regulators were none the wiser. 

It would be impossible to police every food producer and processor, but there is a case for requiring the reporting of any health issues with strong penalties for those who don’t.

The EU imposes very strict requirements on the killing and processing of meat we send there, so much so that there’s a suspicion they’re using food standards as a non-tariff barriers. We can’t test every item of food which comes into the country but the increasing amount of imports from places which don’t have our strict standards does raise the question of whether we’re doing enough.

Cheap food isn’t good food if it comes at the cost of our health.

This isn’t an argument for compulsory country of origin labelling, but retailers ought to take note of customer concerns and realise the marketing advantage in highlighting food from sources which we ought to be confident have high saftey standards.

In the meantime, the thought of Chinese broccoli is the prompt I need to grow my own.

On-line livestock sales launched

PGG Wrightson has launched an on-line livestock selling site.

Agonline started today with dairy cows. Sales for beef cattle, sheep, deer and other stock will follow later in the year.

Xtra spam problems getting worse

Ever since Xtra changed to Yahooxtra some months ago we’ve had on-going problems with its spam filter.

Several times a week legitimate emails go into spam and almost every day several spam messages get through to the inbox.

If I don’t check the spam every day or so there can be 100s of messages so it’s easy to miss a few bona fide emails among the many I don’t want.

Today when I checked the spam there was a relatively modest total of 64 messages but 33 of them were legitimate. A few were press releases which go to multiple addresses which can trigger a spam-alert but most were messages sent only to us.

How offers of cheap watches, fake degrees and sex aids get through when killing sheets from the freezing works, an Air NZ  boarding pass, Federated Farmers newsletter and ministerial press releases don’t is beyond me.

Sigh.

Vegemite victim of Aussie food police

If anyone suggested I ate the same thing for lunch and dinner day after day I’d rebel.

But if I’m at home my breakfast hardly varies: two pieces of toast (Burgen soy & linseed or Vogels sunflower and barley) with a scraping of vegemite, topped by cottage cheese and tomato in summer and in winter I forgo the vegemite and replace the tomato with kiwifruit.

It’s just what the dieticians order and one of the reasons I dislike hotel breakfasts is because I find it difficult to get something with the same mix of low fat, low sugar, some fibre, vitamins, protein and a tiny bit of calcium from anything they offer.

Vegemite is a peculiarly Australian and New Zealand phenomenon and not to be confused with marmite which is also found in Britain but different from and inferior in taste to the antipodean spread.

So I read with concern that the Aussie food police  have their sights set on vegemite because of it’s high salt content.

A meal with an 8% salt content would be bad for the health and probably unpalatable too but vegemite is used in tiny amounts. I doubt if I use a teaspoon in total on two bits of toast and 8% of less than a teaspoon is nothing to worry about, especially when a blood test a couple of years ago showed I’d been taking the low salt, lots of water advice to the extreme so was low in sodium and advised to add salt to my food.

And that’s what’s wrong with so many of these well intended but misguided attacks on people’s eating habits. It’s not just what we eat but how much, how little and how often we eat and drink combined with how much or how little exercise we do that matters.

As Jim Hopkins  puts it, there’s no junk food only junk diets and small amounts of vegemite do not a junk diet make.

Hat Tip: Pundit

Mars and Venus

If proof was needed that men and women come from different planets it’s the posts and comments on yesterday’s Herald editorial  at The Hand Mirror  and Monkeywithtypewriter.

Apropos of that I offer an illustration of the comprehension void between men and women which came in an email, I’m not sure who to credit as the author though some websites attribute it to  Dave Barry.

The Difference Between Men & Women

 

Let’s say a guy named Roger is attracted to a woman named Elaine. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts, they have a pretty good time.

 

A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

 

And then one evening when they’re driving home, a thought occurs to Elaine and without really thinking she says it aloud: “Do you realise that as of tonight, we’ve been seeing each other for exactly six months?”

 

And then there is silence in the car. To Elaine, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: Gee, I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he’s been feeling confined by out relationship; maybe he thinks I’m trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn’t want, or isn’t sure of.

 

And Roger is thinking: Gosh. Six months.

 

And Elaine is thinking: But hey, I’m not so sure I want this kind of relationship, either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space so I’d have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily toward … I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading towards marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?

 

And Roger is thinking: … so that means it was … let’s see, February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer’s which means …lemme check the odometer …Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.

 

And Elaine is thinking: He’s upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I’m reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from out relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed, even before I sensed it, that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that’s it. That’s why he’s so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings. He’s afraid of being rejected.

 

And Roger is thinking: And I’m gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don’t care what those morons say, it’s still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It’s 87 degrees out, and this thing is shifting like a goddamn garbage truck and I paid those incompetent thieves $600.

 

And Elaine is thinking: He’s angry. And I don’t blame him. I’d be angry too. God, I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can’t help the way I feel. I’m just not sure.

 

And Roger is thinking: They’ll probably say it’s only a 90 day warranty. That’s exactly what they’re gonna say, the scumballs.

 

And Elaine is thinking: Maybe I’m just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I’m sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centred, schoolgirl romantic fantasy.

 

And Roger is thinking: Warranty. They want a warranty? I’ll give them a goddamn warranty/ I’ll take their warranty and stick it right up their …

 

“Roger,” Elaine says aloud.

“What?” says Roger, startled.

 

“Please don’t torture yourself like this,” she says. Her eyes beginning to brim with tears. “Maybe I should never have … Oh God I feel so ….” (She breaks down, sobbing).

 

“What?” says Roger.

 

“I’m such a fool,” Elaine sobs. “I mean there’s no knight. I really know that. It’s silly. There’s no knight and there’s no horse.”

 

“There’s no horse,” says Roger.

 

“You think I’m a fool, don’t you?” Elaine asks.

 

“No!” says Roger, glad to finally know the correct answer.

 

“It’s just that … It’s just that I … I need some time,” Elaine says.

 

(There is a 15 second pause while Roger, thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one that he thinks might work).

 

“Yes,” he says.

 

(Elaine deeply moved, touches his hand).

 

“Oh Roger, do you really feel that way?” she says.

“What way?” says Roger.

“That way about time,” says Elaine.

“Oh,” says Roger. “Yes.”

 

(Elaine turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eye, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse. At last she speaks.

 

“Thank you, Roger,: she says.

“Thank you,” says Roger.

 

Then he takes her home and she lies on her bed, a conflicted, tortured soul and weeps until dawn whereas when Roger gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV and immediately becomes deeply involved in a return of a tennis match between two Czechoslavakians he’s never heard of.

A tiny voice in the far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car but he is pretty sure there is no way he would ever understand what and so he figures it’s better if he doesn’t think about it. (This is also Roger’s policy regarding world hunger).

 

The next day Elaine will call her closest friend, or perhaps two of them, and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours. In painstaking detail, they will analyse everything she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, expression and gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible ramification.

 

They will continue to discuss this subject, off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions, but never getting bored with it, either.

 

Meanwhile, Roger, while playing squash one day with a mutual friend of his and Elaine’s will pause just before serving, frown, and say: “Norm, did Elaine ever own a horse?”

 

BYO loo

Rural emergency service personal who spend a long time in remote locations can be caught short when wanting to spend a penny.

But a BYO loo has brought relief for emergency workers in the Upper Waitaki Valley.

They’ve purchased a port-a-loo  that can be towed behind another vehicle which will be used by the Omarama Fire Brigade, Waitaki Rural Fire, Civil Defence, the Omarama Co-response unit, Upper Waitaki Search and Rescue and Victim Support.