Counting my blessings

The phone rang, I answered it but was only listening with half an ear when the woman told me who was calling. However,  her next words got my full attention.

“Is your daughter X?”

I said yes with my heart in my mouth and held my breath until she explained she had my daughter’s wallet which she’d inadvertently left in a shop. It didn’t have her Auckland contact details but did have ours which was why I was getting the call.

Just a lost wallet, not an accident, not an emergency.

Phew.

Maintrunk Country Roadsong

Today’s contribution of poetry month is Maintrunk Country Roadsong by Sam Hunt from Time To Ride, published by Alister Taylor, 1975.

Maintrunk Country Roadsong

 

Driving south and travelling

not much over fifty,

I hit a possum . . . “Little

man” I muttered copping

down to second gear,

“I never meant you any harm”

 

My friend with me, he himself

a man who loves such nights

bright headlight nights, said

“Possums? just a bloody pest,

they’re better dead!”

He’s right of course.

 

So settling back, food down hard,

Ohakune, Tangiwai –

as often blinded by

the single headlight of

a passing goods train as by

any passing car –

 

Let the Midnight Special shine

its ever loving light on me:

they run a prison farm

somewhere round these parts;

men always on the run.

These men know such searchlight nights:

 

those wide shining

eyes of that young possum

full-beam back on mine,

watching me run over him . . .

“Little man

I never meant you any harm”

   – Sam Hunt -

Baaa Studs’ sheepvertising clever or cruel?

It’s definitely clever and the Samsung ad doesn’t look like animal cruelty to me:

But some people think sheepvertising is unethical.

Korean blogger faces 18 month sentence

A South Korean blogger who has been critical of government ecnomic policy is facing an 18 month gaol sentence.

Prosecutors demanded an 18-month sentence Monday for a popular South Korean blogger who is accused of spreading false financial information in a case that has ignited a debate about freedom of speech in cyberspace.

Bloggers don’t have sub editors to save us from ourselves so we have only ourselves to blame if we defame someone or spread false information.

However, call me cynical if you will,  but I suspect a government acting against a blogger in this way might have more to do with censorship than any concern for the facts.

Now this is really silly

Norwegian police pulled up a car for speeding and found the driver “in a compromising position” with his girlfriend on his lap.

UPDATE: Alf Grumble  has a link to a fuller story which introduces hefty motion to the list of euphemisms for sex.

Off-airport park replacing shuttles?

Passengers flying in and out of Dunedin are benefitting from a price war because a shuttle operator has halved his prices after missing out on an airport tender.

Further north, friends in Auckland tell me that demand for shuttles to and from the city has fallen since an off-airport car park opened which allows people to drive their own vehicles, park and be driven the short distance from there to catch their planes.

A similar service has operated at Chirstchurch aiport for years. It’s a lot cheaper than parking at the airport and for shorter trips much the same price as, and much more convenient than, a shuttle.

Sabotaging an air service

The battle to get commercial flights in and out of Oamaru began soon after Air New Zealand pulled its service in the early 1990s.

It was finally won a couple of years ago and has been wonderful for people wanting to fly north. Instead of having to drive a couple of hours south to Dunedin, an hour and a bit north to Timaru or more than three to Christchurch, we’ve had a same-day service from our local airport.

The morning flight left at 7.05 and got into Christchurch about 40 mintues later (sooner if the wind was behind it) enabling passengers to connect with other flights and be in Wellington by 9am or Auckland by 10.30.

The plane left Christchurch again at 6.20 in the evening from Sunday to Thursday, but came in an hour earlier and went out again soon after on Friday for those wanting a weekend away.

Flights in and out on Saturday morning were added to the schedule but these stopped a few months ago.

Now the week day schedule is changing too. From the middle of next month there will be an inward flight leaving Christchurch at 8.30am and an outward one leaving Oamaru at 9.35am. That will put an end to most same day passengers who when I’ve been using the service seemed to be the majority of passengers.

Those wanting a same-day return service will have to use other airports and anyone planning longer trips who’ve had all day to get back to Christchurch won’t find it nearly as convenient if they have to be there by 8am.

I haven’t seen any annoucement from Air New Zealand Eagle Air *explaining the reasoning behind the change in schedule but it looks like an exercise in self-sabotage to me because flight times which are less convenient will attract fewer passengers.

* UPDATE: Eagle Air operates the service on behalf of Air NZ.

Dear Andrew Williams

Dear Andrew Williams

I was surprised that you, the Mayor of North Shore City,  emailed me a media release headlined Local Government Minsister Rodney Hide has misled the PM and Aucklanders and followed that with another email entitled Required Reading to understand how bad the government’s decisons on Auckland’s governance are  with a copy of Rod Orman’s column in yesterday’s Sunday Star Times headlined : Welcome to ‘grater’ Auckland.

But I presume you got my address from this blog and that means you want me to post on your emails.

I have given only cursory attention to announcements and views on the super-city proposal for Auckland.

That doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s an important issue. Much as we mainlanders like to joke about what goes on north of the Bombay Hills, most of us do understand that Auckland is important and having more than a quarter of the population and their economy handicapped by a poorly functioning local body structure isn’t good for the city or the rest of the  country.

But it does mean, just as you probably don’t have the time or energy to concern yourself with tenure review, irrigation and other such matters of importance to rural New Zealand, I’ve been leaving the issue to people more interested and better informed than I am.

However, since you’ve taken the trouble to email me, might I say how amused I was to read this:

“I am also concerned to be advised that John Banks has been a long-time silent supporter of the ACT Party and has attended ACT Party meetings, sometimes as a guest speaker. This unholy alliance between Banks and Hide needs to be the subject of a great deal of scrutiny. Something smells here. I also understand ACT supporters received inside information on the Government’s decision on Auckland prior to the announcement on Tuesday. This raises questions as to whether this National Government is being hi-jacked by these extreme right wingers”.

If you waste 10% of a media release on this, it doesn’t say much about the strength of your case.

Yours sincerely,

Ele

Blindness

Today’s contribution to poetry month was inspired by nature’s art at PM of NZ.

Blindness, by Donald McDonald is from New Zealand Farm & Station Verse, published by Whitcombe & Tombs.

Blindness

 

I know a man

Who – raving on ‘the view’

Broke with his clumsy feet

A spiderweb,

Starry with dew.

 

- Donald McDonald -

Putting possums on the pill

A contraceptive for possums  has been successfully trialled at Wellington Zoo.

The treatment makes possums infertile for up to two years.

Associate Professor Doug Eckery, of Victoria University, said he hoped to have field trials underway by 2013.

“It was an exciting result, but delivery is the key,” he told the Dominion Post.

The challenge was to find a way to distribute it to wild possums, possibly using bait.

The estimated 50 to 70 million possums  in New Zealand compete with native birds for food, eat young growth of trees , destryoing forests, and sometimes dine on birds’ eggs and chicks. They also carry tuberculosis which is a danger to beef and dairy cattle and deer.

North Otago is a low risk area for TB but we  had several outbreaks in our dairy herd. It took ages to find the carrier,  a cow which had come from the West Coast. Testing isn’t 100% reliable and it wasn’t until she was culled after drying herself off that we discovered she was riddled with TB.

15,495 pests potted in Easter Bunny hunt

Central Otago has 15, 495 fewer pests after the 18th annual Easter bunny hunt.

Shooters potted 14,799 rabbbits as well as hares, stoats, ferrets, goats, possums, turkeys and a few feral cats.

Organised by the Alexandra Lions Club, the annual hunt has been responsible for culling almost 200,000 rabbits from Central Otago since its inception in 1991.

Local scouts also benefitted, being commissioned by the Lions to pick up all the dead rabbits and dispose of them in a purpose-dug pit.

  Rabbit tallies

Kills from the past 10 hunts:

•2009: 14,799 (39 teams)
•2008: 15,542 (35 teams)
•2007: 16,121 (31 teams)
•2006: 12,494 (35 teams)
•2005: 20,201 (43 teams)
•2004: 11,546 (33 teams)
•2003: 9148 (27 teams)
•2002: 7513 (18 teams)
•2001: 3694 (17 teams)
•2000: 4324 (20 teams)

Record
•1997: 23,949 (44 teams)

The high numbers of rabbits killed in the last few years indicates that the population is rising again as resistance to RCD (rabbit calicivirus disease)  grows.

We’ve noticed rabbit numbers in North Otago increasing and in spite of regular shooting the number of young shurbs in the garden which are repeatedly nibbled indicates we’re not making much headway against them.

It’s not nearly as bad as it was in the 1930s when my father recalled there were so many rabbits it looked like hillsides were moving, but it’s a growing problem and I’ve got some sympathy with arguments for the reinstatement of rabbit boards.

Rabbits don’t respect boundaries so individual property owners’ pest control is only as good as that of their neighbours.

Reinstating boards would mean the that the effort, and money, most put into pest destruction isn’t sabotaged by the few who do little or nothing to eradicate pests on their properties.

Who was the first to discover gold in Otago? UPdated

If you’d asked me who was the first to discover gold in Otago I’d have said Gabriel Read whose name lives on in Gabriels Gully near Lawrence.

But I’d have been wrong.

The first workable goldfield was discovered by an Indian prospector, Edward Peters, three years before Read made his find.

I discovered this in this morning’s ODT because Governor General Hon Sir Anand Satyanand unveiled a plaque   in honour of Peters yesterday.

UPDATE: Didn’t Winston Peters reckon Maori orginiated from China? Maybe he also had Indian ancestors?

What would I have done?

When I first heard the news of yesterday’s daylight rape I wondered why the girl hadn’t sought help. But she did.

A 13-year-old girl pleaded for help from a stranger just minutes before she was dragged into bushes and raped in a daylight attack near a busy road in west Auckland.

Police say the girl approached a woman filling her car at the BP station on Great North Rd, in Waterview, and begged for help, after being followed by a stranger for about a kilometre from Pt Chevalier.

Police want to speak to the motorist after she reportedly told the girl to keep away from the man, before driving off.

My immediate reaction was, if only that woman had done something to help. But could I be sure I’d have done anything more?

I’d like to think so. But that’s easy to say from this safe distance without knowing all the circumstances and with the benefit of hindsight.

Crook safety standards hook anglers

Anglers in Derbyshire have been snared by over-zealous safety standards:

Thousands of fishermen come to Foremark Reservoir in Derbyshire every year to fish for rainbow and brown trout.

However the local water board has banned fishing on the dam wall after a number of anglers sustained minor injuries slipping on the rocks. Anglers are also banned from most of the rest of the reservoir for fear back casting will snare a passer-by, although this has never happened in the forty years since the reservoir was built.

Anglers now fear that hundreds of other fishing spots near public walkways will be restricted around the country as health and safety officers protect against litigation if walkers are accidentally injured.

Forty years of accident free angling count for nothing while common sense and personal responsibility are ignored again.

But the bureaucrats aren’t really concerned about the risk to anglers or passers by because this ruling has far less to do with physical safety and a lot more to do with fear of legal liability.

Calorie free chocolate fix

This is a little late for anyone who’s had more than their fair share of Easter eggs, but scientists have invented Le Whif, an inhaler which provides users with a calorie free chocolate fix.

The gadget lets users breathe in chocolate to curb cravings and satisfy their sweet tooth.

Invented by Harvard professor David Edwards, Le Whif comes in four different flavours: raspberry, mint, mango and plain.

“It seemed to us that eating was tending toward breathing, so, with a mix of culinary art and aerosol science, we’ve helped move eating habits to their logical conclusion.

“We call it whiffing.”

But what about the oral satisfaction?

The pleasure of chocolate isn’t just the smell and taste, it’s the melt-in-the-mouth sensation and I don’t think you’d get that by whiffing.

Whoops

 

We had established we had both gone to Waitaki Girls’ High when she said something which made me realise that she thought we might be a similar age.

Not wanting to be be rude about what I thought must be quite a bit more than a decade’s difference in our ages, I said, “I was there from 1970 to 1974.”

Oh, she said, “I left in 1959.”

I thought it was funny but can see why the Auckland woman, mistaken for someone twice her age by a gosspip columnist isn’t amused.

In case you were wondering . . .

. . . I did stick to my pledge  to resist hot cross buns and Easter eggs until Easter.

In fact, I was a day late with the buns, not eating one until yesterday.

As for the eggs, I’ve bought a few to share with friends who are coming for lunch but I”ll be looking at them very carefully after reading about the woman who found creepy crawlies  when she bit into an Easter egg.

Cadbury’s, which made the offending confection, says it’s taking the infestation very seriously and my experience is that they do.

A few years ago my daughter found what she thought was plastic in an Easter agg and sent it back to Cadburys. They replied immediately with a letter thanking her and a week or two later with the results of their tests which determined it wasn’t plastic but sugar and other normal ingredients which hadn’t dissolved properly.

That’s how any question of contamination should be treated, but as Macdoctor points out here  and here  not every company takes it as seriously.

Release

Joy Cowley is probably best known as the author of children’s books although her first published books were novels for adults.

She also writes spiritual reflections and I’ve chosen one of those as Easter Sunday’s contribution to poetry month.

Release  comes from Aotearoa Psalms by Joy Cowley, published by Catholic Supplies (NZ) Ltd, 1989.

Release

 

It was a bit like

the opening of a tomb, really,

the lids of the cage pulled back

and quick and bright life spilling out

with an eagerness to fly.

As I watched the wingbeat

of those pigeons, I felt mummerings

against the bars of my heart.

 

All the love imprisoned within me

fluttered for release. Blessings unspoken,

smiles concealed, acts of kindness

which had never got off the drawing board,

clamoured for the light of day.

 

I wondered about the cost

of opening the cage

and lettering love spread its wings.

I felt a bit frightened.

When I’d given everything away,

could I live with an empty heart?

 

What I’d forgotten, of course,

was the homing instinct of love,

and how, unlike pigeons,

love always returns

with more than it takes away.

The other thing I forgot

was how love enlarges the heart

to take its increase,

multiplying and enlarging,

multiplying and enlarging,

until the little cage

is as big as the Kingdom of Heaven.

 

- Joy Cowley –

Did you see the one about . . .

Pirates are not all bad  at Anti-Dismal

Simon the Cyrenian (An Easter Song)  at Bowalley Road

A Tale of Two Cultures at Macdoctor

The view from a roofer’s recession  at The New Yorker (HatTip: Inquiring Mind)

Woman eats 51 of world’s hottest chilles in one sitting  at Farmgirl

Economists: more human than you think at the Visible Hand in Economics

The Art of borrowing  at Cactus Kate

All you wanted to know about the OIA but were afraid to ask  at goNZoFreakpwoer

Obsessing about weight in terms of not obsessing about weight  at 2bSophora

Le traison de clercs (and the journalists)  at Micky’s Muses

Water

Today’s contribution to poetry month is Water  by Philip Larkin from The Whitson Weddings, published by Faber, 1964.

Water

 

If I were called in

To construct a religion

I should make use of water.

 

Going to church

Would entail a fording

To dry, different clothes;

 

My liturgy would employ

Images of sousing,

A furious devout drench,

 

And I should raise in the east

A glass of water

Where any-angled light

Would congregate endlessly.

 

     - Philip Larkin –