Let me start with tomatoes. My home grown tomatoes have thin skins and flesh as dense and true as wild meat. I have red, orange and pinkish heritage type with a variety of wonderful favours. But we have a short growing season and my toms are just about finished, which is why my wife bought some supermarket tomatoes.
I ate half of one.
When this wacky titled book, turned up – some new age novel I thought.
Not so. This is a true story about the jihadist takeover of the real Timbuktu and the remarkable story of one man’s finding, collecting and then saving hundreds of thousands of priceless manuscripts in Timbuktu.
Perfectionism is a personality trait, wrote Mary Ellis on Kiwiboomers earlier this month.
It is not, she added, the same as striving for excellence or having high standards:
Bumped into an old friend the other day. Goes by the name of Waiheke. Used to know the place well when the S.S. Baroona chugged into the channel and about an hour later, discharged us on to Matiatia’s humble wharf.
Property is a commodity, a possession, which may be sold or disposed of as the owner sees fit. After the transaction is legitimised by a legal document, justice and all democratic and economic requirements of fairness to all parties is served. It’s simple really.
Were we supposed to go WOW! when the Government announced it would build a rail link to Auckland airport by… 2030? Maybe 2050?
TV3 news (sorry, Newshub) carried the story last month. And it featured something so familiar that it felt like déjà vu, yet there it was on our TV screens.
Richard Wagner was devoted to his King Charles spaniel named Peps, who actually participated in his master’s composing.
Wagner’s biographer H.T. Finck records that Peps constantly sat near Wagner when the composer was at the piano. Sometimes Peps would leap on to the table and peer into Wagner’s face, howling piteously.
