Rainbow Tick is a business, like the halal certification business, it gives organisations a tick for behaving in the manner the certifier approves. The Muslim Islamic Council provides certification to businesses that kill their animals with a single cut, that are thoroughly bled, and have not come into contact with animals (pork especially) that have been stunned before being slaughtered.
The day Congress decided to begin an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, cable news network MSNBC ran a documentary on world-wide protests by millions of young people. It featured the real life impacts of climate change almost everywhere in the world – from Paris where a prolonged heatwave had killed dozens, to Kabul, where determined women marched (with men guarding them), and most pitifully, in little Guatemala.
Why would anyone think I’d vote for them if they give me a leaflet I don’t want! Look – it says ‘NO CIRCULARS’!” I consider explaining that local body election leaflets are actually not ‘circulars’, or indeed, advertising at all. They are instead an important part of the democratic process. But I fear a bureaucratic distinction will be lost on this vehement elderly woman intent on keeping her letter box clear of bumf, and for that matter, on most others whose letterboxes are firmly labelled as to what can and cannot be posted within.
Our Kiwi friend loves her new home in Australia’s Sunshine Coast except that… one morning when she opened the doors to another glorious day, she saw this on her back deck… a python. It basked on the desk railing, all 3-4 metres of it, and sent our friend scurrying back inside.
Winter lingered like an unwelcome visitor, but finally Spring arrived – one little step after another.
Jasmine scented the air on crisp mornings in the lull between seasons; daffodils thrust dreary winter aside, lambs gambolled in Auckland’s Cornwall Park and in the burbs, pink cherry blossom brightened the streets – on days when it wasn’t raining!
For many centuries, the soul was perceived as separable from the body, and never so clearly as when seeing one’s reflection in a pool or a mirror. The reflection there was believed to be your soul on a brief walkabout from your body. But having been separated for a short time in this way, the soul normally returned home safely to within its owner – unless a water creature snapped the soul into ripples or, in later centuries, a mirror broke.
To say he had a beard would be an understatement- his whole face bristled with pepper and salt whiskers so thick they looked like an uncut hedge. In one of Auckland’s coldest winter spells, he wore a coat which had seen too many winters and was at least two sizes too big for him. And then there were his shoes, or perhaps one of them. It remained staunchly unflappable while the other had clearly given up the pretense of being a shoe, and its uppers flopped open with every step he took.
Picture this: An 80-year-old grandfather of four children – three boys and one girl – is picked up from his central city flat by his only son every Sunday. He drives him through suburban streets which he can now barely recognise. The once lush avenues of bungalows and villas seem gap-toothed here and there. Or they sport towering new townhouses which block sunlight from their neighbours.
When was the first time you felt, umm… elderly? Well okay – old? It’s not as if it’s something that happens often because we live in a self-made reality, now and in the past.
But it’s right there if we bother to look: on the car radio Magic FM specialises in music for the ‘oldies’ – that same music which revolutionised the music world when we were in the Swinging Sixties, is now a commercially viable lullaby for early baby boomers.