Balham, London, 1961. I was twenty and my fiancé eighteen when we decided to get married. London was my fiancé’s home town. Being young and in love we discounted obstacles, the first being my girlfriend’s mother, who was not impressed by the idea. Not only was I from a northern tribe with a Liverpool accent, I was a labourer. We never did become pals but we learned to tolerate each other.
You’ve wanted to paint for years – but always filed it away as a nice thought, one that can wait until say… you were older? Until you realise you’re already there. And once you’ve declared your interest in the craft to an old friend over coffee, you’ve already painted yourself into a corner, because friends being friends, listen.
Jeff’s a junkie, Mary’s an alkie and Angela has something called a smartphone addiction.
Seems like everybody out there has an addiction of one kind or another so I’ll join the crowd and announce mine. It’s not anywhere near as interesting as say, sex addiction, but millions around the world share it. It’s Computer Vision Syndrome.
“Attention Please: We are a safety-conscious airport. Please do not let your children play near the escalators.”
The first time I heard this message over the PA system at Christchurch Airport I was impressed. The woman spoke in dulcet tones and I agreed wholeheartedly with the message. Unsupervised children and escalators can be a lethal mix.
About to visit Auckland? Read on…
If you’re thinking about visiting Auckland anytime soon, think again. The place has been overrun by the Hi-Viz Brigade, men and women whose weapon of choice is the orange road cone. These little pointy heads narrow lanes everywhere, block them in some cases. They choke traffic just about everywhere you drive in central Auckland.
(With apologies to that old song ‘a Gordon for me, a Gordon for me’ etc., here’s a Waitangi Day rendering about the flying pink phallus which hit Economic Development Minister Stephen Joyce):
A Dildo for thee
Was not meant to be,
A Dildo for Key
Was where it should be…
The other night we were sitting on a porch at another 60th birthday. These days the Big One is almost as common as that other rite of passage, funerals. It’s as if we party one minute and exit the next. On this warm night the other hallmark of our age was that we were sitting. In another room ’60s rock beckoned, reminding us that once, it was only the old folks who sat and watched while we danced…
To further promote my (Imperator Fish) blogsite, I have come up with a new marketing strategy, and I guarantee you will love it!
From next week onwards I will be providing a kitten visit service to workplaces. For a modest fee, you can get your hands on a boxful of adorable kittens.
Here’s how it works:
Just look at this street art – roses in Iran, Dali in Philadelphia. Any similarly stunning parallels here? Nope. 
In short we haven’t even picked up our paint brushes yet and we should if these two amazing transformations of concrete into colour show.