The worst part of being curious about the world around us is wishing you weren’t so nosey. Take ‘world leaders,’ for instance. Trump and Putin come to mind immediately, but let’s not be too exclusive. Erdogan, Netanyahu, Duterte and Kim Jong-Un are screaming to be let in to the upper echelons of the international Mongrel Mob. And there are countless other certifiable leaders begging to be awarded their patches.
To the New World… Only two dogs are known to have sailed from England in the Mayflower with the Pilgrim Fathers to North America. A detailed account of the journey published in 1622, Mourt’s Relation, by Edward Winslow and William Bradford stated: ‘John Goodwin and Peter Brown having a great Mastiff bitch with them and a little Spaniel.’ Apart from the mastiff and the spaniel, no other dog appears in the account of the emigrants.
Spotted: Not the sort of thing you’d expect in a suburban Street. Certainly not in a nobby Epsom avenue. But things change. After another day’s downpour in this waterlogged Spring, a Gypsy woman emerged from one of the street’s impeccable gardens.
She’s already been humbled and now, as a new homeless person, she’s about to be humiliated. Living in the streets she has no money and so tries her luck at the nearest shop.
“I’m homeless today – can you give me a dollar for a coffee?”
The finding of a body of a handsome young man lying in a remote spot beside the Clutha River began the story of Lonely Graves. In 1865 a miner called William Rigney came across the body near Horseshoe Bend Diggings. The dead man’s dog stood guard but no one knew the young man, nor could they discover his name.
Things don’t always go according to plan.
No wonder John Lennon, and some wise people before him have said, “Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans.”
And yet when the unexpected happens, it invariably throws us and we react.
In the world of politics it cannot be denied, he is a breath of fresh air. What he says in public may be nonsense, but I wish some of our politicians would say what they really think occasionally, instead of being afraid of the media response.
Oscar Wilde once observed that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. So let’s talk about it, that unprecedented threat to our health and well-being – public service television.
Never mind that we’ve never had it, the mere mention of it makes some in the commentariat fume. Take Mike Hoskings. Nice bloke. Shame about the rash he’s developed over this issue, though he’s not alone. Here’s a take from his comments:
A baker refused, very politely apparently, to provide a wedding cake to a gay couple because he was against same sex marriage.
I am moved to comment on this after listening to aghast responses on the topic from panellists on Radio New Zealand: ‘Stupid.’ and ‘Homophobic.’ And ‘It’s the same as refusing to serve a coloured person in a cafe.’ Is it?