If you shop for birthday cards you’ll find the funny, the odd and the entertaining. But among them there’s a surprising number for those who make it to their 100th birthday.
So how many Centenarians are there in New Zealand? Based on the 2013 Census, Statistics New Zealand puts the number at 561. Five years on and given the fact that for nearly 200 years mankind has been pushing back ageing, that number is likely to be higher in the 2018 Census.
Now here’s something an old hack would never have dreamt could happen: A typewriter revolution – typewriters reverentially dusted off from their obsolete past, and ushered into a welcoming present, wreathed with terms like the ‘typosphere.’
Another day in Auckland and another tree falls. No, not just one but three – all native Puriri.
“Where will the wood pigeons go now?” an anguished neighbour asks as the chain saws roar and a wood chipper finishes the job, grinding once proud trees into garden fill.
Yey! We reached the red planet. Arid place, clearly had its day. Is our lovely blue planet on the same track?
Here’s an informative sample of climate change research in 2018:
Outside there’s a colourful riot of flowers cherry and pink blossoms and the joyful Springtime chorus of our birds. Out there drunk and disorderly, cheeky Tuis dangle from Kowhais sucking the nectar from the trees’ golden flowers.
I do love this long awaited time of the year especially this year when dreary winter lingered too long.
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.
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?”
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.