Dementia is a subject which dominates this issue. It’s not just individuals who fear the onset of it. It’s the fact that huge numbers will suffer from it. After Covid 19, it is the next plague in waiting.
On a lighter note, Chris Bourn recalls a comic incident in his auditions for TVNZ. And they involve common or garden instruments.
We can talk all we like about the founding of the nation and the bi-cultural partnership and the rest but all most people want from Waitangi day is a holiday, preferably sans politics. Most of us will never get to Waitangi anyway. I mean, it’s not Mecca is it?
I’m sure the sight of massed wakas and all the other cultural activities are wonderful to behold but the truth is, most people think Waitangi is a pain, at least the TV version, and that’s all we will ever see.
It is that time of the year! If you are like many of my clients, you may be feeling low energy, tired, even exhausted after the considerable output of the past year. And you won’t be alone in needing time to just stop, re-charge and refresh with the Christmas New Year break.
‘Torture: Children locked up 23 hours a day’. At least that was the media created impression, unless one chose to delve behind the headlines and ten-second TV screamers. But it was handy for giving Serco a pasting even though whatever fault there was, belonged entirely with the Department of Corrections.
First, the young prisoners under discussion were on remand in Mount Eden Prison and therefore not allowed to mingle with sentenced prisoners.
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…
One glance and you knew she looked like everybody’s favourite auntie, her round freckled face wearing a smile which seemed like a permanent expression. Yet she’d had no cause for such equanimity.
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.
First they came for the trees. Then for the gracious houses and generous back lawns. And finally they came for what belonged to us – our reserves and if they could get their hands on it, some juicy parkland.
That’s been the political trajectory of this Government’s changes to the Resource Management Act and none of it is pretty, especially when it’s so blatantly a pay-off for developers.
Years ago, my then partner, Jane, and I were blessed with perfect neighbours. In those days, neighbours like these were rare.
Today …?