Perquisite Perpetual
There are times when I sleep through the nightI but such nights are rare. So thank heavens for TV 3, for sacking John Campbell and giving him the opportunity to return to Radio New Zealand.
Dignity Awards Say Go!
Some years ago a lifelong devotee of yoga brought together the residents of her retirement home to teach them this 4,000-year-old relaxation and meditation technique. She was 90.
Viva Venezuela!
What a difference benevolent government policies can make to a society.
Venezuela’s low-cost housing programme is building new homes at a breakneck pace of over 200 a day, according to the government.
Here, Statistics New Zealand figures show more than 21,000 new dwellings were approved last year, 26 percent more than in the previous year.
Stars in their Eyes
When Freda Du Faur partied at The Hermitage in 1909, they moved the piano into the dining room, rolled back the rugs and everyone danced. By Christmas that summer, The Hermitage overflowed with mountaineers, adventurers and artists. One year later, Freda was the first woman to reach the summit Aoraki/Mt Cook.)
These days The Hermitage Hotel is more likely to see Asian bus tourists stretched back in chairs, ensconced in a 360 degree cinematic experience – viewing the night sky in its Digital Dome Planetarium: See the night sky like never before. Leave Earth. Fly to the edge of our galaxy and far beyond to the reaches of our known universe. So the promo goes.
A hat-rack please…
Went shopping for a hat-rack the other day. No big deal, this was a need rather than a want – my hats had multiplied in direct proportion to my vanishing hair.
I rang a store which stocks everything from rope to paints and plants, and asked for a hat-rack.
“No we don’t sell any” said a South African accent a little too emphatically, the way some people do when they want you off the line.
“Really?”
“I’ll put you through to hardware” she said, and was gone, though Hardware was displeased.
Stale ponds – fresh ideas…
Baby-boomers might just identify with the description of this country:
…’it maintains a welfare state — a set of government programs designed to provide economic security — that is beyond the wildest dreams of American liberals. It provides universal health care; college education is free, and students receive a stipend; day care is heavily subsidized’.
The country is Denmark. The writer is American Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner for Economic Sciences. And many of those state-funded programmes paid for by taxpayers were once also ours before the 1984 election.
Miscellany – October
Reformed…?
We should be grateful that Maori are, in general, inveterate forgivers even if their own are harmed by that generous custom. Tariana Turia and three other prominent Maori women think Chris Brown, the African-American entertainer, should be allowed into New Zealand despite a conviction for assaulting his girlfriend, pop Diva Rihanna.