Southerly: My Life As a Palm Tree
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A whole bunch of extremely amusing stories on this thread, I must say. Thank you all so much! I've laughed, I've cried, I've felt nauseous. It's been, as they say, a journey. A journey in which Paul Brislen has definitely one-upped me in the realm of "taking your daughter into the men's lavatory" horror stories.
Snap?! I grew up near the Glen Eden end of a stream that led to Titirangi/Konini.
Snap^2. I have also made the trek to follow that stream from source to end. It's the one that starts where the Konini Road reservoir is now, right?
As a lad I also followed the one from Titirangi Primary School. I remember towering waterfalls (probably 3 metres), and then disappointment when it suddenly disappeared into a culvert.
I was also, aged about six, dumbstruck by the diggings of the children at Konini Road primary school. It was like the Huntly mines. Very disappointing when some responsible adults sealed them up with diggers.
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I recommend the little NZ movie Kiwi Flyer. It's about kids in Nelson and their trolley derby. Lots of innovative technologies, dangerous risk taking, bullies (adult and children), and beautiful scenes of Nelson sometimes from the perspective of going downhill at speed.
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Hebe, in reply to
Chop
I feel sick now.
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Hebe, in reply to
“Good peeing, Mama! HOORAY!”
Those moments make parenting worthwhile, even if you are in the toilet with the children and the zoo with the possibility of the neighbour or meter man being invited in by one of your helpers.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
I’m just a bit rubbish at that stuff.
I am too. But lack of money forced me to learn that despite lack of natural skill I could get there if I went slowly enough and was willing to accept that the first attempt would end up in the bin. A love of shiny tools also helped.
Besides you CAN cook, that is also a kind of magic.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
the same stream
Yup that's the one. This was back before the bottom half of Konini Rd became subdivisions so it was mostly bush all the way down.
I learnt so much in that bush, how to slide down mud banks and avoid the trees, how to recognise bush lawyer, how to identify deep mud from shallow, the difference between storm water drains and sceptic tank overflows. It never occurred to me I could hve got lost or injured, the worst case scenario for me then was missing lunch.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
It’s the one that starts where the Konini Road reservoir is now, right?
Yup, but there is another stream that joins it, that starts right up where Konini rd meets the Scenic drive. That's where my home was.
Those diggings at primary school were great ... and then there was the time we discovered the wasp nest down the bank from the lower playing field ...
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JacksonP, in reply to
Two ends missing.
Ouch. Since we're making each other squeamish, one of the in stitches incidence involved working on my BMX bike in bare feet. Stood on the each of the open metal toolbox, resulting in a semi-detached big toe.
What a tool.
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ChrisW, in reply to
sceptic tank overflows
Sometimes I find my sceptic tank overflows and I ask "You sure of that?" or even call "Bullshit!" :-)
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Hebe, in reply to
Sceptic tank? that's good.
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ChrisW, in reply to
Sceptic tank? that's good.
Essential for scientists - but one has to be careful in presentation of the overflow.
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On reflection, we're all bloody lucky to have made it this far.
Perhaps the cure for being 17 is indeed to turn 18 after all.
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Steve Barnes, in reply to
That other brew with iodine and potassium permangate….I think…that goes bang when it dries. :-) :-) :-)
Being a smart arse, because everyone likes a smart arse. It is Iodine crystals and Anhydrous Ammonia and the resulting compound is Nitrogen triiodide
Oh how we laughed at the teacher when the blackboard exploded. ;-)
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Moz, in reply to
I recommend the little NZ movie Kiwi Flyer
It is quite good. But they picked the wrong hill, there are much better hills in Nelson for that. Some even have nice run-out areas at the bottom. Not the best one, that has a stop sign. But often, if you time it right, you can run the stop sign and go up the hill on the other side, missing any crossing cars. I imagine a number of adults have died of heart failure at that intersection.
We had a range of hills behind Richmond where I grew up, and I had unsupervised access to a 10 acre hobby farm complete with creek, trees and a small barn. We spent a lot of time making forts and stuff out of hay bales (back in the day of little hay bales that a child or two could move). One game that in retrospect seems insane was to make a "pool" out of haybales, fill it with loose hay, then jump into it. Often by hanging from the rafters of the barn and droppping four or so metres.
The exploratory habits didn't really go away for quite a while. I remember being mildly drunk in my early 20's after a gig at a pub and going off to the woodchip piles in Nelson to climb the gantries and jump off onto the chips. Do it right and you can drop more than 5m and land on a steep slope that promptly collapses giving you a nice slidy ride to the bottom. Or you can break a leg, or sprain an ankle, or open a methane bubble and fall into it to be buried. It's fun. P:ossibly less dangerous is the similar "sport" of scree running, which you laboriously ascend a mountain then run down the scree at great speed. Often completely not dying at all!
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Moz,
One of my favourite memories of childhood must be just after I started school. We had a new house, and many days I'd come home from school,and my mother would have seen me walking up the street. So I'd open the door to be greeted by "don't bleed on the carpet".
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Steve Barnes, in reply to
Do it right and you can drop more than 5m and land on a steep slope that promptly collapses giving you a nice slidy ride to the bottom.
We used to do that on sand dunes. The angle of a sand dune is fairly constant at between 30 and 35 degrees. So, you run as fast as you can and leap over the edge in the most spectacular fashion. The faster you ran the further out you would go and the further you would drop, hundreds of feet it seemed at the time, then tuck into a roll as you hit then roll down to the flat, oh how we laughed when the fastest runner we knew managed to avoid that ungainly tumble by landing on the flat.
We took him some grapes to the hospital the very next day.
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Hebe, in reply to
I’d open the door to be greeted by “don’t bleed on the carpet”.
Should be the title of a Kiwi parenting manual.
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Moz, in reply to
“don’t bleed on the carpet”. Should be the title of a Kiwi parenting manual.
I'm thinking illustrated in the syle of those "where did I come from" books. But yes, it would sell based purely on the title.
But these days it more likely to be "don't eat that" or "how many iPhones can a 10 year old break?".
I'm sorry, I'm still reading about the suppository of all wisdom over here in Oz, and laughing.
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It's interesting how 'small-town/country bits of even big cities were a few decades back. Growing up in such settings is a grand way to have narrow escapes. We underestimate the value of 'wild' spaces- even the scrappy eucalypts and tangle of vines next-door to my first primary school (we called it 'the jungle') was an education.
It didn't rate at the time, but aged 10, one of my mates' dad was foreman of the local council gang. We discovered a few boxes of sticks of gelignite in their garage, and over quite a long period, we'd fish out a few sticks and play with them (put them under things and pretend to blow them up.) We heard that if the geli 'sweated' it was nitroglycerine, and we watched hopefully for this when they were in the sun, but did not, I'm pleased to say now, ever try to warm them by the fire :) -
Russell Brown, in reply to
We used to do that on sand dunes.
Old-school playground swings were the bizzo. With a little practice you could wind up and let go at just the right point in the arc so that you launched up and out and achieved enough height to go quite some distance.
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These days have sadly fast disappeared……
Unfortunately, H&S has reached all the way to Scott Base. I have been reliably informed that the mid winter skinny dip into the sea through a hole in the ice is now taboo.
Me? I am a qualified member of the Lake Vanda Swim Club. Membership qualification required walking only in Mukluks to the waters edge, taking said boots off and immersing oneself completely under the water. All in the presence of a Vandal (person who resided at Lake Vanda for the summer).
Fact: Ruth Richardson is a bona fide member!!
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Hebe, in reply to
I’m just a bit rubbish at that stuff.
But you're obviously good at other stuff! Having grown up with an ace builder/ all-purpose Kiwi bloke as a father, it took decades for me to know that it is fine not to be able to change the car's oil, concrete a path and a build a spare room before teatime on the Saturday of a weekend.
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Hebe, in reply to
Fact: Ruth Richardson is a bona fide member!!
Do you mind! I'm meant to be making dinner.
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BenWilson, in reply to
I think the spirit of all this is still alive in extreme sports. Protective gear has meant that kids are just more extreme. Their standard gear is much better than what we used to have. But still, you get guys doing this:
Kudos for his exclamation! Most people it's "aaaah, F$%#$!", but he says quite clearly "Oh no, I broke my leg in half", which if you can bear the shitty quality (sorry I couldn't find the original, think it's been removed from youtube), is pretty much exactly what happened.
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'I wonder what will happen if we put a sheet of fibrolite on that outdoor fire?'
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