Posts by daleaway
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If Deborah Russell is not New Zealand's Minister of Finance in waiting, I'll scoff my chapeau on toast with cheese sauce.
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Don't wax too lyrical about Amsterdam's free bikes. Between the endeavours of thieves, vandals and drunks, about 12,000-15,000 bicycles (and 50 cars) end up in that city's canals each year and they all go for scrap afterwards. I worked alongside one of its major canals for several years and loved to sit at my desk watching the patrols dredging bikes up onto the rubbish barges. We never saw any go in, so it must have been happening at night.
Last year I was trying to negotiate some of Oxford's narrow footpaths with a wheelchair, and was forced out into the road traffic (bump, jolt) by bicycles stacked half a dozen deep against any available railing. That city is in dire need of proper bike parks just about everywhere, but the UK is a great believer in muddling through, so I dare say it will never happen. Not a great prospect for wheelchair users.
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Hard News: Not yet standing upright, in reply to Steve Barnes,
I believe the ghost of what's left of the Government Printer (which subsequently became GP Print, part of Blue Star) was sold to Australians in 2012.
From a press release at that time:
"The New Zealand operations of trans-Tasman printing group Blue Star have been bought by Australian private equity group Mercury Capital and Blue Star shareholder and former manager Tom Sturgess. " -
Hard News: Not yet standing upright, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
For Those in Peril on the Sea is also sung as "Lest We Forget".
You'll have heard it in many an ANZAC Day service. -
Osmiroids were the "greasy kids' stuff" of the fountain pen world - a sort of entry-level cheapie. But they worked well enough.
The Rolls Royce pens were Conway Stewarts, which the odd kid had passed on to them from their Dad. I think they came in ladies' and gents' sizes.
I revelled in the ink cartridge fountain pens when they came in - always hated breaking nails on that side lever thingy of the traditional models. And of course cartridges were so clean to change over, albeit pricey. Anyone recall when cartridges came in?
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Hilary, when I was at university some of the fustier members of faculty required the use of fountain pens when answering exam questions or writing essays.
They claimed that ballpoint pen ink contained oil and reflected the light; the glare gave them a headache. We thought they were just being cantankerous because they could. Curmudgeons havent changed much over the years.
But biros were quite new in the 1950s, and we all used fountain pens at secondary school. Dip pens and inkwells at primary school, fountain pens were a bit expensive for youngsters. Yes, we had an ink monitor to keep the inkwells filled. Giant bottle of Stephens blue-black in the cupboard.
A grandfather gave me a biro for a birthday present around 1958 - they were quite chic at the time.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Wireless Summer, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
By 1977 we had been using videotape for about ten years in New Zealand.
Mine was the hand holding the Leed Lemonade bottle in its introductory commercial, videotaped in late 67 or early 68 in TVNZ's old Waring Taylor Street studios in Wellington. The crew were full of swagger about their new technology.
It was the first videotaped commercial our ad agency had made, and we were a little scared of having to film the whole thing in one sweep.
While the camera was panning away to a card, in between two shots of the lemonade being poured, the agency manager swooped in and stirred the glass of lemonade with his fountain pen to keep the bubbles looking fizzy. The camera caught him out on the way back - what looked like one last drop of lemonade going in to the glass was actually his pen being withdrawn. We got away with it.
I can still remember the ache in my arm from having to hold the bottle in a graceful manner while displaying the logo.
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So this "business-savvy" government fell for a classic bait-and-switch?
Quelle surprise.
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Happily off topic.
I'm intrigued by the IHC kiddies on the roundabout. I swung on that very roundabout many times in the 1950s but did not know of any IHC facility in the neighbourhood.In those days the Basin Reserve was closely ringed by schools - primaries Mt Cook (new buildings), St Joseph's (now defunct), St Mark's, and Clyde Quay School was relocated to the old Mt Cook school buildings after earthquake damage (1954-56). Secondaries included St Pat's (now relocated to Kilbirnie), Wellington Tech, and Wellington College, with Wellington East Girl's' nearby just above the Mt Vic tunnel.
None of those inner-city schools had decent grounds or playing fields except for Wellington College, for obvious reasons, so these tiny play areas got a lot of use.
Oh, and the Boys' Institute was just behind the Basin.
That double-fronted building on the right in the photo was where Millwood Press was later located.
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Hard News: Public Address Word of the…, in reply to Ewan Morris,
As I said on another blog some months ago, Wellington does not have a beltway, but it does have a Quay Ring.
Also a Key Ring.
One is lovely and has shops, and the other is ugly and has Black Ops.