Posts by daleaway
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Bon voyage, Geoff. Share your impressions with us when you return.
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Kebabette, I sometimes used "What ho!" as a greeting, till the day I did it on an IRC group.
I came in and said "What ho!".
All the North Americans irately asked who I was calling a ho.
I had to get me coat.
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I saw "Behind the Fridge" in London just after that I think - wonder if the sketch lineup was the same? The only one I can now remember was Dudley Moore's piano routines with slides flashing up on screen - when Ted Heath (then PM) came up, he said "Hello sailor" in his campest manner and the audience roared.
Michael Flanders carried all the comedy in that duo. He had the relish, Swann was the don.( But my husband disagrees. ) Saw them in New Zealand in the 1950s and later saw Donald Swann in London with his new performing partners, Sydney Carter and Jeremy Taylor. Nice enough but not much fun.
Morecambe and Wise had their roots in music hall, but were none the worse for that. Morecambe's timing and delivery can still crack me up.
Always thought it a shame that Jo Brand never teamed up with Jenny Eclair - have seen them both live and they would make a dynamite combo.
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OK, I'll tell you my Wahine Day memories.
Getting to work by car because of the bad weather, instead of my usual walking from Berhampore to an ad agency in Upper Willis Street. Fierce wind and some rain, but only small branches down - we'd seen worse. At that stage.
Everyone made it into work. By mid morning the winds were roaring, radio and power were going off intermittently. Whenever the radio came on we would huddle round listening to reports on the situation of the listing Wahine. Very sombre mood, except amongst the bragging office juniors, who said they could "easy" surf those waves. Young men, eh?
By mid morning there was whiteout all round and the radio was now telling us all to stay off the streets because of flying roofing iron and downed power lines. The windows along the south side of our tall modern building suddenly blew in and we rushed around amongst the broken glass and flooding, salvaging artwork and files. It kept us busy. There wasn't much creative work going on that day.
By early afternoon the bosses said we could all go home as soon as the police said it was safe. We got home to find one fence down and the washhouse roof a bit damaged, and its chimney missing. At a relative's house in Seatoun a row of back garden fences all down the street had been felled like skittles. When the Evening Post came out that night, it reported only one death from the Wahine sinking. The full horror story had not emerged by press time.
Small, idiotic personal footnote. I had just bought my first house and was doing up the kitchen. My new blue vinyl flooring was on its way up from Christchurch on the Wahine. It was probably salvaged later, but I like to think of it still lying somewhere on the seabed out by Wellington Heads, delighting the mermaids.
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Up to a point, I/O - given that AA members' subscriptions underwrite the entire publication, the advertising argument doesn't really fly with this particular mag. And in any case, so many of Directions' current ads are for their own products - travel, insurance etc.
The lifestyle emphasis was a deliberate introduction over the last couple of years, because the AA apparently see themselves as now mainly in the business of flogging travel and travel products. Which they would be entitled to do, of course, if that were the business they were set up to do. But not by extracting the money from members who thought they were signing up to a road rescue service, and are instead now being levied hefty amounts to keep a lifestyle magazine in the style to which it thinks it should become accustomed. Cushy for some.
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What annoys me about the Listener's direction are the excess of "opinion" columnists. Ralston in particular is superfluous. If they want irritable-Auckland-greybeard they've already got Hamish Keith.
The Listener's Auckland focus overall is same ole same ole for any Auckland-based rag (that seems to be another "given", Steve - that Auckland's norms and preoccupations are New Zealand's). With the number of excellent free lance writers active all over the country, there's no need to fall into this trap.
The publication that really has the steam hissing out of my ears, though, is Directions magazine. What a waste of trees - hardly any features about cars, fuel economy, or road safety, or anything that people who buy/use cars want information on. Instead there's a bucketload of lightweight "lifestyle" crapola aimed at encouraging New Zealanders to use more fossil fuel.
And its publishers know it wouldn't stand on its feet as an independent newsstand magazine, so it's a compulsory part of your AA sub. Car owners deserve better. So does the environment.
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Four minute mile was broken by Roger Bannister, 6 May 1954.
A Pom. I remember it. -
Saw the OnDemand version - not. Midnight in a mine. It all looked like beef stew with a couple of slightly paler talking carrots. Missed your manly features, Russell!
The vox pop street bits with natural lighting were perfectly visible, so it must be the set. What colour is the set?
That stew had meaty content, however. A news in brief section would be a good addition.
Looking forward to your next.
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Too quick.
Casserole on a low heat.
Make the sods suffer. -
Bitter orange and sevile oranges have a powerful effect on the human body.
Along with grapefruit, they're forbidden fruit for people on certain kinds of heart and blood pressure medication. These fruits quadruple the effects of the medication in an unpredictable way. They can literally kill you.
Watch your marmalade intake.