Saturday 31 May 2008

Otago Farmer's Market

Foggy start in Dunedin today. So foggy we left the bikes at home and took the bus into town. Fruit and vegetables are the heaviest parts of our weekly shopping so I am happy to get the bus in and the bus back. I keep an eye out at the market for familiar faces. The instinctive need of the immigrant to be recognised and feel at home. I saw Diane as she was leaving. Usually we have a brief conversation but not today. Then, as I was attending our shopping trolley near the Pacific Rose apple stall, Jackie said 'hello'.

After market we went to Potpourri Café and had coffee and treats. My dormant nostrils erupted when they met the warmth of the café and I thanked the god of paper tissues that made me line my pockets with them before we left home.

A short stop at the Supermarket saw us on our way to the pharmacy for Disprin for me and muscle relaxants for P who has had a shocking three weeks worth of pain. Outside we discovered her keys were missing. She went on to Albany Street and I went back to the market to look for them. They weren't in the Lost Property at the market caravan. Nor were they at any of the stalls. Each of the stallholders advised me to visit the Market caravan. I could see what a circular thing this was becoming so I checked the Railway Station with no luck there either. I also went to the cop shop and the policewoman gave me a great bucket of keys to look through. I had an inward eye flash of a child being quieted by rummaging in the toy bin they have in horrible places like WINZ to project a warm caring image. I didn't find the keys there either.

I started for home - in a bit of a panic as my keys (whoops!) were still in my pocket and jeekersflipmeohmygosh how was P supposed to get in out of the cold. I'd already advised her to get the bus back home and let me worry about her missing keys. I hooked it down to Butts and stuck my thumb out and got a lift straight away. My accent still poses a little difficulty for Kiwis at times but once the driver worked out where I was going he lightened up and gave me his ancestry - Maori-Irish-Scottish. A good blend we both thought.

When I wheezed up our steep drive I found the door already open. Polly had already located her keys in the trolley in a place that would seem improbable to the rational mind. I really find the location impossible to describe without a diagram so I'm not going to do it.

Thursday 29 May 2008

Post hoc, ergo ...

Yesterday I noted I went out with wet hair and forecast dire consequences: cough, runny nose und so weider. Today I have a stuffy nose and slow release moist product. (Enough, enough we get the picture - Ed)

Anyway I wanted to say ' I told you so.' But my hand is stayed. Wet hair then sinusoidal problems the day after? Nah. This I believe is a logical fallacy.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. After this therefore because of this.

It takes ages for a good cold to develop. I lost heat through my head, that much is not in dispute. Or is it? I wonder.

Not to worry, a trip to the Pixie Dust shop will I am sure yield some useful remedies for a cold - garlic capsules; extra vitamins and an empty wallet. The last part wouldn't be hard at the minute.

Far better to buy a supply of Mars Bars; Smarties; Cadbury's Dairy Milk blocks (often on offer from The Warehouse, The Warehouse, where everyone gets a bargain), retire to the scratcher and emerge some days later completely free of cold or flu symptoms and in full possession of a horrid sugar hangover.

Best wishes

Wet hair day

Shopping day today. I went out with my hair wet so I'll probably get something horrible and noserunny and coughing-ly yeugh.

When TV first started in Northern Ireland it was infested with helpful Public Information films - I reckon it was because they didn't have enough adverts in the early days.

This is one set in a train and has the rhythm of train wheels when spoken:

Coughs and sneezes spread diseases
Coughs and sneezes spread diseases
Coughs and sneezes spread diseases

Trap your germs in your handkerchief
Trap your germs in your handkerchief
Trap your germs in your handkerchief


Wednesday 28 May 2008

Waiting for the plumber

Where are you G——? I sincerely hope you're not at home reading blog posts. By the time you read this one we will be dead. We will have died from hypothermia and the cats, as you will see when you get here, if you get here, will have nibbled and gnawed our bodies - a sight I hope will make you retch, you wretch.

Please come soon and connect our flue so we can light the fire. Please.

Yours faithfully,

Frozen of Dunedin

Monday 26 May 2008

Early readings

In our house, 60s, we (me, Nelly and Minnie) read
  • The Newsletter
  • The Weekly News (aka Thomson's Weekly)
  • The Daily Express
  • Tit-Bits
  • Reveille
  • People's Friend
  • Woman's Own ( I only read the weekly adventures of Just William. No, honestly.)
  • Sunday People
  • News of the World
  • Sunday Post
  • The Dandy
  • The Beano
  • The Beezer
  • The Topper
  • The Hotspur
Last night I watched, alone, Polly not being well at present, The Iceman Cometh. Sounds good and literary eh? Oooo he's been watching Eugene O'Neill. Er ... no. This little gem comes from Hong Kong and its original release title is Ji dong ji xia (1989)

I realised after five minutes that I had already seen it - I didn't recognise the cover. Our Video Ezy store has reorganised its categories and Martial Arts has disappeared. You can still find Bruce and Jackie and Jet and Donnie in the store. But they might be in the Thriller or the Action or Foreign and Festival (a bizarre shelving of some of the finest films I have ever seen) sections. The Iceman stars Yuen Biao and Maggie Cheung. The martial arts are achieved with wire work which is disappointing. I didn't remember the plot - hi, no sniggering, there is a plot, there is a story - and the DVD froze in the final scenes so I forget how it ended. Never mind. I will lose no sleep.

Daily basis

I'm really trying for a daily basis.
Things I got in the post today:
two Live CDs from Canonical
1 x Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition
1 x Kubuntu 8.04

I fired up the Ubuntu Live CD when I got back from town. I see there is now an option to install and run from within a Microsoft Windows environment. Well that took me back a bit, for the very first Linux disk I ever got was called WinLinux 2000 and it ran from inside your Windows Partition. Later on when I became more familiar with Linux distributions and installed them on their own partitions I found out that the WinLinux 2000 method of running from within Windows was called UMSDOS

Oh, I likes a bit of nostalgia.

Currently on its own partition I have PCLinuxOS MiniMe 2008: a cut down version of the 2007 release. It has been a challenge installing all the bits and pieces to get it working just the way I like it. I know when Texstar and the Ripper Gang release the next big live cd of PCLinuxOS I'll be there with my ext formatted partition at the ready.

Must away and watch a DVD. No, I don't know which one yet. I'll tell you tomorrow.

Sunday 25 May 2008

Return

I am back after a long break. I am back because a fellow writer in Dunedin said she had begun blogging. I thought blogging would be easy. I'm always on my IBM compatible. It's not as if I have to go to somebody's house and beg a computing time slot.

My fellow writer's name is Vanda Symon, an extraordinarily busy person.

Yesterday after Farmers' Market, Polly and I went to the closing hour of the annual Dunedin 24 hour book sale. We bought some books. There was music from a group of people. If they were introduced I missed their name. My foot tapped.

This is an interesting link for New Zealand bloggers: