Author: llew

Wastebustas

Spot­ted near the Mt Vic look­out.

I dun­no about the Greater Welling­ton guys, but I reck­on the Welling­ton­ista could have put all this infor­ma­tion on one sign — the only dif­fer­nce between the two is the name of the poi­son, and the colour of the pel­let.  

Dancing with the ‘Stas

It’s a few min­utes to 6pm on a Thurs­day night, a mot­ley group are mak­ing their way along the Ter­race to the St Andrew’s Church Hall. Inside, there are already a dozen or so peo­ple in casu­al attire. These are the “Advanced Class” who came at 5pm. Many of them stay on after their class to help and coach the “Begin­ners” who are arriv­ing for their ses­sion with teacher Michael Har­ris. The begin­ners don’t come too ear­ly, because watch­ing the advanced prac­tise is very dis­cour­ag­ing.

This is Thurs­day night danc­ing.

Every 8 weeks a new begin­ners class com­mences. Last night was the sec­ond ses­sion of the lat­est term, and already we’re old hands at the Clap Dance and fox­trot. We’re new hands at Rock ‘n Roll. Next week, God knows what fresh humi­la­tions await.

Old hands have expressed delight that this ter­m’s intake is almost equal num­bers of men & women. This means the more advanced women don’t have to dance as men so much. Men nev­er have to dance as women.

The class begins with a sim­ple warmup in the form of the “Clap Dance”. This is because after every few steps, a lusty clap is required, before tip­py-tap­ping back in towards your part­ner to bump hips. On the off chance you man­age to con­nect with­out dis­lo­cat­ing your part­ner’s hips, you get an encour­ag­ing com­ment from Michael. Me? After learn­ing the next stage of the tip­py-tap­ping, which involves a spin and a clap, I found myself about 10 metres away from my part­ner & hav­ing to sprint back in from across the room to attempt my “bump”.

Some Thoughts on the Botanic Gardens

Ahem … climbs up onto soap­box. I have some­thing to say about the Botan­ic Gar­dens, the Coun­cil & Gar­den staff & some of the peo­ple who go there.

1. To the Wgtn City Coun­cil & Gar­den staff:

• Many thanks for the dog­gy-doo bag dis­pensers at the main gates, cable car & Rose Gar­den – I’m not sure if all dog own­ers have noticed them yet (more on that lat­er), but even those of us usu­al­ly pack­ing more plas­tic than the dash­board of an 80s Japan­ese import get caught out now & then. If I’m allowed a wish list, then anoth­er one at the Glen Rd entrance and (dare I say it) Mag­pie Lawn would be grand!
   
• The ‘Get off your bikes & walk’ signs are real­ly piss­ing some cyclists off, if the fre­quent­ly ripped up signs are any­thing to go by. I think that ‘Please bike con­sid­er­ate­ly – go slow’ signs would be a good com­pro­mise, par­tic­u­lar­ly on those roads that are already used by cars. Every­where else, they should walk. Most cyclists are con­sid­er­ate any­way (not all – and more on that lat­er too).
   
• The play­ground used to arguably have the great­est drink­ing foun­tain in the South­ern Hemi­sphere. What hap­pened to it? The one there now is ade­quate, the oth­er was attrac­tive & func­tion­al. Could we get one at the top of the Cable Car too? And (dare I say it again) Mag­pie Lawn?

More after the jump

The Waiting For God Commission

Let’s have a lit­tle com­pe­ti­tion — the NZ Retire­ment Com­mis­sion­er, Diana Crossan, says she’s want­ed a change of name for the Com­mis­sion for sev­er­al years, but no-one has coined a suit­able name.

Wait­ing for God, and The Gold­en Years were sug­gest­ed at Select Com­mit­tee, but reject­ed (Un. Be. Liev­able.)

We’ll think of a prize as we go along, maybe a bag of Kapi­ti Macadamia nuts, I’m sure we can lay our hands on one of those.

So have at it in the com­ments, we’re look­ing for the best sug­gest­ed new name for the Do Not Go Gen­tly Into That Good Night Com­mis­sion, the win­ning label will be for­ward­ed to Ms Crossan.

Judges deci­sions are final & not to be ques­tioned.

Love was in the air — conversation overheard

On my way home the oth­er night, I hap­pened to walk past a young woman & man sit­ting on a grass verge at the Botan­ic Gar­dens. The woman was, I think, recount­ing a friend’s Valen­tine’s Day expe­ri­ence. Here’s what I made out:

… halfway through din­ner, the guy asks, “What’s your pol­i­cy on sex on the first date?”

And she says, “Nev­er”.

And so then the guy says, (and she gave a hearty & throaty laugh at this point) “In that case, I refuse to pay for din­ner…”

She was still laugh­ing and grasp­ing for the next words when I passed out of earshot. But I was impressed already, and my inter­est was piqued — like where were they? Had the guy picked a love­ly eat­ing house of a qual­i­ty he thought guar­an­teed some ener­getic post-pran­di­al exer­tion? Or what? And is there a place in town so fan­tas­tic, your date’s knick­ers dis­solve some­where between the entree & dessert? If there is, I would have expect­ed the Masked Barfly to have report­ed back already.

Or should the guy maybe invest his pre­cious funds more prag­mat­i­cal­ly in future, in some­one more like­ly to deliv­er? Like a hook­er.

Midland Park, Right Now.

Any­one know what’s going on at the moment? There seems to be (for­give me my scorn) bad 80s cov­ers (Rhythm of the Night as I type this) being blast­ed accross the road so loud we can hard­ly hear our­selves think. Owooo Owooo.

If we need­ed this, we’d have Mam­ma Mia (the sing along ver­sion natch) blast­ing from the Welling­ton­ista Home The­atre. Owoo owoo

But we don’t. Because we don’t. Owoo.

Water Metering & User Pays

Two of Welling­ton’s lead­ers are back­ing debate on a user-pays water sys­tem to reduce Welling­to­ni­ans’ reck­less con­sump­tion — now more than twice the nation­al aver­age.

Appar­ent­ly we’re using about 400 litres of water per day, per per­son.

The bulk of it gets flushed away.

And one answer, to dri­ve the cor­rect behav­iour of course, rather than make you behave as “they” want you to, is to install water meters on homes & charge for the usage. Just like Auck­land.

Kind of makes that 6 litre per minute show­er head that Nan­ny was going to make us get, attrac­tive.

There are plus­es & minus­es to this plan & we’d love to hear what you think in the com­ments

Full sto­ry here.

Bikes, Boobs, and Ballots

Just a cou­ple of last minute reminders.

First, some­where in town there’s rumoured to be a bunch of boobs on bikes head­ing toward Par­lia­ment. Expect gra­tu­itous nudi­ty, ogling & who knows what once they get to the Bee­hive.

Sec­ond­ly, please do remem­ber to haul your­self out of the house tomor­row & vote. It’s your civic duty. And I want some seri­ous enter­tain­ment to watch tomor­row night.

Also, if any­one’s still sit­ting on a nucu­lar strike for one par­ty, can­di­date or anoth­er, now is the time to reveal it with a flour­ish & an evil “Moua­ha­ha!”

Spring Festival at the Botanic Gardens

Tulips, tours, art, “Crafty Fifi”, the leg­endary Fairy Tri­na and more at this year’s Spring Fes­ti­val in the Botan­ic Gar­dens. Run­ning from 28 Sep­tem­ber until 12 Octo­ber. I can con­firm that the recent (and typ­i­cal for this time of year) gales have not denud­ed the tulip gar­dens & so weath­er per­mit­ting, Tulip Sun­day on the first day of the Fes­ti­val, should be a beau­ti­ful way to spend an hour or two com­muning with nature. Accord­ing to the offi­cial pro­gramme:

Spring Fes­ti­val is the time to rev­el in the glo­ri­ous riot of spring flower colour and fra­grance at the Welling­ton Botan­ic Gar­den.

Spring Fes­ti­val is proud­ly brought to you by Welling­ton City Coun­cil, with gen­er­ous sup­port from the New Zealand Com­mu­ni­ty Trust and the Welling­ton Cable Car.

Steakout

Look­ing for a good steak in Welling­ton? A week or so ago this Welling­ton­ista was & after con­sult­ing my col­leagues, I can report back on two of the finest steaks I have tast­ed in this city (yes, two).

First up, it was one of those notable occa­sions (although not a sig­nif­i­cant one) that prompts thoughts of a nice lunch and/or din­ner.

First off lunch:

I had expressed to my loved ones, a par­tic­u­lar desire to sam­ple either a great steak, or a great cas­soulet.

So imag­ine my delight on arriv­ing at Copi­ta to find they had “Fil­let steak on a bed of Cas­soulet”! It was meant to be obvi­ous­ly.

It was love­ly, as was the squid entree.

Copi­ta itself was quite under­pa­tro­n­ised that day, but there was some sport to be had lis­ten­ing to a very loud par­ty con­sist­ing of two old­er gen­tle­men lunch­ing with two much younger women. Because they were so loud we soon ascer­tained the gen­tle­men were wine­mak­ers from the Hawkes Bay. It was­n’t obvi­ous who the women were, but we decid­ed that if the women paid, they were prob­a­bly wine dis­tri­b­u­tion reps, and if the men paid, hook­ers. As it hap­pens, we left before them so we’ll nev­er know!

And onto din­ner:

We decid­ed to take the tip from the team & try the Steak Frites at Le Met­ro­pol­i­tain in Cuba St. This was served with a red wine & bone mar­row sauce & we accom­pa­nied it with a green sal­ad & copi­ous glass­es of a French wine whose name I can’t recall.

And once again, I can rec­om­mend a win­ner!

Le Met­ro­pol­i­tain on this evening was well patro­n­ised but not packed, in addi­tion, it’s a love­ly lit­tle spot to watch passers by from. The staff were atten­tive & infor­ma­tive, the menu offered plen­ty of vari­ety & the evening was a rous­ing suc­cess.

I’m hap­py to take any oth­er decent steak rec­om­men­da­tions for next year, in the com­ments.