We know that we’ve men­tioned their sales in the past, but we know that you like books, and dis­counts, and also free wine, and that is why we must let you know that once again, Vic Books is start­ing its sale of awe­some­ness.

It starts with drinks, nibbles & great books with ridicu­lously low prices from about 4pm, Thursday 1st May, in the Kel­burn shop. The sale runs in both shops until Thursday 22nd May, and they have two spe­cial “dis­count days”: 25% off all non-fic­tion not already dis­coun­ted on Thursday 8th May; 25% off all fic­tion not already dis­coun­ted on Thursday 15th May.

And remem­ber – if you’re too lazy to walk up the hill, you can take the Cable Car, or the num­bers 17, 20 and 23 buses to get there, or check out Vic Books down at the Rail­way Sta­tion if you’re not so keen on fic­tion.

This just in from Met­link – Dis­rup­tion to GO Wel­ling­ton bus ser­vices – Wed­nes­day 30 April 2008

On Wed­nes­day 30 April bus ser­vices on all GO Wel­ling­ton routes will be sus­pen­ded between the hours of 10am and 2pm.

“The sus­pen­sion of ser­vices is to allow a sched­uled uni­on meet­ing for our people rep­res­en­ted by the Wel­ling­ton Tram­ways Union,” says Zane Fulljames, Gen­er­al Man­ager South­ern Region. “The uni­on has one meet­ing each year to dis­cuss uni­on busi­ness with its members.”

“We apo­lo­gise unre­servedly for any incon­veni­ence this causes our cus­tom­er­s” says Mr Fulljames.

“With advance notice we trust our cus­tom­ers can plan their day’s activ­it­ies with min­im­um dis­rup­tion”

Ser­vices will be lim­ited between the hours of 9.00–10.00am and 2.00–3.00pm.

Between 10.00am and 2.00pm, there will be no GO Wel­ling­ton bus ser­vices.

A nor­mal full ser­vice on all GO Wel­ling­ton routes will oper­ate up until 9.00am and will resume from 3.00 pm.

Val­ley Fly­er, Runcimans, train and Cable Car ser­vices will not be interup­ted and will oper­ate as nor­mal.

A group of well-bred yet raff­ish gen­tle­flies embarked on a Chaps’ Night Out last night, in search of rare delights and exquis­ite debauch­ery. I won’t both­er you with all the sor­did details, but I think there are a few valu­able les­sons that are worth shar­ing.

• It’s dashed incon­veni­ent to find so many oth­er­wise fine estab­lish­ments closed on an Anzac week­end.
• When in search of enlight­en­ment and exot­ic delights from the mys­tic East, I would­n’t both­er with Raki.
• On a night when hordes of be-sneakered young ruf­fi­ans have been lured into the city by pop­u­lar music, one has yet anoth­er reas­on to steer well clear of the vul­gar hoi polloi of Cour­tenay Place in favour of more sed­ate water­ing holes.
• When Hawthorn Lounge gets busy, the qual­ity of their caipar­in­has can slip quite alarm­ingly, yet they can still deliv­er an impec­cable Crown Jew­el Mar­tini.

…

Recently the Wel­ling­tonista were sent an email from “Dave, Design­er fella in Wel­ling­ton” enquir­ing wheth­er we thought that Wel­ling­to­ni­an Cre­at­ive Web Design Folk might fancy the oppor­tun­ity to meet up monthly; to drink, dis­cuss related stuff and net­work.

Our response was:
“Web people get­ting togeth­er to drink (and talk geek), you have to ask?”

But we thought we’d ask you any­way. We do appre­ci­ate that there are many sorts of sub com­mit­tees that hap­pen organ­ic­ally, but they’re all sub styles. So how about it, Web Cre­at­ive folk? Leave your com­ments and thoughts here for Dave to col­lect. And please feel free to con­trib­ute ideas for ven­ues and spon­sor­ship while you’re at it.

Looks like our inver­teb­rate col­league has been doing what flies do best: spread­ing dirt. But the fine weath­er has made us cheer­ful, so we thought it was time to spread some sun­shine about some of the things we love.

The Chef’s Café, 251 Cuba St. Not exactly high-class decor, but at $12.90 all-inclus­ive for bet­ter-than-aver­age curry, rice & naan, we’re not com­plain­ing. Plus, it’s BYO.

Sprink­lers saved St Peter’s: might they save you next?

Stable, at 47 Wil­lis St, seems like the most inter­est­ing of the Chews Lane retail offer­ings. More than the usu­al Huffer/Diesel streetwear (though there’s that too): Marc by Marc Jac­obs, Kate Sylvester menswear and Cheap Monday.

Dymocks’ Tues­day Tempta­tion deals (20% off and changes each week).

Sweet Fanny Anne’s. The delight­ful Claire has a totally win­ning smile and atti­tude, and if you buy a cof­fee, you get to draw a card. If you get an ace, you get the cof­fee for free. If you draw the Joker, you get to tell a joke, and if you make Claire laugh, you also get free cof­fee!

A cer­tain bar own­er in Wel­ling­ton may have to rethink his staff work policy. Espe­cially con­sid­er­ing we as bar pat­rons prefer not to get viol­ently ill after being served by con­ta­gious bar tenders who were forced to work by you.

Sadly this whole thing might be going to court so we can­’t really say much more. I can­’t even really tell you what bar to avoid like the plague (so to speak). Let’s just say choose your cock­tail con­cocter care­fully.

Well, we expect a $6 lunch­time pizza in the usu­al stand­ard from where we usu­ally get it and for it to take a reas­on­able time.

And if it will take a bit longer or won’t be as good we expect to be told so. We would­n’t mind, hon­estly, we just have to plan our lunch hours.

And finally if we com­plain about the wait or the qual­ity we like to be treated a bit nicer.

So if you really wanted to know “what do you expect on a Tues­day?”, that would be it. Thanks for ask­ing.

Ahem, Media Per­son­al­ity, and Prom­in­ent Loc­al Cit­izen. We know that you are not each oth­er­’s spouses. Per­haps a ren­dez­vous in Auck­land might be more dis­creet? The Auck­land­ista has some reviews of an assort­ment of hotels that you might want to check out.

Don’t worry, I don’t mean like prop­er grown-up invest­ments, but instead I wanted to give you a list of things com­ing up in the social cal­en­dar that you might want to save that last $[insert amount here] bucks for. I’ve recently become only semi-hardly-employed (any­one need a freel­ance editor/writer’s ser­vices?) and am slowly relearn­ing the concept of select­ive social­ising, for which advance warn­ing is always good.
Read on for upcom­ing gigs, events and even some insider­’s rumours.…

The first per­son who can sup­ply us with pho­to­graph­ic evid­ence of any work­men in the city, oper­at­ing heavy or noisy machinery, AND WEARING EAR PROTECTORS!!

Will win a 1kg bag of Rahui Lodge Mac­ad­amia Nuts.

But I’m not sure you’ll find one.

On the off-chance any­one wants a bag of nuts… pho­tos of ear muff wear­ing Wel­ling­ton work­men can be emailed to andrew.llewellyn@gmail.com.