Dick’s Toolbox cont. I normally don’t look after roses, relying on their sturdy ancestry to see them through the seasons. My theory has always been that if a rose has been around for a few centuries it must have a reasonably rugged disposition but, in truth, some have survived because they are so dammed beautiful…
..from a couple of old geezers venting about how things have deteriorated since ‘our day’. Vaguely apropos of that, I usually have no idea what I’m going to write about when approaching these P&W follies of mine and so I have adopted a standard preparatory procedure. First I have a quick squiz at Christchurch’s The…
.. on the highway at speeds so slow that they could be confused with reverse why break the habit of a lifetime? We were quite young and so the intrepid band of fisherfolk set off from the west bank of the lake and some considerable time later reached the east side trout free and sunburnt….
Mike’s Pith & Wind cont. .. moderately galling to find something one had thrown out as worthless selling for a handsome price at such a market. Or not. I don’t know – presuming I have the cash to squander I have the same dilemma at markets as I do at shopping malls, perhaps even worse…
.. follower I’ve also had to endure on occasions Listening to a raft of national anthems in a row, like at the Olympic Games for instance, is not that different to being an unwilling spectator at the Eurovision Song Contest. It’s not just Australia that needs to review its choice of song as a national…
Mike’s Pith & Wind cont. ..winner taking home both tubes in triumph. There are endless examples of feeble synchronicity that we all experience daily – we just have to keep our senses alert to the possiblities. I’m not sure what it proves, but cumulatively it can have a pretty disconcerting effect, which might have something…
.. communist plot. It was always so though never so pathetically blatant as now. In fact, if you took the events of the past month: the shooting down of the Air Malaysia aircraft, the events in Gaza, and the outbreak of the Ebola virus you might find good reason to be a tad depressed. But…
..condition, in this version at least, than just the specified young-man-driven-to-suicide-by-faithless-lover motif and of course the dancers themselves are simply spectacular, with Marie-Agnès Gillot imposingly impressive. I’ve watched it a few times now (I even showed it to Bill) and I’ve shed a few tears every time – it’s that sublime. An interesting sidelight; when…
Dick’s Toolbox cont. .. argument that global warming is not just happening, (surprise), but is happening at a rate far greater than expected. We have an expanding population, (yes Virginia, there are far too many people), opting for the cheapest (coal fired) solutions to energy generation. Couple with virtually no power conservation, garnish generously with…
..in our collective brain I had my subject. The first thing to do was listen to Ad Nauseam and see whether it had dated or indeed had retained any of the elements that made it funny – or shocking – in the first place. I’d heard the first in the series (Live) many decades ago…
Moody Bill, happy Ray, a happier Lee, Mike and son Chris. I don’t know why this was never used as a publicity shot Mike plays a very tricky chord on his L-series Strat – when the Strat and he were in original condition back to the top
S P E C T R U M S P E C T R U M S P E C T R U M M I K E R U D D B I L L P U T T . C O MM M I K E R U D D B I L…
S P E C T R U M S P E C T R U M S P E C T R U M M I K E R U D D B I L L P U T T . C O MM M I K E R U D D B I L…
..a polished head emerging in a straight line from the type of neck generally owned by South African rugby hookers or Gestapo torturers. Those tight rolls of flesh extrude out of a too-tight collar and there is too much gold jewellery that once characterized used car salesmen or proto-Mafiosi. His legs look like Christmas hams…
..Airport” as we started our descent in Whenupai, Auckland’s main airport until 1965. This inspired great confidence in the passengers, already frightened by the low altitude, turbulence, cloud and the single toilet. It was an age of muted optimism. Our father was a stock and station agent and would drive up from Eketahuna, redolent of…
..on the street. Nevertheless, the lunch and the chat were great fun; the world’s problems with Intellectual Property and Copyright were discussed at length and the house pinot proved quite acceptable to boot, so I charged off back to the Casino car park full of bonhomie and anticipation. Perhaps I was cutting it a bit…
..of two young ladies ( I am using the term ‘young’ loosely in the same way as you might describe the morals and ethics of the NSW Labor party) who rowed backwards below us for about an hour. The convention of rowing is that you face the blunt end (the stern) so that you can…
..driving-in-the-city impatience and exasperation. It’s a neat trick I jotted down the music that had become my soundtrack and I’ve just checked the dertails on the ABC Classic radio website. It was a guitar piece called Chamber Concerto by Shaun Rigney, whom I’ve not heard of before, played by one Antony Fielding*, whom I’ve not…
..classed as actually employed. How one survives seven days on $13.50 is not explained. There are also many people who want to work – take many of those over 45 for example, who have given up seeking any job through not being able to take the endless frustration of hidden ageism denying them even an…