Busy weekend - soccer club breakup and community 'placemaking' under threat in Porirua
As I’ve been fixing my breakfast I’ve been listening to the children next door practice their Kapa Haka skills. The 10-year old showed me her poi skills when I was out there earlier. Now her brother has joined in and they are practicing their waiata and a haka. It’s great to hear.
The family is all excited today. The father-in-law is getting his gong from the Governor General this afternoon.
He (Anthony Dreaver) was made a Member of the New Zealand order of Merit in the New Years honours list for his work in local history, especially around Kāpiti. This involves endless committee meetings, but he has written several books and lots of journal articles.
Everyone is very proud of him and happy he has this recognition.
Company on a wet day
🐕You’re never alone when you’ve got a dog ready to snuggle in.
Is it too soon to say we probably won’t have a spring drought? Rain, rain and more rain.
Great news from our children travelling in Europe. Our daughter-in-law (the journalist) has just picked up a 3-month contract at CNN, based in London. We don’t know many of the details apart from it being in their digital team, and she might get to do some presenting, which she is good at.
Hopefully, by December they will have realised how good she is and offered her a permanent role.
Happy birthday to our youngest child. He and his wife are currently on a bus tour through part of Europe with a bunch of Aussies. They seem to be having a great fime, and I think he got more than one birthday party.
Currently in Venice.
Crash, bang, flash. The thunder and lightning has arrived.
A new pain?
Want to read: The Magician by Colm Toibin 📚
My mother-in-law lent this to me a few weeks ago, and it has joined a small pile of ‘one day I’ll get to this’ books.
My father’s bible given to him by the Kelso Presbyterian Church after he enlisted in the Army in World War 2, and went into basic training.
The referenced verse, 11 Timothy 2:3, says “Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Christ.”
We have another, more battered brown copy, which I think Dad carried with him and got more use.
Regarding the news from Auckland today about the City Council considering when stores can sell alcohol.
I reckon anyone who wants to buy alcohol at 11pm has probably been on the sauce for a while and doesn’t need any more!
A new notebook
I’ve just created a new section in my bullet journal for September. It’s the last one I have any room for in the notebook. Given my prognosis at the end of last year, I didn’t think I would be doing this. But, things have changed, and I have even had the confidence to buy a new notebook for October and onwards.
It’s not exactly one of my highest priorities regarding my health, but I will be interested to see how much of the new notebook I get time to use!
Community newsletter for Pukerua Bay
If you’re interested in what we’re doing in our little community, check out our two-monthly community newsletter (edited by my clever wife).
The latest issue of Kōrero (kōrero is Māori for news or talking) is online.
Here you can find information about the PKB Hub’s Pop-up Parlor, the Climate Action spring series, and a link to Maringikura Mary Campbell’s Facebook page with her artwork.
Also, lots of informative articles. We hope you enjoy it.
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I’ve been experimenting with the
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Your immune system is not a muscle
A fascinating description of the incredible complexity of our immune system. Not too technical for a non-clinical person to understand.
The weather’s really crapped out in the past half hour. Wind’s up, rain’s back. We’ll have to console ourselves with the memory of yesterday’s perfect weather.
Visit to Wellington Botanical Gardens
It was such a beautiful day, that my wife, mother-in-law and I decided to go to the Wellington Botanical Gardens. It was the first time I had been there in at least a couple of years. Hardly any wind, full sun, and no crowds. A great day!
Birds in the garden
It’s nice going out into the garden in the morning to fetch the paper and hear the tūī going for it in the trees. We have a growing number of them in Pukerua Bay.
Dedicated amateur pest controllers – i.e. residents with rat traps in their gardens – have made the village much safer for the birds. We also have lots of kererū (wood pigeons) that have come over from the wildlife reserve on Kāpiti Island. There are so many, they even have their own ‘Slow down’ road safety signs!
Burning Spear - Marcus Garvey
🎵This was the first Burning Spear album I bought. It’s also very devout and hard-core Rastafarian. Also very political, given it’s a homage to Marcus Garvey, who was a Jamaican political leader dedicated to the ‘Back to Africa’ movement. An anti-colonialist, he was also fairly controversial in the company he kept (the KKK) and being an anti-socialist, despite being a trade unionist.
However, the Rastafarians liked the back to Africa aspects of his politics and regarded him as a prophet who predicted the crowning of Haile Selassie (aka The Lion Of Juda) in Ethiopia.
