Posts by Tamsin6
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And we don't just remember the soldiers. My great-great aunt Marion Brown, of Southland, died when the Marquette was torpedoed.
http://muse.aucklandmuseum.com/databases/Cenotaph/1781.detailA little more detail here:
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nzlscant/marquette.htm -
Southerly: Gerry Brownlee: “I Like To…,
Oh, and good luck on meeting your housebuilding deadline David - I love that the council are adding extra challenges for you - and you upped the level of difficulty by multi-tasking with a dangerous implement! Do they give you extra points for artistic interpretation as well?
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Southerly: Gerry Brownlee: “I Like To…,
I was going to say 'How can there be no comments to this? how is that possible! It is magnificent!' but then David whipped in there and commented himself. Frankly, I'm a bit disappointed.
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Busytown: “Glory! Glory! There’s the salt!”, in reply to Jolisa,
Whereas the other night I lost it while reading Great Expectations (Pip leaves the village and never looks back, waaaaaaugh, and then keeps thinking he'll hop down from the coach at the next stop, or the next, or the next, but doesn't, WAAAAAAAUGH), and there was nowhere to hide!
So hard to avoid total meltdown while reading! I think mine are getting used to my crying jags while reading out loud. They look at me as if I am a strange and curious specimen, and then hand me a tissue.
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Busytown: “Glory! Glory! There’s the salt!”,
Lovely, lovely piece, thank you Jolisa. 'Every damn time', as you say. Glad it isn't only me blink, blink, blinking at that point in the story. A deep breath and a bit of a pretend cough...and back into it again.
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Muse: OPEN HOUSE: Margaret Mahy, The…, in reply to Danielle,
A few weeks ago, I read 'The man whose mother was a pirate' to my two girls - I kept finding myself moved nearly to tears, as Danielle describes above. I don't fancy my chances of reading it without a full-on weep now.
I remember her reading to us when I was at Intermediate - with the multicoloured wig of course. I have a distinct impression that it was full of birds too - but I can't now remember if there were actual birds, or if that was just something she told us, that was so vividly described that it seemed like it ought to be true.
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Hard News: Strange days for journalism,
I see there is more manoeuvring going on with this...
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120705-702626.html
'Gina Rinehart's Hancock Prospecting on Thursday sold 3.7% of Fairfax Media Ltd. (FXJ.AU) as part of the Australian mining billionaire's continuing drive to capture seats on the media company's board.
Far from seeking an exit from its holding, Hancock Prospecting said it sold the 86.5 million Fairfax shares to a major Australian fund manager to comply with a policy that prevents directors owning more than 15% without agreeing to certain restrictions on taking legal action.'
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Southerly: Liveblog: Moving House (Literally), in reply to David Haywood,
I took 20 cuttings of the apple tree -- all of which seem to have perished. But I do have seeds. Peasgood Nonesuch is a terrific apple (the name says it all really). Jennifer and I have lived with a Peasgood Nonesuch tree our whole marriage -- it would be hard to go without.
Grew up with a Peasgood Nonesuch tree in our garden in Ashburton - have never heard of anyone else having a tree - it used to grow the most enormous apples, but I vaguely remember that wasps liked them as much as we did. Sigh. Miss those apples. Wonder if it is still there?
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Southerly: Village People, in reply to James Green,
I don't entirely disagree with thinking about attachment to the land, but how do you explain the strongly held (at least in district plans) attachment to entirely detached dwellings, even at the point that this frequently means a pointless an unusable strip of land between houses that is home to a fence and not much more?
I currently live in a terraced house in London (built in the late 1890's) - it has made me even more inclined to never ever ever live in a house that is NOT detached. Even with retrospective sound-proofing (if you can afford it) party walls are a complete and utter nightmare. I have felt bad for my neighbours when my children were very small but very very loud in the early hours of the morning. I have felt true enmity to those same neighbours when they play very loud Polish rock/metal in the early hours. Don't get me started on our other nightmare neighbours and their incompetent builders putting a steel beam through my daughter's bedroom roof.
I also think that the modern tendency to build a house almost to the outer limits of the available land area is nuts. What happened to the idea of having outdoor space? Why build these enormous houses on relatively small sections?
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Southerly: Village People, in reply to Hebe,
Hah! That's why I'm resisting going to the village: I spent my first seven years in another dam town, Otematata.
Ahhh - all kinds of memories of Otematata (and Omarama) from sailing holidays at Benmore long, long ago. And Hakataramea and Kurow for that matter.
You're not the first to muse that Christchurch really needed the old Ministry of Works and its power to command resources. Many of the MoW's old roles have become specialised and may be more suited now to contracted-in machinery like the big blue thing that added the lanes to the Newmarket Viaduct. But imagine how Christchurch might have used the men and machines from our great public works projects.
My father started his traffic engineering career with the MoW in Otago and Southland - he always said it was the best and most thorough grounding anyone could have had. Mum dug out loads of photos from those early days - will have to get her to scan some so I can post them here.