Letters from Wetville

Or shift the soap box for the milk box? First day of the new school term. Fionn went, late, in swim shoes and quadbiking gloves. Begrudgingly, he also wore a few items I insisted upon, like shorts and top and jersey. I have no motivation for doing the proper houserunning things I ought to be doing and I'm not quite ready to go on a massive shoe hunt on Fionn's behalf just yet. So I'm mucking around online and I find some discussion on getting the supermarket out of people's every day and every week lives. Maybe I should do that. Bit of focus. I've played round with it before. Currently, I source eggs, fish, meat and most vegetables and fruit elsewhere. I source some of my flour and often my tahini elsewhere. So what next? I could make my own yoghurt, not from a sachet but the real thing. I've tried and given up before and I've ditched my kefir, but this isn't impossible. Knowing my history, I'll stick to easiyo sachets for the time being and focus on...

Anzac Day - May Day - placenta day - Autumn equinox. Yesterday I went to the Dawn Service, my first time. I stood with Mary, my (Dad's) cousin and wife of a prisoner of war from World War Two. A woman who has supported her husband through nightmares of his time in the war. A woman who has had to understand that support is often understanding that some things are beyond understanding. We watched the march and I felt very proud of the many young people marching, standing to attention in the cold. There was talk of fighting for freedom. I thought of the many fights for freedom, including those of the conscientious objectors. They also fought for freedom. There is a good blogpost on some of the battles they fought here . Afterwards, back at the RSA, I said hello to people of all ages, saw the meaning Anzac Day has for current soldiers, for relatives of servicemen and women, for many other people in our community. I stood in the wrong queue for a cup of tea for ages until I real...

I took Dad's cousin and my children to Hanmer for a few days this week. We stayed with my parents and I even made a reasonable fist of being a good daughter. Hanmer Springs is a strange place to me. It is a holiday town with high housing costs and seems largely insulated from the wider world. If you are poor or unemployed, it is extremely unlikely that you will live in Hanmer. Trying to talk about recession issues was, um, frustrating. Of course, Mum and Dad have a television, which we don't. So I had the cultural highlight of watching the finale of Dancing with the Stars. I didn't explain what the charity Rainbow Youth was about until the next day. I also learnt that I am related to Rodney Hide's cousin. These right wingers don't all come from private schools. Rodney, it turns out, is a Rangiora High School boy. Just like Roger Kerr (Business Round Table) came from the same small town high school as me - Waimea College. So while we were away, the governm...

I've been thinking about the graphs in a recent Against the Current post for a few days. I think the post (and the article which the graphs come from) are well worth reading, but the biggest message is that comparisons of 1929-30 and 2008-9 show that global trade and stock market value have both dropped faster since April 2008 than in the comparative period (immediately after the peak in the stock market and in trade) in 1929. Which seems a pretty powerful piece of information to me. This afternoon, over biscuits and tea, after much admiration of Brighid's biscuit dunking skills and of the clothes I dropped round for the great grandchildren, my cousin Mary (aged 82) and I were discussing this graph. We talked about the 1930s depression which she remembers but which her late husband Lou, eight years older than her, remembered even more vividly. Mary said she never went hungry and her Dad was in work throughout the lean times, so they were very lucky. Lou's family had no...

It hasn't rained the absolute entire weekend. Not completely. I started this morning (after a rather stodgy pancake making attempt) by donning gumboots and digging up some pretty autumn flowering bulbs from the creek at one end of our street. I've been asking and researching to find their name, but to no avail so far. Yes I do realise that posting a photo might help. Taking a photo would be some kind of start as well... No children found me, so I stayed outside a while longer and sowed rocket, pak choy and phacelia seeds. Later on I inspected Favourite Handyman's excellent work making a new plastic cover for part of the chook run. This time we have gone for the much higher quality and more expensive agphane plastic. FH ran a rope down each side and then used his heat gun to seal a flap over it. It certainly looked a wonderful scheme to me. I didn't know he had these skills precisely when I fell in love with him. But I did have a whiff when I saw that he could, ...

Well that will be the end of any vegans reading for the night. But seriously, there is the smell of dead animal in our back garden. It is stronger in some places than others. I removed cat poo (our neighbours have many cats; at least the dogs can't get in) from one garden and I checked the chook run. The chook run area is a bit pongy as well but I think that is a separate problem, which will be when Favourite Handyman has a few hours to fix the huge rents in the chook run plastic cover. Last time we had a pong like this, I eventually found a dead and decomposing hedgehog. I said many prayers of thanks that I found it first, not the (then) one year old. I think the strongest smell is from under the house. Which does suggest that Favourite Handyman's job list is lengthening by the second. Being of a fairly staunch disposition smell-wise, I managed to garden near the whiff without too much trouble this afternoon. I worked on the last section of the back of the house garden s...

The Warehouse is a bad place. I think I've mentioned that before. What I am less likely to have mentioned is that in spite of being aware of the problems, the pitfalls, the dodgy ethics and general badness of it all, I myself am bad in the Warehouse. Which could explain why one Sunday with two (too) many children around me and a pile of supposedly useful things in my arms, I spotted long sleeved v neck t-shirts for just $12 each and bought a purple one and a black one without even trying them on. The shape of the v was nice, not too high and not indecently deep. If you wonder why I didn't bother trying them on, then obviously you have never taken small children shopping with you. To the Warehouse. On Sunday. Or any day. Now, the neck was indeed just right. But as we do not live in a society where fertility goddesses are the desired phsyique and all women aim for a big rounded tummy like mine, and indeed such a tummy displayed prominently is seen as at least bad taste, if not ac...