In 1957 I joined the Riversdale Surf Lifesaving Club. Your image of a lifeguard is someone who is tall, muscular, bronzed and handsome. I was, of course, none of these though after a few weekends in the sun, I did go a sort of a reddy brown. Back then I was incredibly thin. In the 1959 National Surf Lifesaving Championships held at Oakura Beach, just out of New Plymouth, I was judged the skinniest lifesaver in the thousand man march past at the conclusion of the competition. I was so thin I could have put on a red...
Wednesday, 30 January 2013
Wednesday, 23 January 2013
The risks of being a gambling man
By
Unknown
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
My father’s given names were Clifford Keir, though everyone called him Jim. Everyone that is except my mother, who called him ‘Tui.’ No-one ever called him Clifford or Keir, but the staff at the shop always referred to him as “C.K.” To add further confusion my sister and I called him Dad. One day “CK-Jim-Tui-Dad” told me that his father, William Hugh Long, but always known as ‘Tui’- had made a lot of money betting that you couldn’t hit a four gallon kerosene tin, thrown in the air from a distance of ten yards, with a shotgun....
Wednesday, 16 January 2013
Sanitising sex on the shop floor
By
Unknown
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Some years ago, I think it was in the mid 1970’s, I was appointed to a quango with the unlikely nomenclature of The Sawdust Working Party Committee. This unit was set up by the government who had decided in their wisdom that it needed to ban sawdust from butcher’s shop floors.
The entrenched little men from the Health Department had carefully scrutinised the sawdust and had decreed that it was chock full of organisms and that these little beasties were scampering up the legs of our benches, landing on the cutting area...
Wednesday, 9 January 2013
Keeping resolute for the New Year
By
Unknown
Wednesday, January 09, 2013
True stories they say are stranger than fiction and the New Year always reminds of the time, some years back, when I made a resolution that was going to be damnably hard to keep. The family were sitting around home on New Year’s Eve when we decided to make our resolutions and knowing that I was perfect in every way - oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble - I was having difficulty in deciding what on earth I could do to improve my persona.
I reluctantly conceded that I did have a flaw in my make-up; I’m terrified of heights....
