Posted by: rivettingkatetaylor | September 13, 2011

Thumbs up Linda Burke

A South African couple promised “splendid” views of the bustling Eastbourne
pier from the Majestic Hotel couldn’t understand why it wasn’t on their GPS –
until they realised they were about 19,000 kilometres off track.

I loved this story on stuff.co.nz this morning.

The man booked into the right hotel, just in the wrong country!

They were looking for the Majestic Hotel in Eastbourne, England, for last Friday and Saturday
night, but were looking for it in Eastbourne, Wellington!

Why do you suppose there was no Royal Parade registering on their GPS system? When they pulled in to Eastbourne pharmacy on Rimu St to ask for directions, employee Linda Burke had some bad news.

And this is where Stuff found the story that makes you smile. Linda apparently offered to put them up in her home for the night and took them to the local RSA for beers and dinner, where they watched the New Zealand v Tonga match and basically had the mickey taken out of them (in the nicest possible way lol).

According to the stuff.co.nz story, Ms Burke has shrugged off her generosity, saying that’s what kiwis do.

Having done a bit of travelling, like Ms Burke, I also believe a little generosity like that certainly goes a long way.

Well done Linda. Thumbs up.

 

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Posted by: rivettingkatetaylor | September 12, 2011

Tragedy. 9/11 and closer to home

Last night was spent in dreams about the twin towers coming down. Monday is our library day and I had visions of us cowering behind rows and rows of books while the towers came crashing down around our building (we go to the library in Waipawa, which, of course, doesn’t have any multi-story buildings, let alone hundreds of floors).

I did “enjoy” (not the right word, maybe appreciate) last night’s Sunday documentary about the day the planes flew into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and the ground (as opposed to Capitol Hill or The White House).

It does not seem like 10 years since the day my husband woke me up at some ungodly hour of the morning to say “something big is happening somewhere, Paul Holmes is already on the radio and it’s only 5am”. Something big indeed. We proceeded to watch Sky News/Fox/CNN coverage all day – the fire billowing from the two stricken towers and the volanco-like billowing of the dust and debris as the towers came down.

Phenomenal.

I remember shooting out to do an interview with someone at an office building. But there was no-one at reception. They were all crowded around the TV in the staffroom.

But today, not taking anything away from the 2000+ who lost their lives that day, I wish to spend a moment thinking about the poor dad who ran over his two-year-old with a tractor at the weekend.

According to Stuff, the accident happened on a farm near Rerewhakaaitu, about 40km south-east of Rotorua, at 11.30am yesterday.

Senior Sergeant Dennis Murphy said the tractor driver was loading silage with his son sitting to his left. “The boy fell from the tractor on to the ground and was run over. CPR was undertaken by members of the public but was unsuccessful.”

That poor boy. That poor dad.

No lessons to be learnt right now.  That poor boy. That poor dad.

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Posted by: rivettingkatetaylor | September 5, 2011

Wool in the headlines (in a good way)

Wow! Something good aBout wool was the first thing I saw on the headlines this morning. How long has it been? 🙂

Stuff.co.nz says Strong dairy prices and rocketing wool prices helped lift the terms of trade to a 37-year high in the June quarter.

It says “The key gains in export prices were dairy, up 4.5 per cent, oil export prices, up almost 13 per cent, meat, almost 3 per cent, and wool, up more than 12 per cent. Wool prices have risen more than 58 per cent in the past year to their best levels since 1989. The annual rise in wool prices was the biggest since the mid-1970s.”

Fantastic!

 

 

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Posted in Family

Posted by: rivettingkatetaylor | August 26, 2011

taking a stand

Today,  a line has been drawn.

A line between myself and the media (media and me, media and I….)

Reporters have been clambering to speak with the man in Australia who lost his family in a house fire (11 died, including his wife and four children, and the rest were related).

I’m not going to tell you his name, because that would mean going to the news websites to get it and I won’t.

TVNZ lost me for the whole bulletin tonight because they led with him talking to a press conference (I use the term “talking” lightly as you can imagine how racked with grief he was).

It takes me back to when a reporter asked a man from Aramoana, who survived David Gray’s gun but lost several members of his family in 1990, how he felt. His reply? How the *&%^%$ do you think I feel?” That has been in my book of reporter-don’ts for years.

Not sure if I have told you this story on rivettingkatetaylor before but a local policeman died in an accident when I was 21 (he was early 20s too) and I was told to contact the grandparents who had raised him for comment. This type of reporting has always bugged me. So I phoned one of the senior detectives and explained my plight. UNtil then, the police hadn’t commented. But he had no hesitation in giving me two 15-second quotes to keep the hounds off my back and to keep us out of the grandparents home.

The Australian fire deaths story was up on the home page of one news website this afternoon and the headline I saw before I clicked away was something about him being supported by his family as he dealt with the press.

Why the hell should he have to?

I’ll answer that, shall I?

He bloody shouldn’t.

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Posted by: rivettingkatetaylor | August 21, 2011

No longer snowing

Hi. Long time no comments from me 🙂

It snowed last week. Tad slow on the uptake on rivettingkatetaylor but I was putting together 4.5 pages for the DomPost 🙂

Enough smiles – it’s Sunday afternoon and I want to go and enjoy the sunshine that has finally taken away the chill of this morning’s frost.

Here are some photos of our place after last week’s snow. It stopped the bus for two days (well, they sent it the first day and none of us would put our kids on it – opting instead for safer four-wheel-drives under our own hand!). The kids were thrilled and so were our ewes, who hadn’t started lambing then.

We had the kids out of bed to witness the snow

This is Lachlan, age 9

Sarah, 11, not as warm-blooded as her little brother!

The big outside light helped to show the blizzard conditions that came with the snow on the Sunday night. Brrrrrrr.

and the next morning called for snow fights all round

which Lachlan loved!

The southerly side of the house was snowblasted

while the north lapped up the sun when it finally came!

andf finally, looking sou-east, while some of the snow still lies a week later

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Posted by: rivettingkatetaylor | August 21, 2011

Nothing Trivial

Having taken a few series to catch up with the Outrageous Fortune craze, this time the TV was switched onto One on Wednesday night to watch the inaugural episode of Nothing Trivial. It was great! The second and third episodes haven’t disappointed – long may it continue! We had been watching repeats on Sky of Periods with Mr Gormsby (David McPhail). Actress Tandi Wright appears in both and doesn’t look a day older!

Nothing Trivial is a warmly comic drama based around a pub quiz team of five friends with one thing in common: each is unlucky or unhappy in love. It has a couple of actors from Outrageous Fortune, but they have thrown off their westie personas well 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted by: rivettingkatetaylor | August 3, 2011

Let’s give farming another kick

So now’s it’s dangerous for me to bring my kids up on a farm? FOR GOODNESS SAKE (picture half a dozen strong words combined with a slow shake of the head and a grim mouth to match).

This story was on the radio this morning and it has now caught my attention on stuff.co.nz. According to the story, children raised on livestock farms have a greater risk of developing blood cancers later in life. A study by Andrea ‘t Mannetje, of the Centre for Public Health Research at Massey University in Wellington (well there you go, has probably never lived in the real world), found the risk of developing a blood cancer is 22 per cent higher for those who grew up on a livestock farm than for those who
did not.

Children raised on poultry farms had the greatest risk, with their chances of developing a cancer such as leukaemia, multiple myeloma or non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma three times higher. Dr ‘t Mannetje said further research would be needed to find a definitive cause and effect. (You don’t say.)

People are still more likely to be killed on the roads. There is no way I am going to give up the chance for my children to have calves, pigs and chooks, feed out hay, collect eggs, pick broad beans and empty pig buckets (chores, townies, real chores). Breathing real air. Clean air. Fresh air. Sunshine, rain and bitter souwesters or warm norwesters – it’s real. More real than sitting on a couch playing play station in between heating up a frozen meal in a microwave.

Viva la farm life.

 

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Posted by: rivettingkatetaylor | July 26, 2011

Another thought

Gosh my Facebook is coming up with some beauty thoughts at the moment! or should I say, my Facebook friends!

A former neighbour (I was about to call her an old neighbour but I thought she might be offended!) obviously without kids for part of the holidays, said “snow without kids is like a hug without a squeeze”. I like.

And this one from a cousin followed by one from one of her friends…

“The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.”

“If you keep on doing what you do, then you’ll keep on getting what you’ve got!”

How true. Then the one on my noticeboard in front of my desk that reminds me not to procrastinate every morning (and yet, what am I doing right now…)

“The more you discipline yourself to use your time well, the happier you will feel and better will be the quality of your life in every area.”

And before you nod off, one more that I found on a scrap of paper while tidying my office the other day. I think I have had it before on here but it’s worth repeating.

“While we teach our children all about life, they teach us what life’s all about.”

🙂 have a lovely day (snow free, at least in Takapau!)

 

 

 

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Posted by: rivettingkatetaylor | July 25, 2011

Thought for the Day

Today’s thought comes via a new Facebook “friend” called CHB Libraries….

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination and the journey. They are home.”
~ Anna Quindlen”
Love it.

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Posted by: rivettingkatetaylor | July 25, 2011

It’s not snowing here!

The snow has not lingered in Takapau.

It did snow this morning – for about 15 minutes.

My children would have been so annoyed – they are in Gisborne where it hasn’t snowed for a long, long, long time (I wouldn’t think!)

Mum will be thrilled – she’s just started an Australian golf trip and will be loving short sleeves. The sister in Tapanui won’t be liking it – they’re on a farm.  The sister in Dunedin is – day off work! The sister in Christchurch – better than earthquakes?

When Southland had a decent fall of snow a couple of weeks ago, it launched my kids into a deluge of questions about what its like to play in the snow. Real snow. Not a few centimetres of snow where you clear an area the size of a rugby field to make a snowman. We used to be able to dive off the top of fence posts into drifts that were taller than we were (being Rivetts that wasn’t a hard feat really).

We used to wake up in the morning sometimes to an eerie silence and a weird colour tone in the bedroom … snuggle down in the bed…. then……click….. snow!

Hours were spent trudging up hillsides for moments of thrilling pleasure speeding back down them again. Mum’s tin kitchen trays used to get a hammering. One of the hills beside our driveway offered extra thrill – if you had a good enough ride you could make it to the creek at the bottom. Funny – I don’t remember doing any washing afterwards…. just a steaming hot cup of milo or vegetable soup in front of the fire while you waited for your mittens and hat to thaw out ready for the next run.

Snow at The Glen, West Otago, in the late 1980s

The days when the snow was too thick to go to school – no school bus run – or even the days when Dad used to take us up to the bus on the main road on the tray of the tractor.

It was nice to reminisce with my two about feeding out with Dad in winter – no big bales and machinery at our place. Loading the small rectangular bales on the back of the ute or trailer on the four-wheeler and off we went, pocket knife in hand, to feed sections of hay out to the sheep (and we always had to find the knot on the “bind-a-twine” (baling twine) so Dad could reuse it).  Numb fingers and noses were par for the course.

We had a winter visit to Tapanui last year (timed with the Young Farmer Contest in Gore).  We got the ice and cold but not the snow. Fancy another visit from us Aunty Keri? Or maybe I can find a farm closer to home that will indulge the memories for a hour or two.

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