FRIDAY IS SHOPPING DAY

 

I'm off to the shops soon with The Old Girl as she is having today off work.

Actually, she has decided to cut her working week down to 4 days with the idea of having most Fridays off.

We will do a 'wine run' meaning that we will have to drive to several wine outlets to stock up the cellar. The local supermarket is good but doesn't stock enough of the zinfandels and Primitivos that she likes. 

We will likely visit Glengarry, Moore Wilson, Big Barrel and Regional Wines and buy a cross section of the aforementioned zinfandels and Primitivos along with some Californian and Hawkes Bay chardonnay plus any pinot noirs of interest.

I suspect that she will want to visit at least one furniture shop to look for a couple of armchairs to replace my 'manky old ones' that we have in the lounge.

*************** 

OK, that's done. We went to all three of those wine shops and will now have to take out an overdraft to pay for the wine (with labels on them) that we bought.

We also went to three furniture shops and couldn't agree on any new chairs. My 'manky old ones' are safe at present but The Old Girl saw an advertisement for a furniture show at Hnry Stadium this weekend. I guess we'll be going to that.

The supermarket shopping has been done but I forgot to get some little pies for Richard. He'll have to make do with salmon flan and salads.

We are now heading out (again) to Lighthouse cinema to see a documentary film Sgt Haane about Sergeant Haane Manahi DCM of B Company, 28th Māori Battalion whose actions proved pivotal in the 1943 battle for the fortified summit of Takrouna, Tunisia. My dad was there as a sergeant in the Divisional Cavalry so I'm keen to see this.

WILL MY BOOMERANG COME BACK?

I'm going to stay indoors today.

The weather is a bit indifferent and I don't feel like walking, golfing or playing tennis.

I should do some home budgeting though and will create a budget spreadsheet on the computer using Microsoft Excel.

I've sorted out all of the direct debits on the credit card after having to cancel our Visa cards because of an overcharging problem we had from Just Answer. What a fankle!*

Since moving house and discovering things to buy and some renovations needed, it seems that money is pouring out of our bank account. I need to get a track of our incomings and outgoings. While it's OK at the moment with The Old Girl working, when she decides to retire we'll need some budgeting discipline.

I'm not really looking forward to doing this as I'm way out of practice at creating and using computer spreadsheets but hopefully it will come back to me.

* Note the sensible and grammatically correct usage of one exclamation mark.

52 HARMONICAS ...

... BEATS 10 GUITARS.

My knee is still giving my gyp but I half walked/half bussed to Cuba Street today to go to the excellent Wellington Fish Supply shop to buy some crabmeat for The Old Girl. She's going to make a crab and zucchini salad for her dinner. I'm making an orange kumara, orange juice and tomato penne pasta dish for me. I like this dish but she says that it's boring so she will miss out on that.

The harmonica guy had some advice for Richard and gigs that I said I'd pass on. It went like this:

"Aarrgh splegger yur sprozzicks ander gesherfuggingarsh innageara oohhhher".

I take this to be musician-speak that Richard will understand. I hope that it's of assistance.

 

ZEALANDIA TE MARA A TANE

 

We did some volunteer work at Zealandia yesterday, checking the predator-free fence for damage, decay, rust, rot and degradation. It was like reading over Richard's and Robert's blogs in that sense - only the fence was in better condition.

The fence is important for the safety of the birdlife within the reserve and requires regular checking for maintenance issues to stop all sorts of pests from invading:

"Hey, Let me in!"

I love this reserve and it was good to experience it again. I'd like to be able to walk the paths daily but it's a bit too far away for that.

We spent a couple of hours checking our section of the fence - about 50 to 100 metres long which we accessed after a steep climb up a bush track. I damaged my knee (again) at golf last week so I was in a bit of pain and difficulty on the steep bits but was OK on the flat.

If it'd been up to me I'd have checked and passed the fence in about a quarter of an hour but was with The Old Girl and an equally pedantic workmate of hers. As a result they 'OCD'd' every little bit - cracks, mold, lichen, missing rivets, corrosion - sheesh and everything and she laboriously entered the information on a large spreadsheet and he transferred that to an app on his phone. I added in things like the weta at the top of a post and some dead insects but was largely ignored so I didn't offer a warning that Evil Doctor Richard the apologist was trying to climb over the fence.

All in all we had a good afternoon's endeavour and earned our glasses of wine before dinner - Kim Crawford Reserve chardonnay for me and Mondavi chardonnay for her.

ROLL UP

Both Robert and Richard have been writing about bowls in their recent posts although Richard might have been referring to bowels (which he does frequently) and misspelled it.

I think Robert aka Second is contemplating taking up bowls as he saw time's winged chariot flying past his window. No doubt he will discover a pristine set of bowls at his local op shop for sixpence.

Maybe, if golfing becomes a bit more difficult, I should reconsider taking up lawn bowls as well and give Robert a run for his money. I've played bowls off and on for over 40 years so might remember some of the rules and techniques. 

Can you spot me?

Here are a few of the posts I've written about it:

HERE

HERE

HERE

HERE

HERE

No need to thank me

Who knows - if it's a go we could get the old whiner from Wainuiomata to join us. At least it'd be another excuse for having arguments.

PLAYTIME

 I read Richard's latest blog post. 

It's a pity that it's such a nice day out as posts like that are best read when it's really bad weather outside. Or when there's no grass to watch growing. Or when you don't have a life.

Here's  a snapshot from some of it:

What was I thinking?

Where does stuff like that get generated ...

... Oh yes, his playroom. That figures.

*********************

Anyway, I have a life, don't have a lawn and it's nice outside. I decided to give golf another go.

Yesterday I told Richard that I think I've forgotten how to play golf. Every time I give it a go at Berhampore golf course I end up duffing shots, hitting balls into the trees, losing balls and today I discovered I actually lost a golf club - a lovely 4 wood.

I played 8 holes today and was prepared to give the game away but fortunately managed to hit some really nice shots and scored well. After a long drive on a par 5 I looked in my bag for the 4 wood to use on the fairway and couldn't find it. I remembered using it on Wednesday when I played 4 holes really badly. I didn't throw the club away but must have just left it in the grass for some reason. Weird. I asked at the golf club today if anyone had handed the club in but no such luck. Bummer - it's a nice one and is part of the matched set I bought from a Japanese woman in Whangarei a couple of years ago.

I don't know why my golf has deteriorated so much. Berhampore golf course is a hard course with very steep fairways and unforgiving rough, big pine tree plantations and out of bounds areas. I should though, be able to carefully hit straight down the fairways but for some reason don't, either duffing the shots or slicing or hooking the ball in to the trees. I think I made a mistake joining up and will have to confess this to The Old Girl soon. In the interim I'll try and get my money's worth. The 12 month membership cost $485. A round, regardless of how many holes you play costs $25. I calculate that I need to play about 20 times to 'get my money's worth'. That will be my challenge for the rest of the year.

AN AESTHETE YET?

 I see that Richard is playing ostriches this morning:

"I won't bother commenting" he wrote.

With a low readership and almost zero following his blog has I would have thought he'd try to make an effort especially since he's obsessed by the number of comments he gets on his blog.

We'll leave him to stew for a while. he might, like Robert, delete all his posts and maybe his entire blog again which would make it the fourth time he's done so. Who said he's a Philistine?

ART FOR ART'S SAKE

 

ART FOR ART'S SAKE

Here at The Curmudgeons Inc.ⓒ we take art and culture seriously as we believe that the finer things in life can make life, well, finer. The Cultured Curmudgeon, The Literary Curmudgeon, The Music Curmudgeon, The Food Curmudgeon and The Wine Guy in particular endeavour to bring readers useful information and insights that can make their lives better ...

... better than the offerings at that other blog Richard's Bass Bag with its Bass Bag Consortium that includes the odious Akish The Philistine blog. I mean - Akish The Philistine! Really? Have a look at one of his recent posts:

Should we be scared? Yes, certainly as cultural boorishness and anti-intellectualism like this is one of the tenets of fascism and dictatorships. It's worrying that Richard has a sub-blog like this one and frankly (his name is actually Richard) he should know better being an educated musician and all.

Reviewing my own blogs I took note that The Curmudgeons Inc.ⓒ doesn't include a visual arts blog - something along the lines of The Fine Arts Curmudgeon which is something that I will have to redress when I'm not so busy. In the interim though I thought that I'd provide you with an image of one of my favourite paintings - Renoir's La Loge.

 The bold black and white stripes on the woman's dress draw the viewer's gaze to her rather than the man behind her.  The black and blue areas create the effect of shadow and light which are contrasted with the soft tones of her skin and the bright and strong colours of her lips and the flowers which is typical of Renoir. I've mentioned before how black and white shadows (venetian blind effect) can be used in art and film to denote conflict as seen in Bertolucci's film The Conformist:

After putting the Renoir painting image in this post I then thought about what the other bloggers might have as their favourite paintings.

Robert is easy to guess given his Marianist infatuation with The Virgin Mary and would likely start off with Jean Fouquet's 'Madonna':

Richard, given his leaning towards Philistinism would not like the classics, finding them to be pretentious, boring, or irrelevant so we need to look to something more modern - but not too modern as he would find that to be pretentious, boring, or irrelevant. I guess something from the 1960s that adorned a very high proportion of living room walls might be the thing, like flying ceramic ducks or one of these:

On your behalf I'll do some more research on this and look to create a new blog - The Fine Art Curmudgeon with the bloggers' art selections being the theme for the first post.

No need to thank me.

WHO ATE ALL THE PIES?

 

So said Richard in a recent post. I guess he's reminiscing of his days at the tuck shop at St Patrick's College.

I just hope he goes for a long walk today.

ASSASSINATION HOAX PRODUCTION (PART TWO)

Look, it's early days (hours) but there are some pretty dodgy things coming out of the reporting on the White House Correspondents Dinner shooting in Washington DC yesterday.

For a start the whole thing is being overly sensationalised but woefully under reported seriously if it was in fact an assassination attempt. The security forces seemed to know and expect what was going to happen and had massive coverage there for just such an event. The alleged shooter's family advised the security forces in advance as well. Trump and his entourage mentioned many times prior to the dinner that there would be an exciting event and even Trump's media person said that "shots will be fired" (smirk smirk).

The whole thing appeared to be choreographed with many - too many cameras in place to record things. 

Trump's immediate press conference seemed scripted if not rehearsed and the administration flunkies all stood about smiling, smirking and looking self congratulatory.

"Just like we rehearsed guys .. look over there"

Add to all of this the recent media scepticism of the 2024 'Assassination' attempt on Trump with suggestions hat it was a Mossad (Israeli) organised hoax in collaboration with Trumps supporters and the whole thing becomes stranger than fiction.

Time and unfolding truths will tell but I'm very sceptical. How about you?