"YOUR BIRD IS READY" * .........

  * ......  was the text I received from the metal artist today. At least it was decipherable. He was referring to the kereru metal sculpture that Lynn commissioned.

I collected it and installed it this afternoon on the wooden fence outside of the kitchen.

It looks great. Here's a close up:

RICHARD'S BASS BAG TOURS *SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT*

"Hello, firstly let me apologize (sic) for the changes to Richard's Bass Bag Tours itinerary. I blame Pope Francis, Robert's god and the Catholic Church for their bringing about the inclement weather."

- Evil Doctor Richard.

Thanks Evil, Richard appreciates that. He's asked me to promulgate this important message. This is because:

1. Richard doesn't know any big words that would give an important message sufficient gravitas
2. He needs to use a medium that will be far more reaching than his own blog.

RICHARD'S BASS BAG TOURS *SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT*

Potential customers will have noticed the severe weather event that has been battering Wellington over the last couple of days. Some roading has been damaged and other routes WHERE RICHARD'S BASS BAG TOURS HAS BEEN KNOWN TO OPERATE have restricted access. As a result we have had to make some changes as indicated here:

 

• The famous visit to the house in Berhampore that Shelley's uncle and aunty nearly bought in the 1960s has been postponed to a later date.
• The visit to Miramar and WETA Workshops has been postponed until it is deemed safe to drive along Great Harbour Way Te Aranui O Poneke.
• The lunch visit to Scorch O Rama in Karaka Bay has been permanently discontinued as it is uncertain if Scorch O Rama has been washed away or not.
• All trips to Days Bay and Eastbourne have been postponed. The road has been washed way and is now too dangerous to navigate. There are rumours of stranded commercial cleaners holding up travellers with demands for food and assistance. The area is best avoided.
• The special trip to Tawa to visit Shelley's place of work has been postponed pending a review. Some negative online posting of previous visits to this venue has unfortunately led to a decline in interest.

We have some good news. 

• All visits to Wainouiomata are still in place.
• The celebrated shopping excursion to Wellington Rockshop in Cuba Street has been expanded to include a double bass performance. No need to thank us.
• The trip to the New Zealand Portrait Gallery on Queens Wharf will still be in place. As usual we will park up Majoribanks Street, walk down to Courtenay Place and catch a bus to Customhouse Quay. No need to thank us.
• We have added a feature: Visits to all of Robert's previous residences. This will take in Wainouiomata (a return visit), Lower Hutt and Petone. No need to thank us.

We here at RICHARD'S BASS BAG TOURS hope to see you real soon and remember, "Be careful out there".

HAVING A BLAST

 It was a bit chilly at the courts this morning and most players were dressed more for skiing than for tennis.

I'll light both wood burners in the house today to keep the house warm overnight as the forecast is for even colder conditions tomorrow with a polar blast on the way..

Still. we won't be getting it as bad as the South Island.

Wellington though is going to be cold and there are warnings of wave surges, rain and high winds. Brrrrr. I hope those old codgers down there know how to keep warm. Richard will energetically play bass and violin and Robert I guess, will pray.

NEW POST - THE MUSIC CURMUDGEON

 

'SAILOR'

GETTING PROTECTION

Not this:  

Nor this:

But this:

I use CleanMyMac and Malwarebytes on my desktop Mac and the Mac laptop to screen  downloads and to, hopefully, protect the computers from viruses. (The Old Girl uses her work computer which has all sorts of fancy I-Tech protection).

These programmes seem to work OK - at least every time that 'they' run a scan the report comes out something like this:

"Wow! Fantastic man. Cool! Your computer is working just fine. Chill!"

 I'm not sure if this is real or just a way for the young tech guys to assuage the fears of the old Luddites like me. Anyway, it does make me feel a bit better.

The problem is though, that in the email inboxes I get several scams, spams and phishing messages per day. Some are obviously fake but some purport to be from our bank, our insurance company, IRD and many reputable organisations. These are quite sophisticated and you have to be wary of them.

A couple of months ago, when the Norton computer protection yearly subscription came up for renewal I discontinued it. I had this for a non-Mac laptop that I used to use for my contracting work and which has been in a cupboard now for over a year. I thought that discontinuing the Norton service would be easy. Well, I was wrong. In the first month I was receiving about 20 emails a day from Norton at first asking why I hadn't continued with protection, then demanding renewal and later sending quite threatening messages. In the second month the messages are still coming but down to a frequency of once or twice a day. They are still coming in. Looking on-line I see that millions of people are receiving these Norton messages which Norton says are spam. The thing is though - I did not start to receive these until after I decided to discontinue the subscription with Norton. The early emails were in the form of reminders before they became more aggressive and finally spam, scam and phishing. I can't help but think that Norton sends our email link to hackers once they know that we were not going to resubscribe.

Some other very annoying and very frequent spam, scam and phishing emails I get are from Dick Smith's and its owner Kogan. I made the mistake of buying an item from Dick Smith's online a year ago which brought a long wait and a lot of grief and frustration. See: THE DEMISE OF ON-LINE BUYING

Since then we are regularly getting spam and bogus emails from them asking for account verification and trying to offer us crappy deals.

There are many others I could identify and, no doubt there will be many new ones to come. The problems with online buying are:

• It exposes the purchaser to risks that were not there when buying in-store.
• The transaction necessitates sending critical personal and financial information
• The growth of online trading is shrinking traditional in-store trading
• This in turn increases the problems in the first two.

I'm getting a lot of Bitcoin offers and silly phishing scams - some clumsy but others quite sophisticated. This never happened until I made an online purchase from E-Bay.

Trade Me, SPARK, BNZ, ASB, and, as I said earlier, most reputable companies are also at fault for allowing our data to be hijacked. This seems to be never ending and I guess will be just part of the cost of the new trading platform.

A couple of years ago our BNZ credit card was twice hacked and thousands of dollars were fraudulently charged to it. BNZ fixed this but it took time and a lot of inconvenience to put right. I now check the credit card statement details weekly to make sure that no-one is 'dipping'. It's a hassle but - "It is what it is." Scamsters are ruling the world.

WHAT (THE HELL DO) WOMEN WANT?

WHADDAYA WANT? 

A few months ago The Old Girl said that she wanted an oblong plastic 'bowl' to go in the kitchen sink for washing small amounts of dishes without using too much water as filling the sink was inefficient.

When I was next in Mitre 10 I found, what I thought was, the ideal 'bowl' and presented it to her with a flourish.

"What were you thinking?" she asked me as she relegated the 'bowl' to the laundry.

"That's no improvement at all."

A month later, when I was in town I called in to Para Rubber to find a more suitable 'bowl'. Unfortunately I'd forgotten to measure the sink and the white 'bowl' but bought what I thought was a much smaller 'bowl'.

It's only slightly smaller than the white one but at least fits into the sink better.

"What were you thinking?"... etc said The Old Girl.

 We've been using this for the last month or so but every now and then I get the odd 'dig' from her.

Today, when in town I went to Para Rubber again and looked for an even smaller 'bowl'. There were no square or oblong ones though so I bought a bowl-shaped one. When I got home I called out to The Old Girl that I'd bought her a treat.

"That's perfect - at long last" she said "although I'd hardly call it a treat."

Women!

It's hard buying things for women as every man who has ever lived will attest to.

Men are supposed to be mind readers when it comes to deciding on a gift to surprise their partners with. Generally the surprise isn't what is wanted. It's much safer to remember (or write down) the things that their partner shows interest in when out and about and, even months later, buy this and present it for birthdays, Christmas or anniversaries. This thoughtfulness is generally and genuinely appreciated.

Weekly shopping can become a nightmare if (usually a last minute addition to the list) a personal item is required. Things like hand cream, shampoo, soaps or all of the weird and wonderful things that women always seem to want can cause an enormous amount of stress for a man. I wrote a post about this a couple of years ago: UNDER PRESSURE

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

Anyway - I read this today: MAN DIDN'T KNOW THAT WOMEN EXIST

It's an interesting story and it reminded me of Richard and my limited success with women when we were younger. They might as well not have existed in reality.

The lack of social skills has been one of the bigger hurdles to overcome for Lang. ‘More surprising still is that today, despite being able to distinguish between men and women, he still doesn’t know the essential difference between them,’ .

"Well, good luck with that" I thought as I read the article. 

JUST CHILLIN'

 

It's frigging cold this morning - 10 degrees!

Well, this is cold for Northland although we have clear blue skies and sunshine. No wind fortunately so it will be nice for tennis this morning.

The Old Girl has gone out for a run before starting her working day and I'm waiting for the plumber to arrive to do a few jobs around the house. I'd turn on the heat pump in the lounge (where I'm sitting and typing) but that'd be a waste as I'll head out as soon as The Old Girl gets back.

So, what do you think about the stupidity of cross Tasman holiday weekends then? I knew that it would be a problem and cannot understand why quarantine rules aren't strongly in place. I hope that this latest event doesn't blow up but it underscores the dangers of this Covid-19 disease and the worse spin-offs and how many people are not taking it seriously. One person, who most likely had symptoms before leaving Sydney (why spend over an hour in a pharmacy on the Saturday if there wasn't some medical situation going on?), selfishly wanted a holiday so spread their germs all over the place in another country.

Anyway, how's your day shaping up?

THE LATEST FROM WELLINGTON

There are concerns by business operators in Wellington that there might be a lockdown after an Australian visitor, who later tested positive with Covid-19, travelled around the city for several days over the weekend.
Te Papa has been closed and bars, restaurants and shops have been affected.
Fifteen places of interest have been identified, and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said all options were being considered, including a possible lockdown.

"There have been some bits of good news though" said Dr Bloomfield "take for instance the Miaow Cafe where a performance was scheduled from a double bass and violin player. Obviously no-one turned up for this so a possible outbreak was avoided. The Wellington Council is considering contracting the double bass and violin performer to schedule performances at all of Wellington bars and eateries. That way we can be assured that the public will stay home and be safe."

 

I SUPPORT THE PLANNED GOVERNMENT LEVIES ON NEW DIESEL AND PETROL UTES

 I live in a rural/coastal area where the roads have changed little from the time that they were dirt or gravel. Apart from sealing and occasional resealing and some minor camber adjustments the roads are just as dangerous as they would have been 50 years ago - maybe more dangerous because vehicles are capable of much higher speeds now.

The speed limits vary on the 25 minute drive from town to the end of the 'Heads' changing from 50 to open road to 70 to open road to 50 to open road to 50 and to open road again. 'Open Road' or derestricted speed limit allows drivers to drive up to 100km/h depending on conditions.

The problem with this though is that many people don't have a clue as to what this means and just assume that the speed limit is 100 km/hr. The morons who drive those behemoth utes and trucks - I term them 'The Builders' - certainly don't drive to conditions and hurtle along the windy and hilly roads at 100km/hr and above and tailgate any sensible person in front of them.

It's not uncommon to see cars that have gone off the road in the area particularly during or just after rainstorms. Lobbying council to fix things has been difficult and is an on-going task for the local citizen associations. Council only have limited powers in roading rules and bow to NZTA rulings which are usually non sensible and take years to change or improve anything. What I, and others would like to see is a maximum of 80 or 70 km/hr speed limit on the safer and straighter bits of road from town to the end of the 'Heads' and 50km/hr for everything else. Of course this is unlikely to happen and will elicit negative lobbying from the builders and their stupid WAGs who drive overpowered hatchbacks and all think that they are rally drivers - a modern dangerous phenomenon that is encouraged by irresponsible new car advertisements.

Empirical knowledge will be the only way that they will learn that on windy and dangerous roads heed is more important than speed.

MAMA MIA HERE I GO AGAIN ...

 Yes, I know that it's the chorus from that bloody awful ABBA song Mama Mia* but it seems appropriate as a heading for this post because tonight we're cooking pizza for dinner. PIZZA! "How can I resist ya?"

The Old Girl has been busy working in the office (my study) all day and I've been busy doing manly things about the property (see previous post) so neither of us are inclined to prepare a serious meal. We agreed on pizza.

We make our pizzas with a combination of prepackaged stuff in jars and cans along with fresh vegetables, cheeses and meats. I normally make (have made and frozen) my home-made pizza bases but am out of these so am using some 'sto-bought' ones from the freezer.

These are pretty good though - the brand is Gianni's and I bought these from COUNTDOWN. They have a fairly thin base so don't require much cooking. Eight minutes will suffice.

As we are going for instant gratification I haven't pre-prepared any chicken, fresh tuna or prawns so I'll be using a can of tuna and The Old Girl will be using salami.

I have just prepared some tasty toppings though, chopping up garlic, spring onion, capsicum and piquant peppers and gently sautéing them in ginger and garlic oil.

The aromatics are wonderful

The other toppings (various) will be olives, capers, tuna, salami, anchovies, tomato puree, basil pesto, jalapeño chillies

Bottom and top will be some Mozzarella cheese.

I buy this grated, in a large bag and break down to small 'single serve' bags which I freeze. They keep well and are perfect for pizza.

The Old Girl uses tomato paste for the undercoat on her pizza and I usually use pesto.

We have ............. *JUST TO HAND*. The Old Girl has just informed me that she won't be making her pizza with salami but will be using Halloumi, Feta and rocket.

No problem and it reminds me that we have some Feta in the fridge so I'll add that to my tuna based pizza.

Moving on - we have a nice pizza stone courtesy of Fisher and Paykel which came with the purchase of a fancy new oven we installed in our renovated Point Chevalier property. We brought it with us (the stone not the oven) to our place up north to an unrenovated villa with a crappy small oven and have made many a good pizza with it.

The stone came with a wooden pizza 'shovel' that is still giving good service even though I nearly burnt it to a crisp a few weeks ago. I decided to dry it after washing it, along with some wooden spoons, in a hot oven and then promptly forgot about them. The Old Girl raced into the kitchen from her office (my study) and said "What the hell (she used a stronger expletive) are you doing?.Admittedly there was a bit of smoke in the kitchen which necessitated all of the windows and doors in the near vicinity being opened and a long anxious wait to see 'what was cooking'?

The result was some wooden spoons that have gone to their rest but the good news is that the 'shovel' is still intact albeit changed in hue.

Another very useful and well used pizza accompaniment is this pizza slicing tool. 

We were given this as a Christmas gift from the owner of a local Italian restaurant we often frequented in Point Chevalier (a very nice guy). This was about 16 years ago and the tool is still in use and at the top of our favourites list.

Do you know what?

It's time to put together these things and make the pizzas .....

Oh! "Hold on, hold on" as Private Frazer used to say, we've forgotten about the wine, that will be drunk with our pizzas. Here's a pic of them:

A really nice Italian Primotivo (zinfadel) and a a very nice Hawkes Bay chardonnay.

The more observant of you readers might have noticed that the chardonnay bottle is empty and the Primotivo is only half full. Busted! 

Yes I've (we've) been sipping this afternoon but, in fairness, the bottles were opened on Saturday (2 days ago). I do think I need another glass of wine though and will most likely open a bottle of pinot noir.

I'm looking forward to our meal. How are you going?

* The ABBA songwriters were (and are) damned good pop song writers though with clever lyrics and catchy tunes. I can only dream of writing anything that good.

DOING IT

 Up here we don't hide in cars or skulk about in warm classrooms when there are things to be done like the namby-pampby Huttvalleyites do. We just do it!*

In between showers this morning I loaded up the trailer with the flax and other cuttings from the front section.

Two and a half hours of cutting, digging and pulling on Friday resulted in a big mound of rubbish. This got wet over the weekend and, with further rain forecast this week I thought I'd get rid of it before it got too heavy. As it was it was a bit of a strain on the trailer and car as this matted debris has a lot of weight in it even when dry.

The bits I cut out here, even though it took ages and filled the trailer has hardly scratched the surface of what needs to be done.

I'll leave a row of flax at the top closest to the deck and some strategically placed clusters to secure the bank but will gradually clear the rest closest to the road and replant with some more attractive native bushes.

I figure that I'll have to take another four or five trailer-loads to the tip.

Heigh ho!

* Thanks Nike.

TIME MARCHES ON

 Whether it's the weather or not I'm feeling a bit old today. Maybe it's just the gloomy look out of the window now that the nice sunny day has given way to  a cold and rainy one. Anyway, I'll soon light the fire in the lounge, put on my slippers and prepare a hearty vegetable soup for dinner.

I've also changed the avatar on this blog -                       

                                                        from this:

                                                           To this: 

HURT - JOHNNY CASH

Maybe it's just the onset of winter.

GARDENING (LEAVES)

 After the glorious day yesterday it pelted down with rain during the night but, surprisingly, today is sunny and bright. The lawn will be too wet to mow though - the excellent EGO battery mower doesn't like wet grass - but there are lots of other things to do.

The wild weather of a couple of weeks ago blew down branches, flax fronds and, leaves and other debris that needs clearing so it looks like a job for today.

The Old Girl isn't going to work today so no doubt she will be inspired to help with weeding and plant a few things like garlic bulbs.

I might light the fire later in the afternoon to make things cosy and will cook meatloaf and roasted vegetables for dinner after a couple of games of pool.

What are you planning?

HEART FULL OF SOUL *

 * I was going to name this post GOOD FOR THE SOUL but then remembered that excellent Graham Gouldman song 'Heart Full Of Soul'.

HEART FULL OF SOUL - THE YARDBIRDS

The Yardbirds performed the first version I heard and liked but Chris Isaak and Gouldman himself have done good versions.

The song's lyrics and meaning have nothing to do with how I feel this morning but hey, I like the song!

Why do I feel good and run the risk of silly Christians banging on about how soul is given by a Catholic god and none other. Bullshit of course.

I awoke to a glorious day of sunshine, blue sky and very calm conditions. This is certainly a big change from the severe storms we've had recently. The harbour was (and still is) smooth and inviting.

I decided to take the kayak out.

Because of the calm conditions I went out much further than usual, right across the deepwater channel, around the island and skirted all the little bays in the larger McLeod Bay area. I paddled for 2 and a half hours.

The scenery was beautiful made all the better by the calm weather and the fact that it's winter and the air is crisp so that the outlines of the hills and mountains are well defined. I had a clear view west across to the mountain range that separates Whangarei from Dargaville. Mount Manaia and Mount Aubrey were perfectly reflected in the water.

As I paddled, several times I went through shoals of small flying fish that scooted across the top of the water - piper I think. On the eastern shore a dog scared up a huge flock of sunbathing oystercatchers that surrounded my kayak. There must have been a hundred of them almost within reach.

Of course, thanks to Mr Murphy, I didn't have a camera with me so was unable to record all of these wonderful things.

I only sighted one stingray which 'flew' away as I glided over it but that was satisfying as it matched the stingray sculpture we just bought. We are going to visit the sculptor today to commission him to make a kereru. The Old Girl found a calendar painting that she wants him to use as a design.

All in all the exercise was good for the soul and, as a bonus good for the body. The knotted muscle in my back and shoulder has been freed up from the paddling motion so I won't need to get a deep tissue massage now.

How is your day going?

OH FOR GOD'S SAKE! *

* Oops, that's the wrong title. It's what that old moaning schoolteacher down south will probably say. The title should be 'ART FOR ART'S SAKE'. 

We bought a metal sculpture today which I've affixed to the side of the house outside the back porch.

It's made by a local artist and depicts a stingray which is apt as we often see these in the bay.

We have a few sculptures and wall hangings around the property which are nice and add extra character to the house.

On the woodshed

On the 'tin' shed

In the back porch (now safely protected from the weather since we enclosed the porch).

At the side of the house (not strictly art but it's old and nice - like me I guess).

At the front of the house

At the front of the house

In the garden

At the front of the house.

After I'd installed it (it's bloody heavy), the Old Girl came out to inspect it and fortunately approved the hanging. Earlier she had suggested getting a builder in - "you're too slap-dash Matey" she said.

"We should have bought another one as well" she said "I liked the fern sculpture."

Semper invictus!