CBD by Miranda Spary

Bad luck, here I am again - they’ve tried getting rid of me, but I think some of the strange people who like my column have been bothering the LWB to let me have another turn. I’ve had to promise to be VERY polite.

I did get some very unpolite phone calls from my darling husband. He has gone to the Hong Kong Sevens and decided to have a night at the casino in Macau. Since Covid, Macau has been pretty well deserted. He asked his lovely wife to book him into the hotel he always used to stay in. Lovely wife did exactly as he asked but when he arrived, they had no knowledge of the booking. He showed them the email, and discovered I’d accidentally booked him into the Hotel Lisboa in Lisbon, Portugal, not the Hotel Lisboa in Macau. He still hasn’t seen the funny side of it.

There’s nothing funny about all the road works and I simply can’t see why we need all the orange cones AND the bored looking orange vested people staring at their phones. Given that there are robots that can take orders and deliver things, we could surely have some to trundle along the middle of the road stretching out how ever many metres of wire with bright coloured flags on for the hour or so that it should be needed. When I watch how long it takes the humans to set up all the cones and explain to angry thickos like me that it is all about safety, I feel like doing something dangerous. It would be so much safer and cheaper for everyone if they just put speed cameras up. I do wish Downer would get itself rebranded - the current name is uncomfortably apt.

Rose and Tom Barnett cycled the whole length of NZ on the Te Araroa Trail to raise money for the very nasty leukaemia that stole their nearly 31 year old son. Two years later, they’ve made a short video of their trip and are showing it at Dorothy Browns as a fundraiser on Easter Monday. It’s nearly sold out already, so hurry along to get your tickets.They’ve had masses of goodies donated for their silent auction, and there’s a specially poignant one - a magnum of Sam Neill’s wine signed by him. If you haven’t already read his excellent memoir “Did I Ever Tell You This?”, you may not know that he was recently diagnosed with stage 3 blood cancer himself. Given how unfunny cancer is, he’s done a fine and funny job of writing about his life.

A fun group spent the afternoon at the Barnetts making candles for the fundraiser. I must confess that I had absolutely nothing to do with the candlemaking - I am so hamfisted that the thought of pouring hot wax into a glass and trying to keep the wick straight was too terrifying for me. Instead, I was allowed to put jam on scones to feed the friends who were doing the difficult bits. It was tricky focusing on my jam application when the view down the Shotover River was so spectacular. It’s hard to believe we used to have the rubbish dump down that end of Tucker Beach Road - what WERE we thinking?

These recent chilly mornings have certainly perked up the autumn colours - friends from the North Island were astonished to see how quickly the trees turn bonfire bright after a frost. They were even more astonished that the bus from Arrowtown to Queenstown costs only $2. In their North Island life, they never use buses, but were very impressed with the service here. I bought my husband a bus pass for his 70th birthday and he hasn’t used it once. His bus pass is nearly 4 years old and still in perfect condition. Any takers?

Thanks so much all for the feedback on orange cones! It sounds as if most of the Wakatipu feels the same way about being treated like morons who don’t understand that SOMEONE is making a fortune out of all this ridiculous safety nonsense.

Have we just had the best Easter ever? Bright blue days and just enough frosty mornings to turn all the trees bonfire bright. We had a great gaggle of tiny novice Easter egg hunters who were completely thrilled by the fun of finding said eggs, then putting them back and finding them again. And hiding them again. And finding them again. Simple pleasures… Leaf throwing is endlessly exciting too. It was especially good fun for me as it was the first time we’d had our two year old granddaughter here from Japan and our brand new one from Auckland. Being a stepgranny is so fabulous that I am now putting massive pressure on my own two to start breeding.

Autumn also means the return of the ducks. We have a pond up above our house, and there must be a Facebook page or something for them letting them know that there’s free and safe accommodation at our place. A few weeks before duckshooting season, they start arriving - paradise ducks and ordinary ducks fly in for their annual quack and crapfest. The noise is deafening and the pukekos who normally have it to themselves stomp around on their long red legs looking grumpy. It’s duck soup up there and there are lot of quacky arguments.

Noone was grumpy at the wooden boat show held at Kelvin Grove. Over fifty pretty. old boats from all over New Zealand turned up on a sparkling morning for all the other owners and passersby to ooh and aah over. We arrived just in time to see all the boats whizz off for a photoshoot that sounded deliciously chaotic - the Earnslaw and all the boats were somehow meant to get into formation in Queenstown Bay. I rang a girlfriend who was in one of the boats and she just shouted “I’m soaking!!” and hung up. They all got back safely and our friend Nigel got home late at night claiming he’d won the prize for best wooden boat in show. I am still awaiting confirmation of that as there was no enormous silver cup or anything.

We are in the running for an award for the slowest people to have an Aga oven installed. We bought an end of line one at rockbottom price (my husband is crazy about getting a bargain). It took us years of argument to decide where in the kitchen it would go. We finally decided and had the holes drilled through our very old (and cold) house’s stone walls only to find when they arrived to install it, that some of the parts were not there. The very kind owner, Kim Bone (probably very frustrated that we had taken over seven years to make a decision that should have been made when we bought it!) has had a much smarter version sent down from Hastings, so in theory, by the time you read this, I will be cooking up a storm. The carefully drilled holes in our house are now plugged with a tennis ball so maybe in another seven years we will sort that out too. Otherwise, in hundreds of years, archaelogists will be trying to work out why these primitive people plugged holes in their walls with tennis balls.

Huge thanks to Carol Morgan for organising the Latino Festival on Saturday. It was impossible to park anywhere near even in the early afternoon. There were dozens of people all learning to dance bachata with varying levels of skill and huge queues for the wonderful latino food. I had my eye on the Peruvian ceviche, but it all sold out before I could get my greedy hands on it. Next time I’ll get there earlier!