Claudelands Bridge

Radiant fern

Rowers heading upstream

Twisting River Path Stairway - going down

Up the wooden steps - part of the river path walk - going up

A walk on the wild side 2

More photos taken on the walk along the Waikato River path recently.

Happy Christmas to  you and yours and best wishes for a successful New Year - Dave & Jill

Twisted Tree above the River Path

Thirty Nine steps to the top

Paddling against the current

Two little male sparrows unashamedly take a bath in public

A handsome looking mynah bird



A walk on the Wild Side

I went for a walk along the Waikato River today while Jill attended a function. These are some of the photos I took.

Song Birds
Occasionally we get a bird which likes to serenade us. They sit on our TV aerial and sing their songs at full voice. This one is a spotted-chest male thrush. We love to listen to him and he doesn't seem to be bashful that we like to watch and listen.

A Child’s Christmas

It was the day before Christmas. David, aged ten, was really excited. Tonight was Christmas Eve, the night Santa would come to visit in the dead of night and fill up the pillow case, which would be left at the foot of the bed, with lots of presents. David would awake in the morning and have such great fun opening all of the wrapped presents.

Because he knew David would be awake early on Christmas morning his Dad always made him go to bed earlier than usual, so that he would be in a sound sleep when Santa came. It also made the night go faster and the morning come sooner. Dad was very wise.

The next morning, Christmas Day, David was awake early, and couldn’t wait to start opening his presents. He checked to see if his Dad was awake and asked if he could begin. His Dad came into the room and sat on the side of the bed to watch as David pulled the first parcel from the pillowcase. He ripped it open and found a box which contained a Mechano Set, something he had always wanted. He was so excited and wanted to play with it then and there, but the excitement of opening another parcel was greater, so he set it aside and reached into the pillow case for another. This one was smaller, and when he opened it there was a mid-sized toy truck. He was crazy about trucks and was so thrilled with this present too.

Next was a flat parcel that looked like it might be a book. He ripped it open and found it was a book on Scouting. David was a Wolf Cub and Scouting books always excited him. He quickly looked at the book, then put it down and reached for another parcel, a small one this time. On opening it he found it was, as usual, a mouth organ. He blew on it and tried to get a tune, but true to form, as usual it was out of tune. Santa never managed to get this right! After opening several more presents, all of which excited him, the pillow case was nearly empty except for several loose sweets, an apple and an orange, none of which excited him very much. But he was so thrilled with all of the other presents and with his Dad sitting there with a big smile on his face. David wanted to sit down now and play with everything, so he did, but soon it was breakfast time and he had to go, but his Dad said he could play with them all for the rest of the day.

He loved Christmas!

1950's school class photo

Remembering the past
Recently a person who was in my class at Primary school 55 years ago (photo above) contacted me. We began to exchange e-mails recalling our school experiences and what happened to other class members we knew, and over the recent few days we have both enjoyed recalling the past and filling in the gaps in our past experiences.

It has been enjoyable catching up and I looked forward to the e-mails. But just like discussions about anything, all good things come to an end once information is exhausted.

They say that as we get older our memories of the past get sharper while our recall of recent events become vague. I think that this is right. I have found that almost insignificant past memories can be quite clear, as if they happened yesterday, and it is fun to recall them. I think too that different people recall things differently, though this was not the case at this time. An example though is of siblings in a family recalling family events. Recently while helping someone prepare their life review this became plainly obvious. I guess the attitude of the individuals both at the time of the event and during recall can determine their memories and chain of events.

Happy memories are always enjoyable and enable us to live the fun times in our lives again. I certainly have recently.

Thanks Marion…

An army 48 radio set

Military training

During my time at High School we had Military Drill once a month, on Mondays I think it was. That is, school cadets. This meant that there was no school work done that day as the whole day was given over to Military Training.

We arrived at school in our khaki army uniforms. The day began with drill – "presenting arms" with empty rifles (WW2 variety), marching and doing whatever other drill exercises were appropriate. I don’t remember too much about this part of the programme, but later we split off into whatever specialised skill our teacher-officers had allocated us to and spent the rest of the time until home-time learning or practicing those skills.

I was very fortunate to be in Signals and we did things like running out field telephones and communicating on them, and if chosen we might be allowed to use the military radios, which were ex-army 48’s,  – about the size of a back pack (see picture above) and battery operated. The radio was either placed on the ground, a bench, or carried on the back. Our headquarters was a room in the school building which we called the “Sigs Hutt.” Our senior NCO, one of the senior boys who was made a corporal or sergeant, would sit at a bigger and supposedly more powerful radio set called a ZC1 which operated off the electricity mains. Though the NZ Army gave us about eight 48’s usually we had only enough batteries for about four. To ensure that we were all able to talk and listen to each other we had to tune up our radios so that we were all exactly on the same frequency. The allocated frequency for us was 7.5 megacycles (megahertz as it’s called now), and we had to tune up to the same frequency as the main ZC1. This was called “netting up.” Sometimes we were successful “netting up” and we could talk and listen to each other, and sometimes we weren’t and would spend until home-time trying to do this.

Eventually we had more boys in the Signals squad than they wanted so we had to sit a test to see who was going to be weeded out. I failed the test and was to be taken out at the next drill day. But because of my obvious enthusiasm compared to some others who passed, they allowed me to stay and removed someone else. My enthusiasm was noticed when we were allowed to use the radios during lunch times on a normal school day and I used them as much as I could. Some of the others were not interested enough, so I was allowed to remain in the squad and someone else was removed.

This taught me a lesson in life, that if I wanted something badly enough to go after it.

First year at High School
For the first day at a new school one is usually a bit apprehensive, and especially the first day at High School.

As a young teenager my mates and I had heard the rumours of initiation carried out by the bigger kids in the High School, such as the removal of the knobs from our caps. We were smart though, and removed ours before we started High School. This was effective and prevented any challenge by the bigger boys at our all-boys school.

The rest of the settling in went well so far as senior boys were concerned. But being a new boy it was to still take some time to settle in.

On looking back I must have been one of the rascals that year as my belt acquired many nicks during the three term year. Perhaps I should explain this. Boys were punished at High School in those days for silly misdemeanours such as not being attentive or causing distractions in Assembly, and also for other reasons which I have now forgotten. So we used to put a nick in our trouser belts for every cane whack we received. That first year I received fifteen. And they hurt! Specially after getting three whacks each time, called “three of the best.” My second year was an improvement as I only placed about six.

I remember one time being lined up with others to be caned and stuffing my cap down my shorts. The teacher gave me a couple of whacks before he discovered the cap, and actually missed it and hit me painfully, then made me remove the cap and gave me another three. I was a bit sore after that lot.

Our Engineering teacher, instead of a cane used a broken engine belt. Boy, that stung more than the cane! Most kids were better behaved in his class.

But over all I enjoyed High School and had a lot of fun and enjoyable experiences.

Stocks 

Flower gardening
In our home I look after both the vegetable garden and all but one flower garden. Jill generally looks after her ‘jumble garden’ as she calls it because she prefers an unregemented garden, where the ones I look after are regimented into rows of plants, tidy and in order. But I must admit that much of the time Jill’s garden really looks great where mine, though nice, may tend to be a bit boring.

Now why, you might ask, does a husband do the flower gardens when the wife also enjoys gardening? To answer this we must go back nearly forty four years, to the time where we hadn’t been married very long and we bought our first house off the lady we rented part of it from. Up till then the lady had looked after the gardens, but when our children were born Jill was busy enough without gardening so I became the flower gardener as well as growing the vegetables.

Ranunculars and Pansies

Since then Jill didn’t have much interest in gardening so I continued with the flower gardens. I learned about types of flowers and when to plant them, and experimented with different varieties. I bought seeds of quality varieties from commercial seed companies and grew my own plants. It was fun and I soon found that although growing vegetables was very satisfying when they were ready for harvesting, flower gardens gave a different sense of enjoyment and pleasure.

Later in my working life I became unemployed and decided to start my own nursery and grew and sold plants to retired elderly people who lived in retirement villages. This gave me work as my own boss and I got to meet people all around the city. It was rewarding and fun, and often I was asked for advice on gardening, which I gave, and it was good to go back later in the growing season and see how their gardens looked.

Old habits die hard, and though Jill enjoys her little jumble garden, I look after the three others and also plant into containers if I have too many plants.

And that’s how it happened.

Christmas memories

When I was a kid I always became excited at Christmas time.

As Dad was my only parent he always made every effort to ensure that I enjoyed the day. As long as I can remember I used to have a pillowcase at the end of my bed on Christmas Eve and always woke early, probably about 6 o’clock on Christmas Day and excitedly began opening my presents.

Though Dad must hardly have been able to afford it he always ensured that my presents were fun and varied. Many of them I am not able to recall now, but a couple I can. There were always sweets, and always an out-of-tune mouthorgan.

I must have had a musical ear because this toy used to drive me crazy! I always made sure later when I had kids and gave them anything musical that they were in tune.

I had two friends about my age who lived nearby, but neither of them received such good presents, or as many as I did. This shows the effort that my Dad went to for me for Christmas.

I remember at about the age of nine I was persuaded that Santa didn’t exist and I asked my Dad. He was adamant that this wasn’t true, Santa did exist. A few days later I received a fancy letter through the post from Santa. It was typed with nice words and was covered in colourful stickers. I was convinced and my belief was restored. I treasured that letter for some time afterwards.

Christmas is a very special time of year. It was for me because my Dad made it special, and I’m sure that because of this it was also a special day for him.

(Please excuse a reprint of this story)

Laurie and Me

The photo of Laurie and me above had me thinking of my early childhood. (That's me on the right)

At this age we used to like playing inside games at Laurie’s home in which we enacted the children’s story of “The Billy Goats Gruff.” I wonder if this story was known in other countries?

We would set up two dining room chairs as a bridge that one of us, as a billy goat would crawl along while the other acted as the big bad troll that liked eating billy goats, and lived under the bridge. When the person who was one of the billy goats got half way across the bridge the one who was the troll would jump out and catch him and pretend to eat him. The game was scary, but lots of fun! We probably screamed a lot playing this!

My Auntie Dorrie lived next door to Laurie and when we became hungry we would sometimes go over to her house and ask her for something to eat. She would bring out a loaf of bread (unsliced in those days) and the dripping tin which contained mutton fat that had been used to roast meat. The dripping tasted so.o.o.o nice. She would spread this thickly over the bread then cut a slice about an inch thick off for each of us. Mmmmm! I can taste it now. Delicious!

Of course I wouldn’t think of eating that now for health reasons, but we never knew about such things that would spoil our enjoyment in those days.