let's talk turkey

On the Monday following Thanksgiving the Otago Daily Times announced various contests with prizes of free Christmas hams or turkeys. So, things are looking up, there is TURKEY in New Zealand although it was not all in evidence when we needed it--Thanksgiving. A last minute item available at Pak ‘n Save the week before though was—guess what?—OceanSpray Cranberry sauce or jelly. (Packed in Australia by or under the authority of Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc. or its subsidiaries, One Ocean Spray Drive, Lakeville-Middleboro Ma or level 37, 101 Collins Street, Melbourne, Vic. 3000 Australia)

Okay, the awards for Willem and Lily. At Columba College, Year 3, Lily won one of three commendations in her class. She also won the Scripture Prize. Willem achieved Merit (which means he was in the top three in his class in each of these subjects) in Social English, Art, Maths and Science. He also got a ‘book’ award for general excellence (being one of the overall top three in his class (the final book in the Lemony Snickets series)). The fact that our children are happy in school is wonderful. Their doing well is an amazing bonus.

The daily paper in addition to news from every financial market in the world has a couple of features new to me. One is the farm news page. One might read on this page that the price of hoggetts is holding steady (that would be a headline). Really important farm news makes the front page of the paper, par example: lamb drops (births) up 2% this year to 43.2 million!

If you are aware that there is a hole in the ozone layer nearby (centered over Antarctica), it will not surprise you that the daily paper predicts the UV index for the day on the weather page. I have yet to see this figure under ‘8’. Today’s reading was ‘11’, the highest rating. (“Reschedule outdoor activities for early morning and evening. Shade essential between 11 AM and 4 PM. Re-apply sunscreen regularly.”) Public service TV adds remind you to ‘Slip, slap and slop’ (slip on a t-shirt, slop on the sunscreen and slap on a hat?…possibly)

Okay, the slang seems familiar here but in many cases a bit behind the curve. Cool is still in.
“Just a sausage roll then?—cool”.

“How you?”
“Great, how are you?”
“Super. Just the paper then? Cool”

Yesterday, the girl in the shop finally used an older expression that I had heard the removers saying to Tessa on the day the furniture arrived.
“Just the paper? Sweet as…”

I point this out because it was a mystery why I kept hearing it said to Tessa and never to me by the removers when our furniture arrived. They kept saying something that sounded pretty much like ‘sweet ass’. Later discussions with new friends revealed, after much hilarity, the explanation that this was a piece of slang mostly out of fashion now. What was said was merely ‘sweet as…’ (like, sweet as candy? paralleling ‘good as gold’?) The explainer said that if the movers had said what I thought I heard, there would have been an ‘r’ (along with the ‘a’ and ‘s’—sweet ‘arse’ in case you didn’t follow)

Temperatures: last Friday was okay (temperate). Saturday was cold, rainy and damp—44 degrees. Sunday was sunny, temperature in the 70’s. Monday was cold. Tuesday was sunny off and on. Wednesday, yesterday, was sunny in the morning; the temperature got to 80. Tessa and I ate lunch outside under our new ritzy umbrella. The wind then shifted from Northwesterly to Southwesterly. By 3 PM the temperature was down in the 50’s.

New Zealanders will talk to you how about how cold it is in New England. In New England, by contrast, our houses are heated and we dress well for the cold. Windy days in winter are not the norm, unless there is a blizzard and the damp is rarely spine-chilling. (Actually, New York City often feels colder than New England.)

will summer come? will we have a string of warm days? (do you people looking at the approach of winter truly empathize?)