Anna Chinn's blog

Sunday, April 24: Signs at the Athenaeum Hall in Arrowtown advertise "Sale". Sale, French for dirty, unclean; English for a frenzy of the freedom to choose.

As word spreads of this blog's finalism (if that is the right word) in the Canon Media Awards, it seems appropriate to gaze at my own puku and discuss aspiration.

When I blog, I have realised, all I am trying to do is write another "Easter of 93".

Dunedin City Council staff sought $30,000 earlier this year for the purpose of beautifying empty shops before the Rugby World Cup. The plan seemed to be to fill the storefront windows with advertisements. Happily, the councillors said "Nah."

It was the end of an era when Dave Cannan recently moved from his post as regional editor and along the corridor to occupy the ODT day editor's chair. But more importantly, it was the end of an incredible tower of paper he had built.

This called for an interview.

[Dave is shown the picture of his pile of paper.]

DC: Oh, crikey.

Mark the German was standing in some roadside grass, watching cars pass.

To be upfront: any T-shirt I make is going to be crappy. Actually, I don't make T-shirts in the sewing sense, but occasionally I buy them in pale colours from op shops and then iron slogans on them using that special T-shirt transfer paper.

What does a subeditor do? After standing calmly in a doorway, watching a clothes horse rattle and thinking "That will not be centred here," she goes to work and does a job that requires a detachment from events, and the detachment feels perverse.

Otago has about 130 rooks remaining. Who knew Otago had any rooks, cousin birds to ravens and crows? I did not know, but apparently we used to have 5000 and now we have about 130. The regional council has been poisoning them; it recently gave the ODT an update on this programme.

My father, who lives in faraway London, sent me a four-part text message about an eel. The eel lives in a creek on the West Coast farm where Dad grew up, and where his brother Doug still lives. He would have got the information about the eel from Uncle Doug.

Dear Mr Flaherty,

As per your request last week, here is a blog about the weather. Specifically, you wanted something "along the lines of how grim it is to live under this relentless grey cloud-blanket and how my brother's come over from England and is wearing exactly the same clothes as he was in snowy Cambridge".