Dunedin was thankful for cruise ship passengers this week. They took over the role of hanging around town and walking about slowly while residents went stationery shopping and taught their young about the dangers of flamboyance. David Loughrey investigates.
Dunedin was a strange, vaguely unrecognisable version of itself this week.
Mostly it bustled; it had a sense of purpose, even if that purpose was not fully clear to everybody.
The bustle was mostly provided by extras shipped in to tide us over the quiet period, that period while we awaken from the dream that was the holidays, much anticipated but now receding rapidly into the past.
With strange accents and sun hats, shorts and sailing shoes, the extras were brought by bus from a steady stream of cruise ships to keep our streets busy as we stretched, yawned and slowly got out of our metaphorical beds and considered the matter of the year ahead.
Of course we like to achieve in Dunedin.
We know the value of study and the freedom provided by strict routine but most of all, we know the importance of preparation.
Preparation, while the actors took our place to trudge the streets with bags, use public transport, fill our malls and look confused at city maps provided by the Dunedin City Council, was what the week was all about.
For school is about to start, the free days are running out and it's time to get to it.
To this end, for decades now, stationery stores and the like have been running advertising campaigns invariably (and to children sickeningly) entitled Back to School.
They've done it again this year.
But not all are attuned to the sharp realities of the education of Dunedin children, who need sober, well maintained school books of a particular size and quality.
Some are keen to offload sparkling baubles, and under the harsh fluorescent lighting of the retail sector midweek, those were presented in all their gaudy glory.
There were diaries with uplifting aphorisms like "Life always offers you a second chance - it's called tomorrow''.
There were attractively shaped bright pink lunch boxes, and purple pencil cases with rainbows and cupcakes on the front.
For those who like to put things off by writing lists about things they plan to do instead of doing them, there was a terrific "To Do'' board with sections to write lists of activities for today, tomorrow, next week, in the future, and to add the magic of whimsy, "if I ever get to it''.
Remarkably, this inspired piece of wall art was cut from $20 to just $1.97.
But the cheap attraction of such frippery was but a sideshow, something those who organise, regiment and sometimes calmly encourage our children know to steer well clear of.
The attention of those more sober, more sensible and more decent was elsewhere.
It was gripping firmly two-wheeled shopping trolleys with extended handles, rumbling past 3B1 notebooks, A4 exercise books, Staedtler pencils and Warwick spiral-bound A4 sketch books as the stationery sector had its week in the sun.
The shopping trolleys were wheeled by recalcitrant teenagers, themselves wheeled around by their mothers, sweeping down aisles with pencil sharpeners flying and clearfile refill pages crushed underfoot, large glue sticks and 30cm rulers bouncing on the rim of the trolley before rebounding inside.
"A ring binder!'' one cried as the trolley clipped the edge of an aisle and came startlingly close to overturning.
"How does it work?'' she asked her mother, grappling with the little lever that opens the rings.
"I've got everything except a sketch pad,'' called another.
A solid teenage boy with a surly visage and careless gait stood bored in an aisle stacked with LWB exercise books (printing).
"I'm going to look at speakers,'' he said, clearly less than enamoured with the spare, mathematical nomenclature of the stationery sector.
"Pleeeaaase'' cried his sister, clutching a pen with one end that can write on paper while the other can be used as a stylus for touchscreen devices.
Perhaps she had not read the sort of warnings that have been turning up on Dunedin school stationery lists displayed by retailers, which contain solid, unflinching wisdom like: "Standard stationery only, not novelty items'' and "Bottles of twink are not permitted at school''.
Stationery, of course, is a little like Dunedin itself.
It contains the mundane and the essential and the very useful, but tempts us with the tawdry glamour of the flamboyant and the ostentatious, where the road to ruin awaits the careless child.
Fortunately, our stationery lists and our sensible mothers are there to keep our young in check.