It is also the last week of "What’s With That?" until around the middle of next month. We still have lots to get through before we can afford to take our eyes off the weird and wonderful stuff that makes our lives fascinating and frustrating.
Working on a Sunday or public holiday always feels way worse when the sun is shining. And so it was hard to resist a sneaky little smile as the first raindrops began falling when I walked into Stuart St and along to the Allied Press building about an hour ago.
It’s actually been a rare weekend in Dunedin for me. Oldest son Joe came down from Christchurch and we’ve been on the tourist trail. We spent an enjoyable couple of hours in Toitu and then met a longtime journo friend and headed off on the Otago Peninsula for the afternoon.
Toitu exceeded my expectations — which were pretty high, given how much I’ve heard people saying how good it is. I especially enjoyed the more recent exhibits — the Tiger Tea trolley bus is superb and I loved the Fresh Freddy neon sign. Shame they couldn’t have Big Daddy’s in its entirety in there too. Or the Star Fountain (a deliberate bit of foreshadowing, as we’ll get back on to this later in the week).
After Toitu, the three of us made it to Taiaroa Head and said rather hopefully we could see the odd albatross flying in the distance around the back of the lighthouse. There were an awful lot of gulls and shags, with bull kelp whipping around the rocks and a few seals. We were disappointed Pilots Beach was closed to the public. The harbour and the hills looked stunning, and the odd scrap of low stratus drifting in on the fresh nor’easter somehow made everything look even more impressive and on a grander scale. Unfortunately we ran out of time but I’d have loved a paddle at Macandrew Bay, which looked so inviting.
What a breathtaking place we live in.
Stopped bus stops
Changes to the Dunedin bus service continue to confuse and ODT columnist Elspeth McLean, of Broad Bay, passes this on after visiting someone in Kirkcaldy St, South Dunedin, near Bay View Rd.
"I remarked about the convenience of the nearby bus stop. My host explained that it was not a bus stop any longer, as routes had changed but no-one had removed the sign. He said sometimes he had to go and advise prospective travellers of the reality as they waited pointlessly at the stop.
"What I got to wondering was, whether this was an oddity or if there are bus-stop signs all over the city which are now redundant but still standing and confusing the populace?"
Good point, Elspeth. Hopefully the Otago Regional Council can advise us on that.
Don’t rely on spell-checker
An ODT subeditor picked up this homonym error, one that had easily slipped through the spell-checker: "Once an initial line was secure, they fed a nylon chord on to it, which in turn was replaced by a steal cable."
Christmas Day weather
Time to check what the metvuw.com site is showing for the 25th.The maps are quite consistent — still picking a warm, nor’west kind of Christmas Day for most of Otago, but looks like some heavy rain in the western ranges, unfortunately spreading elsewhere early on Boxing Day.