Thirsty Thursday: Sparking memories of 'towning and arounding'
Sarah McCarthy’s Thirsty Thursday column is brought to you each week thanks to Invercargill-based law firm Mee & Henry Law.
Sarah McCarthy’s Thirsty Thursday column is brought to you each week thanks to Invercargill-based law firm Mee & Henry Law
THIRSTY THURSDAY 24
We missed out on our trip to Dunners at the weekend with all the flooding. Far be it from me to complain; there are people in this actual world at this actual moment whingeing about their trips to the Disneyland in Florida being disrupted by the second deadly weather event in a week, but they are AMERICAN and stars forbid I a) upset the men or b) be AMERICAN in any way, shape or form unless it is in channelling the awkward yet raw elder sex appeal of Jenna F Lyons.
Instead we spent a weekend at home and entertained visitors (two sets! Unheard of!) and went for a drive on Sunday afternoon out to Awarua Bay where we were menaced by seething packs of voracious vermicious vampiric sandflies and had to talk the little one out of taking rancid seaweed home to dry out to eat.
This Sunday drive sparked memories of “towning and arounding” with my parents when I was a girl - I vividly remember writing a story at Primary School about what I did at the weekend and the teacher telling me that towning and arounding was not a phrase known to man nor beast, beginning my lifelong abuse of the English language and all who sail in her.
Mr mr and I told the kids to be grateful, because going for drives at the weekend meant for us and those of our vintage that you had to sit quietly and still in someone’s living room while the adults talked and maybe get a Raro or be allowed into someone’s musty spare room to look at elderly toys if you were incredibly lucky.
The boys ignored us, asking which shop we would be going to for the bribery ice cream on the way home (me, it was me that needed bribing me me me).
We even managed to undertake the yearly task of cleaning our windows - we love Kereru more than clean in our whare and leave them grubby so they don’t divebomb at the reflection of the bush and get mortally injured. When I say we I mean of course Mr mr - he waggled a long broom attachment in the general direction of the windows while I pointed out bits he’d missed and mocked him for not using any detergent.
Now I’ve attached incredibly gaudy iridescent things onto the inside of the windows to try and keep the birds away, further confirming my descent into cronehood and the acquisition of all the attendant accoutrement that follows - bird feeders, garden gnomes and Franklin Mint tchotchkes et cetera, et cetera, et al, ad nauseum, et merda.
It was a nice weekend in all, although a shadow has remained - this weekend’s weather across the globe is just the beginning and that is an actual great big fact.
The Government, both local and central, you may notice, have begun to talk about the mitigation of climate change rather than what to do to avoid it, because a pack of creepy useless slugs have wasted everyone’s precious time for the past 30 years arguing that it isn’t “a thing”. It’s a thing, Glen. The only bright spark in the gloom is the guy from Dunedin holding a select committee zoom meeting hostage while he danced mockingly in the floodwaters, blasting Kora’s Politician. More please.