The Napkin Diaries
By Paula Pistol "First published in the Capital
Times"
No Cleavage Until Christmas
Another reason to love New Zealand: It’s still the only country in the world that will make the weather the lead item on
the TV news, ahead of GM, the war on Afghanistan and the top ten New Zealand songs of the last 75 years.
Makes the number one song, “Nature”, quite appropriate, if you think about it.
So we’ve had a week of tornadoes, electrical storms and flooding, making things less than pleasant for those of us
who’ve been out rallying for various causes.
Gita Mann has a view of Parliament’s front garden and says she watched in dismay as what had been a fine morning turned
into horizontal sleet for the GE-Free Hikoi as it arrived from the Far North last week.
And the regular Thursday peace meetings at the Cenotaph have been less than pleasant weather-wise. Guy Fawkes wouldn’t
have had much fun trying to burn down Parliament in this weather, either (though at least it cleared up for Wellington
City’s regular blast-fest).
But while I do expect a wet spring, it’s the cold that’s getting boring. No wonder the Labour-Alliance Government is
allowing genetic engineering field trials to continue – it’s too cold for anything to grow naturally at the moment.
Not that you’d notice from some of the outfits on the street. After a very suburban Saturday night, we popped into town
for a hot toddy before bed.
Running the gauntlet of Courtenay Place after midnight – sober – is a startling experience. I’m sure I’ve never been as
naked as some of those young girls (though when you’re drunk, would you notice?). Young lads with loud voices swaggered & pounded their chests. Young women preened & chattered wearing itsy bitsy strapless tops and low-slung, standard-issue black bootlegs.
Normally I would curse Glassons for giving these girls the wherewithal to show off their nubile flesh. And curse the
girls for having nubile flesh. But this Saturday I just wanted to wrap them up and give them a cup of tea.
Am I a prude for thinking that there are times when baring flesh is appropriate (when bathing, fixing a wound, or making
love behind closed doors with the light off) and times when it isn’t (when the temperature in late Spring is plummeting
towards zero)?
Gita should know. A few weeks back she got her cleavage out for a party and woke up Monday with a chest infection. This
led her to conclude that just as white heels are ruled out after Labor (sic) Day in the United States, Wellington is a
no-cleavage-‘til-Christmas town.
So we remain impressed with the regular rally folk for their dogged determination to state their case in the worst
weather situations. Sarah Barr had been considering setting up a caravan to serve cups of tea to nubile young girls on
Courtenay Place on cold Saturday nights. Instead, she’s proposing we turn up at protests in bad weather, armed with
thermos flasks of piping hot toddies for the good peace folk.
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