Daily Archives: 2020-04-02

Mucked about most of the morning, eventually, after making a substantial food shopping list to cover the next week, we went off to Hastings to beat the Friday rush. Ha!

My new $250 wireless headphones arrived from Apple – their Beats” label. Look forward to trying them tomorrow when I listen to another couple of Tim Harford’s “50 Things That Made The Modern Economy” series two.

Off shopping for the next week. First stop the pharmacy in Stortford Lodge. Queue outside of six, one out allows one in rule being applied, there were about six customers in the shop.

Then to the Vets to see if we could get some medicine for a couple of coughing sheep – not Covid19 but lungworm, probably. No-one allowed in the shop which was in darkness but there was a number to ring. Eventially someone answered and agreed to make up the potions, they’d be ready in ten – fifteen minutes so I said we’d come back after supermarket.

Past supermarket Countdown with its queue of shoppers that went on and on, and on. Decided that despite they being the only local shop selling GF Wheatbix or meat-free Beyond-Meat patties we’d give it a miss this week.

On to OMG – the baker of fine breads without flour including my favourite “paleo” loaf that has very little added sugar.

In darkness but there was a notice on the glass of the door, very old and barely legible, with a number to call. On the third guess I got a lass who admitted to being OMG. Upshot was that they will next bake on Wednesday but it will go very fast so best to pre-order on Internet. And good idea to get several loaves and freeze them, she said, it still tastes good if toasted and you don’t know what the future holds. I told her that her phone number was barely decipherable and she seemed pleased to be made aware of that.

And so to New World supermarket. The queue was a snake into the car park, maybe 50 or more people in the line. Same as the pharmacy, one in for every one coming out. A few dozen people inside instead of the usual 100 or so during the day. I waited for about an hour I guess to get in and it then took me much longer than usual to fill my trolley with seven days of stuff.

We set off around 11:30am and got back home around 3:30pm.

Whilst in the New World queue there was an interesting incident, not just the one when employee came out and said, “any couple in the queue, if so, one of you go back to your car”. This one was a foreign gentleman on his cell phone speaking volubly in Arabic or Turkish perhaps. This went on and on and on at high volume and got mildly irritating; others were on their phones but not shouting. Anyway suddenly there was a bellow “Turn That Phone Off” as a person joined the queue “Droplets. You’re Spreading Droplets By Speaking”. The man shut up. The bellower said “I’m with the health serfvice and you should not be speaking if you haven’t got a mask” – he had a mask as did about a third of queue dwellers. Someone else took exception to the bellower, in typical New Zealander fashion, and said quite loudly and clearly, “Anyone want to use your phone, do it – it’s not our business”. I don’t know if the droplets would actually travel more than the social distancing of a couple of metres, and anyway the wind was blowing quite hard – which is tough on those downwind of a talker I guess – but I was happy he shut up.

Well that was most of the day gone so apart from Karola and I discussing the best way to attach the chook house ridge capping, that was it.

Gill emailed this morning to let us know that “A Stuff article this morning says “Bauer Media Group has announced its intention to close its publishing business in New Zealand due to the severe economic impact of Covid-19, titles including the NZ Listener.” Well that’s a blow, Gill & Ben buy us a subscription each year and we reciprocate. It is usually chock full of interesting articles that haven’t been “dumbed down”. On TV tonight our PM, Jacinda, assured us that even though Bauer was conveniently blaming the virus for their closure it was the decline in printed media, not the virus, that triggered the closure. Bauer had rejected government offers to help financially, she said.

And Gill sent on a photo, quite appropriate given the New Zealand (pre-virus) strategy to rid us of possums, stoats, and rats (“all marsupial and mammalian introduced predators”) by 2050. Feral cats are also a big problem but killing them is politically divisive.

Five doves on the bird table this morning.

Dr Ben Bell Making His Contribution To A Predator-Free Seatoun

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—19℃ no rain [76.09] IBOrchard TdT