Southerly by David Haywood

Our 88-year-old stenographer, Miss Spong, has asked me to thank all those who sent Christmas gifts to her prison cell. Unfortunately she remains on remand as a consequence of an incident in which a guard was 'shanked'.

Despite her trials and tribulations, Miss Spong valiantly managed to submit her transcriptions to Public Address the same day that she was released from solitary confinement. What a trouper!

a miner’s gavel….
Once again Dr H holds court with a totes brill gold mine of Kiwi kultural references…
starting with allusions to Foreskin’s Lament,
then bringing home the beacon by wandering into Hicksville’s lighthouse territory (and closing that circle by ending with Key’s ‘I’m no terror Tory’ plea – tres subtle!), not to mention the poised for a hat trick by invoking Jenny Pattrick's coal mining epics The Denniston Rose and Heart of Coal – a rich seam!

‘Clean’ energy is obviously a Point that thing reference

How reassuring to know our betters are in safe hands, and that messrs Guy and Bridges have no self-esteem problems and are happy to work with old boilers and scrubbers, revelling in a life at the pit face, with all the horsepower they can muster…

PS: your cheque from Delta is in the post!

pps
Q: Why is John Key’s biography like a Venturi orifice steam trap?
A: It’s full of hot air and there are no moving parts!

Yes, why do we have a Minister of Racing, but not a Minister of Silly Walks?

We don't even have a Minister of Rugby or Netball

Well bugger me. Again Haywood has unwittingly written a piece that links to an ancestor. My great grandfather ran the first totalisator around Southland and Otago in the 1880-90s. He was in cohorts with Mr Roberts.

Here is a wee mention of GGF and a naughty person trying to cheat his way to a fortune by “passing a false coin”.

And

Mason and Roberts got good vibes too!!

And

Here is an account of getting the bloody thing around the races!!

Netball? Surely that would be a Ministeress? Or a Wominister?

I thought we had a Minister of Sport? Surely that's the same thing? You're not implying there are other sports? *clutches Best Bets*

Now, now, I'm sure the Minister, for it is he, is the kind of progressive chap who would give all due acknowledgement to the Ladies' Rugby Auxiliary, even if they're not currently winning.

What you’re implying that racing is not a sport? I’m pretty sure that’s heresey, especially if uttered within about 100km of Winston

I mean if it wasn’t a sport and instead a business then the practice of using pokey profits to pay for prizes would be, um …. illegal

the kind of progressive chap who would give all due acknowledgement to the Ladies’ Rugby Auxiliary, even if they’re not currently winning.

Naturally. There's no losers when every lady provides a plate!

A Minister for Sauntering would suit the talents of many in this current mob.

A Minister for Sauntering would suit the talents of many in this current mob.

Swaggering, surely?

You forgot the Twilight reference. That was what the Venturi orifice was referring to, right? Oh, wait, Twilight was Volturi, not Venturi. Now I don't know whether I'm mortified at having mentioned it, or relieved that at least it didn't sink in enough for me to remember properly.
As you were, nothing to see here, move along.

I don’t know whether I’m mortified...

...or pulling the more terrifying Potteresque (Aitch) Volte-morte-face

<on me bike>
:- )

Totalizer or Totalisator? ....or have I missed the punchline? There is probably a truss-flange involved somewhere.

viva the difference engine… *

Totalizer or Totalisator?

in Australasia it’s Totalisator as in TAB

The NZ Racing Board has a proud legacy, stretching back to 1951 when the Totalisator Agency Board (TAB) was established as the sole betting operator in New Zealand.

I can see why Bridges and Guy would want to be on hand to rake off the vig for Don Key!

* this is interesting for computing buffs

Totalizer or Totalisator? ….or have I missed the punchline? There is probably a truss-flange involved somewhere.

Well fucken hell – thank you Evan Yates! Yes, there are devices called totalizers in engineering for calculating the total amount of various things (of which the TABs totalisator is an example), but it turns out that Sir George had to be a clever wanker and give his invention a slightly different name. Had he no thought for the reputations of future political journalists?

And here was I thinking what a good job I’d done on this column – working in Foreskin’s Lament, Hicksville, The Denniston Rose, Heart of Coal, Point that thing, Twilight and My Favourite Martian, etc. I mean, you don’t get that from John Bloody Armstrong in Granny Herald. And written while repairing a wardrobe; not to mention typed out in 15 minutes.

But then Sir George goes and ruins it all by his clever-clever spelling. What a bastard! Well, I hope you’re happy with yourself, Sir George. You make me sick!

(Hugely embarrassing misspelling now corrected – thank you, Evan and Ian).

Oh, and in correcting my original LibreOffice document, I see that it autocorrects ‘Totalisator’ to ‘Totalizer’.

No doubt John Armstrong would have noticed. That’s the difference between a political journalist with 75 years experience in the gallery – and me with a handful of engineering degrees and a broken-down stenographer whose main claim to fame is a criminal record like a roll of loo-paper.

Mind you, we do give you all the hard facts here (albeit sometimes misspelt). Not like some ‘proper’ political journalists in some Auckland daily newspapers who take a germ of fact from a press release, and pad it out with 999 words of complete and utter opinion.

And in case you missed the photo in Ian’s link, here’s Sir George’s impressive Totalisator in Sydney (click on photo to see full size image).

P.S. And apologies for the delay in replying to the comments on this thread (once again, Ian Dalziel writes a comment cleverer and funnier than the original post) – had long day of intense activities with my wild children yesterday.

Shucks, David, that’s a nice thing to say about my shameless act of shoehorning in kiwi product placements…

…and I agree these people from the past are still providing problems in the now.

Why only this week Bill Birch (now Sir William Francis Birch) tried to burn down our house!

Yes!
From deep in 1984 the then Minister of Energy the Rt Hon Bill Birch has reached out with his peculiar Think Big hoodoo and seeing the upcoming parliamentary loss looming he placed a curse upon our house – by fuelling column centimetres in The Press, which then ended up (for whatever reason) in the wall lining of our upstairs bedroom – then a mere 30 years later whilst I was angle grinding a headless nail a spark or hot metal ignited cobwebs which caught on this paper and quickly transported the seat of the fire to places unseen (and for some time undetected) – I thought we had the fire out, job done.
But a bit later (just before I was due to go out) I noticed a tiny tendril of smoke curl up from behind the freshly replaced and painted weatherboards – a sudden frenzy of jemmying and cutting of boards refused to reveal the seat of the fire – and taking the boards off seemed to be giving it more oxygen, smoke increasing steadily – at which point the fire brigade was called, and arrived faster than I could’ve hoped for – they quickly headed upstairs with their nifty heat camera and found the source in a wall at right angles to where I had been looking – doh!
…and with a coupla quick thrusts of a wicked looking implement the recently plastered and painted (EQC repaired) bedroom wall was no more and the fire revealed and quenched – we were saved by a double dwang that slowed the fire’s efforts to reach the roof cavity …
so snakes and ladders aside – we were bloody lucky, really!

The moral of the story: if you at home are thinking of grinding off any metal objects in closed areas I suggest hanging wet sacks or towels around the job – a lesson hard learnt.

smug walks of some sort, yes.
#showponies

Woah, Nelly -- what an extraordinary combination of coincidences. Of course, if you'd actually tried to deliberately burn down your house then it wouldn't have lit all all (2LT).

This deserves to be a guest post, really...