June Rains Amaze

Another lot of Rubbish

More to add now that I have started.  Brenton Milne - Marian's eldest is about to take off for Redmond, Washington USA, as a recruit for Microsoft.  At present he is finishing an IT Project at Canterbury Uni., and is anxious to see it through to fruition. His sister, Katie is at Victoria Uni, doing Art plus Environmental Sciences, yr 2.  My brother Phil Garrett is still farming near Leeston, though he takes a back seat usually to the younger brigade - with son Andrew playing a leading role. They MUST be chewing the fingernails with the price of milk on overseas markets in the doldrums.  Luckily they are well entrenched there, not like the newly-converted farms which have huge debts to service.  

Such heavy rainfall over the last two-three days has brought floods to parts of Dunedin and further a field.  The heaviest downpours for many years saw roads become rivers and rivers become torrents. The kayakers had fun on the Leith and other "streams".  Up here in "Sunny Motueka" it has been so wet that the golf tourney has been put off till Monday.  Streams of water rushing off the hills! But sun is out today.

I must comment on the FIFA scandals.  Fancy allowing an election to proceed, then resign the presidency and few days later.  The evidence is mounting of money laundrying, kickbacks, bribes, and general dishonesty at the top of the organisation.  Sepp Blatter has been at the forefront of upgrading facilities in struggling countries, with money provided for training facilities, playing fields and coaching staff.  No wonder those countries led the way in voting him back! But to give a World Cup to the desert of Qatar, where the temperatures regularly hit 40 degrees or more was the last straw as far as the older national FA's were concerned.  Right now we are being paid to host the under 20 World Cup, only second to the Main World Cup in importance.  So many teams here to play soccer in front of reasonably large crowds [small by international standards], have already boosted the profile in NZ.

We've returned from the Founders Book Fair in Nelson, where we indulged ourselves yet again with a pile of wildly different books and magazines - all for $13.50!  Betty got herself 2 new jigsaws at Whitcoulls, and we bought Bluff oysters and a mutton bird in honour of our Southland heritage, before lashing out on a new Lazy-Boy chair for me.  It comes next week, and we have already sold off its predecessor to the local Second hand shop.  Last week I went boldly on-line and bought a new glasshouse to replace the one blown to pieces by a storm a couple of months ago - old plastic torn to shreds. The new one is polycarbonate double skin with an aluminium frame - slightly smaller but quite adequate for our needs. It comes in a couple of weeks.

Today was St Vincent de Paul Duty day, when we meet with needy people to help them out in crisis situations.  Mostly we provide food vouchers, but occasionally we supply a trailerload of firewood where needed. A busy day today there with several families coming in for help with 5-6 kids to care for.  The Government announced a $25 increase in basic benefits but - it doesn't come into play until NEXT year!!

Tonight is Amnesty International committee here in MOT. We usually do just a lot of letter writing in support of those unjustly imprisoned any where in the world.  Tonight we may have go on a fund raiser as our costs of postage are going up.  Just a small group but we do well.