My mother first met my father at a wedding, and afterwards they went to a Joe Brown dance at Dunedin's town hall.
My father was at the wedding because he worked on the family of the groom's farm shearing sheep. He sheared sheep to pay to go to university. My father didn't have a really great upbringing, he was brought up by a prickly Aunt, but he was decent at school, good at sport and a great ballroom dancer.
How did someone with his background get to be a good ballroom dancer? My mother wasn't sure. Anyway, when she first met him he had three records: Mantovani (Immortal Classics / Tangos) and Belafonte. So these are my dad's records from the 1950s.
When I was a teenager in Paraparaumu it was all the rage to fill up old 1.5 litre Coke bottles with water and leave them all over your front lawn. It was supposed to stop dogs doing their business on your property. It got to the point where every single lawn in Paraparaumu had these plastic Coke bottle droppings on them (usually with dog dropping in between). There were various theories why this was supposed to work. The only one I remember was that the dogs were supposed to be frightened of their reflection in the water bottle. Of course it didn't work. In fact it is utterly ridiculous. Nevertheless, thousands of adults littered their lawns with old Coke bottles in the belief that it did work.
This is very hard to understand twenty years later. Which is a bit like me trying to understand the world's fascination with Mantovani in the 1950s. It is completely lost on me. What kind of world are we dealing with?
10 comments:
One theory was that dogs don't do their business near their water source. There is a theory that Ronnie Binge, he of the 'cascading strings' sound, once talked about putting an old soft drink bottle on his front lawn. Personally, I don't believe this is true.
Although cascading, water, and going for a whiz seem to tie up somehow. Maybe he got the idea for cascading strings whilst watching dog urine cascade down the side of a plastic soft drink bottle on his lawn.
All of these theories were invented by people who overestimated the intelligence of dogs (and music teachers). They think dogs wander around going "Gee I really need to take a slash - better look for a location away from water sources and mirrors." Actually dogs (and music teachers) walk around all day with this in their head: peeeeeeeeeeeeee. Like a whistling kettle (except music teachers try to figure out what key that's in).
9RE is better than 9PY.
Well, actually, that's not true. I wonder if a plastic bottle of water in my form class next year would help? Maybe also 60 beats per minute music? Mantovani might be a bit fast. Cascading strings? I think that 9RE can cascade quite efficiently.
You're doing one of those comments that only make sense in your head Richard. I talked to you about this. Anyway, I'm 9JY not PY. YP would've been funnier. Not that I'm giving the master tips on blog comments.
John-Paul, John-Paul,
Riding through the glen,
John-Paul, John-Paul,
With his band of men,
Feared by the bad, loved by the good,
John-Paul, John-Paul,
John-Paul.
That's just silly. I don't know how to ride a horse.
That, my friend, is the old Robin Hood song... written when 'men were men and smelt like horses'.
You can still buy scent of horse in some posh chemists. It's called "Equine" I believe.
I'm ready for the story about the next record.
The sheep belonged to the bride's family - part of a shearing run -various farms in South Otago where Marshall sheared sheep in the University holidays.
After we "met" Marshall and I realised we were both studying Geography 1 that year - so had been sitting in the same room for those lectures all year.The wedding was in the August/Sept holidays.
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