Monday, September 17, 2007

Out of Marmite

I am going to contact the Herald's subscription office today and see if I can have my arrangements changed from a six day subscription to a five day one. I am buggered if I am going to pay for the Monday edition. Today is worse than usual.

There is an opinion piece bleating about development. A woman (I think) prattles on about a motel being expanded in Epsom. Epsom is an urban part of the country and urban places are just that - 'of, pertaining to, or designating a city or town'. Motel is old and small but adequate for the populaton and traffic of the sixties or seventies (guessing here) when it was built. It is now forty years later and things have changed - there is no economic sense in just putting a lick of paint on a facility that is no longer adequte for the use that has evolved for it. Build a bigger one on the same footprint. Town planning 101 would tell you that to meet this requirement the z axis will have to be enlarged. This means the new building would have to be taller and this can be achieved by putting the extra stories underground or putting them up in the sky. I hope I'm not going too fast for you here. I am a reasonably well travelled bloke and have stayed in hotels worldwide. I have been billeted on the twelth floor, the fiftieth floor but I am yet to lay my head on the pillow in B46. That is how you do it; to make buildings bigger they become taller - upwards. Oh no, not in Epsom. The world must remain one of villas on quarter acre sections arranged down sleepy leafy avenues. Nimby to the max. Get over it woman. We, and this includes you, no longer live in the world portayed on the lids of chocolate boxes. The Haywain was painted in 1821 and I have it on good authority that the cart is no longer in the river.

The Green pages reach a new low with a quarter page devoted to how you must select garden furniture in a eco-friendly way. I didn't read it. All this tosh is rounded out with the usual Monday fare of an ersatz Society Photogapher's page near the back. The whole paper is mind numbingly facile and should be reported to the trade descriptions wallahs. It in no way resembles a newspaper. If Fairfax think I am going to pay for this drivel they have another think coming.

On a more serious note, where is the English food shop in Brown's Bay? I purchased a jar of Our Mate (proper English Marmite has this apellation in NZ for trademark reasons) in Woolworths and it will last me to the end of the week - tops. I need half kilo jars and I need them urgent like. I will not be held responsible for my actions if I can't find bulk Marmite supplies pretty bloody sharpish.

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