Centenary Cabaret Ball

Continuation of the celebrations for the 100 year birthday of the Martinborough Town Hall, included the Centenary Cabaret Ball held on Saturday 22nd September.

The event was a great success with all 150 guests making an exceptional effort to embrace the theme of the ‘Last Century’. The evening kicked off at 6pm with canapés and bubbly, followed by an amazing main course and a selection of sweets available throughout the night.

The ‘blind’ charity auction, with the expertise of Graham Howie controlling the hammer, was well supported and has enabled us to donate a cheque of over $4,500 to the Town Hall committee. … Continue Reading

Book review

Seeing further

At around 500 pages this is a substantial book. A glance probably puts it in the category that most would pass over as being too dense. Which would be a shame.

The book is not a difficult read. Divided into twenty two chapters, each by one of today’s most distinguished science writers, it has been edited by Bill Bryson to ensure that this remarkable story of the Royal Society can be enjoyed by readers with only general scientific knowledge. … Continue Reading

‘It costs an arm and a leg’

Ever wondered where this saying came from?

In the days before there were cameras one’s image was either sculpted or painted. A painting may show a man standing behind a desk with one arm behind his back while others showed both legs and both arms. Prices charged by painters were not based on how many people were to be painted, but by how many limbs were to be painted. Hands and arms are more difficult to paint therefore painting them would cost the buyer more.

Hence the expression, ‘it cost an arm and a leg.’

Comment

The front page of a recent paper led with the story of a farmer who had been taken to court by a Regional Council with regard to the illegally discharging of waste.

However what caught my attention was not the court case, in which the farmer was fined $70,000, but rather the number of properties, in both the North and South Islands, this man and his wife have acquired. They have controlling interest of a company which oversees 58 farms with 44,000 cows and. employing about 450 staff.
Evidently it is now quite common in the dairy industry for people such as these to form companies, leveraging off what they already have, to hoover up dairy farms as they come on the market. … Continue Reading