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Took the kids to see The Wiggles yesterday. The show was very similar to when they were here a year ago; lots of circus stuff, a mix of the classic tunes and some of the newer ones. The Wiggles always give a good gig. If you've got kids, I can highly recommend taking them. As Rodger noted, the crowd outside was about as rowdy as for AC/DC, but 3ft tall. Important difference to note: the crowd outside the Wiggles thought that a bloke on a bicycle was cool. This was not so much the case for AC/DC. But I'm pretty sure that both crowds were clamouring for the ladeez to get their tits out; except at The Wiggles, it was more based around nutrition. More la leche than le lech, really.
Similarly, as with Rodger, we took the kids to the Wellington Aero Club open day at the weekend. They loved it. Maggie has a big thing for planes, and the chance to see them taking off at close range made her very happy. We had to extract her with extreme prejudice from several aircraft. Rebecca enjoys anything where you get to climb into vehicles and pretend to drive them, so she was in her element. After a couple of hours, we had to leave in order to prevent the kids from passing out with hunger. And at that, as we crowbarred them out the door, they were still begging to have another look at a couple of the planes... bless their little cotton socks, the buggers.
There's been a recent proposal to put up a Wellywood sign on one of the hills in Miramar, so it's visible from across the harbour (and to planes making the northern landing approach). Leaving aside the general discussion about the sign, I've been amused to see that one of the arguments against it is that we should leave the natural hillside alone. Have the people arguing this actually seen the hillside in question? It's covered in gorse scrub and a couple of pine trees. 100m away from the proposed sign, on the other side of the cutting, is a light industrial zone, the most notable feature of which is a clearly marked paint factory. This is not one of our areas of outstanding natural beauty. Now, if they were talking about putting it in the hillside 2k further up the peninsula around the Shelly Bay reserve, we'd have something to talk about. But they're not. So yes, feel free to have a problem with the Wellywood sign - but for heaven's sake, don't argue that it would be desecrating our natural wilderness. That's one of the few parts of wellington where a brush fire would count as improvement.
A brief note to other cycle commuters: learn the light phasings. Why? So you don't end up looking like a dick running the red light at the corner of Featherston and Bunny streets, turning left up Bunny. Because there's no point running that light - you always have to wait for the lights to get onto Thorndon Quay. If you're going to act like a dick, at least get some fucking benefit out of stitching the rest of us up.
Mainly listening to: the Gil Scott-Heron live album from the 80s. There's a 23-minute version of 'Angel Dust'. It's astonishingly grand. Highly, highly recommended.