Old-Fashioned Fruitcake
On the 11th of October 2020, I started playing around with a new idea for a book. One thousand, two hundred, and twenty-nine days later, that book is on the cusp of taking physical form. Mere minutes ago, I ordered the proof copy – the first of what will hopefully be many copies to be printed.
And what, I hear you ask, will it look like? Behold!!
Continue & CommentNew Zealand has a history of strange elections. That time the Prime Minister called a snap election while pickled to the gills, for example. The time when two parties who respectively got the support of about 1/15 and 1/21 of the enrolled voters got into government.
And yet, despite this history of oddity, I was nonetheless Yours Truly Baffled last night when I read in the news that seventh place in Bug of the Year went to Powelliphanta superba.
Which is a snail.
This is even wackier than a bat being voted Bird of the Year. Birds have wings, bats have wings. Bugs are the Things With Many Legs, snails are…(checks notes) legless. So legless, in fact, that they’re gastropods, i.e. the Things Which March On Their Stomachs.
Continue & CommentDespite what the US Embassy in London may say, microwaving is not the right way to heat water for tea. For one thing, an explosion of superheated water as you take your mug from the microwave creates the very opposite of the soothing and restorative effect a good cuppa should have. The proper way to make tea is with water boiled in a kettle, and these days that’s usually a super-convenient electric kettle.
Except.
As Consumer NZ wrote in 2019, “We’d expect even the cheapest kettle to last at least five years of household use” – but their survey showed that 85% of kettles are defunct before they reach that age.
This does not surprise me in the least. Over the course of our marriage, the Caped Gooseberry and I have seen no fewer than five electric kettles bite the dust – including the one that memorably died the day after we moved house.
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