Writers
Susan Grimsdell
After retiring from audiology some years ago, Susan’s finding life’s pretty good with lots of time to do what she likes. That includes walking, reading, having coffee with friends, and a bit of activism thrown in. Also, day by day doing her best not to worry too much over the many threats to our gorgeous planet.
Read Susan’s Blog
Trevor Plumbly
Meet Trevor. He’s had quite a colourful career, from his early days as a pub manager in Tunbridge Wells he went on to become Dunedin’s leading auctioneer. Trevor is a published author and was something of a TV personality in the 1980s as a regular panellist on a show about antiques.
Read Trevor’s Blog
Emily Smart
Emily is very loud, and has really bad taste in cheesy pop music. When not at work flogging goods to the public via advertising and marketing campaigns, she can be found hiding from her partner and children at the local pub. If you’re easily offended or don’t appreciate the constant use of profanities, then you probably shouldn’t read Emily’s posts. You have been warned!
Read Emily’s Blog
Angela Caldin
Angela has had many roles in her life including: schoolgirl, student, daughter, friend, civil servant, wife, lover, mother, manager, magistrate, landlady, teacher, grandmother, blogger, editor and proofreader.
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The latest
Prorogation: a word for our times by Angela Caldin
There’s a kind of hush over our house now and we are no longer drawn to watching the news at all hours. This is because on Monday 9 September, our prime minister prorogued parliament. This means he’s shut it down so that for the next few weeks we’ll be spared the sight of Boris Johnson making sexist remarks from the despatch box, of Jacob Rees-Mogg lounging arrogantly on the front bench and of the House of Commons flailing around in the mess that is Brexit. Prorogation is a new word for a… Read More
Get it together and get it right by Susan Grimsdell
Sometimes I think different parts of the NZ government live on different planets. One part is always warning of the risk to the economy of New Zealanders’ high level of indebtedness. We’re told we’re deeper in debt than almost anyone else in the world: Fitch Ratings (whoever that is) reports that this country has one of the world’s highest household debt levels, at 93% of GDP. Save or spend? By the same token, we’ve also been told time and again that we need to save more. Consumer advocates urge us not to… Read More
Three score and 8/10ths by Trevor Plumbly
78 this month; shit that’s old! Maybe it’s time to quit the intellectual musings and accept that the old ‘get-up-and-go’ has finally gone. I could do the escape route, and scoff a couple of ‘goodbye pills’. I would, of course, croak, but at least senility wouldn’t be an ongoing worry. There is a bill in progress to make that legal, but to pass into law it requires a conscience vote, which in turn requires being counted and some MPs have a problem with that. Others dribble on, to the extent that makes… Read More
The joys of grammar by Angela Caldin
At school, in English lessons in the middle of the last century, we were taught something called parsing which involved analysing a sentence in terms of its grammar, identifying the parts of speech, and understanding its syntax. I loved parsing and I think this way of looking at language can be helpful in learning foreign languages and in writing in general. One of the main rules of grammar is that the subject of a sentence must always agree with the verb. In other words, they both must be singular or they both… Read More
The Writers
We’re four Brits who made the big move from the UK to the other side of the world. We love New Zealand, the English language having a good laugh and the occasional moan. Ah, just read our posts and you’ll get the gist.
