Advertisement
Published: January 5th 2011
Edit Blog Post
I went shopping in the morning, and bought food enough to last through Jan. 2nd. I also bought another bottle of Robitussin. The clerk seemed anxious and looked at me strangely. I was puzzled, but Jim thought of the solution. Robitussin here still has alcohol in it, and no doubt she thought I meant to use it to drink in the New Year. Otago Province had banned off-premises liquor sales throughout the Christmas season.
On my way to the supermarket, I had the great pleasure of meeting Ikumi and Mei, the Japanese people with whom I had ridden on the Taieri Gorge Railway yesterday. They waved wildly at me from across the street. When I came over to them, they tried to tell me where they were going -- some sightseeing attraction or other, I think -- but I could not understand them. In any case, I really needed to go shopping, so I couldn't come with them.
There was an Office Max next to the supermarket, so I bought a new camera case. I am very well pleased with it. It's a Belkin, and it has a neck strap.
I should be able to keep much better
track of my camera now.
I spent the afternoon at the City Library. I should like to have had time to browse through its book collection, but under the circumstances I had a more pressing need: as I mentioned in my previous post, they offer free Internet. Unfortunately they will be closed every other day of my stay here for the New Year's holiday.
I did spend about an hour of my time at the exhibit in their third-floor gallery. It was called "Let There Be Light," and it was a display of copies of the earliest English Bibles. Most were genuine, but at least one was a facsimile. To me, the most interesting one was the Lindisfarne Gospel. It's in Latin, but the Northumbrian monks who made it glossed the Latin text in Old English. Since I understood the Latin text, I was able to use the Latin to gloss the gloss.
There were copies of Wyclif's Bible, and Tyndale's, and the Great Bible and the Bishop's Bible. There was a copy of the first Bible published in Scotland and the first Bible published in New Zealand. There was David Livingston's own Bible -- he's the
1890's Typewriter
On display in the library Livingston of "Mr. Livingston, I presume." Some items were on loan, but many of them belonged to the library, and to the city of Dunedin. They had been the gift of a Mr. Reed, the Reed of Reed Publishing, which, I believe, is now a part of Reed Elsevier.
He had always wanted to mount a Bible exhibit in his gallery, but apparently it was never done in his lifetime. However, 2011 will be the 400th anniversary of the KJV (they had one of those too, and an early printing of Douay-Rheims into the bargain), so this had struck the Library trustees as an ideal year to have the exhibit at last.
The city of Dunedin had planned an "alcohol-free, family-friendly New Year's party" in the center of town, beginning at 9:30 p.m.. As it was pouring buckets when I left the library at 4:45, I doubted that the party would go on, but just in case I spent some megabytes to check for cancellation notices on the City Council's website. There were none, but I learned that the event was to involve three bands and over sixty loudspeakers. I immediately decided that I didn't want to be anywhere
near it.
Fireworks, however, were to be shot off at midnight, and I do love fireworks. So at 11:40 p.m. I ventured out into the street. I walked three blocks towards town and stopped; beyond that point the shops had overhangs. Besides, there was a Presbyterian Church there, a comforting companion in the night, and the church seemed to stand upon a slight rise.
Alcohol-free the party in the center of town may possibly have been, but everyone I saw in the streets around me had at least three sheets to the wind. The Christmas alcohol ban had evidently been unsuccessful. All the revellers I saw were young; probably students at the nearby University of Otago. They came down the street in packs, shouting and singing. Most were good-humored, but I retreated from the street corner to the edge of the churchyard when a man, swearing loudly, began smashing beer bottles in the middle of the street.
At that point, actually, I nearly went back to the Kiwi's Nest, but it was only five minutes to midnight, so I waited for the show. It was very different from an American fireworks show. It lasted a little less
Knox Church
Presbyterian; three blocks from my hostel than ten minutes, but multiple fireworks were shot off throughout. I saw some effects I'd never seen before, and I've seen a lot of fireworks. I suppose, being so close to China,
New Zealanders can import the best.
There was no especial outburst of noise at the moment of the New Year, which surprised me. I suppose everyone was waiting for the first firework. After the public fireworks were over, though, private fireworks began, and bid fair to go on all night. Most of them seemed to be firecrackers, but there were some Roman candles.
I didn't try to watch those; I went back to the Kiwi's Nest, singing "Gaudeamus igitur" softly as I went. It seemed somehow appropriate. Only one group of students took any notice of me, and they called, "Happy New Year, miss!" quite politely from across the street. Of course I returned their greeting.
When I got back to the hostel, I met the only two people I saw that night who weren't drunk as lords: a British couple, about ten years my senior. They had watched the fireworks from the second-story kitchen, so I suppose I might have done the same.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.045s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 22; dbt: 0.0251s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
K.Freeman
non-member comment
fireworks v. your shoulder?
John was asking, and I wondered myself, wouldn't fireworks be just the sort of noise that would aggravate your shoulder?