Gluten free dog food, organic cauliflowers and Commander Rob Green still being spied on.

Several blogless days since I last bloggered around and nothing to say. Does that mean I'm now a Kiwi strong in my silence and defending to the death my right to have nothing to say? Or does it just mean I'm too exhasted preparing and giving lectures to have anything else to say?

It certainly means we've not been out and about much since the retreat from Reefton. Why bother when we've had such awful weather more winter in Sowerby Bridge than Christchurch in the summer. Rain, cold,wind alternating with a couple of days so hot its been enervating removing the will to live as well as the desire to do anything. They blame it on El Niño but I imagine that that's because the government doesn't want to admit its due to global warming.

It didn't however stop an interesting piece of sociology when we discovered the great social gulf between two New Zealands as demonstrated by the different crowds attending the Riccarton Race course market held on Sundays and the Riccarton Bush Market round Deans house on Saturdays.

The Racecourse is ordinary folk. Cheap-particularly books with serious stuff going for $3 a volume, trash a bit pricier, cheery and cheerful. Tonnes of tat, tools and hamburgers where kids run around uncontrolled while mums sort through the plates and dads try the gardening equipment.

 At the bush by contrast its more up market, middle Kiwis and social climbers better dressed with carefully controlled kids all buying organic food at exhorbitant prices (we saw organic cauliflowers at $5) gluten free dog food and posh pies. They all arrive in bigger cars than the humble Toyotas and Hondas at the race course which means it's impossible to park for streets around.

Racecourse more fun. Bush better socially, particularly for  gluten free gentry. Race course less well off Christchurch. Bush more Fendalton. Racecourse Labour. Bush Green 

Apart from that Mrs Lincoln did you enjoy the show? Yet both. But what else have we done. We went to a mass protest meeting against  TransPacific Partnership agreement. But late because it's signed this week-appropriately enough at the Auckland Casino cos it's a major gamble. Essentially it's an American effort to make the world fit for US multinationals to profit in an argument well put (insofar as I could hear it) by Jane Kelsey and an American opponent.

 Great crowd with the hairy left and ordinary folk, all rightly worried because it's being foisted on them without consultation. It's another, and fairly final step to open NZ up to the world and a step too far in my view. No report appeared in the Press as if the meeting had never taken place. Next day though there was a report in the ODT on the Dunedin meeting the next night.

Also went to dinner with Rob Green who's still facing interference with his mail which can only be the British secret service trying to put the frighteners on him. He's right of course. The killing of his aunt Hilda Morrell was a mysterious affair in which the nuclear lobby contractors must have played a part. The kid who went to prison for killing her indicated that there was someone else in the house and seems to have been promised money for taking the rap. When he comes out it won't be worth much and he'll be able to get more by spelling the beans. Tam Dalyell told me when I took it up that there's something fishy about the whole business and I'm sure he was right.

Aside from that now at lecture nine and no one's thrown anything yet though the class are all searched for weapons before I begin. So far the thesis is working out well though I now have to decide what to give my public lecture on(29th February). Brexit is in the news but boring. Pavlova revisited is a comedy routine not an academic performance and I don't think they'd want the Whigs in Opposition 1812-1830. 

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