An urban N.Z. baby-boomer and a Jack Russell terrier
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THE SHOCK OF THE NEW

23/4/2013

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Most of us now carry a phone which has a better memory and more brainpower than we do. I often feel like my smart phone’s slow-witted, slightly amnesiac maiden aunt. I am superior to my phone only because I command the off switch - and who knows how long this will last?
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I first saw a mobile phone at a seminar in Auckland sometime in the 1980s. A man arrived lugging - somewhat self-consciously – an object which looked like a car battery with a phone receiver perched on top of it. An urgent and excited whisper ran round the room - “.... a mobile phone ... it’s a mobile phone!” 
We all gawped as its owner considerately tucked the object under his chair so that no one would stub their toes on it or trip over it. At the first tea break, this fabled machine and this man (who we would now call an “early adopter”) was immediately the centre of an awed cluster of onlookers. I remember thinking that I would never be well-enough off to afford such a machine or the extraordinary per-minute cost of using one.  


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LIVELY PEOPLE - DEATHLY PROSE

9/4/2013

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Given that my poor teeth are only held together with gobs of amalgam, I really should not, ever, gnash them. However, sometimes gnashing (and possibly wailing) is the only proper response to extreme provocation. Take last Friday for example.
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I got up, after an only mildly insomniac night, to a gorgeous autumn morning and ingested my first two tablets of the day, before toasting a slightly aged Easter bun for breakfast. 
Several vast mugs of tea and another tablet later, confident of a pain-free day thanks to modern pharmaceuticals, I drove to the Positive Aging Expo at the Headingly Centre in Richmond. Welcomed at the entrance by the cheerful strains of an electronic organ, I joined the throng which ambulated, Zimmered or were wheeled along the aisles of products and services on display. Only God knows what combination and quantity of pharmaceuticals there were circulating in our collective veins but we were all terribly upbeat in spite of the fact that everything on display - with the possible exception of the “Miracle Chopping Board” and the model train, screams ill health, infirmity and decline. 


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    THE GREY URBANIST
    Ro Cambridge, is a freelance writer, 
    arts worker & columnist Here she reports on the oddities & serendipities of  urban life.  She roams Nelson city , NZ 
    with a tan & white Jack Russell. (Her original canine side-kick, Pete, who features in many of these posts died in 2015.

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