Experience leaves bad taste
HATE to say this, but that’s your last threeday publicholiday weekend until the end of October. And that seems a long way off.
I hope you enjoyed Queen’s Birthday weekend and were safe and warm wherever you were. Seems like we had the best weather in the country, avoiding all the drizzle and rain falling in many other places north of the Waitaki River.
The highlight of my ‘‘short weekend’’ — it certainly wasn’t a long one as I worked Sunday and yesterday — was a lovely meal out with friends on Saturday night.
I won’t name the restaurant, or the type of cuisine, because of what I’m about to mention. But after we’d had a wonderfully tasty dinner, we asked for a doggy bag as there was still quite a bit left over. My friends were handed a plastic container and told to, basically, do it themselves.
So we scraped all the food out of the dishes into the container. I was pretty nonplussed as I’ve never known a doggybag request to be selfservice before. In fact, I think I said a little too loudly: ‘‘Let’s get out of here before they make us do the dishes as well.’’
Has anyone else had that experience before?
Plastic bags
L.D.H., of Andersons Bay, sent a letter she received some 36 years ago when she complained about the introduction of plastic bags in supermarkets.
Signed by John D. Maze, branch controller for the southern supermarkets of Woolworths (New Zealand), and dated April 26, 1982, the letter says alternatives to paper bags were sought when their costs ‘‘appeared alarmingly high’’ and there was no guarantee of a future supply.
‘‘We, in fact, trialled many different kinds of plastic bag, some of which have proven very successful in countries overseas. However, it would be fair to say that the article currently in use is not satisfactory, and we would advise that we intend to withdraw this from the market place and return to paper tub bags as soon as the plastic bags have been used.
‘‘The only reason for the change from the paper tub bag to plastic bags would be for cost reasons, and I am sure you will agree with me that it seems incredulous that articles grown, manufactured and supplied in New Zealand are substantially dearer than a plastic product whose base incorporates ingredients imported from overseas, but such are the whims of the market place.
‘‘I hope that the return to paper bags in our Andersons Bay store will see a more favourable comment from our many loyal customers.’’
L.D.H. says soon after receiving that letter the supermarket returned to paper bags, before succumbing to the inevitable avalanche of plastic products.
‘‘At least the paper bags used to stand up in the boot,’’ she says.
We couldn’t find any really old photos of the Andersons Bay Woolworths so I’ve used some of
its Mosgiel supermarket instead.
Memorable TV
Your television memories keep flooding in, thank you.
Shirley Hay, of Bishopscourt in Dunedin, remembers the excitement of an actionpacked evening in front of the TV.
‘‘My motherinlaw, who lived with us, bought the first television set in our little street in time for Dunedin’s first transmission. Several neighbours gathered and we all sat transfixed — glued to the (unmoving I think) test pattern.’’
Pat James says her husband worked in broadcasting during the 1960s.
‘‘From 1964 to 1967 we lived and he worked at the Dacre radio transmitter site in Southland. We used to watch, with lots of snow on the screen, the broadcast of The Untouchables from Dunedin and hope that radio finished promptly so the transmitters could be turned off, which slightly improved the picture.
‘‘It was wonderful when the Kuriwao and then Hedgehope transmitters came on line.’’
Brian Kane, of Green Island, has an interesting question for all you readers:
‘‘I’m curious to know what the first commercial advertisement might have been on DNTV1.
‘‘I have early recollections as a young teenager of a Sidchrome spanner ad with the spanners marching up the road singing a song — ‘You canna hand a man a grander spanner’.
‘‘I also recall watching the TV test pattern on the snowy screen for what seemed to be eternity.’’
Softball names
One more for Graham Latta, who is writing a book on the history of softball in Southland.
An anonymous caller said the woman fourth from the left in the back row of the photograph we ran last week is Lois Doudle.