Longwhitecloudadventures: Ministers, (prime and otherwise), bachelors, kiwis and christmas trees

So New Zealanders went to the polls a couple of weekends ago and these two chappies had plenty to look serious about. John Key (right of picture) and Phil Goff had idly bantered back and forth and openly slandered one another for weeks and the TV and ordinary folks like us were sighing under the pressure of the opposing ad campaigns. Mr John Key remains the King of the Castle and Mr Phil Goff has resigned as leader of the opposition (shades of scooping up his bucket and spade and stomping out of the sandpit) - in this case being the Labour party. Now just yesterday, the new leader was announced and along with that comes a mountain of work to re-instate the Labour party as a force to be reckoned with. The author and co had the privelege of voting for the first time and speaking only for myself, I have to say that I could not bring myself to place a tick or a cross or anything else for that matter beside the name of the opposition leader. You might ask, "how can you possibly know anything about him? Have you MET the man???" and my answer to you would be" Indeed, I have met the man, face to face and had a fairly long conversation with him ............. and mmm....yes!"

Here is a huge thumbs up for deaf and hearing impaired kiwis - for the first time, a profoundly deaf member of parliament! Mojo was born profoundly deaf and will require a few miracles of modern technology to be installed in the House so that she can be effective for her party and her constituents. A member of the Green party, she lip-reads, so they are going to have to get jacked up with screens and subtitles - something which she says she has been promoting for years - now there is no choice - it shall have to be done! Hearing her speak on the news the other evening, one cannot help but be impressed by her command of language and although one can pick up that she is deaf, you would never guess that she has been profoundly deaf since birth!

Faithful blog followers will remember our little South African lass who has won all sorts of accolades for her hairdressing skills - best apprentice and so on. If you go way back on this blog, you will also find a photograph of Mauritz sitting on a barstool in our house with a motorcycle crash helmet on his head and strumming a guitar.

Mauritz (pictured here doing the quick 5km bridges run last weekend) and Bonnita are marrying in January and this outfit was designed to make his bachelors party all the more spectacular. He appeared in the Wanganui Chronicle newspaper on Monday morning having spent a while attached to a light pole and dressed in this outfit - (the fishnet stockings are not all that clear in the picture) One of the neighbours beside the light pole apparently came out and asked whether it was his birthday or whether he was getting married. On being told it was the latter, she apparently said he looked like quite a good catch!

Richard O'Brien of Rocky Horror Picture Show fame (he played Riff Raff) has long been considered an adopted Kiwi - not so, we discovered this week. He was officially presented with his New Zealand citizenship at a ceremony in Wellington where a statue of him has been erected at the site of the old theatre which he evidently frequented all those years ago when he was a lowly hairdresser working in a salon across the street!

This is Evan Hill - featured on an evening magazine programme on Wednesday. An orthodontist has said this is the worst case of buck teeth he's seen and will cost in the region of $14,000 to fix - including surgery which will be required. Evan comes from a pretty poor family and the Public Health system is unable (or unwilling) to pay anything towards his treatment. The poor little guy is teased and mocked unmercifully and he is not really able to close his mouth over those choppers.

It was mentioned in passing that if anyone wanted to donate a dollar or two towards helping this family to get the teeth seen to (all the information came from a good samaritan neighbour) there has been a trust fund set up to see if we can help a bit. Last night the feedback report announced that there had been a pretty good response - the trust fund collected very close to $100,000 in the 24 hours since the broadcast!!! (That's half a million Rand chaps!) And remember too that the entire population of New Zealand is only in the region of 4 million people! The first thing they have done is take Evan and his dad to pick out a small economical run-around car so that he can get to the orthodontic appointments. Apparently, the boy has a little sister who is also going to need the same treatment - so it makes our hearts happy to see that folks do still care and want to help! Fabulous story don'cha think?