Beneath Shakespeare Cliff, all over Lonely Bay’s really quite lonely beach, lie broken and sea-smoothed bits of gastropod shell.
We’d seen such rough shell circles in New Zealand restaurants, used as napkin rings. That’s why we quickly had rings on our fingers (though no bells on toes.)
There’s something about New Zealand that makes people smile. How about this sign from coffeeshop Mariposa in Port Wells?
UNATTENDED CHILDREN
WILL BE GIVEN AN ESPRESSO
AND A FREE PUPPY.
We formed many hypotheses about Shakespeare Cliff. Mine was that William Shakespeare jumped off after some bad reviews. Frank says that it wasn’t William Shakespeare at all, just his boyfriend Cliff. So, which of them really wrote all those wonderful plays?
4 responses so far ↓
1 kea // Jan 31, 2008 at 1:46 am
I am glad to see you enjoying New Zealand! If you need some help figuring out what to do in the South Island, just give me a bell. I’m in Christchurch.
2 Betsy Devine // Feb 1, 2008 at 7:11 am
Thanks, kea! I would love to come hang out on the South Island some day, but please give me a rain check.
My daughter Amity says the South Island is even more scenic than the (beautiful) North. But then she also says that the kea is a parrot that preys on live sheep, so should I believe her?
3 kea // Feb 1, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Many kea were shot because they killed sheep, but they are now protected, and unfortunately endangered, although that isn’t obvious because they like to hang around humans, who are generally bad for their health. The powers that be didn’t believe they killed sheep until a farmer took a video of them doing it. They are very smart, with a tested intelligence comparable to some monkeys.
4 Betsy Devine // Feb 3, 2008 at 12:35 pm
You have to wonder what the tested intelligence is of some powers that be, when it takes a farmer with a video camera to set them straight.
And that reminds me of something the whole world owes to New Zealand: that doctors there bucked the conventional wisdom in the 1970s US that all babies must always be put to sleep on their stomachs. Otherwise, warned the powers that were, babies can choke on spit-up.
Eventually, a comparison study was done which showed that back-sleeping New Zealand babies had much better survival rates because the stomach position led to an increase in crib death that outweighed any decrease in choking. So it sometimes goes. Anyway, thank you, New Zealand!