A business day today – we compiled a long list, + headed in. Changed our air ticket time + place. Advanced it to Friday, + altered the destination to Melbourne (paying $40 each for the privilege, making our tickets about $460 each – makes you want to cry). Decided to fly to Melbourne, so we wouldn’t have to travel the Sydney/Melbourne stretch twice, but really we weren’t all that keen on going to Melbourne at all – if it hadn’t been for Val’s uncle, we wouldn’t have bothered. Various other city chores performed, we took the afternoon to see “Tootsie” with Dustin Hoffman. Not a hilarious rib-acher, but a fine + splendid film, Dustin Hoffman at his best for years. In other hands, it could have been tacky farce – as it was, it was moving, funny, + pointed. A pity it competed with Gandhi for awards, I think. We spent, once again, a lazy evening back at Darvel Road (pictured.)
Just getting ourselves ready for leaving for Australia, our sight-seeing in New Zealand almost done. At one time, Dustin Hoffman was my absolute favourite actor, and I saw just about all his early films, from The Graduate onwards.
I understand, by the way, from various readers of the blog (well, Val and Kev) that they failed to understand the “joke” involved in the post on April 18th, and, looking at the picture again, I can see that the photo is not as clear as I had supposed. But where it says “Turn on lights” you will see that some one has painted an arrow, which leads to a small domestic light switch that they have helpfully screwed on. Get it now? It certainly tickled me at the time.
Kevan Baker
Glad to see my humour failure is in very good company