Big Mac or Fish and Chips?

Woke up this evening on the sofa in melancholy mood after recovering from an active public holiday Monday here in Wellington. With the music of the piper on the quay from this afternoon still ringing in my ears, I'm listening to the mysterious, delectable Gaelic tones of Iarla Ó Lionáird, one of my favourites. Táimse im' chodhladth... 'I am asleep and won't be wakened'. Well, chance would be a fine thing!

Living up to its reputation of rapidly changing weather here, the morning started with cloud and rain and a slight Southerly wind, then gradually eased itself into a glorious and almost windless afternoon that just had to be enjoyed down the hill, on the waterfront. Leaving the shock-absorberless Toyota Starlet at home with a good intention of serious fat burning after Doug's barbecue yesterday, I headed off at a brisk pace for a swim down in the Freyberg Fitness Centre. 40 lengths (1.3 kms) was enough and ended with a nasty cramp in the right calf so the fat burn had to continue with a brisk limp along the shore, around the main marina, stopping for photo opportunities (I'm still in tourist mode it seems), and then a beeline for Mac's Brewery Bar for some reverse fat burning; 3 pints of their smashing beer and a silly slimmers fush&chups, NZ style.

The main promenade was really busy with folks of all kinds propelling themselves as they do here, in a variety of fashions, walking, jogging, running, rolling, skating and cycling on devices of all shapes, sizes and capacities. Just a stones throw from the brewery terrace youths were propelling themselves bungie-style off of an approx. 7 metre drawbridge arch into the water...without a bungie. Kiwis.

A little further off the familiar sound of the Scottish pipes beckoned me to investigate a formidable Mac (who spoke nevertheless with a north American accent) resplendent in kilt and sporren, busking by the ferry jetty. The sporren doubled up as a case for his mobile phone: A Scottish innovation for the mobile market. 48 years of practice had not been wasted and those folks with a wee bit of Celtic blood in them, I assume, were happy to throw a few dollars for the show. Must say that I prefer the drones of the Irish Uilleann pipes much more than the Scottish variety, in both sound and contexts. But playing the Irish pipes well, they say, is a black art if ever there was one. Still I'm thinking maybe this is the country made for wannabe pipe players, even ones like me with only 1/8th Celtic ancestry. It could be quite lovely to sit up on a hill, in the wind, and practice your pipes to your hearts content without the slightest possibility of annoying the neighbours. But not in a kilt for me though. Far too chilly and overrated...sometimes said to have been invented by the Englishman, Thomas Rawlinson around 1727 and a few years later banned by the English parliament as a threat to the English way of life. In my efforts to live a healthier former Englishman's life I wonder if parliaments worldwide might lend a hand to the global fight against the flab by banning both the Big Mac and Fish and Chips. That would be progressive and surely a far more useful policy in these modern times than banning the skirt for men was in the mid-18th century?

(Pictures with Nikon D300)