BDO - Levin Style

The following blog entry is to stop Marty (the only person I know without Facebook, who has to rely on Blogger for all updates and photos) from complaining about being left out. Stop your whinging now!

Marty is a man of adventurous spirit. He wanted to be whisked away somewhere dangerous and romantic. So I took him home to Levin for the night.

On Saturday it was time for a tour of the town. Sticking to the main highlights because time was limited (he'd bought tickets to Beckham, not knowing it would drag him away from Levin so quickly).

First stop was, of course, the Giant Market Gardener. Marty was duly impressed by his impressive stature and ethnically vague features. Lynne had said that on Friday she'd seen that someone had put a christmas decoration around his neck. When we got there it was evident that some young hoodlums had set fire to the decorations and all that was left was charred remains. This defacing of the Giant upset me greatly, so Marty took it off. Many people stopped and watched as he jumped into the shrubbery and interacted with the Giant. Then, as can only happen in small-town NZ, an old man stopped and had a yarn with me. He'd seen me photographing Marty with the Giant and thus assumed us to be tourists. He said quite happily, 'That's our China-man.' All the PC-Wellington-ness in me wanted to point out to him that China-man was a perhaps not an appropriate name..... scenes from Crash were flashing through my head. But I appreciated his sentiment in that he was trying to support Levin tourism. He went on to give a quick explanation of the importance of market gardening in Levin. I said, 'But I thought maybe he was supposed to be ethnically generic..... ' and the old man gave it a serious thought and said, 'Maybe...... but no....... he definitely looks like a China-man to me.'

 Next stop was to New World. We made a B-line to the bananas, which was where Ange toiled away during her years as a Produce-Girl while at T-coll. You could be guaranteed to walk in and find her restocking bananas 9/10 times you popped in.

Then a quick stop at the Salvation Army Shop and it was on to Levin's best cafe, Whispers. My local knowledge led me to order the mocchachino because I knew it came with a Sante Bar and marshmallows in the shapes of little duckies. Marty got a stink old boring old latte. He said it was ok though.

Luck would have it that we were in town on the day of the annual Gardeners' Club of Levin's flower show. We popped in for a look. Marty bought a ticket in the raffle. Good luck, Marty! He was taken by the succulants and I tried to talk him into entering one of his pot-plants next year.

We drove down to me and Ange's old school for a peek. It looks pretty flashed up since our days.

Last stop was the Adventure Playground. I had billed it as the best park in the world and Marty had been dubious. But by the end he had to agree.

He warmed up the trampoline for Dave (who did competitive trampolining at high school and has promised us a demonstration one day).

And helped a four year old girl hop up on the flying fox (forgetting the sign that said you had to be 10 years and above...... she lived..... it's ok.....).

He sucked at the rotating barrell thingie. Assed over right away.

I was awesome.

I am happy because I was having a skinny-photo day. That meant I could eat Burger Wisconsin for tea and not feel guilty.

The End.

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Two Quotes for me to Remember

"All that learning you did at school was super-fluous"

"I'm gonna go graffiti 'philanthripist' on his picture"