Mike Riversdale

I miss them both so much 😞

Full name Sapphire, and she still remembers me whenever I go visit the kids home, awwww.

He's a big fella in statue terms, must've been quite the sight when Lawrence Makoare wandered onto set for the first time.

"King Kong Toilet", and that's all there is to say about that.

Lordy lord, the Internet eh, I started with " Māori fern " which took me  Wikipedia: Koru , and then click  New Zealand national korfball team , before click  Korball : Korfball (Dutch: korfbal) is a ball sport, with similarities to netball and basketball. It is played by two teams of eight players with four female players and four male players in each team. The objective is to throw a ball into a netless basket that is mounted on a 3.5 m (11.5 feet) high pole.

Where is this?

As I write this I'm not sure if the Gallipoli exhibition is still going on at Te Papa, I hope it is [ edit: yes it is, closes 25 Apr 2025 ] as it is, as I've said before , quite something and should be seen by many.

No. No, no, no, no! NO! I finally through these out earlier this year. 2 years after buying them and having tried one slice. I wanted them to be great, but no.

Everyones first visit to  The Roxy Cinema (Miramar, Wellington) involves a stop on the stairs to the upper lounge as the amazing Greg Broadmore ceiling mural looms into view.

My brother arrived in Wellington mid-afternoon and, after a brief rest, he wanted to break the jetlag by being on NZ time. So we went to the pub. I can't remember if it worked, however it was a wonderful way to welcome him back to Wellington.

My brother arrives in Wellington having plane hopped his way all the way from Sweden. And the start of a wonderful summer holiday with him.

"Guinness is good for you", so goes the marketing phrase. Well, 2 cans is even better 😁

One of the kids annual Kirk's Christmas tree decoration purchase.

I'm a sucker for perspective lines and when they come in the form of a glorious summer sunset it's even better.

This is brilliant - so immersive. Designed by Matthew Mazzotta. source: LinkedIn, Strati Georgopoulos post

This photo has not been edited in anyway, and when I took it I remember thinking, "This will be a daily photo one day", that day has arrived. We were watching the Phoenix play Brisbane at the Wellington Stadium (Dec 2018)  and it was loads of fun as the crowd love them a bit of football eh.

If you know Adam you know how much this photo is an absolute capture of much that is 2018 Adam.

It was only a few months ago that I learnt that, "You can't get burnt behind glass" ... colour me stunned (and not red) and apparently I was one of only a few on the planet to not know this. HOWEVER ...

"How many have you got Mike?" Ankle, inner arm, upper arm, shoulder.

A snap of an old sign on the side of a Wellington building leads me to the National Library site and voila a 1903-4 shot of it. Love it.

I got me a new tattoo in December 2018, the Einstein field equations for General Relativity. Why? Coz it's the most beautiful theory yet conceived. It describes the position and movement of everything in the known universe. And it is both right and wrong. When Einstein popped this out from his mind (fuck, isn't that just amazing), the universe we knew was static, not growing, not shrinking, just what it it was. And yet his theory indicated a dynamic universe, but wha? So Albert popped in the cosmological constant , the Λ (lambda) symbol to make sure it all worked out for a constant universe. Hubble looked up, did some calculations, "Oh well, the universe is expanding , look at that data". Einstein went, "Ah, fuck!", or actually, " That was my greatest blunder ". Buuuuut. It seems the universe isn't quite perfect with the Cosmological Constant being 0 (ie, not involved), it needs some value ... possibly . So when Einstein was wrong it turns

Ping! Slap, Slap, Slap! Bash, Ping, Ding, Rattle, Slap, Slap! Ping!

This article,  A Scientific Explanation for Your Urge to Sniff Old Books , reminded me of my favourite ever talk I gave, " The Glorious Smell Of A New Book " - article  here . If anyone wants me to give the talk again, even if it's just to yourself, I am up for that.

We all know about the paranormal activities that Wellington experiences on a  serial basis . But did you know about the alien Tripod invasion?

The Queen Victoria statue on Cambridge Terrace with a stunning blue summer twilight backdrop.

Lunch at the Basin Reserve and they let the crowd run around the ground pretending to be cricketers.

During games there are chances to take a kick through the posts (and over the post, you know what I mean) to gain points. A successful conversion of a try gives 2 points whilst a successful penalty kick gains 3 points. A drop kick, rare these days, gives 3 points. Every now and again a kick will hit either the left or right upright and extremely rare land on the crossbar. These ricochet around either over for the points of back into play for a lolly scramble. So, I'm proposing an addition to this situation ... BEFORE any intentional kick for points (conversion, penalty, or drop kick) the kicker must indicate to, and be acknowledged by, the referee that they are going for either the left upright, or right upright, or the cross bar. a) IF the ball directly hits the nominated upright at or above the level of the cross bar THEN it is 5 points. b) IF the ball directly hits the cross bar AND goes over THEN it is 7 points. IF either situation 'a' OR 'b' AND the nominated u

I have come to love test match cricket and appreciate that common points made by naysayers are the reasons exactly why. "It's so slow!" yup. "It takes five fucking days", indeed. "Nothing ever happens", mostly. "The jargon makes no sense", can do. "There's no damn point to it", it's a sport. "It's so complicated", sure. I hope soon to lying on the grassy bank, radio commentary flowing into one ear as I sun myself, thinking about maybe perhaps wandering off for a second beer.

December 2018 and a Boyle family has actual laughs via a virtual catch-up. Makes me glow to see everyone so happy even though life was silently working to irrevocably change it.

OMG! Following on from my re-posting of 20 year-old articles from mates around the world in what was known as The Forum (a Web 1.0 version of blogging / 'social media') my mate Kate has sent in a new one for us all ... how friggin' awesome eh. And she's gonna do more, yay, The Forum returns! Off to panto rehearsal...  oh yes I am !!!!! 😍 POST – IT FROM LONDON - November 2021 – Kate Ayres “The Anniversary Edition” Firstly, Happy 20th Anniversary from the “post-it” blogger!  Yes, it’s been that long since myself and Mike Riversdale sent monthly or bi-monthly missives from opposite parts of the world and to celebrate and remember these fantastic posts charting modern social history, I am writing again from the comfort of my laptop and in my PJs...  Oh how very Post Pandemic ironic ! So, let’s start the posting.  It’s all go in the UK, or namely Glasgow in Scotland, most of the world’s leaders are attending the COP26 Climate Change Summit.  It’s been controversial since i

If the Faraway tree could just grow high enough it would poke through the clouds and into yet another weird and wonderful land.

The 'elecat', whilst rare and certainly hardly ever photographed, is happy to cuddle upon a human blanket, and this specimen is especially attracted to blue ones.

The Museum Of Curiosity is straight out of the QI stable , co-hosted by John Lloyd (the Professor Of Ignorance) and a series changing Curator of the museum - I think it's always a comedian. Currently, in series 16, this is the very fast and funny Holly Walsh. There's a lovely  John Lloyd video  from 2013 explaining what the show is (and isn't). In essence the virtual and infinitely sized Museum Of Curiosity invites 3 people along each week to donate an item for all to see and wonder at - these can be anything and everything, a feeling, an actual object, the universe, anything at all. We then hear why it should be preserved and exhibited and what it means to the person - it's fascinating stuff.

Green clouds (no, not really) herald the arrival of the Wicked Witch Of The East.

I like the Garage Project Champagne Pilsner, it's a very nice beer indeed.

You know how it goes with most podcasts, invite a guest along, put them in a situation, use that to find out about their life and outlooks. It's what we did with Access Granted NZ, it's what most podcasts I listen to do, and it's bloody hard to make engaging week in week out. When you are top UK comedians Ed Gamble and James Acaster it's probably no easier but man alive they make it sound like it is. Especially James Acaster, he just does what the fuck he wants without (mostly) shagging up the format. The Off Menu podcast is a lot of fun asking the guest what are the components of their perfect meal, starting with still or sparkling water and ending with, what desert? It of course raises the question, "Poppadom or bread? POPPADOM OR BREAD??" ... I think it will have to be bread, just as  Meera Syal wanted, warm, crusty and with salty butter. I'd urge you to go back through their back catalogue as there are some classics among them, and if you need a star

When I was on the Breaker Bay committee I was fascinated by those that had lived for a long time in the area, many having been brought up there from children. They were rightly proud of the community they belonged to, had a deep desire to look after the environment, and were highly critical of "experts coming in and telling us how to do things in our own backyard". As Breaker Bay was mostly elderly white people I found that last part ironic and another example of how deep and blind Kiwis can be to the history of the country. It is also exhibits an unwarranted confidence in their own ability to deal with a world that is changing at an exponential rate. Without people that have worked hard at understanding the unwarranted changes we are going to be lost. These people, these experts, will have the ways forward. These experts will also have to work WITH the locals. Those that live in a place do indeed know the intricacies of their area, the weird ways the environment has reacted

A very different video from Destin who's usual fare is "Wow, look at that, now let's work out the science behind why we saw ..." There's a load of insightful comments about online privacy. As for the product call it turns out to be I'm not so sure. Not that they are trying to create something dodgy more that it's been tried and failed before ... but hey, product creation is a lot about timing so ... 

The yellow brick road turns into the yellow planked wharf.