To Morningside, for life. I went to the Craccum party last night; I'm in with the in crowd. We swayed to the gentle sounds of the Body Corporate and the Dilettantes, playing live in Simon's sitting room. We talked (Derrida, the Pre-Socratics, robots, that sort of thing), we danced, we drank. And then we ran out of drink. And then came the dread realisation that it was past midnight and today was Good Friday, the day on which everything closes. There was no drink to be had.
Why does this happen? Yes I know, it's because Jesus died, for our Sins. Then he took a weekend off from being alive. Then he stopped being dead on Monday. Then he went away again, to be with his Father and his Ghost, or something like that. For this we get two holidays; but we are not allowed to do anything that involves buying things. Thanks Jesus.
Any anyway, this is not necessarily the day he died, because Easter is a Moveable Feast and it does a lot of moving. The Book of Common Prayer includes a useful guide to calculating when it will happen each year. A minority of us will be going to church to mourn the death of Jesus, knowing all the time that he came back later; so, although he really died, he didn't really, really die.
For this, the majority of us are condemned to the slowest day of the year. We can go to dairies and petrol stations and buy some of the stuff we would normally buy in a supermarket, but at inflated prices. Apart from that, we can buy souvenirs and not much else. If you own a shop, you can open it, if it is in Parnell, but not up the road in Newmarket. If you are a retail magnate, you can open your shops in Queenstown and Taupo but not those in Rotorua, Mt Maunganui and Wanaka. If you are a Labour Department inspector, you will be prowling the streets looking for transgressors.
Oh well, at least I got a chocolate egg.
4 comments:
Never mind, Paul, the shops will be open tomorrow. May I recommend that you find a bookshop where you can browse a copy of The Book of Common Crap (aka Maxim’s latest tract, Pursuing Social Justice in New Zealand)? I flicked through it last week and could scarcely suppress a snort at Muriel Newman’s contribution. I wonder if she consulted “New Zealand’s most well-known historian” to check the facts?
There was a rather vitriolic letter in the herald today about easter trading.
You mean the one about streakers or the one about families?
I liked the letter about God and Reality which ended: "The one who is above 'superstition,' the one who will not acknowledge sin, is the one who once again will find belief impossible." Yes, that would be me, I guess.
I'm pretty sure it mentioned families. At least we can still smack strippers and hookers - even if we have to pay for it .
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