Somewhere...

One of the great curses of this age is department store music.

Many years ago I had a job at the DIC in Lower Hutt. My job was to blow up balloons. I shared a small room with the DIC's resident sign-writer, a pretty young woman whose main concern at the time was how would she get the racy photos her boyfriend took of her developed.

Good college Photography Club member that I was, I politely offered to develop them for her... she just as politely declined...

But I digress, my other main task was to keep the store music going, I was allowed to leave our little room now & then & sample anything from the store's record section.

Note to younger readers: "Records" are what we had before CDs & electricity were invented.

I nearly got fired, because for one day straight I played an album of "oompapah" leiderhosen music on continuous loop. Yodelling. The store manager suddenly burst into our room, waved his finger at me & said "Once more & you're out of here".

it was tempting...

SO this lunchtime I was in Kirk's looking for a birthday present for my neice. And I suddenly realised the sound system was regaling us with an overblown instrumental version of songs from West Side Story.

Resisting the urge to break into "Somewhere", I moved on...

...to Capital on the Quay, where they were playing the original soundtrack to High Society.

It almost makes me nostalgic for Christmas songs.

After that I got my little briefcase & my grey macintosh & took my usual post on the pavement between Whitcoulls & Westpac, and handed out religious flyers, just as I have for the last several decades, with the odd extended break here & there... I imagine some people might wonder where I go to at these times. Best not to mention it's Vegas....

"You must be reborn!" I called out, and some wag that I remember used to stagger drunkenly out of Barrett's Hotel on Friday nights in the early 80s responded "My mum wouldn't be impressed". Tosser.

And now, the good lord's work done for today, it's home to blog the latest, and spend a few hours with the PS2 & Grand Theft Auto... missed Dr Phil again, I must change my schedule...

I wonder who I'll be tomorrow then...