And there was much rejoicing in the Village...

Jubilation in the village last night. Feasting, drinking & carousing. Friday will be worse.

That's Kelburn Village, the hub of a suburb populated with a mix of white, middle class citizenry, and the fledgling middle class citizenry, not so white as they used to be, the students. Tomorrow's leaders....

And the Village was buzzing last night. Students clogged the shops buying... food, it looked like. I didn't check, but it was likely that the licquor store was doing a good trade too. And the topic of conversation? Aside from everyone (I kid you not, everyone) opining that Mark Blumsky fell down the stairs in a drunken stupor* (and this was opined in not necessarily unadmiring tones), was Labour's interest free student loan (blatant bribe - and opinion was not necessarily unadmiring of this either) promise.

Even the shopkeepers were in good spirits. Especially the ones with children with student loans.

Everyone laughing, and shouting, and pumping the air like Katie Holmes is waiting at home in the hot tub....

And me & Wilma? We were morose. Wilma, because she hates the shops anyway, and especially people trying to win her over & pat her... Me, because happy students do not bode well for peace & quiet & property damage free weekends.

When we first moved to Kelburn, it did not escape my attention that none of the houses in our part of the street had letterboxes. The next door neighbour told me that there was no point, when capping week came along, your letterbox disappeared. And every two weeks or so, all the cars parked kerbside would be vandalised. Drunken students coming home the universal suspects.

Our wheelie bin was taken one night, filled with concrete and dropped off the Kelburn viaduct. We drove home from SunnyO on the Sunday & laughed as we passed it "Some loser has lost their wheelie bin! hey, where's OUR wheelie bin?". Actually that happened twice, despite it being chained up after the first incident.

Fortunately, I paid a significant sum of money for a group of professionals to demolish our letterbox as part of a small suburban renewal programme a couple of weeks ago. SO aside from a sleepless couple of nights listing to revelry, we probably have nothing to worry about.

* To be fair, and to avoid DPF's righteous wrath, I can't see why he'd make up a bogus story if he'd had an accident like that. Blumsky is well known & liked around town & so such unkind speculation somewhat surprised me.