Questionable place names

Dear all,

Greetings from a slightly earthquake threatened Christchurch. Yesterday there was quite a tremor here but thankfully no damage done really and I actually wasn’t quite here in time anyway. I was here in time for a lovely gig at Christchurch Folk Club last night to a packed house so thanks to you all for coming out, it was good to see such a wide range of ages present. To bring you up to speed, Hamilton was a good night with a cracking openening set by the Rhodes family, a quite ludicrously talented trio of frighteningly young lads with big futures ahead in the music world. Stay tuned! Then it was down to New Plymouth for a delightful gig at 4th Wall Theatre with a very nice crowd indeed so thanks to all you lot up there too. Then it was down to Wellington for a night off so a good tune session and a dram or two with some friends before heading over to the south island to begin that half of the tour. A long drive to Oamaru to kick things off. Ah Oamaru. What a lovely place – so relaxed and full of quirky artistic people! And better still a whisky shop selling exquisite rare whisky distilled in Dunedin at a distillery which closed 20 years ago so the whisky is beautifully matured. Apparently it often wins awards much to the chagrin of the Scottish whisky giants. I may have accidentally brought some back with me…As for the gig, what a delight! The Grainstore Gallery was packed (a LOT of extra chairs had to be brought out) and wonderfully whacky! Picture here…

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Pretty good eh? And a lovely and highly international crowd including some Geordies – lovely to hear that accent again! So a fair few gigs left out here in lovely New Zealand – there really is nowhere like it.

So a little humour before I sign off and actually get moving today – I am still in my jamas – I have a GPS/Sat Nav whatever you want to call it and it is my lifesaver. I am sadly cursed with one of the worst senses of direction known to man (thank God I don’t have a job where I need to know where I’m going eh?) so the GPS is my lifesaver and tells me reliably where to go. Anyway, I digress slightly. The way my sat nav works, I type in the city I’m aiming for and then select a street. The street I was looking for began with Sh so I typed that in and was astonished to see ‘Shag Valley’ come up. As if that wasn’t enough I scrolled through and discoverd ‘Shag Point’ as well! Otago clearly has certain streets…I was then informed that there is a bird called a shag out here but that gets in the way of a good story eh?