In which I visit Whanganui and smash stuff

To my amazement, I made it to Whhhhhhhanganui (sorry Mr Laws). I liked the place, to my surprise. It's got a river (what? really?), a river mouth and a coast, just like Riverton only on a grander scale. It has hills also, just like home, and diversity of housing and from what I could see, people. The opportunity for me to visit the place came through my being in Feilding for the Manawatu Garden Festival at which I'm speaking, and my host Ron's keeness to nip over to Whanganui for a break from the garden biz. I didn't see Laws berating anyone on the street, nor did I see patchless gangsters in the malls but I could imagine both disturbing scenes easily enough. Back in Feilding, the pong of sheep poo had largely disappated and the bleating entirely ceased - the countries biggest stock sale was held in the town yesterday and it did make its presence felt, or rather smelt. There are 5 'opportunity' shops here though, so I'm not going to cast the town in a bad light. I bought a black bow-tie and a lovely copy of H.E.Bates 'The Darling Buds of May', along with a Fonterra 'Dairy for life' t-shirt. Go figure :-)
At the show, I had what I thought was a very successful session talking about planting by the moon - I'm being billed in the local papers as, 'The Moon Man', and the tent was filled to overflowing with interested listeners. Tomorrow's '14% bigger Super Moon' has played into my hands nicely and I'll weave that into my presentation, just as I did the lunacy of the duck hunters today. Best fun at the garden festival for me though, was the crockery smash-up. That's not what its called, but it involves throwing wooden blocks at old plates and cups stacked up on shelves - something I've loved to do at fairs since I was a young boy. I wondered if I could still bring 'em down the way I used to and the 'wow!' from the girl running the stall as I shattered the china without a miss, made me feel tremendous. Small things, eh!