knickerbocker holiday

Heh, the things you end up doing when you're on holidays.

So, we got lost in Oamaru and accidently found ourselves in a little neighbourhood where all of the buildings are from the Victorian period and made of limestone.

Turns out there's a little Victoriana thing happening, with a bicycle museum dedicated to penny farthings and the like (I know, I get lost and find a bicycle museum - what are the odds, right?)

Also in this area is a shop dedicating to clothing from the 1890s through to the 1920s. I'm not kidding. They make a lot of the clothes on site for re-enacters and the vintage car people.

I just happened to find a pair of early 1910s style knickerbockers. They just happened to fit me very comfortably. This, in spite of the fact that they were made on site for a "random" size (which wasn't even on the pants) and I'm a girl with girl-shaped hips.

Yes, I know the pants are technically gender inappropriate (a phrase that can describe far too much of my wardrobe), but I don't care.

I've decided that it's high time mens fashions from before the Revolution* became perfectly acceptable women's clothing today. Everyone who's ever watched Firefly would agree that mens styles from the late 1800s look pretty good on women, and I think we should just bring steampunk into the mainstream with high waisted pants and braces for all.

I will admit that I still want a pair of bloomers (and a matching basque), but I know I'll also have to get the foundation garments to go with it. Quite frankly, the thought of wearing a corset (whale bone or otherwise) chemise, drawers and a dickie in the tropics is unappealing - especially when you're wearing the other clothes on top of all that**. Men's fashions from the period were much more flexible and allowed for more movement (hey, look! Nothing's changed!).

Join with me, all of you. Men and women alike. It's time we started mixing and matching the fashions of the last two hundred years. Empire line dresses with sneakers one day, knickerbockers and T-Shirts the next. What a bright and glorious future it will be***.


*Nothing too political folks (depending on your point of view). I'm talking about the sexual revolution in the Sixties - you know, the one were it started to become perfectly normal for a woman to wear jeans and a T-Shirt without having to explain to her father why she still dresses like a boy even though she's past 18 and should start wearing more pretty dresses if she wants to land a husband any time soon - thus paving the way for those horrendous power suits in the 1980s.

**I once had a strange desire to go around dressed in nothing but a chemise, corset, pair of drawers and multiple layers of petticoats (standard "foundation garments" from the mid-to-late Victorian period) and see if anyone noticed that a) I was walking around in public in nothing but my underwear, and b) I was still wearing more clothes than anyone else.

***Okay, I'm possibly not crazy enough to actually expect anyone to join me in this endeavour. I'm not even crazy enough to actually join myself in this endeavour - but largely because I know I'll have to sew my own clothes if I want to do this economically, and that's not something I'm likely to take up any time soon.

****Bonus footnote: Interestingly, women's fashions do shadow mens fashions from several decades ago more than you may think. I once bought women's vests from the 80s to dress a couple of actors who were playing men in the 20s, because the cut of mens vests in the era were closer to women's clothes from the 80s than mens clothes from today.

Wanaka - or "One Lane Bridge"

Two things I have discovered in the past three days:

1. New Zealanders don't think their bridges through when they build them
2. Wanaka is very pretty. And Puzzling World rocks. I would have put an exclamation mark after that point, but this keyboard won't let me. Thus there shall be no exclamations.

I don't know what it's like on the North Island of the Land of the Long White Cloud, but in the South Island, they have a fondness for single lane bridges. All well and good when it's a little bridge over a little creek in the backroutes and side-roads. When it's a) the major road, b) a major river and c) shared with a train line... well then it gets a bit ridiculous.

I've lost count of the number of bridges I've driven over in the last two days, but I can count on one hand the number which had more than one lane. Of the single lane bridges, some of them were long enough that you couldn't clearly see if there was a car at the other end. Some had "queues" that started around blind corners on winding road through steep mountains. It's not good, people. It's just not good.

Not only that, but there were some pretty serious bridges. We're talking cast-iron suspension bridges, cable-stayed bridges, and truss bridges. These costs some serious money and engineering. Roughly the same amount of money and engineering it would have cost them to make it a two lane bridge. Yes, two lanes cost more, but not as much as two seperate bridges. A single lane bridge is a false economy - ask any engineer worth his/her salt.

Anyway, running out of time at this kiosk, so: Wanaka.

If you come to the South Island of New Zealand, you must come to Wanaka. You must go to Puzzling World, which is on the way into Wanaka (it's soooo much fun. Illusion rooms, a multi-level branch maze and a shop full of puzzles and games), and you must go for a walk along Wanaka Lake for some mighty fine scenery.

This cannot be avoided. If you go to the South Island and do not go to Wanaka, the good holiday fairies will hit you over the head and refuse to give you as much fun somewhere else.

That is all.

Away with me!

If anyone is interested in such things, I'm leaving town. And the country.

I may be hard to contact for a while.

Say, if anyone finds a body in the boot of an abandoned car in the car park outside the Fisheries building...

I didn't do it.

Strange Days - Or, Welcome to the Real World

I regularly communicate with a man named Colm (hi, Colm!).

Colm and I have never met. We've never been introduced. We've never even started a conversation with each other. In fact, this post marks the first time I have ever produced the words "hi, Colm" in my entire life.

I've never seen Colm or spoken to him. I've never written him a letter or an email - or sent him a text message. He's never written to me. I only know what he looks like thanks to one picture, which I saw for the first time some months after I started communicating with him. He did not send me the picture, just as I have never sent him a picture of myself - although he has seen one.

We've never been in the same country at the same time. We have walked some of the same streets, but months apart. Even if we had been walking down the same street at the same time, we probably would have walked passed each other without a flicker of recognition. We do not know any of the same people and, as far as I know, none of the people we know know each other.

We move in different circles on different sides of the world.

Yet, I know more about Colm than I do about many of the people who work my building. I know where he lives (not an exact address, but a rough ballpark). I know who he lives with. I know what he does for a living, where he works and when he got that job. I know where he was born (again, just a ballpark). I know what his highest educational qualification is. I know what he thinks about issues ranging from gay marriage to the use of English in the Eurovision Song Contest. I know English is his native language, but he doesn't particularly like it. I know he finds the last days of Autumn in Estonia miserable. I know he's thinking about buying a new computer, but he's hoping to avoid it for as long as possible. I know what he usually eats for breakfast.

If you asked him, he could probably tell you he knows a similar range of facts about me. He's never particularly told me any of these things, just like I've never particularly told him most of the details he knows about my life. This information is a matter of public record - anyone in the world could find out these details. Heck, anyone in the world could read every word Colm and I have written to each other.

I know Colm because there are a couple of blogs which we both read and comment on. After reading each other's comments on these blogs for a while, we started reading and commenting on each other's blogs. Pretty much every word we've ever "said" to each other has been in relation to a blog post first produced for the world at large.

If you asked me to classify my "relationship" with Colm, I'd put us in the same bracket as people who eat lunch in the same staff-room and often participate in the same conversations. Friendly acquaintances, I guess. Friendly acquaintances who've never met and don't know any of the same people...

Except the men who write those two blogs. I know more about those guys than I should, as well - considering I've never met them, either. Heck, I've even seen pictures of their children.

Oh, and the reason why I read those blogs? My cousin got me onto them. A cousin I haven't spoken to in person for over ten years.

Crazy world.