Entries from February 2009 ↓

The Rugby 7’s tournament is here this weekend on its annual tour of countries that play rugby with 7 per team (oh god what do I know anyway?) Seems it’s more about gangs of people getting together and all dressing the same and drinking enormous amounts of alcohol and making their way through town to the stadium.

We had a coffee at a cafe with outdoor seating and watched some of the crazy fans walk and stumble by.

We saw rather a lot of costumes – here’s what we can remember:

• strawberry tarts
• Billy T’s (NZ comedian)
• Puss in Boots
• a carrot
• Spartan warriors
• army guys
• men dressed as women (including one with his dress & a piece of toilet paper caught in the back of his knickers)
• construction workers
• Girl Guides/Boy Scouts
• Smurfs
• Atom Ants
• Tangy Fruits (NZ sweets taken off the market this year after having been around forEVER)
• a yoghurt
• Heidi Klum from the Guitar Hero ad
• Mexicans
• Pirates
• bumble bees
• Pink Bats (insulation, as in the current TV ad)
• sailors
• sheep (all with ear tags with sheep-like names Baaaabara, Shaun, Rambo and one black sheep called Obaaaaaama)
• nurses
• Adam & Eve
• Rubics cube
• gridiron team (Wisconsin)
• Barbie/Ken
• i-Pod
• priest (with a toy kid stuck to the front of his trousers!)
• Mr Incredible
• life guards
• jockeys
• Fred Flinstones
• 3 blind visually impaired mice
• buzzy bees (class wooden NZ toy)
• Mormons (oh wait, they were actually some guys on their way to a wedding)

Now that they’ve rebuilt one side of Willis Street, they’ve started on the other. Not sure what’s going there though – thought the new office, apartments and shops on the first side were enough but perhaps not! There’s lots of old shops they’re pulling apart now – like Stirling Sports that was there for 25 years.

At least now we can see something’s happening. For a while there it was just end-of-line sales and boarded up windows – you could easily be mistaken in thinking that business was doomed in Wellington if you stumbled upon that part of town.