Valentine’s Day at the Oaks

Lifestyle staff Kim, Lidia and Ashlea held a special Valentine’s Day lunch for the married couples at the Oaks, with David providing entertaining music, playing the guitar and singing.

Advice from the three couples on how to have a happy relationship was to respect one another, listen and communicate well. The said it was important to share interests, but it was also okay to have time apart to focus on your own interests.

Phoebe and Ralph dance. The happily married couple say they do everything together.

Dridan

Tips to help if you are a supervising driver

A free presentation for anyone supervising a learner driver is being given at Gisborne Secondary College on 21 March.

The one-hour session will cover a range of topics, with practical information and helpful tips on how the Graduating Licencing System (GLS) works, taking a staged approach to learning, choosing a safe vehicle, reducing your learner’s risk of crashing on their Ps, and helping you and your learner stay calm and driving safely. Learners are encouraged to attend with their supervising driver, helping them develop a good foundation for a lifetime of safe driving.

The event is supported by Department of Transport and Planning, the TAC L2P Program, Bendigo Bank Gisborne and Gisborne Secondary College.

‘More than a licence – Everything a Supervising Driver needs to know’, Tuesday 21 March at 7pm Barcham Theatre, Gisborne Secondary College Bookings: bit.ly/3IkD1uA

Marching to a different beat

As I was waiting in a line of cars stopped to let the schoolkids cross in front of St Brigid’s one morning, something quite uncalled for entered my mind: Colonel Bogey.

I say uncalled for in the sense of unbidden. The Colonel Bogey March formed a tiny part which in direct reversal of its importance loomed large in my primary school days.

Every Monday morning the entire school would assemble on the asphalt to hear the principal, Mr Fowler (only ever Mr Fowler), a moustachioed fellow of imponderable years to our small minds and large eyes, tell of… I can’t remember what now.

It must have been important to why were all assembled there each and every Monday morning. And then at assembly’s end, it would boom from a large loudspeaker hooked menacingly over the verandah railing: Colonel Bogey’s March. And off we would pretend march to our respective classes. Why march? Who knows. A regimented step was a regimented mind? Quite possibly.

And after the music ended we would be seated at our desks, pencil to hand, or if in the older years, inkwell filled, staring towards the blackboard, not yet chalk marked, and above it what else but a picture of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II,

CROSSWORD Words starting with the letter ‘N’

Questions compiled by the late Graeme Millar and his daughter Heather ACROSS

1. This element forms nearly four fifths of the atmosphere

4. Trent Bridge Cricket Ground is in this city in England

5. The first US president to resign

6. French military leader of the early 1800s

8. The capital city of Cyprus

9. The world’s longest river

11. A person who lives in your vicinity

13. Country that borders Finland, Sweden and Russia

14. Victorian town with a statue of racehorse Black Caviar in main street

15. Where in the human body you find the jugular vein

16. Early race of man in Europe, becoming extinct over 20,000 years ago

DOWN

2. The study of coins or medals

3. To settle by bargaining

4. Eighth planet from the Sun

6. Indigenous landscape painter

7. The world capital of country music

8. Founder of modern nursing

10. The eleventh month of the year

11. Island off the east coast of Australia

12.Second-largest city in NSW

Reflections

Warwick McFadyen forever radiant and reigning over us.

The March was composed in 1914, the first year of WWI, by Lieutenant F J Ricketts under the pen name Kenneth Alford, who was an army bandmaster. It was spectacularly successful for its time and subsequent decades.

After the march passed to war and the parades, and its rendition by the common whistle, it made its way into film, debuting, quite naturally, in The Bridge Over the River Kwai in 1957, and has managed to thread its way into the ears ever since, even appearing in the seminal ’80s’ teen film The Breakfast Club in 1985.

But to the young minds standing at assembly at a little public primary school, it wasn’t so much music to our ears but the march of another time, foreign and uncomprehending. It was the past and they did things differently there.

Time itself marches on, and now there is a new cohort of kids starting school around the country who if they are lucky will never have to high-step it to dear old Colonel Bogey.

1 The Wars of the Roses were between the houses of Lancaster and which other house?

2 Which car manufacturer made the Yeti?

3 Which singer/songwriter was born Reginald Dwight?

4 The tiger is native to which continent?

5 Around which planet do we find the Galilean moons?

6 What kind of product is Stilton?

7 Proverbially, a stitch in time saves what?

8 In electronics the word “transistor” was made up from a combination of which two words?

9 What number does the Roman numeral XXVI represent?

10 Which is the only muscle in the human body to be attached at only one end?

Answers ►p39