my 10 bucks worth

Tonight I'm reporting from Dunedin - the world's most Southern Scottish city - I'm staying over night on my way to Clinton, yes Clinton, you know Clinton, yeah, yeah Clinton is on the way to Gore with the Taxidermist shop. Clinton prides it's self on being a two horse town and is basically a corner on State Hwy 1.

I'm going there to be the official at the Otago/Southland Regional AGM.

So back to Dunedin. A surprisingly warmish evening, dark early, early and plenty of people abroad on the streets. Mags is with me and we couldn't decide is there really was lots of people or if we needed spend time in larger towns where there are groups of people larger than the pairs we see in Leeston.

Plus there were many people with parcels wrapped in newspaper - intriguing...... after a hot chocolate seated on the edge of the Octagon, Mags asked our waitress to be told that Dunedin was hosting the 30th annual 24 Hour Book Sale at the old Regent Theatre to save the Regent Theatre - their goal is to raise $100,000.

We wandered along and into the theatre and this is what we were greeted with endless rows of books - these are just the Mills and Boons (yes I do realise you can see the end of the row of books here). The paper reported there are more than 300,000 books for sale, collected over the year preparing for this one full-on day and night.

And the people - mums and dads making the most of an evenings entertainment, children with arm fulls of picture books, students grabbing large textbooks, geeks trolling the sci-fi section, black wearing, serious looking people in the New Zealand book section, book buyers from North Island scooping up bags and bags of books to take home to sell....

I practiced restraint and came back to the hotel with 9 books and only 8 were for me. Mine were a dollar each and Mags splashed out with my $10 and got herself a $2 book. I added a Diana Gabaldon book to my collection of one so to be seven, found "Roots" which I read lying on a beach in Tuscany (sounds glamorous, not so much in reality) and a bunch of summer reading books which I plan to aid my deluded fantasy that it is summer while lying very close to the fire during the deepest and darkest winter days coming up.

Impressive and fun project Dunedin! Yay for you and all your peoples.

Am currently watching American Idol and the hotel TV has unsynced the voices - it's like watching American Idol in a non-English speaking country.