The posters encouraging voter turnout for Wellington's local body election have lead to some Twitter groaning. The 'Declare your love for Wellington' campaign panders to the "craft beer, hipster beard" stereotype of the city, which many locals don't relate to. Thankfully some wag has added their own, more accurate, strapline to these ones in Leeds St.
Beer's in the pipeline
A Belgian brewery is turning on the taps of a pipeline buried beneath the medieval city of Bruges to transport its beer to a bottling plant 3km away. The Halve Maan (Half Moon) brewery says the pipe that will solve the problem of their beer-laden trucks weighing more than 40 tonnes manoeuvring down tight cobbled lanes of the city centre, which is now swarming with tourists. Managing director Xavier Vannest, said the idea of a pipe had seemed crazy until he saw workmen laying underground cables and started looking into it. The pipeline cost 4 million ($4.5m). Halve Maan received a government subsidy but also raised about 350,000 through crowdfunding, paying contributors back in beer. Those paying the top-rate 7500 will be rewarded with a bottle of Brugse Zot every day for the rest of their lives.
Coffee and Bun: the real story revealed
The real story of Catherine Hill is in Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. She was a familiar figure at the Frankton Railway Station, but it was not her son who went off to World War II who she was waiting for, as Friday's reader suggested. "It was widely believed that she had lived in the town since World War I and that her mind had been affected by her fiance's death in the war, so she walked to the station to meet all the passenger trains in the hope of seeing him again. Her 'Coffee and Bun' nickname came from her habit of ordering coffee and a bun while she waited at the station." However after her death the daughter of one of Hill's few friends told the Waikato Times that the fiance story was untrue and "that she was simply a proud, independent and lonely woman, estranged from her family, who sought company at the railway station". The full story of Catherine Hill ('Coffee and Bun') go here.
