Quality in the provinces

On Sunday night I received an international call. It sounded like it was international, but not from a country that had good telecommunications, because the line was poor.
The heavily accented voice of a woman announced she was from Digipoll and proceeded to ask how I obtained information about products and service.
I replied that I asked questions, and then I enquired, was she calling from New Zealand? The line then went dead.
Interestingly, I have an unlisted number, so how did the caller manage to get my number?
I called Digipoll and received an apology and explanation.
The apology was for the caller who did not follow protocol and terminated before she identified the full content of the call. The human resources manager of the marketing research company based in Hamilton said the call would not have been from offshore, and the company employed a lot of different nationalities.
And what about my unlisted number? He explained that they used a computer system, which randomly selected telephone numbers because that gave them better market research results.
They then filtered out the numbers that were obsolete.
In this week's paper are cautions about being safe from unwanted attention from uninvited callers who helped themselves to your property.
Opportunists who have no sense of personal responsibility or respect for the hard work of those people who have toiled, probably have mortgages, and then had their property stolen.
Gone are the days when we could leave our doors unlocked, windows open, and when people actually left their car keys in the ignition when they went into town.
The landscape is very different. Safety is paramount and security uppermost in people's minds.
Law-abiding people deserve peace of mind.
Spring is budding everywhere and on Monday I saw my first calf. Doe-eyed and with a very loud call as it was carried to its mother, it then awkwardly stood as it tried to find balance on new legs.
Stopping to smell the roses comes to mind and in my case, the jasmine that cascades like a fountain near my carport or the pungent fragrance of daphne in a vase at Stratford Primary.
They're childhood fragrances that hold wonderful memories of a time when life was simple.
Everywhere I go I meet people with Stratford connections.
They or their grandparents once lived here. In Maori society we whakapapa to our turangawaewae, and even though we leave to work, live or travel, we know we will return someday. My guess is that if all the people with Stratford connections returned, you could become a city. And with the growing dissatisfaction of living in congested metro cities, people are looking to the provinces for a quality of life. New Zealand is the best country in which to live.