Robyn’s Secret Passage

A One-Act Play

The play is set in a second-hand shop in a small New Zealand coastal town. It’s a long weekend, so the town is full of visitors. One such visitor is MAN. He has come into the second-hand shop and has spotted an item he wishes to purchase (a driftwood sculpture clock, if you must know). He is attempting to negotiate a price with the shop LADY, but first he must run the gauntlet of conversation with her.

MAN: Hey, um, how much would that driftwood clock be?

LADY: Oh, that’s a nice one.

MAN: Yes, I like it.

LADY: Hey, you remind me of someone.

MAN: Oh yeah?

LADY: Who is it?

MAN: I dunno.

LADY: Oh, it’s that fulla from that TV show.

MAN: Well, I’m not on a TV show.

LADY: Jim! That Jim who’s on that TV show where they fix up people’s gardens.

MAN: Oh, really? I don’t think I’ve seen that one.

LADY: Now, what’s his last name?

MAN: I dunno.

LADY: He’s married to that Mary lady.

MAN: Well, I’m married to Sharon, so it’s not me.

LADY: Oh well. I just thought you might have known.

MAN: Nope.

LADY: We get all sorts of famous people in here. A couple of weeks ago we had that, ah, that Dom - Dom from New Zealand Idol.

MAN: Oh, is he the runner-up?

LADY: No, no, Dominic. He was the compere. He was in here.

MAN: That runner-up - he’s doing quite well.

LADY: Oh chroo, chroo.

MAN: Yeah, I was surprised he didn’t win.

LADY: Now, is he a Maori or an Islander?

MAN: Ah…

LADY: I saw him on TV, but he hasn’t been in here.

MAN: So, how much did you say that clock was?

LADY: Oh, that’s not for sale.

FIN

The dairy down the road had a TV on and there was something about New Zealand Fashion Week on it. Some runway action was being shown with a couple of ladies giving some commentary that sounded oddly like sports commentary.

I wasn’t really paying attention to it, but then suddenly one sentence jumped out at me:

“The black and white, which is representative of the whole Dunedin, grunge, university sort of thing.”

I didn’t see the garment or garments this described, but it strikes fear deep in my heart. I don’t want to go to Glassons in six months’ time and see a bunch of clothes inspired by starving Otago students. I don’t want big, ugly but designer polarfleece tunics or ill-fitting jeans. I don’t want my only scarf options in the winter of 2005 to be yellow and blue ones.

Fashion is tricky.

Today I also saw a definitive sign that Ugg boots are sooo over. Waddling in front of me as I walked down Queen Street was a young lady with a large arse, a shapeless sweatshirt, an equally shapeless denim skirt and a pair of dirty pink imitation Ugg boots. Not as in the colour “dirty pink”, but as in boots that were pink but got dirty. They looked awful. They looked they they should have been binned long ago.

But back to Fashion Week. It’s really is just a boring old trade show, but one where virtually everyone involved is really good looking, so it just seems that much more interesting. But in reality it’s looking at next season’s products, then boozing up at night, not unlike the Fieldays, only with slightly better looking cows.

The Name Popularity page is horribly addictive. It gives you charts and rankings of the popularity of names over the last 100 years. Enter a name and it will tell you how popular Britney, Lawanda or Gladys were as names over the years.

It’s based on American statistics, so it is skewed to American culture, but English name trends seem to be fairly global. After a quick look, I discovered the following:

Emma started off in the 1900s with a reasonably popular position at #39, but decline started and by the ’70s Emma was languishing in 420th, but suddenly, unexpectedly, Emma became popular again and by the ’90s was back up in 71st place.

Mary dominated the stats, hogging the #1 spot from the 1900s to the 1950s. Possibly being edged out by all the Rainbows and Butterflys in the ’60s, Mary jumped down to #2, and continued falling in popularity until it ended up at #41 in the ’90s.

Ashley didn’t even register a blip on the name tracker in the early years, with there only being enough Ashleys to start earn a place on the charts until the 1960s. But once the Ashley juggernaut started, it didn’t stop, powering on until it became the #1 girls name in the 1990s.

Amber was moderately popular, hovering in the 900s for the first two decades, but suddenly dropped off the scale in the ’20s and ’30s. It slowly emerged in the 1950s, then shot back up, reaching 18th place in the ’90s.

Robin peaked in the 1950s, which just goes to prove my theory that I have a middle-aged woman’s name.