Sometimes New Zealand broadcast television feels like a wasteland, so we set our weekly columnist Tara the tallest, most terrifying task imaginable: recapping The News.
The 6 o’clock news bulletin is a time-honoured tradition, like death and taxes and only finding one sock when you definitely need two. The News has always been there, yet who has time these days to sit down and watch an entire hour of it? Not me. My evenings are filled with a demanding regime of clipping my toenails and watering my already dead pot plants. Yep, I am rushed off my well-manicured feet.
But life’s too short for regrets and I needed to tick ‘watch the 6 o’clock news’ off my bucket list. So at 5.59pm last night I found myself in front of the telly, ready to be saturated in a torrential downpour of news and information. I watched 1 News, purely because it’s the default channel when my TV starts and I was too lazy to find the remote. That’s me: loyal to the brand, lazier than sin.
It was a big day in the fiery hellhole that newsreaders like to call ‘the real world’. Auckland had no water in their drinking fountains. There were more natural disasters than The Bible: fires, floods, and oh my days, the fog. The fog was out of control, an evil pandemic of low cloud suffocating the country, if not the entire world. Great news if you’re a foghorn, not so cool if you’re a plane. Or a water fountain. Or someone who doesn’t give a shit about the weather.
Approximately 82% of the bulletin was filled with weather content. We saw it from all angles: up high, down low, from the side, too slow. But who cares about tomorrow’s forecast, because Les from Nelson sent in a lovely photo of a bee on a sunflower and if that doesn’t warm your cold, dead heart then there’s nothing Daniel The Enthusiastic Weatherman or I can do to save you.
I watched the news, so you don’t have to. Here are the headlines you need to know.
Auckland Council introduces new water conservation policy
This kind of visionary thinking is exactly why we pay rates. I’ve worried about the planet ever since I heard we’re running out of chocolate, so if giving up water makes a difference for future generations then that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
Teresa May tells Europe to ‘Eff Off’
Seems fine.
It might rain or maybe not, nobody really knows for sure
“The weather forecast: it’s a bit like walking into an office building, into a lobby, you walk in and all of a sudden you see a purple elephant sitting in the corner of the room. You can’t avoid it.”
FFS Daniel, I just want to know if I need a cardigan tomorrow or not.
House wins Home of the Year
It looks like the set of The Secret Life of Four Year Olds to me, but what do I know, I still have a ‘Love, Life, Laugh’ sign sellotaped to my toilet door.
Invercargill is a sultry fireball of autumnal utopia
Daniel can’t believe it, I can’t believe it, Auckland’s dried up water fountains can’t believe it. Global warming, we salute you.
George Michael is still dead
1 News marked the pop legend’s funeral with a clip of George Michael singing “I’m sorry, I think I’m through”. I thought it was a live cross; got me right in the feels.
Farmer buys three tractory thingamajigs
Bloody legend.
Someone finally made a statue of Andrew Saville
Once Auckland sorts its pipes out, water will spurt out Statue Saville’s eyeballs on the hour every hour, and all will be right with the world.
Because they haven’t suffered enough
Weather update for Christchurch: no purple elephants. Not even one. When will those poor bastards catch a break?
Woman discovers Snapchat
The results, quite frankly, are HILARIOUS.
Writer withers and dies while waiting for weather forecast to end
Thank you, I think I’m through.
