Goodnight Kiwi

Try talking about the Goodnight Kiwi to kids today and you'll get a puzzled look. Their questions go like this:

• What do you mean 'when tv closed for the night'?
• What was on after that?
• How could there be no tv until 11am (or 2pm??)? What was there instead?
• What's a 'test pattern'?
• Oh, you mean it was played before the infomercials start?

No, no, and oh no.

My dad used to get in trouble with my mum for waking me up occasionally to watch the television closedown late at night. All kiwis of a certain age will know the tune (Hine e Hine), and smile nostalgically as they remember Goodnight Kiwi closing up for the night before going to sleep in his satellite dish. Watching it again this morning, for the first time in years, I chuckled at Kiwi putting out his milk bottle, and wondered again how the cat could have made it up the tower faster than Kiwi, who took the lift.

*contented sigh*