Kittens for Christmas!

Now look what she’s done! That annoying overfriendly stray, Pesky, had disappeared for a few days.

Great, thought I. She’s probably gone off and adopted some other family.

But what did we discover yesterday? A Christmas present under the bush …. kittens! Four of them!

So THAT'S were she was! Oh dear, now what?

Warm Christmases

I’m not really a Christmas person but if there has to be a Christmas let it be a warm one! This trait might be one I inherited from my mother who found any kind of festivities a stressful disruption to her normal day to day living. Christmas was way up there as the worst kind of stress ever. Entertaining sundry relatives couldn’t be avoided and to top it all it had to be accompanied with a kind of feigned joviality. Stress, stress and more stress! I reckon the negative vibes rubbed off on me - although my sister seems to be OK with Christmas. Maybe she got different genes!

I escaped Christmas when I went to live in India. Christmas is not one of their biggest festivals and can easily be ignored or celebrated with nothing more stressful that a cake for afternoon tea. Great!

On returning to UK I was reminded of how Christmas should be celebrated … in fact … Christmas was thrust upon me from all directions … on TV, radio, in shops, on the street … I couldn’t escape! I HATE being told that it is the season of joy and so I should be joyful!

Coming to New Zealand has given me my second chance to escape! OK, Christmas is celebrated here with some enthusiasm but it’s WARM and I can just go to the beach and ignore it!

And then there is the beautiful Pōhutukawa or New Zealand Christmas tree to admire! Here’s one I spotted while taking a walk along the harbour this morning. Lovely!

Our work party

Wine and wheels were combined to make our work Xmas party a rolling success. The 'do' was organised at a little local vineyard.

The girls got started on the bubbles ….

… then had a go on the wheels. Woooeee!!!!!

A speech by big boss temporarily put something of a damper on the proceedings. The enthusiastic clapping may have been more to do with the anticipated lunch to follow than the speech itself.

Lunch was followed by more wine and beer …

... and more wheelie stuff.

A good time was had by all. Well, almost all ……

Wink! Maybe he was just admiring his toes or watching the grass grow!

What IS that?

Whistling a merry tune, I arrived at work to find this on my desk!

A giant cracker! A quick look around tells me that every desk has one. Ok, so I’m not the sole target of some kind of ‘week before Christmas’ joke.

Steve arrives. Oh look, a giant sausage, says he. The label tells us that it is a gift from a ‘higher-up the corporate ladder’ person thanking us for our great work and wishing us a happy festive season. That’s OK then, it’s probably not a dodgy parcel that should be reported to security rather than be meddled with.

Bravely, we tackle the wrapping … taking care not to tear it. I haven’t bought any Christmas-type wrapping paper … so … this red stuff might be useful!

All is finally revealed. It’s a towel!

Call me ungrateful … but it’s a towel! A nice blue beach towel … but a towel! Probably up there with socks and hankies as the most boring present ever! Hmmmmmmm!

Pesky …

She’s a stray who has adopted us. Annoyingly overly friendly animal named by my daughter …. pesky she certainly is.

The weather forecast that followed the previous night’s news had plenty of dark clouds scattered all over my region of the map. But what happens? I wake up to warm bright sunshine! Great! But now I have to rethink my day … Pesky has no such problem.

Why is it that the weather people treat us like dummies with their maps scattered with simplistic pictures of sun, light grey clouds, dark clouds, clouds leaking water droplets.? We all know it is notoriously difficult to make accurate, short term forecasts of the weather in this corner of the world. Knowing that why do we take the forecast seriously? Knowing that why don't the forecasters truthfully tell us that 'for the next x number of days everything is very unsettled and we don't know whether it will rain or shine'?

Pesky’s clearly got it sorted … just go with the flow and if all else fails … snoozzzzzzze!

Worm’s eye view of washing day

Imagine the scene.
The sun is shining.
I’m working from home so I can’t resist putting a load of washing on.
An hour later it’s coffee break time.
I head outside to hang up the clothes.
For some reason ‘Sing-a-song of sixpence …’ is going through my brain.

df has been mowing the grass and worms are about …. I reach the line (in the song not the clothes line) that goes ‘… when down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose’.

‘Maybe the blackbird was after a worm’, think I. ‘How would the worm feel seeing the blackbird swoop down?’

Lying down on the grass and looking skyward I get a pretty good idea of a worm’s eye view. Here it is minus the blackbird!

Yes, all right! Perhaps I should just have gone to the office!

A Trip to Licky Lane

We lucky people from work went on an ‘educational’ trip to an ice cream factory. The tour set-up was clearly created with children in mind … young children at that! Can you imagine what a group of early teens would make of the Licky Lane tour title?

Can’t complain about the seating though …. very colourful!


We were told some interesting facts like, for example, around 400 staff produce approximately 50 million litres of ice cream per year, enough to fill over 6000 average sized rooms!

Sadly, some of the ‘facts’ on the introductory video were a tad misleading. Would you believe, for example, that ice cream is healthy because it contains half your daily requirement of calcium? No mention of the huge amounts of fat and sugar that some of the more exotic concoctions contain … tut, tut, tut!

While we collectively sniggered at the somewhat doubtful healthy claim …what about the rather more innocent kids that the video was clearly aimed at? The marketing people would do well to reconsider … methinks.