What I did in my holidays

Remember your first day back at school after the summer holidays? The first assignment you'd always be given was to write about what you did in your holidays. So predictable, just a lazy teacher's way of finding out a little about her/his new pupils lives and whether they could spell, punctuate, etc. I often wondered if I just made something up, such as "in my holidays I was abducted by aliens/woke up as an old lady/found a time machine and went back to a time when teachers didn't ask what I did in my holidays", but I was never brave enough.
Adults seem so dull to children. Every Sunday at Sunday school we had to sing "All things bright and beautiful". Even today I dislike that song, and I think of you, Miss Tooth (kid you not, this was her name) my Sunday school teacher. And at Christmas, it was always "Away in a manger", prompting visions of Baby Jesus hooning round the stable in a souped-up feeding trough on wheels.
Anyway, I had a great holiday. Even the car trouble was sorted, due to the skills of Simon from Little River Garage. Country mechanics are usually excellent, because they have to fix everything from lawn-mowers to sheep-trucks, so they get a lot of varied experience. Plus they have to be more ingenious, there's no parts warehouse just down the road, and if they don't run a good business word soon gets around in a small town.
Revisited some places I haven't been in years. Pics follow, hopefully.

                         Rudbeckias at Okuti Garden

Easterly fog rolling over the top at Otepatotu - looking down to Akaroa Harbour and Onawe

Filmy ferns at Otepatotu Scenic Reserve

The "ramparts" at Otepatotu

Birdlings Flat, looking down Kaitorete Spit

Looking the other way- these eroded volcanic cliffs mark the south-western end of Banks Peninsula

Lovely moody shot with Mt Bradley in the far left distance. Taken from inside a little brick hut built to store explosives at Kaituna Quarry, on the Little River Rail Trail.

Back again

Back at the lovely Okuti Valley again, in the housetruck. Had some car trouble on the way here, but the mechanics at Little River have taken her in hand and hopefully will fix it for nothing (yeah right). Walked back from Little River to Okuti, weather is great, really sunny, but cold at night. I have my trusty thermals with me to use as pyjamas. Nutmeg the dog is racing round like a mad thing, and pears are falling and possums are eating them at night. Went to the loo about four in the morning and came back, stood under the tree and heard crunch, crunch, munch from somewhere above me. Felt a few tremors today, one just over an hour ago at 4. something, so we rock on. Have to go and do the dishes now, so may write again tomorrow.

Pretty things

Woken up at 10 to 7 this morning by another smallish quake. We haven't had many lately, which is a little worrying as it makes a person feel as if  there's pressure building up somewhere that could go off nastily. I don't know whether its worse to have quakes or not to have them. It's a little like waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's a holiday today too, and we seem to get shakes on holidays - Boxing Day, Christmas Eve - so perhaps this is the start of a rocky day, I hope not.
Went to the Shabby Market yesterday and bought these doilies and tray covers to add to my collection. I think the one with the blue flowers  may be from the 1930's or 40's, judging by the style of the embroidery (trellis was a popular motif then - the original wallpaper (1938) in my bathroom had trellis and pink roses on a brown background) and the fabric, which looks like sugar-bag material. The linen that sugar-bags were made of was densely woven, so made a good-quality material when washed and bleached. I hate to think that these things might get thrown away - some anonymous woman, now probably dead and gone, spent time and effort to produce something that would be pretty and cheerful, maybe because her own life was anything but.

Marmite stocks may run dry!

Yesterday was a bit shitty. I've got two sick cats at the moment. Eddie has an inoperable tumour on his jaw, but he's keeping well, with the vet's help. The other day he killed and ate a bird, then shinnied up the cabbage tree, so he's still enjoying life. Emma has chronic recurring rhinotracheitis, which means she sneezes snot everywhere, and is not her usual naughty self. I had trouble getting appointments at the vet, probably because there's a holiday weekend coming up. (Feb. 6 is Waitangi Day, for those of you who aren't NZers, a day when we celebrate being NZers.)
Driving back home, I annoyed another driver (Mr Turdface Arsehole) by not waiting far enough to the right on an uncontrolled right hand turn. He actually had to slow down. How awful. He yelled at me and I flipped him the fingers, which I think surprised him because he thought I was a nice old lady. Hah! I had a sudden urge to smash his windscreen in with my car lock. If only he'd stopped I would have enjoyed taking him and his car to pieces. This is road rage, folks, like a sweet wild rush of battery acid to the brain.
Well. Back to being a nice middle-aged lady, I found a website called pinterest, which lets you make a virtual pinboard of favourite stuff that you find surfing the net. This may go big, may be another Facebook, but I can't see it appealing to straight men, so perhaps not.
Looked at the news headlines on MSN this morning. 73 people are dead in Egypt following a soccer riot, but the bigger headline was "Marmite stocks may run dry" following the closing of the local Sanitarium factory. Gotta love parochialism. We concentrate (pun alert - Marmite is a concentrate of something, God knows what) on the really important stuff in NZ.
I don't like Marmite. I once went on a field trip to the factory and saw how it used to be made. Imagine great black blobs of the stuff extruded through an anus-like construction in the factory ceiling, collected in buckets by eager acolytes. Health foods they used to be called. Read "The road to Wellville" by T.C. Boyle for a fictional account of John Kellogg, the founder of the health food industry - all a bit twisted and obsessional, and scary too - to think that people used to inhale radium for their health. Makes me wonder how present day "health" programmes will be viewed in future.

Sherlock

Posted the clip below for my friend Sue who put me on to the Sherlock series. Benedict Cumberpatch has to be the best Sherlock ever - "the wall had it coming". There's never a dull moment at 113B Baker Street. Gossip has it that Cumberpatch may be the villain in the next Star Trek film. Hope they don't put him in some stupid makeup/facemask and let him be himself.

Severed head in the fridge - Sherlock - BBC. Magnificent

Still in love with the Boosh boys

Been watching clips of The Mighty Boosh on youTube. I still find them funny and am still in love with Noel. So clever, so funny, so pretty. I've posted this little clip of "Jurgen Haabermaster's" masterpiece for you to enjoy.
Saw an hilarious 1980-something clip of Princess Diana trying to speak Italian, thanking the Italians for being so Italian. She spoilt the effect by adding a sotto voce comment along the lines of "try and work that out if you can". Prince Charles thought Florence was wonderful largely because there were so many English people there.
First day of my holiday today. On the first day of a holiday, time just seems to stretch away, like a freshly made bed, like a hot fruitcake straight from the oven, or a crystal wave taking you away with it. Poetic, innit? But I'm sure you know the feeling.
Random thoughts today:-
 A rooster crowing in the distance makes my suburb feel like its out in the country. Glad he's in the distance though.
The function of newspapers is not to inform; it's to give you a new selection of things to feel outraged about every morning.
Allora, a domani, raggazi.