Here you'll find my thoughts about life, travel, books and, because I love a laugh, the occasional spoof. All this from the perspective of a small town, on an island, in a country that's too close to the Antarctic for comfort.
Nau Mai, Haere mai. Come on in!
I saw my first real hand gun in Chicago. It was 1975 and I was on my way to Minnesota. I was edgy. Back home, I’d seen Starsky and Hutch on the Tele – if there was a gun someone always used it and someone always got hurt. The […]
This aside is an announcement! Coming soon: the adventures of a Kiwi AFSer. Yep, you read it correctly. Inspiration has struck and the ideas are flowing. The series will be haphazard, unpredictable, and short-lived. But, hey, it’ll be all mine. What better way to celebrate the centenary of […]
When we visited Ayutthaya we took an elephant ride. The old city, now a world heritage site, was the capital of the Thai Kingdom from the 14th century until it was sacked by the Burmese army in the 18th century. High on the back of the elephant, beneath the […]
It’s anniversary time. A biggy: one year of gym membership. One year of three – four times a week (most weeks) pumping iron and sweating it out on the bike or the cross trainer. For those of you who are long-term gym attendees you might wonder why I’m […]
An hour’s drive south of Napier, past the tiny settlement of Otane, the small town of Waipawa (Misty River, in English) nestles between the hills and the Waipawa river. It’s purportedly one of the oldest inland towns in New Zealand. And it is small, even by […]
Late one night a week or so ago I was browsing around sites I follow in the blogosphere when I landed on a post titled Goodbye. The writer is articulate and wry, but sometimes confronting. I knew they had a tough time of it. I thought perhaps […]
“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”* While I was reading One Hundred Years of Solitude (a book, you may remember, I decided to read after coming across another blogger‘s eulogy to Marquez) Maya Angelou died. So, I thought, what […]
Outside it’s dreary. We’re not seeing much of the sun. There’s no growth in the garden. It’s only seventy-one days until spring a friend of mine said on Facebook. Well, I thought, that’s a relief. Tonight I’ll be celebrating the solstice by going to a beach […]
Mid-winter is nigh and, with the bite of the cold, Thailand is on my mind. We’ve got another trip to the tropics in our sights – well, we’ve promised ourselves that come July we’re booking the flights. Our hoped for departure date is not till after Christmas so, […]
Would I chew or choke I wondered back at the beginning of May. After reading Brenda’s tribute to Gabriel Garcia Marquez over on burnsthefire I thought what better way to mark his passing than to read One Hundred Years of Solitude; the masterpiece beloved by so many readers […]
Jill's Scene 
The korero