A peaceful harbour

Bobbing yacht

Canary capstan

Shed 5 restaurant

It depends on how you look at it.

This morning I traveled by train and found myself sitting next to a very large lady. Not large as in overweight, but LARGE. My guess was she was of Tongan blood, as the Tongans are often very tall and big boned. I felt small next to her. My hands looked like dolls hands as I knit next to her hands holding a mobile phone. She had tattoos on her forearms and was wearing skin-tight clothing, her hair pulled back into a disciplined ponytail.
Now you will have to trust me when I tell you that I was truly bowled over by her beauty. I am often shy of being tall and large, and in my own eyes, ungainly. But here was someone who could probably top my weight by another 40 pounds and my height by another 4 inches and she was beautiful. In another century she might have been painted by Gaugin. The fifteen minute journey next to her had given me the intoxicating perspective of being dainty.
Still recovering from the experience of skewed perspective, as if I had looked down the telescope the wrong way, I had another shock. This time it was a bus. Written in large capitals above the driver were three words that would simply never be uttered in many parts of the world.

SORRY, BUS FULL.

The life lessons you can learn from travelling on public transport.

Half Century

In 32 days time I turn 50 years old.
I’m excited. It’s a great milestone and I have much to be thankful for.
Over the last few months, people have asked me, was I throwing a big party (no), was I going away to celebrate (no), was I expecting a surprise gift (no).
I made my husband promise he wouldn’t surprise me with a secret get together of friends or any other kind of surprise. I think you get the picture, I’m happy for the birthday, but I don’t want anything happening unexpectedly.
A few weeks ago, I woke up and told my husband that I didn’t want any kind of gift, what I really wanted was to FINALLY start my own business. I’ve been thinking about it for years, tossed around lots of ideas, but never got around to doing anything about it, for a variety of reasons. But I’ve held on to the dream.
The beginning of my next half century seems a good place to start something new.
Curious? Well keep stopping by the blog, as there may be clues.
The first clue is “take me on a journey”

Data Cat

Testing a database

Selling the database to another customer

Not sure if it fits the client's requirements.
Who says one size fits all?

Purple palaces

We call our house "Foxglove Hollow". We have rather a lot of these "Bee Apartments" all over our property. One year, one grew to 7 feet tall.
I wish I was small enough to live inside one of these purple palaces, just for a day.

Of Delis

For a capital city, we are bit thin on the ground when it comes to genuine delis. Oh sure, there are the upmarket "fleece you for 100g of anything" places, but the New York type, "make everything on the premises with the owner smiling at you from behind the till" type are scarce. Until now.

Craig Dunshea took a rather unpromising looking shop on a side street in a leafy suburb and turned it into the talk of the town. The ovens are two paces away from the counter and the coffee machine, and you see the pies being made as you are buying your latte.

It's a bit like sitting at the welcoming kitchen table of a large country house. The scrubbed pine table seats about 10 and you are surrounded with larder like shelves and dressers, laden to groaning point with food.

Craig's philosophy "We make the stuff we love to eat".

As my husband and I returned home, he commented he was feeling sleepy. My response "It was probably the pie - it has left you with that Sunday post prandial happiness" The good news is that we have another day to appreciate that we have been "fed to within an inch of our lives".

Dunshea's Deli - Khandallah, Wellington

Philyda Laterly's at it again

Always looking for that little treasure

Oh no, I've lost my contact lens

I thought I saw a Penny Red!

Darn it got away!

Linguistic miners

If you love the mystery, wonder and craziness of language, this is a book for you. I am a terrible linguist, but studied linguistics at degree level, so although I can't string a sentence together in any other language than English, I revel in the technicalities and science of language. This book has me going to bed early on a rainy evening, to read and read and read. And as tonight is one such night..........

Making the medicine go down

I HATE silverbeet. To me it should only be grown as a decorative vegetable and left to die an ignominious death in the veggie patch, or be gobbled by mice and snails. Small problem - it's good for you. So, tonight I tried to disguise its taste and texture by burying it under tahini sauce and very crisp fried onions.
The silverbeet still tasted hideous, but the topping was great!

Early morning peace

Photos taken on a stroll before breakfast.
Greytown Wairarapa

What lies behind the red door?

Greytown Wairarapa

The French Market

We are now blessed with a "French Quarter" in Wellington. It comprises La Cloche, The French Market and Bordeaux, all within five minutes driving distance of each other. Eh voila, our newest "discovery". The coffee was not as good as La Cloche, but it was nice to be able to buy French cheese and provisions in their store.

Bhutanese micro tiger

We recently watched a two part series about an expedition to Bhutan to look for tigers. Several kinds of naturalists hiked to some of the most inaccessible parts of the Himalayas in search of a missing "link" to the tiger corridor from China to India and across to Nepal. It was thought that tigers couldn't live at these kinds of altitudes. Well, the amazing thing is, they can, and were filmed there. We loved every minute of the documentary, marvelling at the beauty of Bhutan and the tenaciousness of the naturalists. We also marvelled at the similarities between wild cats (they also filmed snow leopards) and the domestic variety.
My husband has dubbed our little ginger princess "The Bhutanese Micro Tiger" - all 3.5kgs of her. Here she is in the gorse canopy, grooming herself!