The pre-Christmas rush for me was about sitting in air-conditioned comfort in slow moving traffic, shopping until I dropped, scrubbing the house with a 'toothbrush', and preparing as much food and accessories as possible one week in advance.

Our Christmas day was about eating chocolates in front of television. We watched the Queen's speech, Last night of the Proms and the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. It was also about unwrapping gifts from under the Christmas tree and watching the delighted expressions on the faces of two little old ladies, Mother and Mother-in-law. Though a few of us ate ourselves almost senseless, and I popped the clasps off my trousers there were no family rows, and no seasonal misanthropy. We were actually happy!

Guests from pre-Christmas celebrations, Christmas Dinner and Boxing Day bashes, have now disappeared back into the woodwork for another year, while invitations to a few New Year parties may need to be considered during the next couple of weeks. Birthdays are just a bore and easily ignored. Luckily our friends and those of our neighbours do not appear to be practising alcoholics, noisy yes, but not legless.

With such hot, humid weather I’m in the holiday mood, lethargic and unmotivated, but feel obliged to look after my mother and my beautiful cat, while John is renovating the trailer-Camp-OMatic (fold-out caravan).

Christmas was a success, now bring on 2006.

a Wohl!

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.

The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.

I think I could turn and live with animals,
they are so placid and self-contained,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented
with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind
that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
by Walt Whitman

Irrigation on a sheep farm near Arthurs Pass - New Zealand.

Hundreds of sheep are yarded for the annual drenching in the Wairarapa.

A sheep dog jumping over a fence in the Te Kuiti saleyards.

A Suri alpaca chews its cud in the Waikato.

Ruth the Jersey-cross cow is now surrogate mother to a five day old lamb on a lifestyle block near Tauranga.

Three big guys up to no good, tall solidly built Polynesian boys aged 16 - 18 years leapt over two high gates and into the service area between our place and the tennis club. Meanwhile I had scaled the 2m high wall and stood near the top shouting threats of calling the police and contacting their school Principal. Further along John roared at the trespassers, but the boys kept running. At the other end of the yard they came to a sudden halt faced with rolls of razor wire.

There was nowhere to go except back. They hung their black woolly heads and looking very sheepish climbed slowly back over the gates.

It was then that I noticed their Principal (I presume) standing on the other side of the first gate waiting for them. "I will talk to you in my office", he admonished, before ushering them into his car.

Afterwards, pegging clothing on the line I noticed my hands were shaking. Such excitement I hadn't experienced in a long time.