Wednesday, January 10, 2007

No Birds, Not Cricket

My Summer Christmas was sufficently lazy that I am eager to get back into work!
I don't have a lot to say as I didn't do very much - I was given many books for the season and have chomped through them all. On top of that I have also made a great deal of headway on my own little bit of writing - about twenty pages in Word, bringing the total to about 265. Once again my flash of inspiration has dwindled but I still have some plot ideas which was more than I had when getting back into it all these holidays.

Our family often takes advantage of the long evenings to indulge in a game or two of jackpot, or sometimes BYC (back yard cricket). We are traditionally too honest to succeed well in games like cheat, poker and monopoly, but nothing has ever stopped us getting a little rough when the person who catches the 'out' gets to go in batting. Stubbed toes and occasionally bruised ribs aside it is all in good fun and now that we are adults we are careful not to let a little roughhousing turn into fights. Alas, this year there was none of that. Ju is in the UK, little brother was working and big sister either working or down south for the (world famous in New Zealand) Omarama Rodeo. I took the oportunity to remain at home with the folks and join distant family from Oz who had come to stay for a few days.

I am sorry to say I have little in the way of fabulous photos of my activities for the night, but here are some of the land and valley I grew up in, and a little lizard I saw by the back steps of a house in Ashburton.



1. View out kitchen window

2. View from bottom of valley. We live up the far end



3. From same point as (2) but turned a little to the right




4. Lizard. Used to handle them as a child, but this one was a bit sneaky.

4 comments:

Maalie said...

Wow! What a gorgeous place to live! It looks really beautiful. Sounds as if you had a relaxing holiday! Happy New Year!

simon said...

I am in agreement with Maalie!
And it sounds like a classic Christmas "Down Under" too!

I spent a few days chasing lizards with my son..

TCA said...

They say the England cricket team are like a lizard....all tail!

B.B

Maalie said...

And we only had one ball to spare! Thank goodness for Flintoff!