Yeah gidday...I remember you guys....

Yep. Been a while.
Twas nice a week or two back to see Mike come on down and visit. The occasion was a Cosmic Wheels gig with some smashing new tunes (hits?) being tossed hither and yon in what this, the sole surviving member of the 100% club who doesn`t see Tom naked on a regular basis thought was one of their most accomplished, thorough and rich sounding gigs of their career.
Was especially nice to finally gain public acknowledgement of my role as manager of the band (in a very `hands off` manner mind), it will be even better when I get my hands of my 70% of any and all filthy lucre that accrues. That was the same day the Foxton High School 3rd 15 took on the Aussies and lost in some sort of competition in Australia. I forget which.
Last weekend saw a party in quite literally the middle of nowhere with representatives from many far-flung corners of this fair earth- including some particularly excited English chaps and some particularly heavy drinking Australian folk. My, I did shake the hands of those from old blighty and reminded them of my fondness for the mother country. They all agreed wholeheartedly that it was indeed about bloody time they won something, and good on them too. Twas a lovely night that disappeared into the morning time with a lot of standing outside and nattering and watching of the sun coming up and blearily wandering to bed as others arose and started (noisily I might add) making pancakes. Lovely day on the Sunday though, so plenty of sitting around in the garden and watching the day go by. Ooodles of fun. And what knocks a hangover on the head like a steaming pile of meat from the local Brazilian BBQ joint??? Not much. A truly grand cap to a roight noice noight.
Cold though. Well into the single digits now- 3 weeks tomorrow till we step off the plane in Sunny old NZ however, so we can deal with it with smiles firmly on faces.

BIG HAPPY BOITHDAYS TO MY BIGGEST SISTER PRU- TURNING **YEARS OLD JUST RIGHT THERE AT THE END OF NOVEMBER. CUMPLEANOS FELIZ (sp?) AND ALL THAT HOOHAA.

We had the fire brigade come to one of the Kindergartens I teach at the other day. Wow, was that weird. First off they set of an enormous smoke bomb inside the building and made the 5 yr old kids run through it to try and find their way out. Well trained though- when the fire was announced over the PA system, to a one they dropped to the ground, took their wee hankies out of their wee pockets, and bailed out. Then they made them walk through a tent filled with choking smoke (5yrs old people)....but that wasn`t the best part- hell no..... So we stroll upstairs and theres this old chap wearing a Fire Service dress uniform, he has a little chat to the kids, then puts on a manga video about a robot-firefighter that comes back from the future to chase a robot-pyromaniac from the future who is threatening to burn! burn! burn! modern day Tokyo. So that was pretty weird.

But not as weird as the guy in the dress uniform finishing up the tape, pulling a red hanky out of his pocket and making it disappear!!!! Thats right folks, teaching fire safety through MAGIC TRICKS!!! So we sat there for about an hour while this guy did card tricks, rope tricks, wand tricks, disappearing tricks, more and more and still more hanky tricks, he made flowers appear from places flowers shouldn`t be in the first place. The killer was when he made all the kids scream real loud to wake up his "little friend" in this case a stuffed badger. The idea was that they had to scream as loud as they would yell `fire` if they discovered one. So the kids were going ape screaming out this things name and he was making it jump around and stuff, and they kept getting louder and louder and he told them that that was perhaps enough and they had done a good job and well done and no really you should probably be quiet now and so on- but the kids- well they just kept a`screaming - that is until he stopped his badger moving and told the kids that they had yelled so loud that they had killed his "little friend" and now he wouldn`t be playing with them any more (5yrs old people).

I sat agog.

But it got worse....but this is the longest blog in the world so I`ll continue the story at a later date. Tune in- it`s a cracker.
b