When we first moved to rural Northland from suburban Auckland four years ago by far the steepest learning curve (apart from coping with the eternal winter-time power cuts, aaargh!) was learning how to take care of cows.

We had inherited ten young beef steers with the property, and along with a propensity to cut scathes through paddocks full of fresh green grass, there were several who loved going on a wee bit of adventure.

If there was a dodgy fencepost or loose area of wire, they would always find it, bowl on through it and run to the hills, or down the road, or up the road, or through a neighbour’s fence and onto their fresh green grass.

All too often I’d open our bedroom curtains first thing in the morning, blinky-eyed and half asleep and still in my PJ’s and find a furiously munching band of ecstatic Hereford Crosses dealing to our lawn.

Or be driving down our winding gravel road on my way to work and there would be one of our lot knee-deep in grass heaven on the roadside, or worse still, go round a corner and there would be one right smack-dab in the middle of the road – not good when you drive a Toyota Starlet and would probably come off second best, were you to collide…

Yep, when you’re a hungry young beef steer, the grass is always greener on the other side.

Consequently we became proficient at rounding up strays in our bathrobes, learnt that it’s really, really hard to sprint in gumboots and eventually, as repairs and upgrades had to be made to our trashed fence-lines, what a strainer, a dropdown, a Waratah and a Taranaki gate were as well as the art of rotating a herd through paddocks A,B, C, D and E in order to get maximum fresh green grass by the time it’s Paddock A’s turn again.

So eventually a) there was no need for our cows to escape and b) they couldn’t escape, even if they wanted to.

Let’s hope we can apply all this experience to the tender and benevolent care of our latest mob of yearling heifers (as per below, skittish and scardycat as could be), delivered on Monday.

‘Cos running in gumboots, it ain’t good for ya…

This Friday my work held its annual quiz night/disco dancing evening at a local events centre.
Usually I look forward to these nights, as a) I love quizzes and have been a member of the winning team two times in a row now due to my capacity to retain generally unimportant and relatively random facts and b) I love to have a bit of a boogie – I find a little bit of Timewarping and air guitaring goes a long way towards bonding work colleagues, and it’s amazing who you meet standing in a circle on the dancefloor, headbanging to “Living on a Prayer” (Hi Mandy in Credit Control!)
But all week all I could think of was “Mmmmmph, wish we weren’t going. Wish I didn’t put my name down. Wish I was heading home on Friday evening at 5pm instead of to the ASB Leisure Centre Conference Room to spend five hours of my own time with a bunch of people I spend 40 hours a week with anyway. We’ll get a taxi straight after the quiz finishes, and I won’t drink anything. Be home early.”
I’m not sure where this churlish, boring old stick in the mud came from, because it’s the first time I’ve ever felt like that, but I cast that little voice aside and soldiered on.
The result?
I drank. Not to the point of drunkeness, but to the point of that lovely stage: “merry”. Our team of eight won the quiz (The Inquizinators kicked butt and I was particularly glad I spent 20 minutes on Wikipedia in my lunchbreak boning up on capital cities. It’s Dili by the way) and I danced and laughed and sang very loudly with my workmates and my husband, and we ended up staying to 1am, at which point the lights went on and the DJ shut up shop and we all had to help stack the tables and chairs away.
I had a _fabulous_ time.
Yesterday the Other Harf and I were both tired and more than a little bit sore from flinging ourselves round the dancefloor (at 40 and 47 years old respectively, it was a solid effort just to still be dancing at 12.30am, I thought…) but one McDonalds Big Breakfast later and a large Nana nap in the afternoon soon sorted that out.
So, two fingers up to you, stick-in-the-mud!
And a handy Inquizinator tip? It always, _always_ pays to bone up on your capital cities…

Greetings to you from the middle of the week in the middle of the year. Well, just over it actually; the shortest day of the year was on Monday, but oh yeah! Jump for joy! We are on the downwards slope to summer!

I’ve been kind of daydreaming about summer lately, or more specifically summer holidays; particularly holidays beside golden sand beaches, with the sea lapping at the shore, barbecues, seafood, long evenings on verandahs with views beyond, accompanied by loved ones and chilled wine. This summer holiday might be in Rarotonga, or in Greece, or even in a bach right here in Northland, NZ.

It’s the sort of holiday that one might be caught daydreaming about sitting at their desk, say around 10.30am, when lunchtime seems an eternity away and they really should be reconciling fixed asset balance sheet accounts or running Bank Reconcilation Journal Posting reports or something equally as dull…

So, in order to fully appreciate the delight, the relaxation, the sheer pleasure of summer holidays, one has to experience midwinter’s days such as today, where the working day never seems to want to come to an end, clothes are layered, temperatures are low and the light is rationed…

The wintery view from our verandah this morning, @ 7.30. Somebody across the way has got their fire burning already…

Eating - When winter rolls round the Ye Olde Crockpot gets dusted down, cheap cuts of beef are purchased in bulk, and what this results in is that we eat a great deal of casserole, particularly during the week,yippee! I could tell a gigantic fib at this point and tell you that ancient recipes are consulted, exotic herbs and spices, gourmet ingredients and the finest organic vegetables are added to said beef but the truth is a can of chopped tomatoes, a diced onion and a sachet of Maggi’s Cook in the Pot is as fancy as it gets round here.

Still tastes good though!

Watching - Separation City - “Simon (Joel Edgerton) is a decent bloke, living in smug and comfortable suburbia with two children and sex life on hold, who falls for his wife’s friend Katrien (Brit actress Rhona Mitra). While their marriages fall apart (to Danielle Cormack and Thomas Kretschmann, respectively), the pair begin an infatuation. They fumble a number of opportunities until a meticulously planned clandestine rendezvous in Berlin turns into a wild and crazy farce that threatens to rip their lives apart… “

My Philistine English husband has an aversion to Kiwi films (“they’re just…weird…” ) and as it contains “sex scenes and offensive language” I banished both him and Miss 9.9 from the lounge this afternoon and watched this all by myself.

My opinion? Well, it’s funny, sad and poignant with a great script and spot-on casting (Rhona Mitra is just gorgeous…) and I reckon the OH just might have enjoyed it. It’s a 4 chocolate fish out of 5 from me!

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Listening - “You and Your Heart” by Jack Johnson – catchy, mellow, fun and this video makes me absolutely yearn for boogie-boarding down at Ruakaka Beach in the summer. Ahhhh, summer…

After the Party by Lisa Jewell – I read the prequel to this book (Ralph’s Party, Jewell’s first ever novel which she wrote after accepting a challenge from a friend to write three chapters of a book in exchange for dinner at her favourite restaurant) on my many tube journeys to and from work when I loved in London and have read all her books ever since.

And now, eleven years later, I count most if not all of them in my Top 50 favourites.

Chicklit, yep, but chicklit as its very, very best. I know this isn’t going to disappoint….

Liking - blogs, old and new (Facebook is fab but for me it’s never going to replace blogging and blogs), hearing a song on the radio and being able to Google it when I get home then download it from iTunes instantly, scarfs, roaring fires, weekends (oh! how I treasure them), having an employed husband, Market Kitchen and spending Saturday mornings after netball having “morning tea” and shopping with Miss 9.9…

After a very unspectacular showing over the summer due to the drought, our yellow daisy bush has blossomed into life with all the much needed rain and is completely smothered in new flowers – adding some much needed sunshine colour to its drab mid-winter surroundings….
How considerate…

• on my morning drive to work a little yellow snowflake appears on the dashboard of my car which means it’s 4°C or lower (anything under 0°C it turns blue! Blue = “bloody freezing”)
• the slugs can’t annihilate the carrots, potatoes, beetroot and rhubarb in my vegetable garden because they’ve all frozen to death. Bwah-ha-hah!
• casseroles and crockpots, soups and stews, convenient and cheap, we love you! (sing it everybod-dy!)
• blowflies are a distant memory. Perhaps they are all vacationing on the Costa Brava? Don’t come back, y’all hear?
• trackypants, fleeces, woolly socks, slippers. Get me into them, now.
• I can sit inches away from the inferno-like Kent fire in the dining room and NOT break into a sweat.
• the backs of my hands turn crinkly and purple, both at once. 
• the chooks go on the blink, damn ‘em. So miss our free range eggs….
• moss grows on the bricks by the backdoor. Slippery slippin’ slipperedge!
• there’s pansies, jonquils, cinerarias, snowdrops, daffodils, camellias and rhododendrons growing. Winter flowers are thee best.
• it’s gumboots all round, from the Other Harf’s trueblue Redbands, through to my trusty Warehouse specials, through to Miss 9.8′s black and white flower-patterned numbers…
• it’s got to be setting #3 on my ‘leccy blanket. Nuff said…

Miss 9.8 and her friend Emmie came in from playing up in the trees in the back paddock yesterday and presented me with a small branch covered in gorgeous bright orange fungi.
“Mummy, you should totally take a photo of this, it’s so cool, we bought it back just for you!”
So I did.
More than one, in fact.