Giving Way

35 years ago New Zealand introduced a give way to the right rule on the road.  Until 5am on the 25 March this year that remained the rule of the road causing a fair degree of confusion for drivers from abroad because this country was, apparently, the only country in the world with that totally counter-intuitive rule.  In Europe a potentially ignorant foreign driver can often be identified by his country's number/registration plate but this is one of the few countries where there are no 'foreign' cars (for all practical purposes). 

In fact when Gaz visited a few months ago he pointed out that at T junctions no one seemed to follow the correct procedure anyway and if exiting a side road onto a main road (top of the T) usually gave way to the traffic on the main road entering the side road.  In fact when I asked a number of my Kiwi friends they all adopted that approach.   A clear case of a silly or counter-intuitive law just being ignored and the following ditty being very apt:

Here lies the body of Jeremy Grey
Who died defending his right of way
His way was right
And his will was strong
But he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong

Good Friday

I woke early but, unusually for me, lay there thinking (always an achievement for me - thinking, that is) and wondering why I had had 4 out of the last 5 nights without a nightmare.  This morning I woke after a dreaming of a long cheese-tasting session with friends from huge chunks of cheese off a lorry at the side of the road.  The Lancashire was judged to be the best.  That I so rarely recall dream or nightmare details made this even more bizarre.  The rain hammering on the deck roof made the idea of getting up less appealing.  Eventually the sun did come out but it didn't stop raining.  This photos shows a soft rain which almost seemed to be hovering in the air rather than falling to the ground and making the photo seem like an impressionist painting.  Standing in it was like being brushed with silk threads.

I'd completely forgotten that shops in New Zealand are, in general, required to close on Good Friday (as well as Christmas Day, Easter Sunday and Anzac Day, until 1.00 pm).  So it is a good job that Wendy invited me there for dinner tonight instead of the family coming to me.

Christchurch is Open

Over the last whilse since the Christchurch earthquakes devastated the city I have received much of the 'real' information to which I can relate from Fiona of Four Paws and Whiskers.  Today she has posted a short YouTube video which is the first one which has left me with positive and happy rather than emotional and pensive feelings.  For a happy few minutes visit Christchurch is Open.

Carpe Diem

Sieze the day.  It is always easier to say than to achieve.  But saying it is a good start.

In a way each of the sayings in my sidebar under the title 'Life' relate to that concept.  It's a concept that when you have a life-threatening illness you either embrace or you don't.  There's not really room for a half-way house approach.

Perhaps Lisa (Shabby Girl) said it most prosaically with "Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass… It’s about learning to dance in the rain."

Today I've been feeling bogged down and if I hadn't already posted the previous post I'd have been too ashamed to do it after reading today's post by Jaz.  It's worth a read at Turning a Corner.  Here's part of it:

In the past I have catastrophized and turned my fears into big ugly mountains in front of me. But I've been thinking about that. Fears aren't real. Sure they can be based on some startling true facts eg I HAVE A BRAIN TUMOUR, but essentially our fears are our imaginations going for a walk.

So I've stopped walking my fears so often and taking myself out for fresh air instead. Lately I seem to be able to enjoy today and not worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will come and then it will be today. I've got no control over it, just how I perceive and receive it.

I'm strangely calm about my MRI I just had. I'm still awaiting results and I refuse to waste precious time on irrational fears. If they tell me I'm dying, then I'll scream and cry, but not today, not NOW.

 Go Jaz.  May your NOW last for a very long time.

Thankful Thursday

It's raining.  I've got bloggers block.  The irony is that the rain gives me time to blog.  An additional irony is that I have so much material for blogs stacked up that I should have had enough done and scheduled to take me to the end of the month when I return to my other life in Scotland.

Do you like molasses?  When I was a small child having been brought up with food rationing Mum and Dad had this idea that a spoonful of molasses each day was good for you.  I see from the label that it's rich in iron, calcium and potassium so they were probably correct.  Dad actually liked it.  It's one of the very few foods that I can actually say that I detested.  I assume that if I tried it today I would still detest it but as I don't have to try it I have no intention of so doing.  I have a jar of it in the pantry because I used it in a cake recipe a while ago.

So why have I introduced molasses?  Well partly because I was thinking that my brain felt like it was wallowing in the stuff and partly because when I saw it this morning I thought to myself how thankful I was that I didn't have to eat it.

Open or Closed? That Is The Question

Do you sleep with the window open or closed?  A simple enough question.  But, I wonder, are the answers we all have quite so simple and straightforward.  I ask this because of Francis Garrood's extremely funny story about.....well you can find out C is For Cockchafer.

For my part at home in the Hebrides or in New Zealand I sleep with the windows closed.  But why?  Well in the Hebrides in the winter it would be a rather foolhardy thing to do for rather obvious reasons of wind and rain but in the summer the reason is less obvious: midges!

So why close the windows in New Zealand? 

Before I answer that I should say that I have slept in the open air in a bivy bag in the Australian outback for a couple of weeks with all sorts of scorpions and snakes and so on and not had the slightest qualms.  I stayed at a friend's house last year and slept in a studio with the doors wide open all night (but the worst thing I was likely to be attached by was a mozzie).

At home (in NZ), though, when I first came to live in The Cottage I never closed the curtains (pointless as no one can even see The Cottage never mind me in bed) and sometimes if it was hot instead of putting the air-con on I just kept my bedroom ranch slider open.  I have no insect screens.  There may be few things likely to bite me but I'm still not too keen on the non-bitey things and one day in the middle of the night as I reached for my glass of water I realised that I wasn't the only creature requiring it.  The other one was, however, dead.  I realised just how close I had come to drinking a dead thingy. 

I read that we consume on average 8 spiders a year in our sleep.  I assume that's actually nonsense but it's the thought that counts.  In fact interestingly allowing more insects in our processed food might be more healthy.  Another post?

And then there are animals!

Bear in mind that for me noise is not a factor in either place I live.

So now I keep my windows closed here too.

How about you?

The Boring Explanation

For those of you who remembered that my Apple MacBook Pro is called Eve yesterday's post was, hopefully, a mildly entertaining few words and pictures.  For anyone who didn't know I might have sounded as though I was going through a crisis.  Fortunately the last one that involved a female was long enough ago to have been erased from my conscious being.

Someone in a blog I've read in the last two days (I wish I had e better memory.  In fact I wish I had a memory of any sort.  Instead I have - Mum's word - a forgettory.) was talking about doors and openings and the metaphor with life.  As soon as I completed the sentence I remembered of course that it was Librarian in a post Doors and Doorways.

Certainly for me the bitterness of the lemons (see Dawn Treader's post here if you are wondering what I'm talking about) was long ago and life's pretty sweet now.  Little known fact: I love eating lemon slices - even more so if they've been in a gin and tonic.

Back to the boring explanation.  Eve has over 68,000 images on the hard drive.  They are managed by an Apple program called iPhoto.  Unfortunately the huge number of images are in one Library so the program is sometimes taking a long time to process commands.  So I decided to split them up into different Libraries.  That's a very simple but exceptionally time-consuming process for Eve.  Each set of photos has to be identified and exported into a holding folder.  Then the files are imported into the new Library. The original files have to be trashed. Then the holding folder has to be trashed.  It takes a day hours to deal with about 6,000 files of 4-5Mb each.  Apple securely shreds everything when you empty the trash so even that is a very lengthy process in itself.

So now you know.

In the meantime live life like it's a journey in a Zorb:

A bouncy ride but it all ends happily:

Rabbits Don't Eat Rhubarb Crumble

OK.  I've lost the plot.  Eve and I have been having a bit of a hard time over the last few days.  Fortunately our relationship is strong enough to ensure that everything that has to be done can and will be done.  We will survive.  In the meantime I shall think of sunny things:

with a bit of whimsey thrown in (never let it be said Kiwis don't have a sense of humour):

Would You Believe....?

The humble Honey Bee (Maori Pi Honi) Apis melifera is not an insect I seem to see a lot of at The Cottage although there must be millions of them around as I assume that they are used to pollinate the apples in the orchards that surround me.  Today one paid me a visit but seemed very dozy.  Mind you it was fairly cold - mid teens - and wet.  After I'd photographed it I decided to check my Maori spelling and look up the Latin.  Whilst doing so I read the rest of the blurb in Andrew Crow's Which New Zealand Insect.  I learned two things: when it is angry the Honey Bee makes a high-pitched war-cry; and that the Honey Bee is New Zealand's most dangerous insect.  I know that we are very lucky here not to have the myriad of dangerous insects that they have across the Tasman in Oz but nevertheless I hadn't realised that we are quite that lucky.   I'm not the slightest bit afraid of bees whilst wasps terrify me (when I'm not behind a camera).  In fact I'm not sure that I actually believe Mr Crowe's assessment to be entirely accurate.

Today's The Day

I get back into Blogland.  Mind you I thought that yesterday but 'twas not to be.  The forecast for today is heavy showers and then rain and the rest of the week is supposed to be worse.  C'est la vie.  Hunkering down is something I can do for a few days quite happily.  I know that I need to be back.  Usually I wake to 20 to 30 emails (a lot more if I've been very active in Blogland) in the in-boxes spread amongst my 17 email accounts (I use different accounts for different purposes and it restricts the spam to the one I use for travel - travel companies seem to be targets for spam or some of them sell their huge email subscriptions).  Today I woke to not a single email.  I can't recall that happening before.  I had to refresh my POP mail 3 times before I'd believe it.  Mind you a friend has emailed me whilst I've been writing this paragraph so at least I know that my mail is working.  One thing I have noticed over the years is that, as a rule, I get far fewer emails at weekends and I have a perception that there is less blog posting too at weekends.  I wonder why.  Do people spend more family time and/or go out more at weekends?