December 2009

The Ghost of New Year’s Past

30 December 2009

The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour.

With that in mind on the cusp of NYE 2009 I decided to review some of my past New Year resolutions to see what chance I have of actually keeping them. Being as they are resolutions and not merely New Year suggestions, and I’m a decisive kind of person I’m cautiously optimistic that the past decades resolutions will have been kept. Won’t they?

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Proof in the Pudding (Xmas Pudding)

27 December 2009

Here’s proof that even if you’re in North Hampshire, surrounded by snow, and sans enfants…

 Even if you’re a little worse for wear after crawling through the snow to midnight mass sloshed after numerous Christmas drinkies, and even if your Englishman is hell-bent that the only BBQ he’ll use is charcoal (not gas! God no!)

Even if you have to drink a spurned can of beer because it was the wrong kind for cooking purposes, and after a bottle of Champers too….  Read more... (126 words, 2 images, estimated 30 secs reading time)

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Wonderful White Christmas

24 December 2009

I wish all my blogging friends and readers a wonderful white Christmas!

Whether white beach, or white snow, may all your Christmases be white.

Merry Christmas!

Vix xx

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The Incredible Journey

23 December 2009

Hey puppy you’ve come a long way!

Until last year, every year at Christmas time you enjoyed your days sunning and splashing in the tepid waters of the Waitemata, or surfing with us at Whangapoua.

But look at you now!

You’re well and truly a Pommy puppy now!

This is Bailey’s reaction to this surprising white stuff that fell from the sky over night.

My Englishman and I have been enjoying the recent heavy snowfall with the fur babies. I say ‘enjoying’, but there was one member of the family who wasn’t so happy.

 Read more... (407 words, 4 images, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

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Merry Makeover!

20 December 2009

It’s time!
Kids bundled off Down Under with one gigantic teddy bear and British residency visas. Check.
Obligatory tears at the airport in arms of my handsome Englishman. Done.
Right on the money pep talk from Air New Zealand aircrew sympathetically saying behind my blubbering cuddle –

‘Just the two of you for Christmas? Excellent!
Think of all those things you can do around the house with the door open!!!!
I’d get her off to the pub and home straight after!’ said to the Englishman.
Complete.
Now it’s time to take off the Supermum cape and become… da da dee dum….
Super-lover.  Read more... (376 words, 6 images, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)

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They Get Around!!

18 December 2009

Up and out of bed at the ungodly hour of 0300 this morning, as the Dark Princess is going to Belgium. For the day. She’s going to New Zealand tomorrow, via Hong Kong, but today it’s Belgium on a school trip.

WOW!  Read more... (822 words, 1 image, estimated 3:17 mins reading time)

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Do you fake it?

17 December 2009
So, you’re becoming a blogger. You can’t wait to get out of bed and hit the keyboard. You agonise over other people’s blogs and their apparent success, and wonder what you need to do to spread your word. You’ve learnt that you have a duty to your readers to write about things that they want to read. To write about those things that aren’t whiny, moany, depressing or uncomfortable. So, what happens if you wake one winter’s morning and you really just don’t feel like it. You dig down but your fingernails come up filled with emotional gunge. Do you fake it?



Did Churchill write on his black dog days?  Read more... (748 words, 2 images, estimated 3:0 mins reading time)

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The Blank Page and the Promise of Snow

15 December 2009

I feel as if I’ve been run over by a concrete mixer, full of Christmas concrete. We had our extended family Christmas on the weekend and as usual the day after I feel run over, stomped on, knackered beyond belief. I say again, Christmas is brought to you by Mum. ARRRRRRGH!

So now I’m faced with the horror of a blank blog page and not enough strength to lift a typing finger. I’m loving blogging, but sometimes find the whole ‘putting yourself out there’ akin to throwing off your clothes and rolling in the snow…….in Trafalgar Square!  Read more... (956 words, 1 image, estimated 3:49 mins reading time)

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Mother Knows Best

9 December 2009

You’re going to need to sit down Mum.

You’re not going to like what I’m going to say. But say it, I must.

Remember when I was 16 you bought me a suitcase for my birthday and told me “now you can really run away”? I’d been running away – down the road, to the neighbours, across the shopping mall – since I could walk. It wasn’t that our life was awful. It was middle class white bread nice. With socks and shoes and perpetually made beds. Closed doors were verboten in our house.

 Read more... (1142 words, 1 image, estimated 4:34 mins reading time)

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A journey of a thousand miles (Part Two)

9 December 2009

“..begins with a single step”
My 2009 Black Friday happened early in January. Happy New Year! It wasn’t Friday, and it wasn’t the 13th but it was very black indeed. I arrived into work at the PR firm after a hellish commute in. When wasn’t it a hellish commute down the M3? About twice I think, in six months. I switched on the jug for coffee and waited for my email to fire up. In it was a snake of an email.

It sat there in my inbox hissing, threatening to strike.

 Read more... (1428 words, 1 image, estimated 5:43 mins reading time)

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