There’s a rat in the kitchen

I was newly out of bed the other morning and, just like the Queen, I was using the toilet (bathroom for our American friends) when Mr Scott calls out: “Did you get up in the night and eat half a peach?”
No, I hadn’t. It’s just not something I would do. “No, I didn’t,” I called [...]

It was one of those safe sharks

At Easter my sister, her husband and daughter were down visiting from Singapore. My niece (let’s call her Georgia) is a bit of a fish when it comes to the ocean and she had kindly agreed to help me improve my swimming technique.
Georgia is 16 years old and I know it’s weird that a [...]

Weeping Cornbread and Obama Sightings

I made the Obama Inauguration Cornbread and to be honest it was a “yes, we can” kind of recipe with a bit of a “no, we can’t” thing going on when it came to the taste test.
It’s hard to convince New Zealanders that cornbread is a top idea in the first place. It’s harder to [...]

Goats’ Gonads in Limoncello

Love and marriage. Horse and carriage. Dried fruit and booze. Somehow they all just go together.
A couple of years ago I decided that when you have a lemon glut you should make limoncello. But not for me the old cheat’s way of simply throwing a bit of lemon skin into a bottle of vodka and [...]

Family Christmas or Something Beginning with Y

My family Christmas is usually a reasonably large affair because the eight children my parents created went forth and multiplied the way all good Catholics should. And it turns out that we’re quite the example of a mathematical equation because the sum of the original multiplication went forth and multiplied, too, demonstrating all sorts of [...]

Rita Massey Ferguson

Rita quickly became the third person in our mock marriage and, like Princess Di, I have at times felt things to be a bit crowded. And it’s not just the crowding that makes me snappy. Rita is a VERY EXPENSIVE MISTRESS TO RUN.

Rita Massey Ferguson came from Trade Me