All I want for Christmas is world peace

and :

a trip to Paris in July so I can go to the flea markets and buy lots of buttons and ribbons and vintage French knitting needles and eat gratin Duaphinoise, creme brulee and a croque monsieur;

a black iPod that is slim and slinky and reads my mind so when I think of a song I want to hear, it just starts playing it;

a bottomless gift voucher from Unity Books;

to be able to speak fluent French, Te Reo, and any language I choose;

an unlimited voucher for Sweeney smiles;

a cookbook with every recipe I've ever wanted in it, including how to make the perfect gratin Dauphinoise, creme brulee and croque monsieur;

for Deb to able to eat dairy again;

a natural forcefield that blocks both skin damaging UVA and UVB rays, and insects, but does not limit my ability to tan, in fact it encourages my tan;

the ability to see into the future;

to own a top like this:

and a posh house in London, Sihanoukville, Paris and New York. Do you think Santa will be able to fit all that into his sleigh??

Walking to work down Durham Street

So there I was this morning, walking down the hill with SJD making beautiful sounds in my ears, when I realised that although walking to work with music does make everything that much more like a beautiful film or an arty music video, I was missing out on the sounds of the Tui that are making Durham Street their turangawaewae at the moment.




There are so many of them, I am surprised the King of Brooklyn, Mr Charles Rothwell, hasn't brought one home for me to inspect. And the magpies that have been waking me up at dawn - they're so loud. I saw one on Aro Street this morning making a noise like fabric tearing. So huge and menacing, but they always remind me of that ad back in the 70s for Watties - "magpies, welcoming the dawn" before shots of combine harvesters doing their thing. They also remind me of a park in Richmond where I used to spend my lunchtimes when I was temping at the International Tennis Federation in London. I would walk to the park and sit on a bench and hear the planes overhead going to Heathrow and watch the crows hop around the park picking at the grass. I was reading "In Cold Blood", and it was warm. It was all quiet apart from the planes and the crows and the pages of my book turning.