I'm outa here !

For more Christmases than he would care to remember my brother Sunshine's Christmas morning has started due to being woken by two hungry cats in his bedroom.

Lord knows how they got there, but the first words out of his mouth tended to be along the lines of 'I'm going to kill Kate'.

While I don't think putting as much distance between himself and me on Christmas morning is the sole reason him and the other Sunshines are currently on a plane hurtling their way to Whistler, I'm sure if he was writing a Pros and Cons list for making the trip, 'Not been woken up by my sister' might have come under the Pros list after 'Skiing is fun' but before 'No chance of getting a parking ticket if I'm not in the country for three weeks'.

Anyway, I'm also out of here. First off to catch up with the rest of my family who aren't holidaying in Whistler or Puerto Rico and then I'm off to see a gaggle of old friends who've returned from various countries around the world. Good times.

I hope everybody has fantastic a Christmas and New Year. I will possibly post between now and the time I'm back posting regularly, but I'm aware of being a bad reality show promo -promising much after the break, but delivering feck all.

Thank you for visiting, thank you to all the lovely commenting visitors - I love your comments.

I was going to leave you with a shot a friend of mine sent me, it looked sixties, there was a dude with slicked back hair holding up a can of something looking at the camera. A sixtyish year old lady (dressed in a snappy orange trouser suit) was standing in front of the drinks bar about to pour herself a drink and in the background sitting on the sofa there was an older, well dressed, lady leaning forward gently throwing up into the rubbish bin.

Unfortunately I couldn't copy the picture, and a Google image search of 'Auntie Nora having a chunder' was absolutely no help at all.

But then, maybe that's a good thing.

Merry Christmas !

Nothing like a touch of festive Tourettes to spice up a supermarket visit.

I was walking in to the supermarket yesterday as an older man was coming out of it. He looked just like your Jo Average type, someone's husband, father, grandfather.

Until I heard him say to absolutely nobody (in a New Zealand accent), 'The only good Kiwis are dead Kiwis!'

I looked at him and carried on my way into the supermarket as he headed out into the sunshine.

However about two minutes later he appeared round the end of an aisle, looked at me dropped the c bomb as he walked by!

I was about to give it straight back to him when it slowly began to dawn on me that possibly things were not all that peachy in his attic.

I kept my head down and heard some more abuse from an aisle over and assumed Mr Wrestling-with-the-World was continuing in his work. A few minutes later I was over by the international section when he turned up again, yelling at a woman, 'Stop looking at me, I hate people looking at me! Especially women.' She then hurled back some abuse and he countered with, 'Oh I hate people like you, family people. You're all just so smug.' And then he marched off.

I went up to the woman and said, 'I wouldn't take it personally, he called me the c bomb, I think he's just a seriously good case of crackers.'

I expected her to say something along the lines of 'Thank god, I didn't know what I'd done to offend him.' But instead, she looked as if she was sizing me up to see if I was doing my own wee cha cha with reality and said, 'Riiiiiiight,' and walked off.

Which left me wondering if I had invented the whole thing in my head.

Until a guy came up to me and said, 'That guy is completely nuts.'

And made me feel a lot better about my world.

A beautiful phone conversation.

Talking to my five year old niece last night, 'Hardly any more sleeps till I see you! I can't wait!'

'Yeah! Do you know how much I love you, Kate?'

'How much?'

'I love you more than the whole tholar thythtem.'

*crinkles up inside*

While I fully understand that being regarded as a rock star by my nieces will only last for a wee while longer, I have to say that hearing things like that do make my wee heart burst with such joy and delight.

Ho Ho Ho and a luminous pair of slippers.

Since everyone is getting into the Christmas spirit, I thought it was time I climbed up on the bandwagon.

So here I am wishing you all a Merry Christmas in my CHRISTMAS SLIPPERS!
Would you CHECK THOSE PUPPIES OUT ??!! Sensationally bad.

I would love to say that I could blame my mother for them, however I am reasonably confident I would have whined and whined and whined about getting them and she would have relented only so she wasn't forced into drowning me in the nearest puddle.

'Have you met Kate, our youngest? Sweet wee thing, yet such a pain in the arse and such terrible taste in fashion.We have no idea where that came from, the rest of the family can dress themselves quite adequately.'

Obviously the nurse's headscarf is my own addition, as well. I think I've mastered the Florence- Nightingale-groupie/off-to-join-a-cult look quite well.

And there's my cat I'm strangling. I've talked of her before, Chippies Murphy Hokey-Pokey Flicky-Tail Patches Tiger Jane MyLastName. Which is - obviously - why she ran away. My sister used to call her Shitty Cat.

And there's my brother Sunshine in the background, and even though you can't really see him, I know that look so well. It's the my-sister-is-such-a-twat-I-would-like-to-punch-her-in-the-throat look.

So there you have it. Merry Christmas from me, my now-dead cat and my very red slippers. Tis not my last post before I slope off, but just thought it was time to hurl some Christmas spirit around.

P.S Tis a glorious 27 degrees here, Summer is HERE! I love it so, even more when I get a text from a friend who is - right now - stuck at Heathrow in a snow storm .

I know who'd I rather be right now.

Just call me Lightning.

One of my goals this year has been to finish a story for my godson who lives in London. When he was born I started it for him, and I've been banging on and on about how I needed to finish it this year.

It's set in a parallel universe where birds fly backwards, people shrink when they get bored and on Thursdays the fish go shopping (see below).

It's called Bryce the Hidden Claw and is about a gargantuan cat who is notorious for being a vicious killer (and rumoured to floss with barbed wire). He moves next door to our main characters Jake and Izzie, who proceed to go on a crusade to rid this evil criminal from their neighbourhood. But it turns out that things are not as they seem...

I've drawn it out with my appalling handwriting and have illustrated it (badly). I got the idea for the design of the book as a great aunt of mine who lived in England wrote a book for me when I was a child, with this layout. (However there were a couple of reasonably major differences between her and I, she was an artist and a published author so her drawings were a lot less amateuresque and her story far more skillfully crafted.)

Anyway I'm just pleased I've finally finished. All forty-three pages of it (it even comes with it's own bookmark due to those forty-three pages making it a little long to read in one hit if you're small).

But what makes the whole thing worthwhile is that my godson got it for his birthday this month, and he loves it.

As I say, I started it when he was born.

He's just turned seven.

I was trapped in a nightmare and woke up on Planet Hello Kitty.

Those crazy Taiwanese. Seeing an opportunity, they thought a way to milk the Hello Kitty craze would be to extend the brand to an airline.

Which they did and went and decked out two Airbus A330-200s.
And they didn't just stop with the outside of the plane, hell no. Or the other bits and pieces. (It is always one of the games I want to play when going on a long haul flight, it's called Lets Count How Many Packets We Open. Strangely, no one ever seems to be remotely intested in playing it with me.)

And of course, lets not forget the dinner tray.

Sadly, for all those international jetsetting girls eight years and under the first was taken off international routes in December 2008 and the second in March. However they're still being used for short routes in Asia.

No doubt Tom Cruise will be trying to buy one for Suri for Christmas.

Crash!

So if you live in New Zealand, anywhere south of Taupo and you have a Telecom mobile phone, you may have noticed that it's been strangely quiet this morning. Well this isn't because no one cares, but because the whole XT network is down.

Telecom have released a statement and here's the part I love :

'Telecom said via Twitter that a severe fault had resulted in the outage.'

Hmmm, call me crazy but is that just a euphenism for 'We have no fucking idea what the problem is and, until we do, we're clueless as to how to fix it.'

All I know is that there are people out there who will be having a hell of a worse Monday morning than me. Especially a handful of Telecom employees.

I'm sorry, but haven't we learnt anything from Milli Vanilli?

My friend who lives in Australia (the one whose career 'highlight' included getting paid to pull the bird to the prime minister outside a deaf school this year- I only repeat that story because I love it so) sent me the link to this story.

A singer in a band called Jukebox was performing live on a Romanian music show called Stele-sub-la.

Things are going well so far.

Now this singer is known well for his live performing.

Still okay.

Until he performs...



I think the technical term for performing with your microphone upside down is an 'Epic Fail'.

Unless he is much brighter than he appears and knows that if he performs as though
he is a worshipper at The Church of Milli Vanilli, alot more people would be talking about him than if he didn't.

Like me.

While we're talking about photos that are wrong....

...another gem from Awkward Family Photo.

They've titled it Armed and Endangered, which I am liking.

I'm picking he doesn't want to pick a fight with her, cause he KNOWS where that bayonet is going to end up.

I'm not sure about his plans for the budgie,though.

Okay, I've officially creeped myself out.

Things that I think are wrong with this picture.

1. The earrings.
2. The shoes.
3. The dress.
4. The father.

I'm waiting for Top Gear to call.

Some time ago I got a new car, not a brand-new car, but a new car.

After I bought it I discovered it had one of those backing-sensor thingys.

It goes like this.

Beeeeeeeeep.

Beeeeeeeeep.

Beeeeeeeeep.

Beeeeeeeeep.

Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepTHUD!

Don't ask.

A digital native, I am not.

Does anyone' s brain, apart from mine, when it hears a word, conjure up an image that is the complete opposite to that word?

Exhibit A.

When anyone says 'terabyte' my brain brings up a picture not too dissimilar (but a little more scary) to this. Which is actually a Pterosaurs. And not even remotely related to something that has the capability to store massive amounts of digital information and can look like this.

Exhibit (but not quite so worrying) B.

When someone says 'cous cous' I always think of a cat, cause don't you reckon it would be a great cat's name?

I have many more examples but I will stop now before somebody calls the men in white coats.

Anyone?

Words of wisdom from Audrey Hepburn.

Audrey Hepburn once said, “If I blow my nose, it gets written all over the world.” And, "There are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a girl's complexion.”

I'm picking Tiger Woods could identify with both of those quotes right now.

And he was a cracking good skateboarder as well.

So I saw something interesting in the weekend.

A dwarf on a skateboard.

I'm hearing you, 'Not that interesting,Kate'. And definitely not as vaguely bizarre as a dwarf on a skateboard holding a leprechaun outfit.

But the thing that bumps this skateboarding dwarf into the not-your-everyday files was that he was wearing a g-string.

And competing in the Skateboarding Nationals.

That's all I am saying.

How to Make Scooter Helmets Cutting Edge. By Karl Largerfeld.

1. Purchase twelve giant scooter helmets.
2. Cover them in mink.
3. Then add pearls.
4. Design them so Ipod hook ups are safe.
5. Slap price tags on them that range from US $1,805 to US $6, 837. 6. Laugh your arse off at how you can make silly money from ridiculous fashion.

More here.