Welcome Isla!

I got a text at 3 a.m on Saturday from the U.K.

It said, 'Isla Joanna Jessop born today at 2.22. 7lbs 1. Both well and recovering.'

Which is fantastic news.

Except I have absolutely no clue as to who Isla's parents are.

Everywhere you go, you take the weather with you.

Right now, in Auckland it's 16 degrees.

In Wellington, it's 11.

In Christchurch, it's 7.

In London, it's 14.

In New York, it's 19.

And in Dublin, it's 12 degrees.

I love my iphone.

It's the little things.

So my father, the arms dealer, is currently in Langkawi doing what any self respecting arms dealer does and, hang on, I have no idea what self respecting arms dealers do.

Anyhou. Yesterday I picked up a message on my phone, 'Hello Katethere, tell your mother I'm in Singapore!' I love those messages, it's as if he hadn't decided where he was actually off to when he left for the airport.

As he was coming through Auckland I whipped off to the airport to have a glass of wine with him before he hit the international terminal. I had gone straight from the hairdressers where I'd had a significant amount of hair chopped off. My hair tis still, technically, long but not half as long as it was.

After she'd had a good chop at it she proceeded to straighten my mass of unruly tangles. A new look.

So there I was, Little Miss Straight-but-Significantly-Shorter Hair. I walked up to my father who took one look at me and said, 'Gidday Wurzel (as in Gummidge,see: 'mass of unruly tangles'), you've grown your hair !'

My father rocks.

Hide the knives.

This week my work has just massively imploded and, as a result, stress levels - particularly mine - have skyrocketed.

I'm not one of those people who gets shoutie when it gets stressful, I just keep my head down, try and manage the problem and get us through it with the least amount of casualties. But at the end of the day, the problem lies at my feet, so my world has become quite intense.

The situation has not been lost on my production assistant who, yesterday, asked me how I was going.

'I want to stab myself.'

'Would that be with a blunt or a sharp knife?'

'Sharp.'

'Is that worse than a blunt? Cause I reckon a blunt would hurt more.'

'Sharp is more life threatening.'

'So when you only want to stab yourself with a banana, things are getting better?'

'I am looking forward to the day when I want stab myself with a banana.'

Sometime around August.

Is it just me....

..or are there other people looking forward to the wireless age ?

At the risk of stirring old broth...

..what did the zero say to the eight?

'Nice belt.'

I'm sorry, but I am a simple fool and I'm not ashamed to admit that that type of joke cracks me up.

Morning talk.

Yesterday there was a pussy cat in our office.

His name was Donald.

That's all.

Must book tickets immediately. Or not.

I just saw a big billboard that proudly announced:

Auckland Gluten Free Food and Allergy Show 29- 30 May 2010.

I'm sorry, but could they make it sound any more unappealing ?

I suppose it doesn't help that I think 'gluten free' is a euphemism for 'tastes like shit'.

I am so lucky I am not gluten intolerant, otherwise I'd be taking the piss out of myself all day long.

Soon I shall start claiming these one liners as my own.

I have talked about a woman in our office who I would rather follow around with a pen and paper and write down her one liners instead of mundanely carrying out my job, like everyone else in the office.

A couple of pearlers that have recently come out of her mouth.

On the cigarette price hike:

'You think, what's it going to be: cat food/cigarettes, cat food/cigarettes, cat food/cigarettes,cat food/cigarettes? Fuck it, I 'll smoke the cat.'

To a woman who dresses incredibly stylishly:

'Hey Coco Chanel, you'll know - where can I get some decent shoes?'

On the phone to a man who had been a bit down on himself:

'Oh get off the cross would ya? We need the wood!'

And on that note, me and my notebook are off to work.

'

Yoga, the after dinner mint of exercise - until you try it..

Recently one of my oldest friends has started dragging me off to yoga.

Which has shown me just how inflexible I am and made me wonder how on earth can anyone can ever fall asleep during it?

Anyway, before I went for the first time I was imagining that the yoga teacher would be someone who looked like she lived on mung bean milk shakes and would radiate smug good health.

And don't get me wrong, it wasn't that she didn't.

It was just I wasn't prepared for her to have quite obviously spent some quality time with her plastic surgeon.

I'm thinking our yoga teacher is an oxymoron.

If that is at all possible.

Just wondering....

Yesterday I was with a friend, who also works in television, and we were discussing how assuming is the worst thing that you can do in our industry.

We came up with a line that we think is worthy of a plaque:

'Assumption is the Mother of all Fuck Ups.'

What I want to know - is this something can be applied across the career spectrum - or is it particularly relevant to our industry?

Anyone?

He's still got it.

One of the things I have enjoyed about moving to Auckland as I have seen more of my family in three months than I generally would have in two years.

Last night I was at a family birthday party to celebrate my cousin's daughter turning 13. I mean how did that happen? One minute I'm teaching her how to crawl, (apparently my crawling improved tremendously during my lesson) and the next she's casually telling me about how she managed to talk to Justin Bieber when he was here last week.

But this is not another how-come-everyone-else-is-getting-older-while-I'm-still-21 post. This is to tell you about my favourite line of the evening.

It was my 82 year old uncle telling me that he and my aunt were driving somewhere this week and that they had to pull over as he got a call, 'It was from my agent, wanting me for an audition.'

I'm sorry, but how outstandingly cool is that ?

I do have to be careful though, last time I talked about him being 82 he emailed me demanding a recount, claiming that he was only 72.

To which I simultaneously sneezed and said 'Bullshit!'