I call this picture: New Zealander And Wife. Over here it probably has a different name. I didn’t say mine too loudly. Not because its offensive but because sleeping with sheep is against the laws of the Bible and that is one of my favourite works of fiction, just after The World According to Garp and The Shining.

I’ve found the sheep. You can stop fretting as to their whereabouts. I found all of them. Must have driven past 13 million of the fuckers today and I’m definitely having lamb for dinner. Which, for any vegans reading this (yeah; that’s gonna happen), I can do with clear conscience and a total lack of guilt. Because I have a God-given ‘disconnect’ which protects me from any form of hypocrisy. Exemplified today when I pointed out in the car a ‘baby sheep’. To which I was quite rightly corrected (fucking pedantics) that it was a ‘lamb’. And I realised that the ‘baby sheep’ which are sweet, gorgeous and cuter than cute, I would cuddle and stroke and ‘ahhhhh’ all day long. A ‘lamb’ is another story. One normally written on menus. Same as veals. I’ve never seen one in the wild hence its no problem. Baby cows are itsy bitsy cutesy things, bit like baby sheeps but need horseradish.

New Zealand is quite wonderful. The South bit anyway, can’t speak for the rest, got no idea. But you drive south and it becomes very alpine. Typical mountains, lovely lakes, gorgeous trees. Could be Canada, could be Scotland, could be mid-Europe. Then you travel further down and it starts to look a bit different, but still geographically/geologically quite familiar. By the time you reach Te Anau, as we did today; ‘the gateway to Fiordland’, you must be in New Zealand because it no longer looks anything like anywhere you’ve ever seen. Te Anau is a Mauri name meaning ‘gorgeous lake in the middle of fucking nowhere’, or something like that. There is ‘the official legend’ but mine’s much shorter, more concise.

And we’re here because tomorrow morning we board a boat. And stay on it for 28 hours. On lake Manapouri (‘gorgeous lake in the middle of fucking nowhere), cruising round like… probably like Sid James in Carry On Cruising. Only there just 12 passengers on this boat. It’s a little boat. So you may not hear from me in a while. If ever!!!!

Happy Saturday

A xxxx