Beware of the Double Bogey man

Just a little bit of excitement in our lives on Sunday as Duncan was in the 19 man shoot out at golf. It begins with 19 players and one person gets dropped off at each hole. Naturally it takes nearly all day. Duncan had promised to ring when he good knocked out. By 1.00 I thought "the B*****d's forgotten to ring me. By 2.00 I thought maybe ......, and just as I was heading off to the movies at 3, he rang to say he had won the whole lot. And the amazing thing was, he had 6 double bogeys. (Bad news, for you non-golfers) BUT when he had a bad hole, someone else had a worse one, and he hung on until the end, finally having to have a "chip off" with Gray Clapham to clinch the match. The next excitement was opening up the winner's envelope - over $600! I didn't find this out until after returning from the movies - Samson and Delilah, about some aborigine kids (very bleak and sad and hopeless)
I have been in Auckland for 2 days on a course for taking classes on video conference next year. Stayed in the Holiday Inn which was nice. Very stimulating course - but as you can imagine with a pack of teachers pretty full on talking and listening.
On Thursday we head up to Auckland with a cargo of wedding wine. Not long to go now!!

A Topp Weekend

Race Day Theme this year was "The Rich and the Famous" Duncan and I went as the Topp twins. I'm Camp mother and Duncan is Camp Leader.

The Blacks were Professor Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle from My Fair Lady. Here they are with their son Andrew who is back to get married - on the 8th of January. The Kemps came as the Papa-Rat-C and Paris Hilton 30 years on - she has just had another nose job, and her dog has grown up. I'm afraid Shirley couldn't stand the bandages for too long, but quite a lot of the costumes got abandoned as the day went on. All except Camp leader (Duncan) who galloped around in his dress all day.

Everyone contributed a dish of the rich and famous and we had a great meal - so that no-one needed dinner that night. The wind was quite cool so we were very glad of the conservatory.

Here is the formal lineup - I don't know what Duncan was doing with his hand!

Roger was Lord Ascot,the instigator of race meetings and Sue was Julie Andrews. We were also very fortunate to have Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip join us (alias Dawn and Paul)

Karen Crosby came as Imelda Marcos and bought a collection of wonderful shoes, which she proceeded to change before each race. The boots were the luckiest.

But in the end Camp Leader was so tired he even went to sllep through the Golf Show. A good day was had by all.

We're on the road again.

It was a great sense of deja vu as I headed off to support Duncan on a run. Here he is, just starting offbehind one of the people in a red shirt.


The course is now a two lap course around the centre of town. Here he is on the first lap. As you can see from his number 1691 he could have done it on his head and still be recorded as 1691!

The second lap and the sweat and dribble off the chin is starting to grow. The man in full fire gear was only doing 5 km. He did the 10.4 km in 55minutes and was 4th in his age group. I had heaps of people asking me why I wasn't doing it, but my muscle tone after my op has been very slow to return. For every day you spend in bed it is a week to fully recover. (Advice from nursing friend) That is why they try and get people up as quickly as they can.

The garden is producing heaps at present, but no flowering on the grapes yet. More meetings with lawyers, but not much headway on the land sale.