A dew drop on the face of humanity

So, my posting has been a bit sluggish of late. I can blame a variety of things, seasonal silliness, fatigue, a four day trip to The Village Of The Damned, more fatigue, writer's block, the list of reasons are endless. So, now back behind the keyboard, I feel guilt, guilt that I have left a gap of several days with no outbound missives and no inward correspondence.

Tonight is the shortest night of the year. As a quirk of the earth's orientation the sunrise times are already later than last week, but the sunsets will continue to draw out, with the latest still another four weeks away. Good news for the evenings, bad news for my morning riding.

Tomorrow morning, Mikeal (he of the quickdraw), Doris and myself will set out in the pre-dawn darkness, to reach the high point of Scenic Drive in time for the sunrise. It will be glorious riding through the growing light, with birdsong as company in the bush clad walls of Scenic Drive. I can't wait. With the mixed cloud we have had today, I'm picking the dawn to be spectacular, a great way to welcome in the slide to the winter solstice.

The trip to The Village of The Damned was fun. Yet again I realised how fortunate we are here, in the upper North Island, weatherwise. On Sunday, while down there, a Southerly front came through and ripped a good ten degrees from the temperature in the space of minutes. The next day it was still barely in the teens temperature wise at midday when we left, and it's supposed to be Summer. It was a relief to get back to sub-tropical Auckland.

The plus side of the visit was that the Kaos Kreator got to do some good, old fashioned country things, played in hay, rode horses and quad-bikes, learnt to crack a stock-whip, had his first go on a motor-bike, played in the creek, caught cockabullies (although he was a little underwhelmed by the size of the fish there) and got to see his yours truly rid the country of one pesky possum. Positive stuff for a small boy, that is pretty difficult to provide in a city.

Only real drawback to all of this, is that he now wants a motorbike, some cattle and a pony. That's going to be easy to accommodate on a small suburban block.