I had dug a big hole. This was the hole for the lovely rose Janet had given me for my birthday. She has it in her gorgeous garden and I have often admired and coveted it. It is a floribunda, a lemon rose with hints of lime. I like any plant with hints of lime. It has a silly name: Lemon ‘n’ Lime. Roses often have silly names. If I was in charge of bestowing silly names on roses, I’d have called it Gin ‘n’ Tonic, with a Slice of Lime.
Anyway, that hole. It was a bloody big hole, by my standards, and it is quite a feat to dig a big hole in our borders. There are established trees in the border so you encounter tree roots which have to be dug up and cut back, which is a right pain. So I was rather pleased with the hole. I turned to lean the spade against the pagoda and when I turned back, Pixie Cat was helpfully filling in the hole. Greg, also helpfully, suggested that she might have thought, because this is the sort thing a cat might well think, that I’d done something unthinkable by human standards, but not by cat standards, in the garden and that she was helping by covering up the crime. For the record: I certainly had not.
I re-dug the damn hole. I turned away to again lean the spade against the pagoda and when I turned back, the evil chickens were helpfully filling in the hole. They were having a grand time finding bug treats, an excitement communicated by much gleeful chitter-chatter. I may have chitter-chattered in response, rudely. I don’t know whether chickens understand expletives. I do, actually; they don’t. But they understand having a broom shaken at them. Briefly. They were back pecking and digging and being right pains minutes later. I don’t know why our chickens are so terrible. Nobody I know who has chickens has such trouble with chickens. They, again, filled in the damn hole. I, again, re-dug the damn hole.
There are holes you dig for yourself. Our friend Pru wasn’t able to attend my birthday lunch. So we congregated, a little later, at the Gladstone Inn.
A Saturday at the Gladstone is the day geezers with what we call mid-life crises come over the hill from Wellington in their leather jackets and on their Harleys. They are benign. They make a bit of a racket arriving and then have a beer or a fizzy drink and fish and chips and then roar off home to the wife and kids to mow the lawn. Or so I imagine.
Pru had some belated birthday presents for me. There were three. The first was a very rude book which I had re-gifted to her for her birthday. I didn’t bother unwrapping the second. I knew what it was. It was the re-gifted mug which I had admitted to her I was re-gifting. On this mug, it relates, written in fake diamantés, and in the fakest of sentiments: “Happy Birthday, Gorgeous”. I told her that the deal was she had to re-gift it again to somebody else. She had out re-gifted – to the re-gifter. Checkmate, mate.
Present Three was the proper present: the 20th anniversary Donkey & Mule Protection Trust calendar, in which donkeys are photographed, winsomely, wearing flower garlands.
Look, there’s Lacey! I won my first, and no doubt last, ribbon showing her at the Masterton A&P donkey-showing competition five years ago. I was so inept at showing a donkey that I am fairly certain I earned a pity award. I don’t care. A yellow ribbon might be third in show, but it is still a ribbon. It has just occurred to me that it would make a very fine dressing-gown cord.
I like to pretend to be an influencer. So, here you go, be influenced to give a very classy Christmas present for a paltry $25: a donkey calendar available from donkeymuletrust.org.nz. You’d look like a caring, selfless, helpful person. And you would be, because rescued donkeys need your help. Besides, donkeys are nice. Also, they look very Christmassy wearing their fairy-esque flower garlands, don’t you think?
