Kiwi Bird

Hey to all my new friends! Thanks for the mails and comments on my blogs - I loved them! Ta v much!

People - including me - have always thought sheep were dummies. However psychologists have recently published papers telling us that sheep are amongst the smartest of the animals!!! Way smarter than horses for instance. But not as smart as dogs of course.

They figured this out by giving various farm animals tasks to do. Go through a maze, press buttons, recognise faces, blah, blah, blah.

The sheep could remember more stuff than the other animals, and learned quicker too! Cool eh?

And no I don't have a sheep fetish - but I used to work on a sheep farm in the school holidays when I was a kid so I do like them.

Have a great day! Kia Ora! Go the ABs in the Bledisloe Cup!

Because New Zealand is a string of narrow islands we all live close to the sea. You could say we have saltwater in our veins.
I live in Auckland - "The City of Sails". This is where we won (and lost) the America's Cup.
But the sailing we love most is not the rich man's sport of maxi yachts, but the family pottering around in a Laser or Hobicat all Saturday year round.
I have only owned one boat. It was a heavy old sailing dinghy with ugly lines but I lavished attention on it. I restored it using the best anti-fouling paints. I bought Hutchwilco life jackets and a new anchor so I could fish from it. I mended the sail and read dozens of books from the library on sailing.
At last the big day came. I had waited patiently for the paint to dry thoroughly, the weather and tides were good.
I had a few happy hours sailing and pulled the boat up on the shore and cleaned it out.
The next day I hurried down to my boat - but it had gone! Nicked, pinched, stolen! This was the heaviest boat on the beach, and the ugliest but it was the one the rotten thieves had chosen.
I sailed a Hobicat in Fiji years later and toyed with the idea of buying one but I never did any more about it. Maybe one day?