Not around? Here's something anyway!

If I'm not around much in the near future, it's because I'm currently writing a novel! A bad one for sure because it's so much more fun writing bad novels than good ones, because ... well, that's the trouble with having a cluster of stupid sodding degrees in Literature! You no longer know what a good novel is, and all you can say for sure is that if critics consider something "a good novel" it just means it has dense concepts, dull pedantic characters, no narrative pull and is unbearably boring to read.

So, in the meantime, I'm still on such a high over New Zealand's win that I'm making my main character a Kiwi in honour.

And also in honour is this parade through the streets of Auckland:



And a lovely note from Queen Elizabeth to the All Blacks!  Let me see if I can find that too:

28 Oct 2011
To the Governor-General of New Zealand:

I was delighted to learn of New Zealand's victory in the 2011 Rugby World Cup. As one of the many who has admired the extraordinary fortitude of New Zealand's people in the face of recent disaster, I am so glad to know how much pleasure the All Blacks' victory has brought to the entire nation. Please convey to the team and management my warmest congratulations on their outstanding achievement.

ELIZABETH R

 Lovely stuff, yeah!   Choice, Bro! (My Kiwi character speaks lots of Kiwi slang, so I'm boning up!) And what makes this exceptionally nice is how she gracefully acknowledges that she's been following the recent series of horrible disasters in God's Own Home - The Land of The Long White Cloud - Aotea Roa - 

1) The two earthquakes in Christchurch! 

2) The Pine River Mining Disaster 

3) The Rena Oil Spill  ...

 ... and knows full well just how much New Zealand needed something to cheer them up!

Shot, Bro! Yeah nah! Good azzz, that Queen Fulla, yeah, ehhhhh!  

E noho ra!