The Price of Potatoes

My Dear Princess & Dear Fellows,

Today I had to give a talk in Auckland, which meant getting up at 5am to be at the airport in time for my 6.45 flight.

Fortunately, my little hairy alarm clocks KNEW this somehow and were schnuppering around at 4.45am for breakfast, waking me up.

Cats are psychic.

Annoyingly, when I got there, the senior manager who was there to provide back-up had not arrived yet. SHE had put herself on the later flight! Bloody rude. And then when she showed up, she was wearing what I can only describe as an unironed olive-green sack. 

"Hello," I said to myself, "here's someone who got out of bed just forty minutes before boarding."

"Do you want me to say a few words?" she mouthed at me before the big meeting.

"Yes," I said. "HERE'S OLIVE, EVERYBODY! OLIVE* IS GOING TO SAY A FEW WORDS."

I am evil.

The presentation went well. I try to keep things light-hearted and people seem to appreciate that. Also I went around the room forcing people to talk to me. I am not really an outgoing, gregarious person, but if you give me an audience I find myself possessed by the spirit of Bob Monkhouse. 

I flew back into Wellington in the evening and arrived at the tail-end of a dinner Cazza had organised with Joshua, Tiger and LouLou. There were several empty bottles of wine on the table and they were clearly just a glass away from singing "Daydream Believer" or possibly "Tubthumping".

So I joined them for drinks while they told me how LOVELY dinner had been, the b*stards. We had good fun. I had told them about Eff-Up sessions when we were in Levin. Fat Pete, this time I showed them your link. LouLou was crying with laughter - it was "Was Ist Ein 'Sh*t-Gap?'" that had her gasping for air.

Tiger and LouLou told us about life in the country. And their odd neighbours, one of whom LouLou is convinced is selling sexual favours for potatoes. That set us all off.

"Potatoes?" I said. "Avocadoes I could understand. You don't want to know what I'd do for an avocado right now."

Tiger suggested that this would explain the shady men seen outside the woman's house, waving bags of chips around and winking.

So it was lots of fun. LouLou and Tiger have invited us to theirs for Christmas - another Orphan's Christmas for the backpackers. We got talking about how freaked out I am by having Xmas in the Summertime and LouLou clapped her hands together -

- she's quite an enthusiastic person -

"Oh my god! We should have a Winter Christmas! I know it's a bit twee, but I love it..."

Apparently it is a thing here - I guess among expats like me - that you have a pretendy Xmas in the Winter months. That means you put up your tree and lights when it is properly dark, as nature intended. Naturally, I am fully on board with this idea and offered to do it at ours.

"We should have Secret Satan," suggested Tiger. "And to make it interesting we could have a theme like 'Things You Can Insert'".

"I'm so excited!" said LouLou. "SO excited for Christmasses. Christmi?"

It was a good end to the day, and the best way to slough off all that work nonsense. Now it is the next morning and the little hairy bandits let me sleep in until 5.45am I just fed them, and came to the decision that although I will be in the office, I shall be dreaming of a dual-Christmas all day.

S.

* Her name is not actually Olive. Except here, where it is from now on.