Gory Christmas

My Dear Princess and Dear Friends,

If you didn't know, Caro and I seem to have reached some sort of accommodation over Xmases. We get to alternate one in Tauranga with family, with one back in Paraparaumu with friends.

And as last year we spent Xmas with Loulou, Tiger and Joshua, this morning saw us catching the plane up to Tauranga. 

Feefs came to collect us from the airport but after dropping our stuff at her new house, we headed over to Dani and The Cop's place for drinks and a barbecue. 

I like Dani and The Cop very much. Dani is probably the most unfiltered person I have ever met and The Cop is her police officer husband with a permanent expression of long-suffering good-humour on his face. 

"Yes dear," you'll hear him say when she berates him for drinking too much beer. As he passes me another beer.

Dani and The Cop also have two adorable little Yorkie dogs, Tink and Oscar. Today's blip is Tink looking soooo happy because we were giving her ALL THE CUDDLES. I've put a picture of Caro and Oscar in the extras.

The Cop heads up the Fatal Accident Response Unit* here in Tauranga and so was a little late back to meet us today. He'd come from Whakatāne, about 80km away where there had been an intentional hit-and-run (gang involvement is suspected).

He shrugged off our shock when he told us. He is used to this sort of thing. "Of all the days, today was a day when I wished there were seagulls," he said. "It took them FOREVER to collect him all."

He is not a fan of the team that does this. "Oh they turn up in their sci-fi suits with their Halloween masks on," he sighed. "Back in the 80's it would just be a couple of us with bin bags, trying to work out whose body part was whose."

"Oh, like 'That's not his nose!'," I joked.

"Funny you should say that," said The Cop and told us a story of how had picked up what he thought was a finger one time and then dropped it sharpish when he realised that it was in fact....

"Eeeeeeeyew!" we all said.

Then Dani's daughter Hannah turned up. She is a nurse and therefore ALSO has some grim stories. I shall spare you the grossest one because it is likely you are eating Christmas dinner right now, but she repeated one about having her lovely pink shoes ruined because she turned over a dead person only to have them leak - and I quote - "corpse-juice" all over her. 

"The other nurses thought it was funny," she sighed. "But I could never wear those shoes again."

To add insult to injury, the family of dead guy asked her to dress him up in his leathers (he was a biker). 

"And I was like, 'Couldn't you have asked me to do that BEFORE rigor set in?'" she complained. 

So it wasn't exactly seasonal talk but we had a lot of laughs and a LOT of drink. I got big hugs and even A KISS from The Cop and he promised to come and visit us in Paraparaumu soon. 

After that, we took ourselves off to sleep in their caravan. It was very comfortable but it had just a cupboardy toilet, the less said about which the better. 

Did you know that drinking alcohol makes you pee a lot? I sure do.

S. 

* Check out that acronym. I'm not entirely sure he didn't make it up.