It is a long time since I wrote anything here. Sometimes one event does not seem newsworthy but when you have a few they add up but then you have to make the effort to write more & make it into an essay of disconnected events. So this is a hotch potch of things. My sax playing is progressing; my tutor is gently pushing me. He gives me harder and harder études each time we meet. I am OK with that, he is wanting me to progress enough to join the Mersey Swing Band, of which he is the director, & I am keen to join. I'm hoping to put some more on SoundCloud soon.

Douglas and I were both competing this weekend. Douglas was actually asked to compete in both an inter-club rifle competition and the Southland Cross Country champs. He'd already accepted the rifle competition before invited to run, so on Saturday, he headed off to Tuatapere with Shane to shoot down there. He had a good day. He shot a single card, and a double, which he hasn't shot before. His single was the best card he's ever shot.

Douglas's birthday today. He had to go to school of course, but I cooked a curry at his request, and Nicky baked a Guinness cake. His present from us was a new version of an item of clothing he had as a much younger age - see the pics below. Gethin was very generous and got him a great new t-shirt and a v smart hoodie. He also got a nice surprise - the parts for the mini which he's ordered from the UK arrived today too.

I enabled a new way of including media files (images, video, sound) and other files (pdf's etc) into your blog posts.

It's called "Scald" - don't ask me why; the bloke who wrote it is French so perhaps it's a French anacronym.

Now, whenever you're on a page you can edit (or even comment on) you will see a bar at the right of your browser that looks like:

Douglas and Gethin were both racing today.

Gethin was racing in the Otago Championships Kart race, and Douglas was racing in the Southland Schools Orienteering Championships.

The Otago Champs is a trophy that Gethin has pretty much made his own - he's won it in every class he's competed in. This year he's in a different class - Rotax Max.

We had an interesting morning.

firstly the snow. This is carrying on.

Then I was making breakfast and heard a thump on the patio window. Looked up and saw feathers on the window and a New Zealand Falcon flying away. There was a rather concussed thrush on the patio.

Nicky reckoned the falcon would return, and sure enough, a few minutes later, there it was on the lawn. I expected it to quickly swoop onto the thrush, but the building must have hindered it, so instead it stalked it:

Happy Birthday Andrew.

Tim and I are on a road trip to the North Island to pick up some "toys". A few things were bought on 'TradeMe' which required retrieving from the Wellington area. We drove via Dunedin to pick up Jim's 'Ute' and then up east coast to Picton. Took the Sunday evening sailing to Wellington, and stayed overnight in a cheap motel. Monday morning we headed north to Sanson, where we picked up the "Laser" sailing dinghy Tim was buying.

A lot of the family know that 4 months ago when my back was sore from kayaking I started thinking about a sedentary hobby, After several weeks of pondering I found a tutor and rented an alto saxophone. When I looked at it before my first lesson I had no idea how to pick it up without damaging it. and could barely tell A from B let alone a # from a flat. However having got started I have become very enthusiastic and am thoroughly enjoying myself.

Sometimes I wonder why I do the guiding work, ... but days like this remind me. I had two clients to take up the Gertrude Valley. It's only sold as an alpine valley walk, so no implication that everyone will get to the saddle. The two people I had were lovely Yorkshire folk, and quite fit, but not so sure about scrambling. They did really well though, and were keen to get to the saddle. They were really pleased that they did too. Great place for a picnic! Coming down the rocky bits a little coaching was required, but no problems. Great day out.