PLACEMARK*

 Hi all.

I'm back from a lovely trip to my old home town which is not Coeur Mechant in France as some of you might surmise - no, it is Wellington.

After a 3 night stay I (foolishly) had selected a 6 AM option of a flight  to Auckland and then on to Whangarei.  Why did I do this? Well, The Old Girl hit the nail on the head when she said to me - "What were you thinking? You booked a 6AM flight which means that you would have to be up at 4AM and then, in Auckland you have a four and a half hour wait around for a flight to get you home in the early afternoon. Are you nuts?" OK, fair dos, she was mostly right. What she didn't anticipate was the fact that going to bed early (9PM) and setting the alarm for 3:55AM is no guarantee at it would work out OK. I turned the light out at 9, tried to sleep and maybe did doze for an hour and a half but by 12.30 gave up and sat up reading until 3.25 when I got up and had breakfast. The early rising was strange to me but not I guess to commercial cleaners and relieving schoolteachers. By 4.20 I'd abluted, breakfasted, cleaned up the apartment and packed my bag and left for the bus stop to go to the airport.

The Old Girl was right about the tediousness of waiting at the airport though after a sleepless night. when arriving home I just wanted to sleep - which I did for an hour or so and then, after reading the misinformation that Richard wrote (more later) I decided to put the world straight with a reliable report and in fact wrote about a third of the post I intended until ..... I hit the wall. I'm parking that post until tomorrow - sorry about that particularly if you have to read stuff from Robert and Richard to fill the gap, but ... good things are worth waiting for.

* This placemark is longer than Robert's posts.