The world has officially gone completely bonkers. All four of our supermarkets in Hamilton have sold out of loo paper. So what do we do now? Drip dry? The general public clearly haven’t given much thought to the far reaching effects of their panic buying. For instance think of our poor plumbers because there’ll be no more clogged carzies as there’s no loo roll to put down them. Or will they… Will the masses start repurposing the tabloid press? In which case there’ll be more blocked bogs than ever before. My heart bleeds for anyone booked in for a Colonoscopy in the next few weeks. But it does make one think doesn’t it? And if you don’t know what I’m talking about just Google Billy Connolly Colonoscopy.

None at Aldi None at Coles either

Empty shelves in Aldi and Coles

Another quandary, does one carry one’s own just in case? Furthermore, to my utter amazement people are starting e-bay shops selling the stuff and at vastly inflated prices! I kid you not!

And this is all because some bright spark in China thought it would be a good idea to eat bats. Personally I’d rather stick needles in my eye than eat something that I’m completely revolted by, but then I’m not Chinese. But seriously the world is in a terrible situation and no one knows what’s going to happen. The best we can do is carefully and hygienically, keep KBOing. I’m not cancelling my trip back to Blighty for my mother’s significant birthday in May and will continue with other travel plans as normal.

My profuse apologies for the lack of blog over the past few months. I seem to have been rather busy doing “nothing”. In November I gave up pretending to be a legal secretary and have become a Lady of Leisure, or in more descriptive terms, Director of Domestic Services.

Some of their beautiful wool Our ram BD getting a short back and sides Phil getting a haircut

Phil and BD getting their annual short back and sides and some of their beautiful wool

What have I been doing to entertain myself? The Kiwi passed comment that I might be getting a little rotund so I poured myself into some brand new Lycra and joined the gym and now do circuit training twice a week for the over 55’s. Yikes! I think I resemble a multicoloured string of sausages but as I’m one of the younger ones in our class I inevitably cop a fair amount of victimisation from our gym teacher. When I’m on the tread mill and she thinks I’m not looking she will push the incline button up a few pips shouting at me “Come on Camilla dig a bit deeper, I know you can do it.” I also do Pilates on Saturday mornings and spend most of the hour either laughing or crying whilst trying to get into the most impossible contortions. Our teacher regularly emphasises the importance of our pelvic floor muscles which given the current worldwide shortage is probably not a bad idea.

Since my last blog Australia has been through some tough times and we feel incredibly lucky to have largely escaped the dreadful bushfires. However New Year’s Eve was a very sober and contemplative event where the Kiwi had spent the festive period helping to shore up fire defences on the farm where he works which boundaries onto a National Park.

A huge bush fire had started in the park a couple of weeks before Christmas and was still raging out of control. It got within 500m of the homestead but luckily danger was averted in the nick of time due to the magnificent efforts by our local firies. Hercules planes and helicopters carrying water flew over at regular intervals on their way to combat the flames which were throwing up massive clouds of smoke visible from our home 35kms away.

The fire ran mostly along the ground with the tree canopy escaping the worst of it and we hoped the wildlife did as well. With the lack of ground feed in the park unfortunately there’s not much for the kangaroos left to eat and they are straying onto the farm in almost plague proportions looking for food.

I am delighted to announce that our Golden girl Margot “got married” for the second time and again we had to endure the agonising 30 day wait before we could scan her to see if any puppies were on board. It was a great moment peering at the screen and I’ll never forget the enormous grin on our vet’s face as she found several little sacks each containing a little bundle of blond gorgeousness.

Thirty more days have passed and Margot now with a large cargo is absolutely enormous. She’s due in the next few days and we’re thoroughly prepared for the great event. We’re planning on keeping another girl pup which will take our compliment up to four Golden girls as I’m now kind of “retired” I’ve got time on my hands to devote to them all and inevitably time to develop my deep and meaningful relationship with Henry the Hoover.

Having some time to myself has been wonderful and I’ve been enjoying retail therapy days with girlfriends and having a day on the farm working with the Kiwi carting hay. I had great fun driving the farm truck across bumpy paddocks whilst listening to BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Disks.

Last week I attended a local Angus Bull sale with the Kiwi and his boss where 150 of the most handsomest beasts were auctioned at the prestigious Te Mania Angus Stud. I found it fascinating watching the farmers very discreetly bidding whilst the frenetic auctioneer did his best to beef up the tempo, but oh no, they were oh so cool. I had to be very careful when it came to swatting the odd fly away from my face as I didn’t want to end with an 850kg mammoth black bull to take home.