Peacocks and pyreneans

Do you remember those travel games we used to play in the days before technology? Car cricket etc. Well there is one game that has never lost its appeal for us. Making up crazy words to fit the letters on the number plates of other cars. If a car has HWH 123 Barry will say "Hugging Warrior Hamsters" and I have to respond with an equally weird reply, but not using any of the previously used words. Maybe "Hairy Weird Hamburger" and so on until one of us runs out of words or another more interesting number plate comes into view. Of course personalised number plates take all the fun out of this game and those number plates are discarded in the game .. unless we have no clue what it actually is supposed to mean and then it is fair game. Do you ever see a number plate and wonder what on earth the owners were thinking? IN2PLA .. apparently a lady who thought if she didn't buy Lotto ticket she was not "In to Play" with a chance. One of my all time favourites is H2OTNT ... this for the guy who had a water blasting business.(H2O = water and TNT is = dynamite) So clever! What would my personalised number plate read? 2YZ4U and definitely not PATSKA. Or for Barry .. maybe BAZZA and for those South Africans out there? I have seen ZULU1 driving around and even BULALA (kill in Zulu) obviously a very aggressive driver. No, I think we will just stick with making up weird sentences for number plates. Our car has the number plate FAE ... so I do wonder what other people in the number plate game might make of ours.

A friend was late for a pamper evening last night because her husband's dog would not let her out the car at their house until he arrived to let her in. It reminded me our our dog Brolux. A white Pyrenean mountain dog. Big as a pony and gentle as a lamb. Well except if you were an uninvited guest and then he would jump on you and pin you to the ground with his body until someone came to call him off. He never bit anyone but was the best watch dog in the world. The kids rode him around the yard and he would happily sleep in the fish pond and allow the goldfish to procreate in his hair. We had a bumper crop of baby goldfish while he cooled off in the pool each Summer. One day the police phoned us to say that a rampaging mob were moving their way along the highway towards our house .. yes folks this was in Africa and not in safe and sound New Zealand where we currently reside. We were advised to evacuate on a moments notice .. kids in the car with a spare set of clothes each and not much else .. and drive off to safety somewhere else. The police said that when the mob arrived at our house .. we had left all the doors open because its cheaper to replace stolen stuff inside the house than repair doors etc. Anyhow some of the mob decided to do a bit of light fingered 'shopping' in our cupboards only to find Brolux standing guard. Firstly he looked like a ghost and Africans are petrified of ghosts and anything that might be the ghost of a vengeful ancestor ... and then of course him sitting on top of them didn't help their anxiety levels. He was spoilt for choice and would no sooner sit on one miscreant than another would enter the fray and he happily hopped from one person to another, happy as Larry to have so many playmates all come to visit him in one day. We loved our Brolux, but we did have a few issues with him. He would sometimes visit the neighbouring farm and chase their peacocks. We would get a frantic call from Mrs McIlrath telling us that he was chasing the birds up trees. Not that she minded him chasing the birds because she was hoping he would actually catch a few of them .. but it was just a game to him. No killing involved, even if the peacocks and peahens made such awful noises that Mrs McIlrath would have no doubt thanked him with a juicy chop or two to rid her of the noise. The problem arose when, tired from his chase, Brolux would flop down on her Italian leather .. very expensive ... lounge suite. And no matter how much she tried to move him he would just open one eye and peer at her through his hair and go right back to sleep. When we moved into town Brolux found life difficult stuck inside a small yard and was soon following the kids to school. Sean would be called out of class to return the animal home ... about 3 kilometers down the road. He would take Brolux home .. walking ... and would no sooner turn around to return to school than Brolux would hop over the fence and follow him again. Not ideal for schooling purposes. We were forced to give him away to a home with wider horizons ... the SPCA put out a call to farmers in the area and within a half hour he was rehomed and happy with guinea fowl to frolic with and children to ride on his back.

We did have a real life security guard on our property on the farm. He would arrive at 5 pm and immediately go to sleep. We would wake him up at 9 pm with hot cocoa and a cookie or two. We had no sooner returned indoors than we could hear him snoring like a steam train once more. So much for being a security guard! But then this was his retirement job and he must have been about 80 years old or thereabouts. Around this time a serial killer was loose in our area .. yes folks, Africa again not New Zealand. Anyhow he had attacked and nearly killed some of our friends and I did have a few sleepless nights thinking we might be on his hit list. We fitted the criteria to a T. He attacked and killed couples with their children asleep in rooms adjacent to the murders .. so it was the innocent children who would find the bodies of their parents in the morning. Shiver shake horrible stuff. Yes, they did catch him and he was given the death sentence ... again folks, Africa not New Zealand. But with Sipho snoring his head off outside each night we could sleep safe in our beds knowing that Brolux was on the prowl .. well unless he was off chasing peacocks next door .. or sneaking food from unsuspecting people silly enough to leave food out. Alphena lived down the road from us and 'farmed' guinea pigs in her one roomed home! And she said he never tried to sneak a snack from her herd of guinea pigs ... and would happily lie down amongst them and allow them to run riot over his body. But we never had any midnight intruders and thank goodness for big hairy dogs with gentle souls.

Folks the mist is descending, the day is grey and drizzly and I really need to have a nice hot shower .. or two. So stay well and hope you have fun thinking of personalized number plates to send me for my birthday ... or Christmas ... or never.