This week has been frustrating, particularly the last few days. It’s been one of those weeks when you start making dinner, reach into the cupboard for potatoes, and find that the potatoes you bought only a week ago have gone from looking fine and fresh to being rotten potato soup which has seeped throughout your entire cupboard and gotten all over everything. I just sighed, took a deep breath, and remembered last week. Last Saturday I drove from Geraldine to Queenstown in the South Island of New Zealand.  For once I had the luxury of a car to myself, and enough time to stop whenever I felt like it to photograph the scenery. The South Island is often said to have the best scenery in New Zealand, a country noted for its remarkably beautiful scenery, and autumn is a particularly fine time in the South Island.  Wellington doesn’t have enough deciduous trees to make autumn anything but damp and unpleasant, but down south the poplars were turning golden yellow in long rows, sycamores were beginning …

So, apparently getting attacked and bitten by random not-particularly-threatening beasties whilst on holiday is my thing.  Last September it was the duck in Hawaii, and a decade ago I was bitten by an eel while feeding it. This latest one takes the cake though. We were in Golden Bay.  We were determined to go swimming.  Fabulous Parapara beach – the massive curve of sand stretching away into the distance.  Endless blue sky, the sun beaming down, seagulls circling, waves crashing. The picture was perfect, except for one minor detail – the tide was out, and the water was a bit shallow and murky.  As someone who grew up by the ocean, that’s not the best time to be in the water, but I kept my doubts to myself and we raced into the water. It was warm for once, which is always exciting and unusual in New Zealand.  So we forged out, walking metres and metres out into the water towards the deep water line. And then I screwed up.  I opened my mouth. “You …