A friend is NEVER a co-incidence in your life.

A friend is NEVER a co-incidence in your life. They enter your life at the right time ... be it for a brief moment or a lifetime ... to fulfill a need in you. They bring joy, laughter and tears and their impact on your life always leaves positives behind.

I’m so glad I have so many AWESOME friends in my life.

I’m having a gloomy sort of day. I’d been so looking forward to the Grey Lynn Park Festival this weekend ... and it’s been CANCELLED. Over 400 stall-holders have spent weeks preparing for this event. Bad weather has been forecast for Saturday and this has apparently caused the cancellation. 

Those white cotton-wool clouds spread across my sky this afternoon.

It’s a grrrrr sort of day and the grey gloomy weather is only adding to my mood. 

I’ve BEEN for a long ramble, HAD my caffeine fix AND a brioche - courtesy of Julia .... scoffed a bar of chocolate all on my lonesome .... but it hasn’t lifted my mood.

A baby Chocolat and a baby Shimmer .... they used to LOVE one another!

I was SO excited about participating in this festival.

Time to move on ... so I've been going through all my pics of the hound when she was a puppy .... that's been fun!

At least all the effort I’ve been putting in over the last few months won’t be wasted as it’s only 2 weeks to Fruit Bowl Craft Jam 2012. That’s an INDOOR 2-day market so there’s little chance of it being cancelled unexpectedly ... YAY!

She's LOVED coffee from the very beginning!

I also now get to go to Waiheke tomorrow on a wine tour. It’s a Christmas function that Gav and I were invited to but had to decline because of the Festival. Fortunately they can still accommodate us so I’m off to sample numerous varieties of Fruit of the Vine on the morrow. Better walk the hound early as I probably won’t be in any fit state to walk her on my return. 
Wine does that you know!

I was reading an article earlier about walkable cities ... ie cities where walking about them is safe, useful, comfortable and interesting. This line caught my eye and made me chuckle ... 
“Let’s have a moment of silence for all those who are stuck in traffic on their way to the gym to ride stationery bicycles.” 

She loves being brushed with the vacuum cleaner

I guess walking as much as I do makes the article more pertinent. There’s a lot to be said for re-inventing cities so as to make them more walkable. The article was specifically speaking about American cities which have effectively become no-walking cities ... but it’s probably applicable to most cities worldwide. Downtowns are easy to get to but NOT worth arriving at.  Cities are losing their sparkle. Creating a walkable city is not only socially and physically desirable but would also contribute to an increase in urban vitality. I’m all for it!

A trio of chocolate mousse!

This is what happens when you’re having a ‘grrrr’ kind of day .... you get distracted by all kinds of inane information on-line, some of which actually turns out to be kind of interesting.