A boot that has come unglued at the sole, but which is held in place with several elastic hair ties found on the footpath.

My shoe came unglued walking home from work one day. With 15 embarrassing minutes of shoe flapping still to go before I got to my car, I was fortunate to pass a high school, outside of which were dozens of discarded hair ties on the footpath. I have never felt more MacGyver.

Large fawn greyhound having trouble working out how to sit on his new dog bed.The bed is exactly the right size for him but is sleeping scrunched in the corner and partly off the bed, causing him to rest uncomfortably with his nose out of joint.

A literal example of a greyhound with his nose out of joint. We bought Cedric his first proper, expensive, new bed, at considerable bother (35km trip and the store fire alarm going off) and he does not approve. No at all. Well, not yet.

I recognize this as the mansion from the unreleased Mattel series "Ken's post-Barbie bitter breakup". The motocross bike leaking oil on the top floor bedroom carpet was a giveaway.

Screen shot from UK Gov with COE costing.

It doesn't change how crummy the whole new regs are, but your husband still took the cheapest route. As of this morning on Uk Gov site, it is unambiguously (well to anyone who doesn't write headlines for RNZ) still £589 for the 1st COE.

I had to be Jimmy in those days, because my dad had already bagged "Jim." When I became an adult, the roles changed and he became Jimmy. It made for some awkward confusion in the in-between years.

Brown printed certificate from Te Awamutu Intermediate School, 1973, for coming second in the boys' 200m running race. Details written in tidy printing.

So I chose to overwhelm them and sent every bit of crap I'd saved since I was a kid. I believe what clinched it was my only ever sporting certificate - a mighty 2nd at the 200m. That must have impressed them, as they've finally reissued my passport. Maybe out of pity?

A screenshot from an email demanding that, for whatever reason, I prove I existed and had a childhood BEFORE I was issued my previous passport in my late 20s, by providing school records, medical records, and my mother's antenatal records.

A Kafkaesque circus: to get my long-expired UK passport renewed, they insisted I also prove that I existed BEFORE I got my 1st p/port in 1988. WTF else was I doing all those years - growing in a laboratory? And... antenatal records? Did my UK birth cert did not impress them? The UK is bonkers.

Lucy the small black female greyhound sitting awkwardly on her haunches sporting white and blue bandages on her right rear leg, pink tape on her front left, and a "woe is me" hangdog look. She's completely out of it on medication.

Our latest foster greyhound Lucy who attempted to leap a farm gate in pursuit of a crittur, got stuck, cut her leg, broke a bone, and developed a deep financial relationship with a vet, all in 12 hours. She's gone back to the kennel for 6 weeks to recover. It is VERY quiet here without her.

We installed a few solar panels but couldn't afford a battery setup -as it was, stumping up for a battery was seen as virtue signalling but economically unwise. I reckon that will be changing quite quickly at the pace of electricity price increases and disasters in the intervening 3 years.

This would make good album cover art.

Photo is of Art, our first foster greyhound, who is a large but hyper sensitive brindle boy, and who is staring at his own photo on the Greyhounds as Pets adoption page, on a laptop. He was a potentially very challenging dog to find a home for, given his intense shyness, but photos we took in the 3 months he was here did the job. We always ran photos by him for his approval, as we are doing in this photo.

Three years ago today, we got Art, our first foster greyhound. Nov. 5th (fireworks night in NZ) was possibly the worst day for us newbies to get a dog who was hyper terrified of everything. Still, thanks to Art taking a keen interest in his own social media, he found himself a home in no time.

Wanda the blue greyhound appearing very pensive as she sits on her bed, looking directly at the camera, with an elephant fishtail treat uneaten before her. Wanda's bed in in New Zealand, and so is Wanda. The fishtail has since been eaten.

Wanda is particularly shy but she would like us to pass on to you Louis that she thinks you've got the best greyhound nose she's ever seen.

He's devoid of vision, substance and charisma, and has not even a homeopathic hint of leadership ability or competence - he's the first one I can remember who qualifies as a genuine Clayton's PM. Still, he came from a pretty unimpressive Nat gene pool, so no real surprise.

Thanks Paul. For we uninitiated, looking for clues on their websites is like trying to find meaning in tea leaves.

Thanks heaps for that - it is exceptionally helpful. Do these red flags extend in any way as far as the 3 Waipa mayoral candidates? On the face of it (i.e., their websites), they all seem reasonable and credible, but how is one to know?

Two metal toast racks spotted on holiday recently (our holiday, not theirs) prompting reflection on what a daft invention they were. Who, in their right mind, wants cold toast?

The toast rack: place your deliciously hot toasted bread in this cooling device so it quickly becomes difficult to spread and unappetising to eat. If there's a dumber invention, I'd like to see it.

Wanda the retired greyhound lying on the sofa with Deb. Been 7 months since her last seizure, and while we never expected her to survive long with us, she's been here a year - and a very happy year at that

An auspicious milestone. We've had Wanda the epileptic greyhound 1 whole year. It's been 7 months since her last seizure. She's still slightly mad but has morphed into the loveliest and funniest of creatures. Best of all... she no longer does vertical take-off when the toaster pops up.

We just watched the 2013 Danish movie that Dept Q is closely based on. Equally good (and the Danish Karl is less obnoxious) but the Scottish TV series allows much greater depth and the ending is indeed superb. 'Tis a good example of TV no longer being the poor cousin.

And yet, if the govt was forced to apply the same logic to wages (thus paying doctors, nurses, teachers, police etc what they are worth on the export market) they would be clutching at their pearls in outrage.

Hey I have a new used bass too. It is an ex Hoffner guitar that always wanted to be a Hoffner bass like yours.

Screenshot from Radio NZ website showing the art-deco style front of the premises of Rocket Coffee in Hamilton, NZ, with headline proclaiming "Hamilton's Rocket Coffee Roasters ranked 62nd in world-wide list of top coffee shops"

My son's been a coffee roaster in Scotland and Australia but been back in NZ roasting for the two Glens at Rocket coffee for nearly a decade. FWIW Rocket were #62 in world-wide rankings this year, the only NZ coffee outfit on the list. Hah. A great place and great people. I'm well chuffed for them.

I can't quite remember them either. Pretty sure they were the same government famous for asking in 2024 for "bipartisan agreement over major infrastructure projects" not long after they trashed many infrastructure projects, both bipartisan and otherwise.

A head shot only of Wanda, a blue greyhound, lying with head over the edge of our bed, as she surveys and interprets the goings on in muted excitement and anticipation of her morning walk, which is betrayed by a large drip coming from her nose. It usually drips onto Cedric, our old male greyhound who sleeps below this spot (not in image).

Wanda has a drippy nose, and the happier she is, the more it drips. I wasn't able to catch it on camera, but today she had a double drip, meaning she is extra contented. I love it when she gently boops our hand or leg with her wet snoot. Tomorrow tho' is vet day, so no drips are forecast for then.

We have 2 kids who relocated to Melbourne because they couldn't afford to live in Wellington, and another, who is about the same age as that 6 million dollar couple, and he works 2.5 jobs and still struggles to pay rent... can't say I'm sympathetic to the real estate difficulties of millionaires

We are watching it too, and in light of the desperate housing crisis, it feels a little tone deaf to me.

A large poplar tree with reject ceramic whales attached to it in the style of cicada skins, which also are shed at this time of year.

Summer is here and the cicada and whale nymphs have emerged from the soil and are shedding their skins on the trees.

We conceded defeat with Connections, mostly due to the cultural component in some answers. I can still remember the collective gnashing of teeth both in our house and the wider social media Britosphere when Wordle had its first US-spelled word ("humor"). Feb 9, 2022. A dark day & my first fail.

Wait - so you have a greyhound that will return WITH the ball? I'd like a refund.

We managed to do it for years with our old greyhound Olive, without her really even noticing (but she had meticulous and predictable toilet habits). Boy dogs? Phew, another matter altogether.

A Samsung phone with a slightly cracked screen is cradled in the prongs of a garden hoe, hovering above the black lid to the plastic septic tank. This is a re-enactment of when the hoe was used to retrieve the phone that had bounced into the tank via the then open lid and landed on the top of the slurry, about 1.5 metre out of reach.

A life hack: the perfect tool for rescuing your phone from the 1.5m deep septic tank you dropped it in is the hitherto unused 3-pronged garden hoe you inherited a decade ago from your mum's estate. Photo is from my annual skills maintenance session. Tank lid is closed in the interests of propriety.