Mike goes All Black

Theres nothing sadder than waving goodbye to your boy and watch him slide off through the doors and into the unforgiving (and occasionally plastic gloved) arms of... Border Security.

Yep, this was Mikes first trip OS - off to the land of the long white cloud: New Zealand. And despite continued simmering tensions over the great under-arm incident of 1981 (well, Mikes dad was at the game after all), they let him in.

Off it was to great-grandad Jacks place - where grandma was also staying after jumping off her boat fresh from Fiji - and immediately all and sundry were captured by the boys smile. (Well, it is a killer after all.)

Unfortunately the speech training on the way to the airport...
"Can you say... g.r.e.a.t...g.r.a.n.d.a.d...J.A.C.K??"
...didnt quite appear to pay off.

The boy is certainly babbling something though, and making sounds we havent heard before but which do seem to be a little more than just squeaks and squeals. And it appears to make sense to him, or at least the grenadier guard teddy bear he's "talking" to.

(The response...
"Mmmm... realllly...."
from mum and dad appears to suffice as answers.)

So far Master M's favourite things about New Zealand appear to be:

• eating bananas (grandma was caught slipping him the odd contraband 'nana; heres hoping he doesn't get too, how do you say this politely, blocked up...)
  
• scooting around on the floor in his new and somewhat strange lunging/rolling action that now appears to be getting him wherever he wants to go... and attacking the budgie cage. (Mike appears to think the budgie is just another talking book thingy that'll make sounds if he bashes it enough. Mistress P is terrified the bird will have a heart attack by the time they leave. )

On the plus side of learning, the lad has had so many people waving at him that he has, apparently, learned how to wave back. Its pure bubby seduction.

On the negative side, he's learned that he hates stuff on his head, and more to the point, that he can do something about it.

Whereas just a cupla weeks ago he'd happily don his sunnies and hat and head off for a groovy and sun conscious stroll, now, and of course just as we're coming to summer, he's discovered he can rip his chinstrapped sunhat off his own head faster than you can say "heightened susceptibility to skin cancer".

Not to mention the millisecond that his sunnies now remain on face.

(We think the mumblings mentioned earlier sounded remarkably like Right Said Fred's "I'm too sexy for my hat" at one stage.)

Finally, and with a total lack of segue,...

When dad was a lad one of his favourite fillums (Blues Brothers) had a scene where Jake and Elwood met up with the Good Ole Boys, after stealing their gig at Bob's Country Bunker ("We play both kinds; Country and Western") and trying to con them that they were a Mr Stein from the musicians union. The dialogue went something like:

"Spose we aint got no union cards and we go in there and play anyway?
Now what you goin to do about that? Stein?
You goin' to look pretty funny trying to eat corn on the cob with no #$%& teeth!"

And its true.

Mike did look pretty funny eating corn on the cob with no (ok, 5 half thru) teeth : see pic above.

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