I was up before dawn broke this morning to be a photography student. It was nothing like when I last studied. No dragging myself out to a tutorial 40 miles away with someone who as a part time tutor knew about as much about the topic as I did. I just opened up... You know it’s winter when every conversation goes a bit like this…… “So how are you? Not bad, feeling a bit under the weather. Oh really, have you got one of the bugs? Which bug might that be? Well there’s the sore throat bug; the gastric... For all the scientific explanations and cultural interpretations I like to think of a rainbow is a smile from the sky. An optimistic sign of better things to come.  We are past the shortest day this year and there is a noticeable difference in the days lengthening.... We’re still waterlogged and squelch around under foot but today I found raindrops I liked today. It was like finding a thread of gold amongst a bale of straw. There was something magical about the way the drops of water just sat perched on a lone leaf... One of the things that charmed me about New Zealand before we came to live here was the seasonal nature of food. It seems my fantasy of a fine upstanding country that would not be plagued by globalisation has been broken with the sight of strawberries in the... 