My Favourite Five

Following my great mate Roger Fleming's  challenge to post the 5 favourite photos of 2011 which I took, here they are; not in any particular order of importance:

As many regular visitors to this blog will remember, we spent 3 weeks in Vietnam earlier this year.  All countries are special but for us, we left a bit of our hearts in this country.  Wonderful, friendly and open people, fabulous food and stunning scenery.  I love the picture below because it shows the sheer enterprise and energy of the Vietnamese.  A pavement maintenance operation for servicing bicycles and motorbikes while you wait.  They appeared to be extremely thorough - oil change and cable lube as part of this job and they even had a plastic chair for the customer.  Innovation and capitalism in a (mildly) socialist country - right in the centre of Saigon!

The enterprise of  glorious Vietnam!

This photo was taken at sunset close to our house, looking over the Firth of Thames.  Not only does it reflect the sense of peace and tranquillity we get from living in Coromandel, it's also where Jennie and I spend time together fishing from our boat.  The little dots in the water  are commercial mussel farms and we moor the boat to them.  The fishing here is fantastic (10 snapper and 1 trevally between us in a 2 hour spell last Thursday!) but even if we didn't catch anything, floating in those surroundings is medicine for the soul.

Coromandel sunset in winter

This is our granddaughter Molly at her christening last weekend.  We were waiting for the ceremony to begin and I happened to notice that she was resting her head on the cathedral pew with a faraway look.  And it makes me misty-eyed....

 

 Our gorgeous granddaughter Molly

This is Annie.  We found her in our garden as a tiny kitten which was very, very hungry, and very friendly.  Despite our best efforts, we couldn't find her owners so we let her adopt us, despite already having 2 cats!  As it happened, my older cat developed an infection which he didn't recover from only 2 weeks after Annie showed up. Annie immediately made it her business to take away as much of the hurt as she could.  A special bond, with maybe a dash of Karma thrown in for good measure!

Little Orphan Annie

And last but far from least is the photo below.  It's Philip McDaid, Chief Examiner of the NZ branch of the Institute of Advanced Motorists.  He was just completing the report form on my first assessment ride back in April.  His expression made me want a pee on the spot but it was more a case of  "safe enough, but needs a hell of a lot of work".  Being damned by faint praise was just the spur that was needed and I honestly can't remember when I'd worked so hard at anything.  Eight months later, a test pass as a full member of IAM and now training to be an Observer.  Oh yeah, this photo is special all right!!!

Eight months of reading, thinking and dreaming about that bloody test!