Warning to husbands everywhere

Arrowtown book buyer Miranda Spary continues her regular column about her recommendations for a good read and life as she sees it...

Writing this column gets me a lot of advice. Some is really useful and interesting.Some is from Geoff Bradley.

Geoff's handy hint is to progressively set my alarm 15 minutes earlier each week four weeks before daylight saving ends so I don't get a shock when it happens.

Really, Geoff, just how organised do you think I am?It's all I can do to remember how to turn my alarm on in the first place.

No more handy hints from you, thanks very much, but I love your wife's book recommendations.

Like me, Geoff was one of the punters at the Cromwell races last Sunday, and given the spectacular losses some people were making, I had a sneaking suspicion I was one of the biggest winners of the day.

Once again the most controversial race was the annual "Run Like A Girl" race. And once again Rob Ffiske, our local Rachel Hunter lookalike who isn't a bit afraid of showing his feminine side, crossed the line first only to be accused of cheating by judge Charlotte, who had obviously chosen a different horse.

When I tried to interview him afterwards he was still so bitter and angry as he held back his tears that it was hard to get any sense from him.

With my winnings - a whopping great $1.50 - burning a hole in my pocket, we decided to blow the lot on a night at Mt Cook.

I know that I sometimes write things that aren't 100% true in this column, but although this sounds highly unlikely, you can go boating around icebergs in Tasman Lake on one of the hottest days of summer.

It's an amazing experience and while boats and icebergs are traditionally an unhappy combo, the Glacier Explorers trip is a very happy exception.

Just three hours from Queenstown, you walk 20 minutes across a moonscape and suddenly you are gazing down on a lake full of icebergs from tiny little old ones to huge great stonking new ones the size of a very big house.

It's an awesome, eerie feeling listening to the creaks and groans and crashes as huge chunks of ice fall off the glacier's terminal face and the icebergs melt and move all around you.

We got back to the sorry news that our big red rooster, who had arrived on Valentine's Day, died. His overzealous approach to loving his many wives daily and equally has obviously done him in. Let that be a warning to polygamous husbands everywhere. Or even monogamous ones.

Mine (of the monogamous variety, I hope) is frantically ringing around trying to find some event that will save him from having to attend the Life Synergy Expo at Millbrook on Sunday morning with me.

As part of the fun, the Sunday morning yoga class will be held on the putting green this week, and all the students have been asked to bring their husbands and wives and children and anyone else along to have a go.