Another Happy Day

 

Started the day in Te Anau, popping into the centre of town to see if anywhere was open (we weren't entirely sure, it being Christmas) before moving on to Queenstown. In the event we enjoyed a happily active morning, finding a few places open and quite a few folk around. I managed to read a few of Thom Gunn's poems, having now reached my favourite collection, Jack Straw's Castle. The ones that I remembered as magical were exactly that, and there were several more that spoke to me this time around in ways they'd never done in the past.

The last time we were in New Zealand we'd spent Christmas Day moving north from South Island all the way to Auckland, if memory serves me right. It had been extremely quiet all the way, with almost everywhere shut down, so I vaguely wondered if Queenstown might be much the same. I couldn't have been more wrong. The place was and is happening, in the happier sense of the idiom. I've never seen a beach, and it's a very small one, quite so crowded. It's a tad overwhelming considering how delightfully quiet our holiday has been so far. In fact, it put me in mind of the bustling Blackpool of my childhood. But with the sun shining and ourselves established in a very cosy apartment and very much at ease that's not a cause for any kind of complaint.

Hope you're having as happy a Christmas Day as we are, especially those who keep the season.