seeing out the old year...

...with a hot chocolate and ice-cream-sundae-(or, in this case tuesday)-thingy...

yum!

a stage for a star

sitting in brian and david's box at gran teatro la fenice for last night's concert, i couldn't help but think of a certain diva who would unquestionably own this famous stage and wow the cultural elite of venezia...

from across the miles

a lovely, touching christmas greeting from a 'certain person'...

lettuce be grateful

yesterday's christmas lunch... guess who got the lettuce?

i couldn't help thinking that the elegant atmosphere of caffe florian would have been considerably enhanced by the glamorous presence of a certain hippo....

it's here!

happy christmas everyone!

there's nothing like a mince pie...

...and if i keep noshing them, there won't be any to leave out for santa!

christmas is coming...

...and the bunny's getting fat!

winter draws on...

...so here's a nice warm reminder of summer days gone by...

icy blasts

the temperature is dropping and it is beginning to feel a lot like winter... which prompted me to dig out this old photo of my sneaking a sit on the ice throne in the palace of the white witch, when i paid a visit to narnia a few years back...

 obviously, she wasn't in at the time...

cracking open the loot

part of yesterday's haul...

(don't tell hippolyta!)

guess who's going trick or treating...

tricky treat

i've been doing a bit of early trick-or-treating (no point in leaving it all to the day itself) and i'm not quite sure if this creme egg is meant to be a creepy green colour inside for halloween or if it's just off!

what was it dr seuss said about green eggs and ham...?

memories are made of this

almost a month since we left greece and the tedium of coming autumn, leaves me with nothing to but fall back on but happy memories...

greeting the dawn

as anyone who knows her will tell you, hippolyta is not really a 'morning person': the hours between sunrise and noon are – understandably for a diva – reserved for the necessary cultivation and preservation of her legendary beauty.

however, the upset over the mouse who turned out to be a rat, left her feeling abused and abandoned and sleep was a total impossibility.

after a seemingly endless night of anguish, I eventually managed to console her and help her see that, as vivien leigh says in gone with the wind, "tomorrow is another day..."

and so, together, we greeted the dawn on the last day of our holiday...

cliffhanger!

determined to pay out the rat who had so badly wronged poor hippolyta, buttons hippo and i pursued his yacht with the assistance of our trusty inflatable bambi, which, in the circumstances  i considered poetic (or, more accurately) filmic justice...

we eventually found our quarry sunbathing on a bay further round the coast, so we snuck up on him...

...located a large boulder, precariously balanced...

...gave it the teensiest of shoves - scarcely more than a nudge...

...and left the rest to gravity!

after which we just had a jolly good laugh!

beware of yanks bearing contracts

my worst fears have been realised! the yank has turned out to be an even worse cad than i anticipated: overnight, he up-anchored and vanished!

not only has he abandoned hippolyta who is devastated and is sitting in her room with mascara streaming down her cheeks sobbing, "i'm ready for my close-up mr de mouse...", but he has also filched the script of a disaster movie that roger was hoping to sell to brian's friend peter jackson; set in greece, it was entitled goats on a boat and will undoubtedly be at a cinema near you sometime in 2014.

buttons hippo and i toyed with buying a boat to go in pursuit of the mouse, but it turned out we didn't have enough euros even if brian went without ice creams for the remainder of the holiday...

all chance may have now gone of a hacienda in the grounds of hippolyta's beverley hills mansion, but we haven't yet given up hope of getting our revenge on that black-eared villain...

hippo-got-a-mouse

we are staying at a truly international venue where big yachts from all over the world come into the harbour on a daily basis.

today a boat sporting the american flag arrived owned by a vip who can truly be described as a big cheese.

since arriving he has done nothing but talk about his studio in hollywood, the films he has made and the oscars he has won...

buttons hippo did his best to sell a treatment for his memoir, carry on up the limpopo, and i actually thought he was going to strike a deal, but as soon as the visitor saw hippolyta (she was relaxing under a parasol by the pool with her first tequila sunrise of the afternoon) he lost interest in b h's proposal and started talking about how he was going to make hippolyta into the new marilyn monroe.

"more like the new margaret rutherford," said buttons hippo cruelly (i thought), retreating to his room with a  bottle of bourbon. but now h is totally smitten with the yank (with his ludicrous red shorts and yellow boots) and is on the point of signing a three picture deal which will whisk her off to the other side of the world to fame and fortune and out of my life for ever...

old friends and new

my austrian pal, hasi, has just flown in and so i got a chance to introduce him to hippolyta and buttons hippo...

in fact hasi seems to be getting on so well with buttons hippo (who is regaling him with selected yarns of limpopo) that h and i may be able to get a bit of quality time just to ourselves...

arking about

while hippolyta was busy signing post-concert autographs, buttons hippo and i sloped off and had a go on this kiddies' ride...

there were other more exciting ones – including a police helicopter – but brian, who's got a bit of an ark fixation (probably because he is old enough to have came out of it) insisted we use this ride.

as far as we could tell the rabbits and hippos on this particular ark went in one by one!

once a diva...

hipploylta is such a star it is impossible to maintain my usual anonymity while travelling with her.

no sooner had we hit town than she found a stage and was instantly into her one-hippo show. as you can see, i was the supporting artiste: "a rabbit, a song and a smile"...

later on, she played the local amphitheatre for an unforgettable performance at which buttons hippo (yes, he eventually rumbled the fact that the early christian baths never had visitors) and i had top-price seats - compliments of hippolyta's management...



 as you can see, we were bowled over and totally knocked out by h's finale rendition of "mud, mud, glorious mud"...

diversionary tactics

you may have wondered whether hippolyta travelled to greece this year without my cousin buttons hippo and, if so, how h and I are managing to spend a little quality time in private (see my last post) without his inevitable presence...

well, yes, he did come, but we managed to convince him that the local mayor had personally asked him to undertake an important local job of giving guided tours to the daily coach-parties of international archeologists visiting the nearby early christian baths.
 
that's him waiting for them in the bottom right-hand corner...                                                      

as he is still waiting for the first coach to arrive, this ruse may not last for long, so h and i just have to make the most of every precious minute!

swinging times

first chance i've had to blog since coming on holiday...

after a pretty boring week with just brian and david, things have looked up now the glamorous hippolyta is here and we can relax in the sun and plan the rest of our time together on this charming greek island...

greek ruin

this is me on an earlier trip to greece, amongst some ruined remains in athens...

we fly off tomorrow and i expect to be reduced to a similar ruin if hippolyta doesn't join me on holiday...

*sigh*

catching up

gill recently sent me a message via brian, pointing out that my blog hadn't been updated for far too long and she (and no doubt other devoted readers)  were getting bored silly by looking at picture of me with a pair of rubber gloves (see last post) that i am never going to grow into!

so, rather belatedly, here's a couple of photos of me on my annual outing to the races at ascot (brian was, at the time, having a fall in a nearby garden that took him back into hospital – more rubber gloves!) and, after indulging in the sport of kings (and loosing david a few pounds of – he says – hard-earned cash!) being happily reunited with my dear (dare I say intimate?) friend, hippolyta (aka 'the diva of fernbank road'), and having an opportunity to plan our upcoming island-getaway-holiday...

doctor buttons

brian is goes into hospital tomorrow and, obviously, i'll be going along to keep an eye on him. i'm all ready with the rubber gloves...

what do tiggers like for breakfast?

i am currently recovering from s visit to the london zoo...

 ...which was not only a lot less fun than my last visit four years ago, it was downright traumatic!

it started out ok when i met this fellow who's getting on for 150 and was telling me jolly tales about his childhood days on the galapagos islands in the 1860s...

but then, just as we were about to go and watch the tigers being fed, one of the keepers was giving a talk and said that tigers ate all kinds of meat, but that the ones at the zoo were rather fond of chicken and, best of all––––

rabbit!!!

easter antics

had a very jolly day with hipployta and the gang yesterday and they very sweetly clubbed together to get me this albino chocolate bunny...

...needless to say, he didn't look like this for long!

sheila and roger gave brian and david another bunny burrowing for easter eggs...

...obviously I couldn't bring myself to eat a bunny's bottom.

regrettably (but not unexpectedly) brian had no such scruples!

easter hoppiness

easter ggs with feet?! must make them 'runny eggs', i guess!

back in the burrow

we've finally moved back into our old home - thank goodness! 

as you can see we have yet to unpack my library: br'er rabbit stories, the tale of peter rabbit, watership down, the velveteen rabbit, little grey rabbit, the tale of the flopsy bunnies, harvey, the best of bugs bunny, who killed roger rabbit, the tale of benjamin bunny, oswald the lucky rabbit annual, rabbit run, rabbit rich and rabbit redux...

the flames of love

though memories may grow hazy with the passage of time, the flicker of true love always burns bright...

  

love on valentine's day

posh nosh

i went with brian and david to a dinner in oxford last friday – not to enjoy the yummy-looking food (no chance of getting so much of a mouthful when brian's around) but for my annual reunion with lafayette, who sounds french but who comes from sweden, where he lives with a famous swedish writer...

laf, as i call him, is a sweetie but he does tend to go on at some length about the bedrock of swedish culture which, if i understand him correctly, is made up of three things called lutherism, trade unionism and self-reliance. 

i told him that english culture was made up of fish 'n' chips, football and beer which pretty much brought our cultural exchange to an end...

i'm dreaming...

...of a white easter!

snow fun!

it's a bit parky but with gill's scarf i was warm enough to make a few snowballs to lob at brian!

 

twelfth night...

...and time to finally put those christmas decorations away, and i can certainly 'put these away' all right!

yummy!!

tree hugging

must have had too much whiskey... no idea how i got up here...