Oh my darlings, I have been busy of late. Not frantically so, but busy nevertheless. May has been a month of weddings this year, and I’ve also been hosting couchsurfers, visiting friends, and possibly (oh my) starting up a small business. (Details to follow.) But! I have also been diligently working on the A Country a Month project — I’m up to the early 20th century in the history of New Zealand, and as you may have seen a couple weeks ago, I enjoyed Whale Rider and have a few other films and books at the ready. I’m really enjoying the writing in Philippa Mein Smith’s A Concise History of New Zealand, much more so than in Macintyre’s history of Australia. I’ve already talked about it a bit in earlier posts, and trust me when I say there’s some good stuff to come. (Is that enticing enough?)

Which is all to say, no, you’re not getting a real post this week, my apologies, but next week you will have a shiny new one on Tuesday to welcome you back to work. You may even get two next week, if you’re very good and eat a lot of barbeque this holiday weekend. Enjoy!