Something to Keep You Warm on a Cold Winter’s Night

The following was a winner in The Edge’s “Forbidden Fiction” competition last year. Quite possibly the only time I’ve received money for my writing!

“The Sexiest Thing a Man Can Do”

Angela had been waiting an excruciatingly long time for this day to arrive. Now, finally, it was here and with the wind moaning and the rain pounding on the windows, their small cabin’s open fire cast a sensual warmth over the two of them.

Brad stood before her, shirtless. The firelight flickered, highlighting the subtler details of his finely toned body.
He poured her a glass of red wine “Where would you like me to start?” he asked. A seductively raised eyebrow and mischievous grin curled the corners of his alluring lips.
She told him and with a chivalrous bow he set about his task.

His big, powerful hands were suppler than she remembered, gliding gently over every curve. His palms tenderly massaged, kneaded and rubbed.
His fingers nimbly navigated the more intimate places his palms could not. Darting this way and that, a firm flick of the thumb here, the tantalising caress of a moistened fingertip there.

Brad’s pace quickened. Sweat started glistening on his broad shoulders and bulging biceps. The windows started to steam up from his exertion.
Flushed with the wine’s warming glow, Angela’s arousal increased to the point that she let out an excited giggle.

Brad turned, looked lovingly into Angela’s eyes and said, “Right, so that’s the dishes done! What’s next?”

“The sexiest thing a man can do is the dishes” – Rachael Ray

Reading the Signs

We are constantly bombarded by road safety messages throughout media and along the nation’s highways and by-ways: “Make it click”, “If you drink and drive you’re a bloody idiot”, “100km/hr. – it’s a limit, not a target”, “Merge like a zip”. But despite these messages, Hawke’s Bay has seen an alarming spate of serious and fatal car crashes recently, especially along seemingly harmless, long, straight, wide pieces of road like the Hastings to HB Airport expressway. Why are people still making these same mistakes when they are constantly reminded of the hazards and what to do? It makes me think there might be a less obvious, yet more serious problem, to go along with speeding and drink-driving, that no amount of signage can cure – illiteracy.
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The Kids Aren’t All Right

Attending to the needs of the younger members of its population is all too often overlooked by local and national governments around the world. In the local case of youth and city councils, this appears to certainly be one thing Hastings does better than Napier.

I was a member of the “Napier City Council Youth Forum” in 1995 – a collection of senior students from all Napier’s High Schools and EIT. We got together once a month to discuss the issues facing
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The Colour of Hawke’s Bay

Some New Zealand bays are full of islands,

Others are plentiful.

But no bay has more color than Hawke’s Bay!

It should come as no surprise, from a place whose rugby team wears the opposite spectrums of magpie black and white.

Majestic Hawke Bay ocean hues: turquoise to navy, cold, hard grays to soft, saline foamy whites.

The lush, fruitful Heretaunga Plains – braeburn red and packham green.

Vineyard covered hills, bleached chardonnay by the summer sun, slowly turning pinot noir in the long evening light.
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