Christmas crackers at dawn

Today I pissed off oooh, at least a hundred spiders, as I spent five hours waterblasting the verandah and the front of the house and annihilated millions of metres of webs in the process.

So I won't be too surprised if that at some point in the night a posse of angry arachnids will abseil from the ceiling, Mission Impossible style and land on my face as revenge.

Speaking of vendettas, tonight the whole whanau is attending the community Christmas kneesup, held at the Lord of the Manor's farm down the bottom of the valley. And regardless of it being the festive season and peace and goodwill to all, there's trouble brewing, as a month or so ago the Lord shot two dogs (one of them was a rather roly-poly Lab, who couldn't even catch a cow, let alone pull it to the ground and maul it to death) who were in playing with his dairy cows, and those two dogs belonged to the Geordie neighbours up the road.

However, the Lord knew who the dogs belonged to, and didn't bother telling them what he'd done. The Geordies got an anonymous tip off and confronted the Lord, but he really didn't give a toss, even when they informed him that next time one of this prize bulls crashed through one of their fences he'd end up in their freezer instead of being chased back over the boundary.

Then a week ago, one of the Lord's prize bulls went missing, and the Lord instantly called up the Geordies, demanding to know what they'd done.

They told him that they hadn't even seen the bull, but during the night somebody put a bullet through the rear windscreen of their ute.

The following day the bull strolled back into his paddock, but there was no apology from the Lord.

And tonight? Geordie Neighbours are turning up to the Christmas do, lookin' for some answers and most of all, that apology.