Out of office - be back with my baby

I currently have 79 subscribers to my Tropical Cyclones blog, and every now and again they'll be away from their computers for a matter of days, weeks or longer. They put up an out-office reply for the benefit of anyone who may be emailing them. This one, from an employee of the Edgewater Resort and Spa in Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific made me smile tonight:

I am currently on Maternity leave at the end of this week. 

I wish the lady, who works in the offices of Edgewater, well for her confinement and birth of her child. For reasons of privacy, I will not put her name on here, but if anyone from Edgewater comes across this message, please pass on my good wishes.

Saturday 6 August

Well, it's my birthday today, and I got birthday cards by snailmail as well as Facebook. Through latter service I received more than fifty greetings - many thanks to all who went to the bother. It's a nice bright day here, with good spells of sunshine but with a bit of a breeze going. It wasn't there in the night, when the fishing trawler Vellee went down off Benbecula. It sprang a leak and went to the bottom at a rate of knots. The crew all managed to get into liferafts and were picked up by the Stornoway lifeboat. This brought them ashore at Stornoway, and the crew went on the 7 am ferry to the mainland.

Today was also the day for the annual carnival. The number of floats has not changed a lot in recent years, and today there were 6 entries to the procession, preceded by the pipebandAll in all, a colour if slightly short pageant. I watched it outside the Bridge Centre, a quarter of a mile from the town centre, which would have been heaving with people.


Tall Sheeps


Jellyfish


The Doyal Wedding



Miss Lewis & Harris


Chocolate factory