A Declaration of War against Stupid Chickens (oh, and it’s my birthday, yay.)

Happy birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
I’m going to war on those stupid chickens,
And I can’t rhyme that with anything except kitchens.

Turns out poetry isn’t my thing.

As for the Birthday, my rent payment broke, because of the delay caused by my contracting agent, so I paid late (sorry landlord) My digital TV antenna broke yesterday, and it doesn’t get a signal anymore (there are THREE antennas stuck to the side of my house, and I don’t even know where to start a possible repair job.) AND my phone seems to have broken because now it doesn’t receive texts. (And it’s NOT because the mailbox is full, or because I’m not on the network.)

I’m not sure about you, but I don’t think 27 is a good year so far.

Also. I brought my drawings from last night to share with you. Below was my attempt to express how I felt after coming home to find my ONE DAY OLD country garden smashed to smithereens by the stupid fat chickens that trespass on my front yard. I was so angry I just wanted to grab them by their fat necks and football throw them into the neighbours back yard.

So Sunday afternoon I went and brought some flowers that were on sale for crazy good prices ($16 for 12 plants? DONE.) And then I dug up a path of dead grass and made myself a really pretty country garden bed.

Then on Monday morning I went to work.

11 hours later, this greeted me as I got home. The bastard chickens that belong to the landlord had spent 11 hours systematically destroying my dreams of having an idyllic, colourful country garden. The bastards also ate every single flower off my 12 bushes – as in, NOT ONE SINGLE FLOWER was left when I got home.

I was so mad I nearly cried. Amongst other things…

This year when I blow out my birthday candles (all 25 of them, because quite frankly I’m not ready to be 27) I’m going to wish that the chickens get kicked off the farm. Or eaten by the landlords for Christmas dinner, or that the landlords decide that actually, all four of the stupid fat chickens deserve to live in a chicken coup.

Until my birthday wish comes true, I’m declaring war on the chickens. How much do you think it would cost to import child labour to act as a 24/7 scarecrow in my garden? I mean, the razor wire and landmines will likely get the chickens before they get through no-mans land and into my yard, but you can’t be too careful.

Sometimes it’s not all about me.

Frontal assault, Gallipoli, 1915

So this morning I dragged myself out of bed at 5.20, and went to the dawn service here in Wellington.

ANZAC Day – for you non-New Zealanders/ non-Australians – is kind of a big deal for us. It’s on the 25th April every year in both Australia and New Zealand, and it remembers the soldiers from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (or the ANZACs) who fought in Gallipoli, Turkey, during World War One.

Our involvement in WWI is kind of a big deal for us, because it was a forging of ties for us here in NZ with those in Australia – the fact that both countries still hold national remembrance days for it on the 25th April kind of stands testament to that. It was also seen as New Zealand stepping up and taking its place in the Federal Commonwealth – kind of a big thing for our small, reluctant Dominion Status country.

The ANZAC legend has an impact on us New Zealanders… It has this indelible place in our National Identity.

Following WWII ANZAC Day has become a day of remembrance for all New Zealanders who have been lost to war. And for a small country there certainly were a lot of young men lost to war.

War is horrific. It has awful consequences. I personally don’t agree with commemorating war, but I do think that it is important to remember the lives lost. I think the men and boys who fell to war have earned the right to be remembered with honor by us New Zealanders.

There’s this bit in the dawn ceremony, where you’re standing pressed into in a crowd of people, every single one of them silent. And as the sky lightens just enough for you to see the profiles of the people around you these words surround you:

“They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
we will remember them.”

It always sends a shiver down my spine. And then you listen to the Last Post played mournfully on the trumpet… And I always wonder what it was like. The terror of war surrounding you. The conviction you were doing something right, or maybe the inability to turn back, or simply the fear not to act. The flipping of your stomach, the terrible weight of expectation. The noise of a thousand men around you waging hell on earth. Cold hands, cold ears, cold feet, and racing hearts. Panic. Confusion. Terror. Pain. The weight of your pack, your gun, your uniform. Mud, rain, and cold sweat-slicked skin.

They’re not exactly pleasant thoughts to be thinking… But then there’s nothing really pleasant about war is there?

That’s why I think it’s important for me to be there. For one day a year it’s important to me to put myself in those soldiers shoes, and honor their deaths. It’s important for my country to remember the human cost of war. There’s nothing glorious about it. Nothing worth celebrating. But all the same we owe them remembrance.