Winner of the donkey competition

I have drawn the donkey competition by randome number generation. It would be impossible to choose between all the wonderful entrants and once again I wish you could all win the prize because your entries are so fantastic and I know you would all love to have a donkey adoption.

Well the winner is actually somebody who may be able to visit the donkey themselves this time. It is @Henryandfriends. Henry was entry number 5 and the random number generator came up with number 5 so Henry its you.

Let me know which donkey you would like to adopt and what you want on your adoption certificate and I will make the arrangements. Perhaps we could go together and visit the donkey you choose and of course we will visit Fergus's donkey at the same time.

Congratulations to Henry and sorry to everyone else, there will be another chance soon.

Prize announcement

Whether or not you can attend this weekend's #pawpawty here is a prize draw for you to enter. Many of you entered the prize draw for an adopted donkey a couple of months ago and I was sorry that we couldn't give it to everyone because you were all so supportive of the idea. So I would like to give everyone another chance to win a donkey for a year. The donkey will be one of those who live at the Isle of Wight donkey sanctuary, have a look and meet the donkeys that you could adopt.

http://www.iwdonkey-sanctuary.com/adopt.html

The donkey's are all so lovable you will not want to resist, but don't worry the donkey sanctuary will continue to look after your donkey. You will get a certificate of adoption with your name on and news letters about the donkeys.

To enter just make a comment on this blog entry letting us know why you would like to adopt a donkey. As you know I would never be able to choose a winner so the winning entry will be selected at random on the Monday morning following the #pawpawty and announced on Twitter and this blog and well as letting the winner know personally.

I hope lots of people will enter and I wish you could all win.

To find out more about the #pawpawty visit Dougal's blog http://www.pawpawty.com hope to see you all there.

Come on and enter the donkey's are waiting.

If you are not able to leave a comment on the blog please DM me on Twitter with your comment.

You don't always get what you expect but its not always a bad thing!

As many of my friends know my person was due to fly to Texas on 13 April but didn't get to go, not because of the ash cloud but because of illness, it was quite mysterious to most people but I think Heathrow Terminal 5 is enough to make anybody ill so it didn't surprise me. Well obviously we were all really disappointed, my person had been looking forward to seeing our dear friends in Texas and was devastated not to, they were also very disappointed not to see her. Well that all sounds terrible I agree, but the trip will be taken at another time, so disappointing as it was we still have the trip to look forward to. But also another really good thing happened that wouldn't have happened if the trip had been taken.








What was that I hear you ask? Well Lippe came to stay with us, like my person his trip to the US was delayed so they already had lots in common, in his case it was delayed by the ash cloud though not illness. Well because we were all at home and he was waiting for flights to resume we were lucky enough to have his presence in our home for more than 2 weeks. As soon as Lippe arrived from Jazzy's house we know that we were going to have a fantastic time with him, he had hardly got through the door before I gave him one of my special big Kolo HUGS! and he hugged me right back.

Lippe wasted no time in making himself at home, he inspected the plants in the garden and then rushed up to the kitchen for a cup of his beloved tea with me and Leroy and a Thornton's chocolate and everyone who has ever had a Thornton's chocolate will agree that he has great taste.

Anyone who hasn't been following Lippe's adventures should visit My friend @schnille's blog http://mookiepig.blogspot.com/ where Mookie has been recounting all of Lippe's adventures with his various hosts and to see more of my adventures with Lippe you can see my Twitpic pictures. We had a great time with Lippe and found out lots about him, who would have thought he was such a keen gardener and climber?

He climbed all the way up this chimney pot to smell the flowers in there little did we know what well developed climbing skills Lippe would demonstrate in climbing trees and sitting on our 4th floor balcony, not just the balcony but the edge of the wall around the balcony. Then there were Lippe's legendary eating skills, pizza, ice cream, anything you care to name Lippe will eat it even the giant hot dog. Have a loot at Lippes adventures here on the Isle of Wight at Twitpic http://twitpic.com/photos/Kolo_Martin. Well we didn't expect to be here in England in mid April but if we hadn't been we would never have had the chance to meet Lippe. Today we all feel a little sad that he has left us but we are so happy that he came to visit and hope he will feel that there is more to see on our island so that he will come back one day because we have lots more to show him.

So, yes you don't always get what you expect in life and that can be disappointing but sometimes you get something great that you didn't expect and that is wonderful.!

What the winter did to the garden

I am a little bit upset. As you all know we had a very hard winter even in the deep south of the England on the sunshine coast there was snow and ice and very cold winds. Obviously this is not ideal weather for plants. This was how our garden looked in January this year.

I am very proud of our garden and I always spend as much time out there as I can and I also like looking after the plants. Last summer I spent lots of time gardening, watering and pruning and I was very happy with how the garden was looking.

This weekend we decided to look at the garden and see what damage had been done, we were aware that a few plants had not made it but we were not prepared for the shock we got. All the plants except the bay trees and a fushia were dead. We had to take them all out of their pots and get rid of them there was nothing we could do for them.

Of course we can get new plants and start again but it is sad to think that plants that you grew yourself and took care of have all died. I expect I am not the only one with the same experience so to all gardeners out there whose plants were killed off by the hard winter I know how you feel.

I've been tagged

My friend Maximus tagged me to play the photo game. I have to:

1. Open my first photo folder (that's easy I only have one)


2. Scroll down to the 10th photo


3. Post the photo and tell you all a little bit about it


4. Pass it on to 5 other bloggers

Well here is my 10th photo

Oh this is a nice one to talk about. It was last summer on a very hot Saturday and we were going to the beach. Just as we were leaving to go to the beach I noticed that the plants were dry. I didn't want them to feel thirsty while we were having fun, that would have upset me so I decided to water them before we went. Then I could go to the beat without feeling worried about the plants. You can see I am wearing a nice bright T-shirt that one of my people bought for me when they were on a diving holiday in Egypt. You can see the diver on the front.

We had a lovely time at the beach that day in the hot sunshine and the plants were very happy in our little roof garden while we were gone.

Now who shall I tag for this and why?

@MonkeysBrother (Arthur) - he has the coolest life and fantastic pictures that all tell an interesting tale.

@Elineof - she is very creative and I bet she has some great stories to tell about her pictures.

@Happpiii - he has pictures that make everyone laugh and he says such funny things.

@Schnille - He takes lots of interesting photos and tells fantastic information about them.

@Aska_Alaska -She has the coolest adventures so I bet she will come up with a great photo and a good story.

Thanks for reading.

Kolo and Leroy talk about mascots

As most of you know I live in the same house as my friend Leroy (@Leroy_Sealion on Twitter). Leroy is very keen on sports mascots and he is a sports mascot himself, self-made in his case as he was not born to be a mascot, he took his inspiration from the first world cup mascot ever the great World Cup Willie who was the mascot for the 1966 world cup tournament held in England and won by England (our only win).

Leroy is so inspired by sports mascots that he and I have started our own little football mascot collection, it could even be called a museum. You can see three World Cup Willie lions that we collected, they are all 44 years old but as you can see they have had very different lives, the middle one is very delicate but the others, two different models of Willie are much better preserved. Our collection started with a badge and a picture of Willie signed by Geoff Hurst who scored in the world cup final for England. You can see that Willie's picture is guarded by two of the more recent world cup mascots Goleo from the world cup in Germany in 2002 who my friend Mookie (@Schnille) tells me is not popular in German because he forgot to put his shorts on, of course Willie did not make such a mistake back in 1996. Yes the Goleo's are sitting in Arsenal mugs which may not be to suitable but that suits us.



Many great souveniers of Willie were produced and we are fascinated by them they are so representatitve of the 1960s when they were produced, alarm clocks that tick so loudly that you couldn't possibly sleep with them in the room, you can see one above, money boxes (people used to save up their coins in those days to buy things) and my very favourite a snowstorm (snowglobe to my US friends). What could anybody want better than this. I looks like a 1960s television set and when you shake it glitter comes over the screen. The background is the famous Wembley Stadium in which England won the world cup. When this arrived the water was stagnant after more than 40 years but we emptied it out and put fresh water in, unfortunately a lot of the glitter came out with the water but we still love it its just so 1960s and Willie looks so great.



This toffee tin is a great favourite of mine. Can you imagine people making something like this now? It is all tin and is absolutely wonderful. The toffees were eating long before we got it but its a wonderful object. I wonder what the toffees were like, lovely I am sure but not nearly as wonderful as the tin.

Well Willie was just the first mascot for a world cup but every world cup since then has had its own mascot or even mascots so Willie is a trail blazer for sports mascots. In 1970 when England went to Mexico Willie dressed in a sombreo and went off to Mexico with the team. You can just see him dressed up like that in the picture of the card signed by Geoff Hurst above.



Now we have a great tradition of football mascots and we hope that the South African mascot Zakumi will be able to live up to that tradition. You can see him in the back. We have a small version of every world cup mascot that there has ever been apart from World Cup Willie (1966) we have Juanito the chubby Mexican boy (1970) who is probably not as smart in his sombreo as Willie was in his; the twins Tip and Tap from Germany (1974), Gauchito from Argentina (1978), the smiling orange Naranjito from Spain (1982), the Mexican Chilli pepper Pique (1986), Ciao the sophisticated Italian mascot (1990), Stryker the US footballing dog (1994), Footix the French cockerell (1998), Ato, Katz and Nik the happy aliens from Japan and Korea (2002) and of course Goleo the German lion (the first lion after Willie, 2006). Zakumi is a leopard lets see how leopards measure up the great mascot tradition.



I wish I could tell you more about our mascot collection and show you more pictures but I don't want to bore you too much! We wish Zakumi luck for his job in South Africa in 2010 and we are really looking forward to a great world cup.

AND THE WINNER IS!

I am happy to announce the winner of the adopt an animal competitor from Amazon Adventure on the Isle of Wight. http://www.amazonworld.co.uk/about_animal_adoption.htm .

The winner was chosen by random number generation. I couldn't possibly have made a choice between the entrants because I wanted all of you to win.

The winner is our friend Ruthi, aka @Flicka47. Ruthi is choosing her animal I am sure she will let everyone know when she has made the choice.

Congratulations to Ruthi I hope you will enjoy your animal adoption and let us know all about it.

For everyone else thank you for entering, please look out for next prize and have a go again, you never know when it might be your turn to win.