Blowers is back!! I thought that he wasn't allowed to commentate on proper cricket any more? How exciting! He's talking about his jolly nice walk to the ground from the hotel this morning. Bless him.

Nervous times - Australia have got a wicket, and England have stopped scoring runs.

Woot! I've just found our marriage certificate! Apparently it wasn't all a surreal dream... :-)

We have now moved into our new and shiny flat in Bristol - anyone who wants the address, please let me know.

It's on the fourth floor in an old tobacco wharf building by the floating harbour, and is lovely. The only odd thing at the moment is that the external windows are currently being painted, so there is a lot of scaffolding up on the building. Not too much of a bother, except when you see burly west country builder-types wondering around outside your windows. Still, they seem like nice men, from the sample we've been chatting to.

In other news, job hunting both sucks and blows. Oh well.

I'm not going to say too much about That Walk, except to say that I am very glad that we had the foresight to buy an extra headtorch before we set off, as to have tried to get through the forest in the dark (not that we made it far) without it would have been a true nightmare. In hindsight, I really can't see how on earth we made such a basic mistake as to read the map so wrong, but it shows that even people who are as well organised and prepared as we (read Rob) are can still make mistakes. We were just lucky that Rob was paranoid about things possibly going wrong and insisted that we bring the tent and the mattresses with us even though we were planning to overnight in huts, otherwise it would have been considerably worse! We survived and got our flight with only minor scrape and bruises; that was the main thing. And I got a two winery voucher (working on the assumption of one winery for each overnight tramp we go on) out of it, so all's well that ends well, I guess.

( Since then...Collapse )

All good. We'll be heading back to Christchurch to drop off the campervan, then a few days' bouldering in Castle Hill, then up to Napier for the New Zealand/India Test (cricket) before heading down to Wellington to meet mum and Lesley. Time is flying past at a frightening rate of knots! As 'twere.

I may have mentioned it before, but I've very much enjoyed having a birthday during the summer, rather than during the winter. At home, I tend to have to force people out of the post-Christmas blues (skint, depressed by the weather and general gloom, detoxing) to come and celebrate the fact that I'm a year older. Here it's more of a case of joining the nearest party of people enjoying themselves, and relaxing and having fun in the sun. Much more pleasant.

This is all brought on by the news report we just watched of the weather in England; the reporter ended it with a smug grin and "Glad we're over here, eh?". All I'm hoping is that the predictions of a 'cold winter and a hot summer' that I'm hearing are true. I'm not (in true British fashion) going to hold out too much hope, though.

Other than that, we are having a pleasant summer, made all the more pleasant by the fact that in three weeks' time we are going to be homeless and unemployed again - yay! Thinking about it, maybe that's a bit of a tasteless thing to say in the current financial situation, but it does mean that we get a couple of months playing around in New Zealand, a trip to San Francisco (via Tahiti) and, depending on how our savings are holding up by that point, a trip across Canada before flying home. We're aware that this might be a bit ambitious, but we can always hope!

In other news, the guy who presents the NZ version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire is rubbish. They need to import Chris Wossiname, it would be so much more watchable.

Well, the subject line says it all - we're off to a very civilised board games New Year's 'party' at a friends' house. But will it be civilised? As Steve says, "four married couples, three divorces, one winner..."

We'll tell you which one we are in the morning, once the ripples have subsided.

Enjoy!

We are sitting in our lovely little flat in Wellington, listening to the wind howl and the rain bucket down, thinking how nice it is of New Zealand to provide us the proper weather for a Northern Hemisphere Christmas. It would have been nice, just once, if we could have had proper, full-on Southern Hemisphere weather for Christmas, but it wasn't to be. Never mind.

We are going to a barbie tomorrow, and Rob has carefully prepared the patties (burgers to UK folk), so we're hoping that it doesn't get fizzled out. Although I do trust in the Kiwi can-do attitude to work around that ("aww, she'll be right, we'll just have it in the garage").

Other than that, we are hunkering down with our yummy snacks and bubbles, have just prepared a game of Arkham Horror and have It's a Wonderful Life lined up to watch later. Nice.

Merry Christmas to one and all. I hope that Santa delivers the gifts you deserve. :-)

This weekend was a nice long one, as it was Labour Day on Monday. Always nice! So we took advantage of it, and of the nice weather on Monday (shockingly for a Bank Holiday) to head out to the Rimutaka Park, where there are lovely walking tracks aplenty.

Imagine my surprise when Rob announced at the beginning of the walk that we weren't aiming for any targets (specifically, high, steep targets) and we weren't trying to break any records, we were just looking to relax and have a nice walk in the woods. I almost fell over!

The track itself (Orongaronga track, a name more Australian than Kiwi, I would have thought) was a nice, wide meandering track which started off following a stream then wandered up into a beech forest. On a sparkling Spring day, with a deep blue sky and gentle sunshine, it was really quite beautiful.



The objective of the walk was the Orongorongo river, which turned out to be a wide stone filled plain with rivulets running through it. At which point, Rob's eyes light up as he realises that he gets to go river-hopping. Admittedly a preferred occupation for me than bog hopping (less chance to get covered in foul-smelling mud), but still not my favourite. Oh well.

We had a lovely time, though, and made a very beautiful dam.



And one of the best things is that Rob didn't worry about work at all... :-)

In other news, the Indians are handing the Aussies butts to them - happy days!

We're going to see A Nightmare Before Christmas tonight.

At the cinema.

On a big screen.

IN 3D!!!!!!!

*skip skip skip* !!!

I just had the best moment, while watching Top Gear (essential Kiwi Sunday night viewing). There was an advert for the apparently immortal David Attenborough's Life in Cold Blood - or whatever his reptile programme is called. Talk about Sunday night viewing - what a corker!

On the subject of everyday, and yet very cool, English TV, we saw John Snow on the tele for the first time since we left England, which was incredible. Unfortunately it was in 'Celebrity Who Wants to be a Millionaire'. Kinda bizarre to see him smiling and laughing, let alone doing impressions of a pig. Apparently he's a real person, and not just a serious face who tells you about the awful things that have happened in the world that day. Who would have thought?

In other news, the weather here is absolutely beautiful today (as Rob has posted) - so I spent the day in a yoga studio, then in the flat all afternoon, cooking lasagne. And boy does it smell goooood. Shame we're not having it tonight...