A small world

We've just got back from Joanne's office chrimbo party. I got to meet all of her workmates in the finance team finally. But then there was no room on their table so we had to sit with some other people who weren't in her team. But that turned out ok in the end as both couples either side of us happened to be Christians so we had a good chat about that and why we moved to Christchurch and stuff. The couple who were to our right used to go to church in Wellington with a couple who were in our team for the quiz at the St. John's parish camp last month.

And then we met a couple from Scunthorpe who have been here about two years and had their kids going to St James school in Grimsby. And then we met a couple from Hull who have been here about five years. Despite the Scunny bloke calling me a "cod 'ead", it was still nice to meet people from the little corner of the country in little corner of the world that is forever "home". I think the Hull fella invited us to go tramping with them (that is "walking in the countryside" rather than "hunting for hobos") sometime too.

The party was a very different thing from the ones I'm used to in London. For one thing partners were invited. That, in my experience, never happens in London. I've actually had people tell me that if the work party was "partners included" they would not be attending. That is quite worrying. What are they intending to get up to that they wouldn't do if their wife or whatever was there? Also there didn't seem to be the hard drinking sort of feel to the party that I'm used to from London. Perhaps those two differences are connected?

The team activity at Adrenalin Forest yesterday was awesome. And everyone had a go, which surprised me. There were four 'paths', each getting successively more difficult and, more tellingly, higher. One person could only manage one and a half paths. A few finished two paths, a few more the third path, but only three of us finished path four. At its highest we were 17m off the ground. That's about 55 feet. Or, if you know Christchurch, just short of the height of the Chalice. So quite high. I am so proud of myself for finishing the course. I was determined not to let it beat me. Despite not being a huge fan of heights. To be honest, while you're doing it, you don't actually realise how high you are. I was so focussed on each particular crossing activity, whether it be monkey bars or a a tarzan rope or a nepalese bridge or a monkey bridge or death slide (called a 'flying fox' here) or some weird rope bridge or moving logs or whatever that I had no time to focus on how far off the ground I was. Which was a good thing. I was very relieved to be sliding down the final commando slide though, I can tell you.