Too late now

I wanted to catch up on here with everything we'd been doing since Christmas day tonight but now it's too late. And with all the organising and stuff we need to do tomorrow before 'The Holts' Relocated Annual New Year's Eve Bash' ("Karaoke not compulsory") it's probably going to be New Year's Day before I finally get to write about the past week. In the meantime have a look at some photos here and here for a taster.

It is good to be home. Driving back from the airport tonight I asked Joanne if she felt "home". It's strange, as it's the first time, but we both did. We knew we'd have that "aaaah" sigh-thing when we walked through the door and crashed on the sofa, and so it proved. Apart from the earwig infestation in the postbox it was good to be home. After a week in a couple of 'finished' homes though, our house does feel a bit bare. I cannot wait to get pictures up and a rug or two and a cd rack and some shelves for my cookery books and some sort of storage solution in the garage. I'm so impatient...

Merry Christmas

May God's perfect gift, Jesus Christ, bring you peace and hope throughout the New Year. (If you're reading this, Anita, I hope you don't mind me quoting you here - it's just that it summed things up perfectly.)

So, Christmas in Nuzziland, eh? It's warm but there's not so much of the sun to be seen. I was fed a lie ;)

This morning Joanne, Shirley and I went down to the little church in Leigh with Leon, Nigel, Claire and Cleo and Georgie. Tom and Jennifer stayed at home. It was nice to be able to go down for the Christmas morning service together. The church was full though. Standing room only for the late-comers. It was good to be reminded on the real meaning behind Christmas, and why we really celebrate it. It's a great time for families to get together and all that peace and love at Christmas stuff is good, but there is more to it than that. Much more. Sometimes it's easy to lose sight of that (he says moving right on to talk about his presents...)

After church we came back and opened our pressies together. I got a nice shiny new camera from Joanne. I'm really rather excited about getting to take lots of photos of the New Zealand landscape now. She also bought me some Acqua di Gio aftershave. Shirley and Tom had one of my photos printed on a canvas for us, a long panorama shot of the Thames that we took on our day up Tower Bridge. That'll look great near the dining table at home. Jennifer got me an awesome recipe book that mixes NZ recipes with beautiful landscape photos while Leon got me a very useful electrified fly-swat. Given the number of mosquitos that were feasting on my sweet English blood last night I could have done with it a day early. My sister got us two ticket-vouchers for a theatre in Christchurch - I really want to see Under Milkwood seeing that we studied it at GCSE, while we didn't have space for the present from my mum and James in our suitcase so we'll have something to open when we get home.

Right, it's nearly 1pm now so I had better head up to see how lunch is doing. Yum!

Snags

There must have been 20 or so of us at the barbecue in the end. Maybe more. Even the mayor of Leigh turned up. I've never eaten sausages with a mayor before. It was a really nice idea getting everyone together like that though. A lot of the people up here are parents and grandparents with family to stay for Christmas and it was nice for everyone who lives up here to meet their friends' families.

It was a bit strange though, for me at least, to be standing outside in shorts on the evening of Christmas eve at a barbecue. At least Dennis brought HP sauce though. Always rely on the Englishman.

Ducks at the beach

This morning the weather was a lot clearer and the sea a lot bluer so after breakfast we headed down to Goat Island. Nigel, Claire and Georgie did a bit of snorkelling around the marine reserve while Joanne and Cleo caught some rays. Leon and I headed out around the island on kayaks. I really did enjoy the kayaking. It was a bit daunting round the far side of the island with the waves getting up to a metre or so but once I had confidence that the kayak wasn't going to capsize it was fine. It would have been even better had the sea been calmer so that we could have gone closer to the island and even explored the caves. Maybe next time, eh? Despite that it was still great fun. I really am tempted to invest in a sea kayak. It is definitely something I could see myself getting into.

A rather bizarre scene at the beach involved first one, and then a whole load of ducks waddling through the sand and then heading into the surf and paddling away. I always thought ducks were fresh water birds only. Maybe these ones were just on holiday or something.

Tonight we're meant to be having a big barbecue with all the people from the surrounding houses joining us. If the weather holds it'll be good.

Joanne is in her element. For her, this is Christmas. For me, if I wasn't sat next to a tree and a big pile of presents right now, I would easily forget tomorrow is Christmas day.

Old feelings

It's a little strange waking up here now. Back here at the start of August everything was new and exciting, there was lots of uncertainty and we really didn't know what to expect. Now we have a house, jobs and are beginning to make friends at church and at work. But being back here all those old thoughts and feelings come flooding back, even though they're not still valid. As I say, a little strange.

More of that view

So, we're up north. The Christmas trip. We eventually got to Jo's mum's at about 5-ish. It's been a long da but it has been good to see both sets of parents. The weather's not so hot here so I'm not sure Jo is going to get her warm summer Christmas but the forecast is uncertain for Tuesday. It's nice to be away for a few days, to forget about work and stuff but sometimes it's tiring meeting all these new family members. I am looking forward to a nice big family Christmas though.

I'm looking forward to getting the camera out tomorrow. I always manage to get some awesome shots up here. Tonight while we were having dinner we saw a whole flock of gannets bombing into the sea afer what must have been a huge shoal of fish. It was amazing the way they flew in formation, queued up for their turn, and then peeled off like World War II spitfires before folding their wings back and dropping like stones. Unfortunately there weren't close enough to get a decent photo. If only I had a camera with a decent zoom.

I've just been watching clips of The Mighty Boosh on you-tube. I miss English surreality. I'm not sure it translates into Kiwi. The sense of humour can be quite different.

Shaky stuff

Another earthquake hit Nuzziland last night. 6.8 on the Richter scale. The strongest since 1987 supposedly. The cloest town was Gisborne up on the north island but according to some people at work it was even felt down here. Not sure what I was doing at half past nine last night but it wasn't feeling earthquakes, that's for sure.

It seems I misjudged the ability of my boss to get everything resolved regarding my department in view of his imminent departure to western Australia. We were told today what the score will be in the new year. Most of the marketing department will be reporting to a new woman coming in as the Senior Communications Manager. Me and one other in the marketing department will be effectively moving into the sales department, I think. But as the GM Sales has loads of reports already, and way more than is recommended in the company, the other person will be now reporting to him but I will be reporting to her. At first I didn't think anything of this but when I was told the news a big deal was made about the fact that I was reporting to a member of the Executive Committee (Ecom) before and now I won't be. I wouldn't have worried about it that much if they hadn't made such a big deal out of it. I'm not sure what to make of it really. At first I was reporting to an Ecom member, the same as she was, so effectively we were on the same level of a company organogram. But now she is reporting to an Ecom member still (albeit a different one) while I am reporting to her. Has she been promoted or have I been demoted? I'm not really sure. Supposedly the job won't change and I will appreciate having a manager who actually has time in the office to spend with their staff so should I really be getting that bothered about it all? As I say, I wouldn't have had a second thought had it not been brought up by someone else. Let's just see what happens, eh?

The other thing no-one quite seemed certain of is whether there is still a marketing department or whether there is a communications department and we just become part of the sales department.

One thing I hope doesn't happen is that my direct contact with the GM Sales is effectively filtered. I do a lot of work at present directly for him. That's good having that contact and exposure. I hope that doesn't change with my new boss having that contact and just passing work down to me. Again, we'll see, eh?

We got all packed tonight for the trip up north tomorrow. It's going to be nice to have a change of scenery. Just hope the weather is as nice as the forecast predicts.