"While the cat's at home with girlie mates trying on clothes...

...the mouse goes out taking photos."


On Monday Joanne hosted an Undercoverwear party at our place and had ten girlies over. I was duly banished from the house. So after I finished playing touch rugby at about 8pm I went for a drive and found myself at New Brighton. I had only ever been during the daytime and I'd been told that at night the pier lights up in pretty colours. I wasn't disappointed. It gave me an excuse to play around with some night-time photography and shutter settings and stuff too.

The square of the hypotenuse

Usually I ignore those T-shirt ads you see in the sponsored bits down the side of websites. Most of the time the designs don't do anything for me, but this one tickled me particularly. You might have to be a bit of a maths geek to get it, mind.

If you don't get it, trust me, it's funny. And clever.

Those magnificent men in their flying machines

When my dad was here last year one of the things we did was visit the air force museum at Wigram. Today they held their annual open day. Part of the programme involved an air flying display. I've always like planes (wanted to be a pilot in the RAF for a while, until poor eyesight ended that idea) and used to go to air displays with my dad as a kid. As a result I couldn't pass up the opportunity to go along to a display only a couple of kilometres from home.

The display wasn't quite what you'd see at a big European or American air display but it was still good. I was always going to enjoy it, I think. I'm always so impressed with what the pilots can do with their aircraft. You never expect helicopters to fly almost vertical or large planes to perform the tight banks and steep climbs that they do. And the close-quarters synchronised stuff is pretty special. The highlight for today for me though was probably what the pilots of a Boeing 757 and a Hercules managed to pull off. Just amazing.

The best seven

There are certain moments when it's good to be an Englishman in New Zealand. This is one of those moments. This weekend the IRB Sevens World Series has reached its Wellington leg. New Zealand were at home, favourites and looking to retain the trophy they won last year. 43 games passed. Two teams remained - New Zealand and England. New Zealand led 17-5 at half-time. As the hooter sounded to end the second half New Zealand led 17-12. But unlike football play continues at the end of normal time until the ball goes out of play. So England had one last chance. Which they took. A try under the posts, duly converted. England win 19-17. In the Kiwis backyard. Ouch! :)

Yesterday, making the most of the lovely weather and the public holiday that is Waitangi Day Joanne and I took our bikes up to Bottle Lake Forest Park for a ride around. It's a lovely place on the northern edge of town, with tracks and paths where people ride horses, walk, cycle or run or whatever. It's so nice to get out and do some outdoorsy stuff whenever we can.

Last night we went round to Jona and Jane's, friends from church, for a bit of a party type thing, which was nice, to catch up with a few people. And this morning we went round to Dave & Kylie's for morning tea. Dave is the new assistant minister at St John's and one of his responsibilities is Bible studies and that includes the Christianity Explored and Exploring Discipleship courses. It was really just an introductory thing so we could get to meet them and so that he could hear from us about ED and from Cam & Jo about CE and stuff. If you are after prayer requests by the way, it would be great if you could pray for the Christianity Explored course that starts at church a week on Wednesday, that people would come along and have open hearts and minds to what they'll hear discussed from Mark's gospel. We're not involved in leading at CE any more of course, with our involvement in ED, but it'll still be great to have you joining us in prayer for the course.

Whoops

I'm not quite sure how I've let over a month slip by since I last wrote something. A bit slack of me, I know. I guess the month's just been a bit full on really and I've not really felt like sitting in front of the laptop of an evening when I've got home from being in front of a PC all day. Poor show, eh?

Well, what's happened since January 2nd? I guess it's worth mentioning the rail trail. The weather this summer has been pretty awesome. One day it wasn't quite so awesome was a Sunday a couple of weeks ago when the middle of the afternoon saw rainfall and thunder and lightning and hail storms and more rainfall. This was the day that Joanne & I and Blair & Amy had decided to try the Motukarara to Little River section of the rail trail. We'd heard forecasts of bad weather coming in but it was sunny when we left home. Even the 'omen' of me blowing a valve on my bike tyre wasn't enough to put us off. We set off and then the heavens opened. We put a brave face on it and cycled probably about 7 or 8km of the 20km section. It wasn't cold or windy. Just wet. Very wet. A little short of halfway we all kind of decided we'd call it a day and save the rest for a nice day. Three of us turned round and headed back to where we started, and the car. Blair carried on. The other car was at the other end you see.

Maybe if it's nice weather this weekend, what with it being a three-day weekend and everything, we might try again. We got a towbar fitted on the big car today and I plan to buy a bike rack tomorrow so at least it means we don't have to mess around taking off the front wheels to load them into the car anymore.

The main reason for the towbar and bike rack is so that we can take our bikes when we have weekends away. We've not really taken many weekends away since we've been here but we've recently planned a few for the coming months. First up, next month, we've got a weekend in Tekapo planned. April sees us head up to Auckland for Easter to catch up with Jo's family. And then in May we've got a weekend in Wellington booked. Air New Zealand recently had a sale on internal flights too. $49 one way to Wellington. Can't go wrong, eh?

This Sunday just gone saw the annual church family sausage sizzle. As I mentioned last year the sausage sizzle Sunday always takes me back to our first ever experience of St John's four years ago now, when Joanne and I visited Chch for a weekend. This time Joanne and I were in charge of cooking the sausages. We had 420 to cook. They were the pre-cooked variety you can buy over here though so at least there was no risk of giving anyone food poisoning.

It still amazes me sometimes how Nuzziland cannot quite let go of the reins that keep it tied to the motherland. News over here quite often picks up something news-worthy from the UK, you see. Like the recent snow over there. Sure it's some heavy snowfall and stuff but if we'd had similar record dumps over here I don't think it'd make the BBC news would it?

I am so looking forward to the football season starting again this year. The first game is at the start of April. I really enjoyed playing last year and as fun as the summer league has been, it will be good to play teams a similar level and not come up against teams from divisions way above ours. I want to reach my twenty goal target this year. I'm determined to do it but the matches missed due to the Wellington weekend away and the UK trip in June will mean less matches in which to achieve it. We'll see.

Parties, beaches, pipi and visitors

Happy New Year. A little belated, but heart-felt all the same.

So, another New Year's Eve another New Year's Eve party. Our fifth in a row and the tradition seems to be catching on in New Zealand. Most of our guests even turned up without eating first too. I think we had about 35 over this time so well up on the 10 or so we had for our first Nuzziland one. It seemed to all go well, I think. Enough people that karaoke wasn't compulsory, good enough weather to use the garden too, and enoough food for everyone, despite Jo's panics all afternoon prior to the party. Four chickens, a roast pork loin (with tremendous crackling might I add), some of Auntie Doreen's stuffing, a big dish of bobotie, and plenty of bread and salad seemed to satisfy everyone. I do love the way that people who swear they'll never sing in public weaken by the end of the evening though. It never ceases to amaze me.

Next week it's time for YLC again. Quite a few of the strand group leaders come over from Australia and often they need a place to stay while they're here. On New Year's Day a couple, Andrew & Jess, arrived. The conference starts on Monday but they arrived a little early so need a place to stay. We've got our spare room of course, so were happy to be able to open our home to them for a few days when we were asked. They're currently cooking us dinner and it smells pretty good, I have to say. It's always nice to meet Christian brothers and sisters you've not met before. Just having that one big important thing in common breaks down so many barriers. You might have nothing else in common but there is always a starting point with Christian family.

Today Joanne and I decided to have a day out. The weather for the past week has been lovely, right since Boxing Day, so we thought we'd head to the beach. Someone Jo works with recommended Tumbledown Bay, over on the south side of Banks Peninsula so we thought we'd give it a go, not knowing anywhere better. It was a lovely place. A long shallow beach protected by hills with clear water. We had a bit of a picnic, sat reading our books, went for a paddle and also 'caught' some pipi. I won't eat them of course but Jo loves seafood and catching them took her back to her childhood summers on the beaches.

Christmas no.2 - baked ham and leprosy

So, Christmas is all but over for another year. Our second Christmas in Nuzziland has gone. My second summer Christmas passed. If I've not spoken to you or emailed you or chatted to you in the past few days merry Christmas, eh?

Joanne and I have had a lovely last few days. Starting with Christmas day, we got up early enough to open presents before heading off to church. Among the many wonderful gifts I received I got a couple of Rachel Allen cookbooks, a bundt tin, a digital photo frame loaded with pictures of family and a copy of Football Manager 2009 that I'm scared to install because of the days it will eat. I also got a Billy T. James DVD and an album of Neil Finn, Anika Moa and Dave Dobbyn music. She's trying to educate me about kiwi culture.

The rest of Christmas day, after church was spent with our friend Sarah and her family. It was so lovely of them to invite us to share their day and they all made us feel really welcome, even though we'd never met any of them before bar Sarah's mum, and even then only briefly. Lunch was what was described as a real Kiwi Christmas lunch - baked ham, salad and some meat off the barbecue. Not quite what a typical UK Christmas lunch but very tasty all the same. I do love baked ham. After lunch we headed out for a walk around the beautiful Canterbury University grounds before heading back for the real Christmas action - sing-a-long-a-Mamma Mia. I'd not seen the movie before and I have to tell you, despite my preconceptions, I enjoyed it. Just a fun film. You can tell the cast had loads of fun making it too. And after watching some famous people sing we thought we'd give it a go ourselves. We'd taken the PS2 along and the rest of the evening was spent introducing Sarah's family to Singstar. We persuaded them it would be a good opportunity to practice before they have a bigger audience at our NYE party. It's amazing how people adamant they will never do karaoke soften as an evening progresses.

Yesterday, Boxing Day, was a relaxing day. Neither Joanne or I left the house. Lazing around, not doing anything imparticular was the order of the day, and the order was filled. Perfect.

Today we met up with Mon and Barry and the kids and Mel and their mum. Mel is over from Hong Kong spending Christmas with her family so it was a great opportunity to catch up with everyone all in one go. And it was definitely great to catch up with everyone. Mon had the idea of heading over on the ferry to Quail Island. It's an island in the middle of Lyttelton harbour that has at various times been used for quarantining both animals and humans, including a period spent as a leprosy colony. Now it's a nature reserve and general beauty spot. It's hard to believe that only fifteen minutes out of Lyttelton on the boat, in the middle of an extinct volcano cone there is such a lovely little place.

We met the others in Lyttelton at about midday (after a lovely panini and chocolate banana smoothie in No.6 cafe) and headed down to the ferry. A fifteen minute boat ride, as I say, and we were pulling up alongside the quay at Quail Island. There was plenty of time for a spot of afternoon tea, a fast-paced stroll round the island and some time for lazing in the sun too. So this is what a Kiwi Christmas is all about is it?

So far it looks like we've got about 30 or so people coming along at New Year. It's still not quite as big an event as the London ones where we had over 50 one year, but we're getting there. The word is spreading. The entertainment for the evening is taken care of with Joanne's massive selection of Singstar disks (she's practising in the other room as I type). Now we just have to plan the food side of things.