11/02/2008 by jon.

I’m supposed to be starting work again next week. How crap is that? It’s the second job since we arrived in New Zealand , but it will be the first one that I show up for. However, before all the hard work begins while I work my way to the top of the pile (not a hint of irony there) we have decided to take a little holiday up North. We’ve hired a camper van – posh camping - and are heading towards Abel Tasman National Park at the top of the South Island , staying at a lovely place called Kaiteriteri.

I was not too sure what to expect from the campervan experience, but Jackie has done the camping thing before and loved it. Of course I can rough it with the best of them as long as there’s terry robes and Molton Brown grooming products so I broke down the name, Kaiteriteri and reckon that I should be ok. Kai is a Japanese word for good, and teri is probably a shorthand way of saying terry-towelling, what the best bath robes are made from. Kaiteriteri must be good terry-towel so we should be ok.

We were not disappointed. The setting is truly lovely and since it is still a few weeks until Christmas, it’s nice and quiet too. We took a water taxi from the beach into the Abel Tasman National Park, armed with the essentials such as insect repellent, water, sun cream and of course peanut butter and jam butties (they taste so good). We were expecting to be eaten alive by the sandflies as their reputation as blood sucking fun spoiling little bastards reminded us of the Scottish midges or the Inland Revenue, but they were crap. They swarmed about our ankles for a couple of minutes as we covered ourselves in DDT or something equally lethal and they left. In Scotland , you’d hear them laughing at the futility …

After walking further the kind of distance that makes your fingers ache as you mark it out on the map, we arrived in good time at our pick up point to sit on the deserted beach and bask in our achievement and finish off the last of the jam and peanut butter butties. We didn’t need rocking to sleep that night, I can tell you. I can see why the Kiwis all hit the sack pretty early on …

After three days, it’s time to head on back to Christchurch . We covered most of the distance in one day, like on the way up, but stopped overnight in Hamner Springs, a spa town with hot springs less than two hours from Christchurch . It was great. It’s set up in the mountains, loads of fresh air and plenty of mountain biking and walking available for the restless and hot springs for the lazy. We are definitely going to go back there later in the year once the temperatures have dropped – it will be great with snow on the hills. There’s even some skiing to be done there.

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27/11/2007 by jon.

Well, that’s it, I quit.

Again.

Not a job this time, just the effort of trying to get things sorted. We’re going to head on up to Nelson and around the north part of the island for a few days before we (that is to say, I) need to start work again. Will I know what to do still ? Can I still even type ? I have no idea, but am quite looking forward to it, for the first time in a long time.

We have decided to spend the next five days in the confined space of a camper van and rough it for a bit. Well, it won’t really be that rough of course because we’re both a bit soft, but we will be down to just one bathroom. There will be a microwave in there for some reason, even though the fridge is not big enough to hold more than a couple of bottles of beer and who wants them microwaved ?

I’ll have to sort out a suitable playlist on the iPod that catches the mood of the open road, blue skies and an optimistic feeling in my water. Something by Morrisey or Joy Division perhaps. Oh how I miss the jaunty ditties of my time wasted in Manchester as and undergraduate alcoholic. “Oh Manchester, so much to answer for”, as one of your more famous sons once scribed (it was Morrisey if you have not guessed).

Maybe a bit of John Denver. “Sunshine on my shoulders” perhaps … though if he had lived in New Zealand rather than Colorado, he may have written “Sunshine on my shoulders, bastard hot, giving me skin cancer” and that was never going to be a big seller.

We’re quite looking forward to a bit of posh camping; it should stand us in good stead when Paul starts talking about the great outdoors in Scotland and we can at least recognise some of the things that he’s talking about - we should be able to see some of them from the van I expect.

If Nelson is as beautiful as is has been described, then we should be able to get some more photos up when we get back. I have heard Nelson described as “a long and beautiful expanse, thrust out from the middle, where few men have been seen and the most frequently spotted mammal is a sheep”. Hang on, that might have been Nelson’s wife talking about something completely different.

I won’t do the joke with “Belsen” as the punch line …

Better go before the wine starts to take effect. Or the wife starts to take the wine. Or the wife’s whine starts to take effect.

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20/11/2007 by jon.

Ah, finally, we have some pictures to show.

We also have a new iMac, place to live, three year visa and have started to compose plans to build our own home.

The pics can be found here but there’s a wee teaser below:

Bulky and going white up top, in front of a mountain.

More soon …

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05/11/2007 by jon.

Everybody knows back in the UK that the real people live in the North and that the South is full of “Walter the softy” types. There’s also the fact that the scenery is much better up North but all the bloody jobs are down South. The strange thing is that it seems to be true here too, except that it’s all upside down.

So we have opted for setting up shop down in the South, amongst the real people of New Zealand (if the truth be known, even the softies from up North were amiable). The city of choice is Christchurch and if all goes well I should be bringing home the bacon before the end of November.

We have spent the last week in the South island having breezed in from Auckland and the scenery is stunning. Kaikora and Akoroa stand out as places we expect to visit often once we’re settled.

Akoroa is surprisingly nice because it was taken from the French by the British, but unlike Chamonix, it seems to have retained all it’s loveliness. Also, I don’t remember many dolphins around Chamonix, but then again, it was winter the last time I visited.

We have missed the ski season over here by a couple of weeks, but next season we should be able to drive to 11 different areas, meaning that the season will be pretty much over before we get banned from the whole lot. Somebody told me that “it’s not like skiing in Europe”, so the news just gets better all the time.

So far we’ve not had much home sickness, but that may come. We are missing family and friends of course but the only other thing is the goals in the premiership, but since Liverpool have not actually scored any, we’re not missing much.

I’ll be signing my contract tomorrow for a real job … could be interesting.

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26/10/2007 by jon.

Hmmm, that didn’t last long, eh ?

I spent almost eight years shuffling bits of paper in Brussels, but have not even managed two weeks in Auckland. The big question would have to be “what’s wrong with Auckland ?” and I’d struggle to answer anything other than it’s flat. But then again, so was pretty much all of Belgium …

Auckland is a great city. It’s clean, safe, warm, very friendly and has plenty to offer in terms of entertainment, food etc. It even has a nice waterfront and clean water, just like Liverpool (in the 1700s). The problem was that the job was in the north, the scenery was to the south of Auckland and that’s just too far to commute. So, we’re off again.

We’re heading towards Wellington and then on to the South Island. While we’re down there, we’re gonna catch up with Martin and Padraig, who are heading off on a little adventure of their own. Let’s hope it’s a little less eventful than the last leg of Martin’s travels where he managed to lose his passport.

I narrowly missed the chance to get the old barnet cut, so will travel south in full boufant glory.

Till soon …

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