LETTER from NEW ZEALAND*

*With apologies to Alistair Cooke.

I thought I might do an occasional blog update in the form of a news letter. If this turns out to be boring wordy ramblings, please let me know via the comments.

Well, holidays are over, time to get down to some serious stuff, house hunting, car catching and generally bedding in for the next couple years.

Firstly the closing chapters of our festive period adventures.

We didn’t leave Melbourne under a cloud, there weren’t any; it was 35 degrees in the shade. My lucky hat came through again and we were upgraded once more to business class. Thank you Emirates, now Liz is totally spoiled for any other type of travel and it will probably cost me a fortune in the long run. We arrived safely in Auckland and, unfortunately fell foul of the airline bureaucracy. Having booked flights in advance with sufficient time to allow for any delays, we found ourselves with a four hour wait for a one hour flight. The nice Air NZ girl on the way out suggested that I ask for an earlier flight if seats are available, what a good idea. Unfortunately the man on the Air NZ desk didn’t think so. “Who have you just flown with?” asks the man. “Emirates”, I reply. Well, wrong answer! “Sorry can’t allow you an earlier flight, this option is reserved for our loyal customers and frequent flyers”, states the man. Okay, now I am a very reasonable person as you all will attest, so I explained very nicely that in the last 2 weeks I and my family had flown many thousands of miles around the world and chose to use Air New Zealand, also flying internally using them, in order to connect up with our ‘air miles’ flights with Emirates. This had no effect on Mr Efficiency, those were the rules. (The rest of this rambling has been removed on the advice of Liz, it’s turning into a rant apparently!) Well never mind, we made it back to Wellington.

What about Wellington, well here is an excerpt from some correspondence in the local news paper: it sums up the ‘windy’ element of the city.

‘It’s a little breezy today. In other countries, this kind of breeze would be called a hurricane and people would be told to stay indoors and nail things down. Here they expect you to go about your everyday business and simply suggest you put a few lead weights in your coat pocket to keep yourself vertical.’

To be truthful, this is the beginning of summer here and, apart from one 140kmph windy day, it has been nice weather (and breezy, says Liz). We are finding our feet more now, and actively looking for somewhere to buy. Not knowing the various suburbs we have taken to buying bus/train tickets and hopping on and off of various transport systems just to see where they go. The train ride up to Johnsonville was interesting, the rail line in NZ is of a narrow gauge variety and the trains trundle up and down the (very) steep hills, with wilderness-quality undergrowth almost brushing both sides of the carriages. I noted with interest that when the Auckland and Wellington lines were build back in 1898, they ended up with a height difference of 700 feet between the two lines; the famous Raurimu Spiral was designed and built to accommodate this. This link will show those who have an interest in it (John Manchip?) how it worked. http://www.websnz.com/ttt/nzr/nzrrs.php3

The rail and bus travel shows us some parts, however we’re going to hire a car and explore the areas that are off the immediate bus and train routes. Buying a car at the moment would cause needless expense as there is no parking around our apartment (without paying silly money).

Last week we went for lunch at the harbour front in a really nice restaurant. However the girl at the bar requested a credit card to be retained until the meal was paid, even if you were paying cash! I queried the wisdom of this in view of the ability to ‘skim’ the card; the girl observed that it was strange that it was the people from Europe who had a problem with this. I explained that it was standard practice not to let your card out of your sight (and the reasons why) and without a hint of irony she informed me that this wouldn’t happen in New Zealand as you would go to jail. We survived the ordeal and had a nice lunch anyway.

It cannot be denied that the people are very friendly and helpful, even in the banks; you are treated as a valued customer with all the friendliness of a long lost friend. It takes a bit of getting used to, coming from the UK.

I’m still in love with the library (given the price of books in the shops!) and the library used-book sale is now at the 25 cents a book, 5 for a dollar (40p) stage. I keep appearing with armloads, I can’t help it, I’m still suffering withdrawal symptoms from the de-clutter of my stuff when we left UK. I have to promise to get rid of them when I’ve read them.

Well I think this is enough for now, I’ll have to see how this sits within the blog, don’t want pages of stuff in each update.