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For about a month every year around this time I keep a close eye on the BBC weather waiting for evidence that the shortest day is finally coming.  And today was the first day I’ve seen that evidence! (Yes, I do know that it’s about the 20th of December every year here, but I just need to see some proof, in case the universe is suddenly going horribly wrong or something.)

YIPPEE!  Won’t really help with the cold, I suspect, but at least it’s the start of the trip to being able to see the sun for a decent amount of time again!

Once again, a late report. These are getting pretty frequent! We’ll try to keep more up to date next year. Maybe. But to make up for it, some of the small pics below are clicky for a change, in case you want a better view of them.

Anyway, a couple of weekends ago we hired a car and went to see some of the country. Well, we had a few ulterior motives like dropping off a few boxes of stuff destined in the future for NZ at friends a couple of hours north who are happy to store it for us (hence the need for the car). And the fact we had tickets for Crowded House in the Nottingham Arena on the Saturday night.

Luckily we were both able to take the Friday afternoon off, so we managed to pretty much avoid the Friday night motorway exodus from London, and the trip up was pretty smooth. And boring. Like really boring! Long boring stretches of double lane roads, with a long boring motorway stretch in the middle. Nothing much to see really. But then that all changed when we got near the destination, where the roads changed to skinny, no centre-line, dark (the sun had set by now), windy (and windy), poorly signposted (in the dark, at least) little lanes. So I guess it balanced out.

And we made it.

Despite Bec not realising that when she printed off the instructions on how to get there the right hand edge of the text was not on the printout. DOH! “turn …(missing) … at the restaurant”… “Turn into the road called B…(missing) “. You get the picture.

But amazingly we got there, with only one missed turn that we spotted at the time. Complete fluke!

Zapping over the nice dinner, conversation, sleep, yummy breakfast to the afternoon the next day… A mission to find a kitchenware shop that Bec had tracked down to a town a few miles away which was sort of but not really on the way to Nottingham, where we needed to be for the night. Ok. No kitchen shop there at all that any of the locals had heard of. Or we could find. We finally worked out that the “shop” must have actually been the distribution centre for this range, not a retail outlet.

But at least we had a nice scone in the tearooms there.

And on to Nottingham.

Dumped our stuff at the hotel and out for a few pre-concert drink and some dinner. Found a student Gothic bar after a bit of a wander that suited us just fine. Good fun sitting under a huge iron pendulum munching on a pretty reasonable tea. And finding the toilet door in a wall that looked like a bookcase.

Then on to the concert….

A superb show. As always. Crowded House always look like they’re having such fun playing, which always makes for a good gig. All the classics were heard, along with some of the newer stuff that we’d heard earlier at Hyde park, so starting to get to know. Still haven’t bought the album, but that wont’ be far off, I think.

So, as I said, a really good show, and a bit of a taste of home in the UK.

Back to the hotel. Sleep, breakfast, a bit of shopping followed. The boring stuff. Then back to our friends to pick up our car and head back to London. But a bit of a treat on the way back at one of the villages close to them. A village fair! Well, the end of one. There were two highlights there. A fairly odd dancing troop, obviously exercising a tradition, or old charter, or something…

And a trailer full of owls of all shapes and sizes. We didn’t pay to have one on our wrist though (or to take the photos…). Cool though.

And the back to collect the car and drive back to London again. Would have been a better drive if the torrential rain had stayed away, but motorway driving when you can’t see the lane markers, or the cars in front is always fun. Luckily only about half an hour of that. And we even managed to find our way back to drop off the car pretty easily in the end. Whew!

It’s always nice to get out and about for a bit. A good weekend all round.

While there’s a set time to take down the Christmas tree, there doesn’t seem to be one for setting one up.  Except if you’re in retail, in which case the 1st of October seems about right, apparently.  But as we’ll be a bit busy the first weekend of December, and the second one seems almost a bit late, we decided it had to go up last weekend.

Of course that could have just been because Bec wanted to have a glass of champagne, as it is apparently somehow an integral part of the ritual!  Which of course you remember from reading last year’s entry on this topic.  Don’t you?  You did read it, didn’t you?!

Anyway, up it went.  This year we both decided that there weren’t enough lights on it, and as I didn’t get around to sneaking some more on last year we had to go and get some more the next day to lighten things up a bit.  Looks about right now, I think.

Not the best photo of it, but I’ll avoid putting a video up of it in it’s full glory. There’s enough crap video on the net already.

Now we just have to remember to take it down at the right time…  Oh, and get a few presents to put under it to, I guess.  That’s the hard bit!

That’s right, it’s that time of year again. The BBC wine and food festival hit town.  So off we went.

Forgot the camera, and my phone was out of battery, so here’s last year’s photo.  To be honest if we took one this year it would look pretty much exactly the same anyway!

There didn’t seem to be quite the same number of people there this year.  Which was a very good thing.  It was much more pleasant wandering around this time. And not quite so hot and yucky.

We came away with a few chilli sauces, a couple of bottles of wine, a reasonable amount of pickled herring, some cheese, and the bowl queen got some more bowls to add to the collection. Like we need any more! Oh, and a few bonus free pasta sauces, chocolate and an apple.

Some mates of ours have a couple of places out in Spain, so we popped out to visit them for a few days. We were in a little place called Playa de Flamenco, which is just outside of both Alicante and Murcia. I can’t say we saw that many Spanish people in the area. It seems to be a place that the Brits have a lot of holiday homes or have relocated to to live in another Britain with sun.  All the pubs seem to have English beers, and you can always seem to get steak and chips.  We prefer the local tapas though, which seem to take a bit more finding…

The first day the rain bucketed down (not that it bothered us at all while we sat inside eating tapa’s and drinking beer), and caused lots of local floods.

But on the second day we woke up to clear blue sky – fantastic.

What did we do – nothing really. Caught up on some sleep, had a few pints, watched some sport, had a walk on the beach, wandered through the extremely busy market, and, oh we ate some tapa’s. And the food highlight for Bec was having lobster one night for dinner.

Yes, I think we can almost talk about it. Though it still brings back some bad feelings!

At the same time we got the tickets to the first All Blacks game of the world cup, we took a punt (if you’ll pardon the pun) and got ourselves tickets to the quarter final game for the AB pool. We figured that it was highly likely that we’d win the pool and if not we could always sell them on anyway. Not that we had any doubts at all though. Honest!

The tickets were the easy bit though. Right up until the week before we went we had no idea whether we had anywhere to stay as there seemed to be no accommodation left in town. All sorts of schemes were being discussed, from driving up and back in a day, or sleeping in a car, etc. But in the end we managed to score a flat for the night within reasonable walking distance from the stadium. Whew! That meant we could take the easy option of a train there and back.

So we got there, got settled, went to the pub to watch the Aussie v England game… With all the other Kiwi’s in town. Who were all cheering on England, rather than our cousins across the pond. Go figure! Presumably because at the time we thought that would be best for us in the long run. The token 2 Aussies at the pub were getting a bit of a hard time, as you can imagine.

Then off down the road for a pie and another pint before the game.

I don’t really want to talk about the the game. So I won’t.

But I will talk about after the game. Back at the pub. With everyone else looking glum and commiserating with each other. Along with some France supporters. All getting along fine.

The reason I mention that is that some people asked me at work what it was like after the game and were really surprised to hear that there was no trouble or bad feeling or anything. They’re so used to football crowds that get ugly that it’s hard for them to comprehend a rugby crowd. No need to separate supporters in the stadium, no need for police on horseback, no bottles being thrown, nothing. Just a good natured crowd where supporters of both teams can talk to each other about the game afterwards over a beer.

It’s all good, regardless of the result.

For the second time now the web server decides to sulk and turn itself off as soon as I’ve left on holiday!!! ARRRGGGHHHHH!!! Why? Absolutely no idea! At least this time all I had to do to fix it was turn it back on again, rather than a full rebuild like last time.

Sorry if you missed your usual exercise of checking to see if we’d put anything new up, only to find that we hadn’t. But now we’re back from the hols, we’ve got a few things to write about. We’ll probably backdate the entries to when things actually happened, so make sure you go back a bit to see the new stories if you’re checking the site in the next wee while!

But at least it shows that at least it must miss me being around. We’ll just have to see if it happens a third time next time we’re away. If it does, there’s going to be trouble, and it will get a good talking to!

Off the plane from returning from NZ one day and then straight on a plane to Marseilles, France the next. What a way to finish a holiday! But it was really good to finish up in the bright sun. We must confess that the NZ weather treated us really well while we were there, what with it being the end of winter (we may have even picked up some colour in sunny central). But the South of France had beautiful weather, well over 30 odd degrees… And for watching rugby in a full stadium that’s just really hot!! I pity the poor guys having to play in it.

But it was worth getting off one plane and pretty much straight back on another to watch the All Blacks play Italy. The game was pretty one sided, but at least the Italian’s got some points. Not like the English the other day! (Have to say that here, as I can’t say it at work!!) Heaps and heaps of Kiwi’s there and in the town before and after the game.

It was nice to see another bit of France that wasn’t Paris. We stayed in Aix en Provence rather than Marseilles. A nice town from what we saw of it, with some nice chatty French guys at the pub to keep us there for just one more pint… But Marseilles had gone all out for the rugby. Big wicker figures doing the Haka on the waterfront, and signs and things everywhere.

Go the All Blacks, let’s just make it to and then through the final!

As we were back in NZ at the perfect time for planting (supposedly cold, wet and when the ground’s soft, I guess) we thought we’d chuck a few things on our patch of dirt.

• 100 odd teeny weeny Pittosporums as a hedge/windbreak
• 1 Golden Elm – Ulmus Pro, Louis V Houtte
• 1 Malus Ballerina (basically a pink blossom crab apple tree)
• 1 Purple Norway Maple (Acer Platanoides Nigrum if you care for the technical details!)

We managed to get the pittosporums more or less in a row, but then who wants a perfectly straight line anyway!

Of course we didn’t do this all on our own. We had a good crew of helpers always ready to give some helpful advice…  Whilst standing around drinking a few well deserved beers for all their hard work!

Just kidding! The crew were fantastic. I had wondered at the start of the day just how long it would take us, and whether Bec and I would have to return the next day to finish off, but in the end we had it all done in about 5 hours, and that was with a fair bit of mucking around at the end, and in between to recover from the hole digging from time to time (Bec – I think I  recall looking up from planting to see in the distance a lot of standing around doing nothing – apparently discussing what shape to dig the next hole in?!) (Mike – Well, Jacob had some very strong ideas about that!  Some were to be round, and some square.  It was obviously important to get it right! And there was a bit of a hold up when Lexi decided that the hole we’d just dug was the most comfortable chair in the world.)

And then there was the big stop for a dose of good old Kiwi pies to refuel.  Ahhhh Kiwi pies!  One of the joys of returning to NZ.  I could write a whole post on them, but then I’d just make myself hungry.

Now all we have to do is wait and see how many of the trees actually survive.  But we guess that’s up to the magic watering pixies (Rob and Dawn, and Jeff and Cole)…….  fingers crossed the roster for watering and TLC works!  All in all if was a great day out on the plot and if it works then, hey, we have a bit of a head start when we finally get our butts in gear and build a house!

Well, Gym anyway. Today I went for a trip to the gym. Yes, that’s ME talking this time, not Bec! Though she was the one that dragged me there. We’ve got a little cardio gym as part of our complex that we pay for as part of our rent, so may as well use it, and it’ not like it’s very far away.

Just a little workout to see if I’d keel over or not, but surprisingly I came through unscathed. So far. I’ll see how the legs are tomorrow…