Now the dust has settled a little, here's a more detailed write up on our birth experience as promised. As a first birth we were expecting a long labour. We got a little more than we bargained for.

We knew things were starting to happen on Monday when Annie started to feel painful contractions. A restless monday night and more of the same on tuesday, pretty much no sleep for Annie as contractions were waking her up every 10 minutes. Wednesday Malc decided to work from home in the morning, anticipating things would get going in the afternoon. Nada. Another night of no sleep followed, but finally around 3am thursday morning the contractions started to get closer together. 5.30am we decided to call our midwife Amber as instructed as contractions are 5 mins apart. We expected to
wake her but she was already attending another home birth as backup. "I'll be there in 20 minutes!".

Amber turned up and set up all her kit, most of the gear that you would find in a hospital birthing unit lives in the back of her car. We already had the pool pumped up and ready, so it was all system go. We awaited the classic signs of progress, contractions lengthening and getting closer, and then ... nothing. At lunchtime, Amber told us she was going home for lunch (she lives in the next street) and would return in a couple of hours if she didn't hear from us earlier.

On her return, things were still the same. Another few hours and Amber headed home again for tea.

At that point, Annie inexplicably went to sleep for half an hour. On waking up, she moved into a pattern 1 minute contractions with five minutes sleep in between. Annie was exhausted after 3 nights without sleep. At around 11pm we called Amber to ask her to come and check out that baby was still ok. She came round and discussed her options. We decided she should do an examination to check progress before making any decisions, as we had no idea whether we were 10% or 90% of the way there.

Great news, we were 80% there. That seemed to give Annie the extra boost of energy required. We hurriedly filled the pool, and Annie clambered in as the contractions were getting pretty intense now, Annie was pushing hard. Still the contractions were 5 minutes apart, Amber said "we'll throw that textbook out the window". Although we hadn't planned to have a water birth, once Annie was in the water there was no getting her out. The contractions stayed 5 minutes apart, and Annie was convinced she was getting nowhere, but Amber informed her she could see baby's hair! A few more massive pushes, then "Malc, you need to come and catch your baby!". And on the last push, out she came. Malc brought her up to the surface and after a couple of splutters she started crying. She was passed to mum, and the two of them wrapped up in front of the fire. It was the most awesome experience of our lives, and we will never forget it.

We are also so grateful we chose to birth at home. If we had chosen a hospital birth, there is no way we would have continued without intervention for that long as the labour was not progressing in the textbook manner. In the end, that was the way it was supposed to be, and baby was born without complications.

We are now blissfully enjoying our first days as a family, Mum, Dad and Baby are all fine and healthy, even getting a semi-normal sleep pattern! Thanks to everyone for your wonderful messages, it really help to ease being so far away from everyone.

For the non-facebook users out there, here's some photos:

Take care all,

M, A & O

Introducing ...

The latest edition to the Locke family, Olive Alice Locke, born 3.33am 2 Nov 2007 NZ time at 7lb 13.

After a marathon 28 hour labour, she was born safe and well at home (as planned) in water. Dad managed to not faint and catch her bringing her to meet mum.

As you can imagine, the whole experience has been pretty shattering, but we are all resting now in absolute bliss. More photos and a more detailed write up to follow soon, but right now we need some sleep!

Malc, Annie and Olive.

And the winner is ...

After a late entry from the 'Nissan Homy', we decided to abandon the whole 'worst named car' train of thought and buy something decent. We are now the pround owners of 'Zak', a 3 litre turbo diesel Toyota Landcruiser.

We drove him home from Queenstown at the weekend, with an overnight stop in Wanaka where we caught up with Ad and Vic again. He's a pretty chunky beast, and with 8 seats he should be good for some family back-country picnic trips.

Hey Bumpy

A few people have asked to see some photos of Annie's .... ahem .... 'progress', so here ya go.

4th July 2007 at Lake Tekapo, theres definitely something there.

22nd August, where did that come from!

We can make sandwiches

Somehow at work, a discussion got started about the old phrase 'dig a hole to China'. Seems that the phrase is used here as well as the UK. We got round to talking about where you would end up if you kept digging a hole. Turns out, from the UK, you end up in the sea off the SE coast of NZ, near the Antipodes Islands. From here, you end up near Lourenza in N Spain. In a similar vein, someone set a challenge to make an 'earth sandwich' by putting two pieces of bread on the ground on two exactly antipodal points of the earth at the same time. They created groovy tool to help. Amazingly, someone did it!

It looks like unfortunately we will be parting ways with the mighty 'Big Al', due to irreconcilable artistic and mechanical differences. It's been emotional, but it's time to move on. Due to the mind boggling plethora of options available in todays automotive market, we have decided to go for the theme 'the worst named car in the world' in our search for new wheels.

So far, we've narrowed it down to two contenders:

The Toyota Emina

It's important if purchasing this car to ensure you find an example with the name proudly emblazoned in large letters down the side like the one pictured. This car is perfect for the dyslexic driver, or a fan of spoonerisms. There's an almost limitless supply of jokes about being rear ended available to the lucky owner of one of these beauties.


The Mazda Bongo Friendee

It's probable that a team of marketing guys & girls sat through months of brainstorming sessions, finally whittling the options down to this incomprehensible choice. Obviously, at no point during the process was anyone struck with the revelation that this is one of the worst names ever conceived for a car.

Got any more suggestions? Answers on a postcard please.

Shortest Day

Yesterday saw the shortest day pass. Unfortunately, the saying goes 'the days get longer, the cold gets stronger'. The southern half of 'the mainland' has been hit pretty heavily by a polar blast, and our minds are consumed pretty much completely by thoughts of insulation and heat pumps.

The shortest day also saw us standing in the pouring rain watching the grand opening of the new lights on the New Brighton pier. These actually turned out to be pretty impressive, the lights sort of pulse different colours along the columns, hard to explain but quite impressive.

On the home front, the nesting hormone (ikeadrene) appears to be taking over Annie's life. Evidence of this includes

• Coming home each day to discover a new curtain has appeared over a window, portal or cubbyhole
• Your house is now home to around a forests worth of paint swatch prints, and you are expected to have a strong opinion on the merits of the colour 'oatmeal' over 'Autumn Husk'. Failure to do so will see you regarded as the emotionless caveman that you obviously are.
• Your spouse proudly announces 'today, I hoovered the hoover'

Mum and baby are both well, with the latter doing regular impressions of 'Alien'.

Got another visitor on the way this Sunday, Tim is staying for a couple of nights en route to a season doing ski tuition in Wanaka .. lucky bugger! Also congrats to the Simmersons and Jacobs on getting NZ residency .. awooga!

Stay warm, and hello to all the Glastonbury goers, have a nice swim!

Malc & Annie

Home from home

We've arrived home safe and sound from Blighty. Think it will take at least a year to convince us to fly again, the world may be getting smaller but it's still pretty big when you have to fly half way round it.

Hopefully everyone has now heard our biggest news, if not your about to! At the end of October we will be parents. We had our second scan today, and all looks good. They gave us a pretty good idea of the sex, but we won't blog it for those of you who don't want to know! Annie is starting to look bigger now and getting a regular kicking, obviously stretching those surfing legs.

A huge thanks to everybody who made an effort to see us while we were back, and apologies to everyone we didn't manage to catch up with. It was lovely to see you all and catch up on the gossip. Special thanks go out to:

• Nigel and Carole for letting us mess up their house and putting up with the 'old codger' jokes.
• Dax, Mary and Isaac for helping us survive in the woods.
• Carol H for letting us mess up her house and putting up with the 'old Nana' jokes.
• Oli, Linda and Imogen for inviting 'The Family' to converge on their house (brave souls), and to all the Bells for coming.
• Fern, Will, Harry & Boz for the exceptional company, hospitality and risotto.
• Chris, Jo and Dylan for pizza & 'Spaced'.
• The Jacobs and Simmersons for rainy parties & bbq's.
• The Mill Hotel Bar for becoming our second home.
• Brett and Rachael for tea, biscuits and 'fat pants'!

And all the rest of you!

We are settling into the depths of winter, trying to turn into tough Kiwis. It's running up to the ski season, so all eyes are on the mountains and regular snow dances are being performed. Annie will unfortunately be grounded this season but will be compiling reports of the best on-mountain cafes.

More news soon, take care all,

Malc & Annie

Leaving on a jet plane

Thanks first to Fernie for giving us a kick to write another post after too long.

We had a visit from Matt, out here looking around and having job interviews in preparation for making the move out here. He seemed to embrace the active lifestyle while he was here, although the surfing could use a little work fella ;-) Hope we made you welcome!

Finally got round to uploading some more photos, credit goes to Matt and Nana for the best ones, check them out at http://bollo.hoodee.co.uk/~malc/gallery/nz/

Biggest news is our trip home, can't wait to see you all when we get back. We fly out of NZ on May 2nd, and are heading down to Cornwall for our first week, then back to Suffolk until the end of May, with a trip to see the Brighton posse thrown in. Look forward to laughing at our middle-of-nowhere accents, and be prepared to listen to us moan about the British coffee. Really looking forward to some nice spring time weather, news of the early heat wave has made it all the way down here, so we have high expectations!

Not much news to report, so signing off for now. Will be in touch with you all to arrange meet ups, see you all soon!

Malc and Annie
xxx

Residence granted!

After what seems like an eternity of waiting, being prodded by doctors, police record scrutiny, mountains of form filling, digging through old photos for 'proof of partnership', nail biting and cheque writing we have finally been granted perminent residence in New Zealand. This simple stamp in our passports was pretty much the last potential bureucratic stumbling block for us here, so it's quite a weight off our minds. It also means that hopefully we will have our passports back before we return to England on holiday!

Whirlwind visitors

We have already had a set of visitors come and go since the last update. This time it was Katherine and Roy, on a 'reccie' trip to check out Christchurch as they are planning to make the move out here. Unfortunately, we had to work during their stay so didn't get to spend as much time with them as we'd like, but had a good weekend trip up to Hanmer and Kaikoura (in the rain (again)). We also took a really nice trip on a small catermaran boat around Lyttleton harbour and saw some Hectors Dolphins. K & R used the van to travel around to check out some possible areas to live. We hope they were suitably impressed.

Last weekend Christchurch hosted a round of the Hyundai Pro Longboard surfing contest. After starting the event in New Brighton, the organisers moved it up the coast to Waikuku Beach due to a lack of swell. We decided to cruise up and check it out, camping overnight at the beach side campsite. After breakfast Malc decided to join the pros warming up in the perfect 3ft waves. Taking the usual 'keep out of everyones way' philosophy, he found a spot occupied by only one other surfer and paddled out. On arrival it was apparent why there was only one other person there, as he was completely naked. Thankfully after a few minutes of eye averting, the mysterious nudie vanished. Thankfully, the 'backside air' did not feature in his bag of surf tricks.



As the requests have been trickling in for photographic evidence of Malc surfing, here's some proof of his ability to at least stand up. Click above for the full sequence, thanks to Richard who took the pics in New Brighton over the Christmas holidays during the Martin household invasion.

Keep in touch, and thanks for reading,

Malc and Annie

World Buskers Festival

Last week saw Christchurch pay host to its annual World Buskers Festival. This turned out to be a great laugh. There were several stages set up around the city centre, with acts taking it in turn to perform throughout the day. The festival organisers pay for accomadation and flights for the acts, who are picked from the best street performers around the world, but it's up to them to pass the hat as usual for their wages.

As Malc's company host the website we ended up with VIP tickets to one of the evening performances held in the outdoor courtyard of the arts centre, with food and wine thrown in. We spent most lunchtimes watching acts out in the street, as well as 'Buskers at Brighton' in our neck of the woods. Highlights include

• Gamarjobat - japanese silent acrobat / magician duo
• Scott Nery - Dry witted american pancake juggler
• Joel Salom - Australian juggler accompanied by Erik the robotic dog
• Nate Cooper - Skinny drunken pogo-ing juggler / 'strongman'
• Blackstreet Boyz - Jive talkin' hip-hop dancers / comedians from LA

The photo above shows one of the 'stages', and is also the view from Malcs office balcony.

Other exciting news this weeks is the long awaited purchase of a surfboard by Darren, so Malc finally has a surfing partner, and the impending arrival of Katherine and Roy on Sunday for a two week visit. Also, summer seems to be here at last! Hopefully we can rub it in a bit to all those who were gloating about the UK heatwave last summer while our socks were freezing up.

Take care and stay tuned,

Malc & Annie

Now the dust has settled from Chrimbo and New Year, it's time for an update. Quite a lot has happened, so here are the highlights.

We went away for a weekend with Carol and did a dolphin swim with the Dusky Dolphins in Kaikoura. Although the sea was a bit lumpy, it was really awesome. You have to make noises down your snorkel otherwise they don't pay you much attention, which was pretty comical in itself. I think we didn't give a very good representation of the human race, the dolphins are probably arguing right now about whether we are an intelligent species or not. It's really amazing when you get eye contact with one though, and they sometimes swim around you in a circle to see if you can keep up (you can't!).

Christmas saw the 'Invasion of the Martins'. Darrens brothers Rob, Dan and sister Suzie, plus partners Nat, Veronica and Richard came to stay in Christchurch for Christmas and New Year. Dan and Veronica stayed with us in the sleepout, with the rest staying with Darren and Nicole. So what seemed likely to be our first lonely Christmas was actually pretty busy, with 11 of us in total kicking around. Lots of eating out, surfing days for the lads, and a BBQ on Christmas day at Darrens. Annie and Nicole kept their pact to go in the sea on Christmas morning, and Darren and Carol joined them. Malc stayed back as official photographer, the water temperature is still 'bracing' to put it politely. Once up to waist depth, most people would express it a little less politely.

Which brings us on to the weather. Our dreams of our first Kiwi summer basking on the beach proved a little optimistic. What we got was the worst December in NZ for 70 years, and most definately the worst weather since we have been here. Thankfully, things seem to be picking up now, apparently February will be nice!

Other big news is Annie quitting her job. It's a long story, but basically things had been getting pretty stressfull and 2 days before Christmas she was asked to work over the whole of the holiday, so she 'stuck it to the man' and left. Will update with details of the new job when it turns up!

Also we have booked a trip back to the UK on May 2nd, hopefully for 3 weeks, as we had return tickets to get out here. We'll be visiting Suffolk, Old Brighton and Cornwall during our stay, so hope to catch up with all you loyal blog readers then! Until then, thanks for reading and hang loose. M & A xxx.