Bouncing is serious business

... so no smiling allowed.

Gumboots

It's sad when the summer starts to gradually tail off, but it does present an excellent opportunity to try out your new welly boots.

Visitors from another world

Forgive me father, it has been 7 months since ... yada yada.

With the exception of all the mini milestones that Olive has been passing, it's been mostly uneventful for the 4 of the past 7 months, with a bit of a flurry of activity in the last 1.

First up was the arrival of Olives Grandad and Grannyma at the end of October. It was lovely to see them both after such a long time, and the first meeting with Olive was pretty awesome. She already knew who they were thanks to frequent webcam chats. We spent 3 weeks with them, generally relaxing and seeing the sights, including a short trip away to Lake Tekapo and Mount Cook.

Shortly after the grandparents arrival was Olives first birthday. It's pretty incredible how the year has flown by, and it was really great to look back at the fun (and sometimes stressful) times we've had so far. We celebrated with a picnic at the beach, the weather held off, the family and a few friends turned up, all in all it was a lovely day. The birthday girl got lots of lovely pressies, which as you can see went down very well!

After the relative drought of visitors over the past 6 months, we were graced with the company of the ever lovely Fred and Hels who stopped with us for a couple of days on arrival, and a couple of days before departing. We saw the New Year in sitting on the deck watching hedgehogs and drinking bubbly.

As most of you only tune in for news of the wee one, we'll give a bit more of an update. She's now very solid on her feet, as she's been walking since 10 months, something she inherited from Mum. She has a full repertoire of animal noises under her belt, and can now say Mama and Dada. A trip to the beach almost every day is turning her into a bit of a water babe, expect her to be surfing by next summer!

Will try and keep the updates coming a bit more often, as requested by Auntie Ivy! Take care all.

Groove IS in the heart

Wildlife Week

It's been a week for strange wildlife here in Christchurch.

First, one morning this week I had to double take when I saw a Royal Spoonbill. Now, seeing one of these in Christchurch is not unheard of, usually on the estuary tidal flats. But this fella was standing on someones back patio, being fed by an old dear in a dressing gown.

The next morning, he was there again, waiting patiently outside the same house for the occupiers to get up. I managed to get this dodgy snap in the early morning light.

A little further down the river, a New Zealand fur seal has taken up residence, causing the local paper to go into cheesy pun overdrive.

And finally, recently spotted in the wild, Malc's workmate and coffee cartel wingman Luci has earned herself the accolade of Christchurch's biggest geek. Sadly for her, the prospect of being the first person in the world to own the new iPhone looks unlikely due to those damn Jafas insisting on their store opening 5 minutes earlier. Awww .. shame.

Lights .. camera ..

Over the weekend of May 16th - 18th, most of the staff at Malcs work got together to participate in the 48 Hours film festival.

On the Friday night, each team is given a random genre for their film. Along with this, every team gets the same featured character with character trait, line of dialog and prop that they must shoehorn in. You then have 48 hours to make a film of no more than 7 minutes length. We were given Animal movie as our genre, and this year the required character was Kerry Post, perfectionist, the prop was a brush and the line of dialog was 'wait a minute'.

The next 2 days were pretty hectic, with some of the team up until late at night writing and editing. Malc was already penciled in as sound man, but for some reason was called in to play the part of Homeless Man at the last minute when the leading man fell ill. After all the hard work by everyone, the final cut was delivered to the finish line with 10 minutes to spare.

A couple of weeks later we got to see the film on the big screen at a local cinema, which was really good fun. We also got to see some of our fellow competitors films, with wildly varying quality. Sadly, we did not make it on to the Christchurch finals, but the whole experience was really good fun. The quality of some of the films is astounding, just check out last years national winner.

So now we are out of the running, we are allowed to publish our film. Here it is for your viewing pleasure, I think you'll agree that Homeless Man pretty much steals the show. The sound is, at best, awful. Which is what you can expect when you get a homeless man to do it.

The future is here ... the future is ...

Ear warmers
Originally uploaded by malclocke

Woolen bike helmet ear warmers. Lovingly hand crafted by Nana Industries. Reversible to match the seasons fasion. Air temperature 2 deg C, ear temperature tropical!

6 months plus and Bicycle Business

Well, we have reached and exceeded our first major landmark, Olive's first semiverssary. The peace and tranquility of our hitherto idyllic lifestyle was shattered a week before 'happy six month day' with the onset of independent baby locomotion.



With her new found freedom, Olive is finally able to make a beeline for all the things that *she* wants. These of course are not the brightly coloured, non-toxic toys provided by her parents, but things like electrical cables, cups of tea (and any other spillable liquid), razorblades, chainsaws, etc. It's all downhill from here ...

As all the pommies begin to bask in the May sunshine, we are starting to hunker down for winter. However, the first showings of snow have begun to appear on the mountains, and our thoughts turn to sliding again. Malc and Annie have both acquired new snowboards in the pre-season sale and are looking forward to a season of extreme-tag-team babysitting / snowboarding.

For coming up to 2 years now, Malc has been commuting by bike to work and trying to find a way to share some of the excitement with you, loyal blogees. In the end, he came up with this.



The movie is at roughly 10 times normal speed, depicting the 9 kilometer ride from home by the sea to the city centre, which normally takes around 35 minutes. Filming was extremely low tech, with a small bendy leg tripod sellotaped to the handlebars. Also, because the camera doesn't have a time lapse function and a small memory card the ride had to be recorded over 4 mornings, then sliced and diced afterwards. Hopefully the end result gives you a feel of what cycle-commuting in Christchurch is like.

As most of you know, we've been avid cyclists for a long time. Having lived in Holland for a short while, the situation for cyclists here in Christchurch is a little frustrating. We have a city ripe for a cycling explosion. Apart from some of the southern suburbs, the city is flat as a pancake, the streets are wide and the climate is mostly favorable. But the car is still king, and dedicated, segregated cycle lanes are basically non-existent. We are left to fight with the traffic. Recreational biking, both road and mountain biking, are massive here, and 25% of school children bike to school (watch closely and you'll see them in the video).

Yet only 2% of adults commute to work. Those that do are generally of the Lycra clad, shaven legged, carbon fibre underpants variety. For most people, the reason that cycling is not considered as a transport option is simple ... it doesn't feel safe. Biking through the city most days, it's hard to disagree. The hope is that the city planners have the foresight to create a segregated cycling infrastructure. To quote the excellent copenhagenize blog's comments about recent improvements in Paris:


... there are many places that have segregated and dedicated bike lanes. This is, of course, the key to developing bike culture. If there was a book called Bike Culture for Dummies, this would be on the first page.


Here's hoping that the powers that be can fulfill their vision to make Christchurch a cycle friendly city for all of us to enjoy.

Happy 5 month day

img_0201.jpg
Originally uploaded by malclocke

A quick wee status report on our dear daughter. She is still doing great, and seems to be a dab hand at attracting attention whilst out and about, exhibiting a wealth of cute smiles reserved solely for complete strangers.

Her alertness has been noted by the Plunket nurse, and she also seems to have a thirst for literature, seemingly wanting to digest book after book. Unfortunately, she wants to digest books in the literal sense, and the thirst for knowledge manifests itself as a puddle of drool all over the cover of 'All aboard with Maisy'.

Major breakthroughs of late noted by her oh-so-easily-impressed parents include blowing raspberries, rolling over, grabbing absolutely everything within reach and a frantic, breakdance like cacophony of limb motion that would be called crawling were it not for the complete lack of any forward progress.

A quick thank you needs to be added to Chris, Jo and Dylan for coming to visit us and showing great patience creeping around the house while Olive was asleep. Of course, we could never provide hospitality comparable to that on offer in West Bergholt, where even Fererro Rocher seem mundane, but hope you enjoyed your stay!

Keep an eye on flickr for more pics. Adios for now.

Bam ... and the dirt is gone!

I'm sure many of you in the UK have questions about living in NZ, what are the cultural differences, the good points, the bad points. But probably top of the list is 'can you get Cillit Bang?'

Well loyal readers, I'm afraid the answer is no! But into the fold comes a new contender, the only slightly less inconceivably named 'Easy Off Bam'. There are many similarities between the two, the garish packaging, exceptional ability at cleaning coins, etc. But the real difference lies, not in the product, but in it's champion. For where Cillit Bang has Barry Scott, on the other side of the world we are blessed with his evil twin, Martin Grelis. Sadly, the internet seems completely devoid of pictures of Martin fulfilling his role as Bambassador, so those of you on the top part of the world map will have to use your imagination.

The obvious question that arises from all this is who's better? The answer is, of course, Martin for two reasons:

1. Martin could beat Barry in a fight


2. Martin is a real actor, he was even in The Matrix. Barry is just made up, although he does have an interesting life story
   

Kids and Kites

Forgive me father, it has been 3 months since my last confusion. Thought we'd better write a little blog entry to celebrate Olives '3-month-day'. This episode is a video special, enjoy!

First up is a little clip so you can hopefully see Olives progress. She seems to change every day, and is really getting very interactive with giggles and smiles. The past few days she seems to have worked out that her arms and hands are actually under her own control, and are not just occasionally seen low flying objects passing by. Mum and Olive are both doing well, although they both seem to have a little trouble sleeping at times. Dad has no such trouble. It's also exciting as she is starting to fit into most of the lovely clothes that you folks all sent over for us, huge thank yous all round! Here are a few recent photos for your perusal.

In addition to Olive, the family in NZ has increased in size a lot since our last blog, with the arrival of Katherine, Roy, Ash, India, Sarah, Matt, Joe and Ben. Nana has moved into a lovely little pad just up the road, complete with hot tub. The Jacobs have moved to their country manor in Tuahiwi just outside the city, complete with a compact little 2 acre garden, and the Simmersons will move into 'North Beach Palace' any day now. It has been great having the family around, and the kids seem to be loving the beach lifestyle, taking to the water like ducks to ... well, you know. We also hosted our first ever family christmas day, now we finally have (nearly) enough room to do so.

Today we went down to the beach for the 'Tip Top Kite Day', which me missed last year, and it was a fantastic day. We took two kites, one flashy stunt kite and a homemade masterpiece constructed from some old tent fabric, bamboo and sellotape. The stunt kite proved a little difficult to fly due to the 5000 other kite strings dangling around. However, against all the odds the homemade jobby actually flew, and proved stable enough to be tied to Olives push chair and left to its own devices ... that is until Nana rescued it when it 'started flying funny' by crashing it head first into the ground. All the rellies turned up with kites of different shapes and sizes, and there were some true monsters on show, including a 50ft long octopus. Check out some more pictures.

Well, thats all for now folks. Will try and keep more up to date over the coming months as Olive progresses towards doing things a bit more impressive than basic bodily functions. Thank you all once again for your lovely cards and presents. Arohanui, Malc, Annie and Olive.

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!