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.

It's been a busy few weeks, with quite a lot going on compared to recent months. Biggest news is the arrival of 'Nana' aka Carol, Annies mum. Our new lodger has been mostly well behaved, and it seems that since she arrived the washing up and laundry fairies have started visiting during the day, which is great news! Nana's first impressions of NZ seem really good, even though the weather has taken a bit of a turn since her arrival, changeable being the word. Now, if only she'd tidy her room ...

We took a week off work and went on a 'tiki-tour' of the south of the South Island. The first two days were a bit of a washout, we had to look at the postcards at Lake Tekapo and imagine what the view of the lake and mountains would be like without a solid blanket of cloud 50 ft above our heads. From there things picked up, and by the time we reached Queenstown the weather was fantastic. We took a ride up the cable car, and Nana even ventured on to the chair lift and luge cart track at the top. Go Nana!! We then took the outrageously beautiful road up to Milford Sound, and a boat trip out onto the sound. We also lucked out with bottlenose dolphins coming up to check the boat out, a first for Annie and Malc. After Milford we travelled down to the wonderfully wild Catlins coast, where we saw lots of sea lions, seals and yellow-eyed penguins. We spent our last night on the Otago peninsula before chugging back up the coast to our humble abode.

Last weekend was Malc's work christmas do. This was a surprise trip on the 'Fox II', an old wooden sailing ketch. We chugged out of Lyttleton harbour, on the other side of the Port Hills from Christchurch, and then sailed over to Diamond harbour. The worlds campest captain then dropped anchor and fired up the BBQ. After that we did a bit more sailing around the harbour, where we were lucky enough to have some Hectors Dolphins come and check out the boat. These are the worlds smallest dolphin, only just over a metre long, and one of the rarest being endemic to the NZ coast. It was a real bonus to see them, we have been hoping to see some for ages. All in all it was a great evening, with much heaving-to, reefing of the mizzen and similar nautical shannanigans.

This weekend we're off to Hanmer and Kaikoura, will send news in the next update. Take care all, M, A & C.