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.