The Wedding Present, Leeds, 16th December

I first heard The Wedding Present when I was living in a shared house just after dropping out of University nearly twenty years ago now. Dear God how time flies.
Aggressive, almost thrash guitars, driving through angry songs about men whose relationships had just broken up, or were just about to. One album in particular spoke to me for some reason. Were these songs written buy a stalker, or wittily observed stories about the kinds of men who stalk?

No, I sent you that letter
To ask you if the end was worth the means
Was there really no in between?
And I still don't feel better
I just wondered if it could be like before
And I think you just made me sure!

After a while they split up and the songwriter formed a new band, Cinerama. Instead of the angry guitars, now there where lush sweeping strings, and songs about men whose relationships had broken up stalking their former lovers and obsessively stalking girls they barely know

But of course none of this has happened at all, yet
We've not even spoken, but i'll bet
Once you're through my door
You'll want to stay for ever more
Because i will hold you so tight, i'll make you see how
You are the right woman for me now
Just give me a glance
To show me that i've got a chance

A few albums later and Cinerama morphed back into the The Wedding Present. The music is less angry than before, but the same themes are there. Pain, confusion, betrayal, lust.

I thought I saw a flying saucer last night but of course it was just an aeroplane
I thought I saw Winona Ryder but my eyes were playing tricks again
Some things look wonderful but then they’re different when you look again

And that’s what’s so funny, honey
You’ve looked like my girl for so long that I thought you would always be beside me
But I’d be the first to admit I was wrong

I'm still not entirely sure I understand the songs. There's a profound misogyny to them when taken on face value. Yet there's a subtlety to the lyrics that move them beyond the ranting. They are perhaps satire, and like all satire it has to sound believable. Or it's just skilfully crafted misogyny. Can't rule that out.
Tonight they are playing Leeds.

All the above written safely before the gig. Leeds Student Union. Tiny compared to all the big stadium things I've been to over the last few years. Maybe 500-800 people. Under ten metres from the stage. An hour later my ears are returning to normal.
Marvelous. Rockier and thrashier than their recent albums. Very quick. They're on just after nine and finish at about ten twenty five. Twenty odd songs in that time. No hanging about for drum solos.
Apparently they're playing Bristol tomorrow... You know if I got off work at four I could probably make it...

Ticket to Ride Dice

Ticket to Ride is probably my favourite recent Spiel des Jahres winner. Some years the prize seems to have been going to rather dubious games: I quite like Zooloretto, though it is just a reworking of an earlier game. The same is also true of this year's winner, Keltis, which I've not yet played, and seems to have got somewhat mixed reviews.
Ticket to Ride, winner in 2004, is probably the last really great game to have scooped the prize. It's by Alan Moon, and therefore involves a lot of wanting to do three things at the same time - collecting cards that let you build things, spending the building cards and collecting ticket cards that earn points by connecting cities. Since other people are trying to get cards in the same suits as you, and connect cities using railway lines you had you eye on, you're generally torn between piling up building cards and rushing to get routes built, with the destination tickets a bit of an afterthought, even if it is an afterthought that winds up winning the game for you.
Since publication there have been a slew of variants and spin offs. The original American map was followed by Europe, Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia, most of which offer different little twiddles. Europe is probably the most balanced. There's a pure card game, but it's the kind of memory game I'm no good at. Now we get a dice game.
The dice game's actually not a game of itself, it's an alternative to building railway connection through collecting and spending cards. There are five dice, showing track, stations or locomotives. You throw the lot and re-roll as many as take your fancy. The two different types of track let you build on single or double lines of track, the stations let you collect additional tickets. Un-used pairs of dice let you collect tokens that give you an additional build your next go. There are three penalty dice that come in while building tunnels in Europe, Switzerland or Scandinavia.
So how does it compare?
The big difference between the cards and the dice is that the game goes much quicker. In traditional cards based TtR the game goes in fits and spurts. There's a degree of brinkmanship going on as everyone starts collecting huge hands of cards, eventually though someone starts building and there's a phase of everyone laying track as fast as they can, or at least until their hands of cards run out, at which point people go back to collecting cards, perhaps collecting new tickets and the whole thing starts again.
With the dice there's none of that. Every turn you throw the dice, throw some of them again, and then you either build or collect tickets. in the game we played last week, Europe with three players, we only a couple of times went for tickets, everything else was throw and build, throw and build. There was never any reason not to get on and build. In the card based game there comes a point half way through, when the initial objectives are secure and the cards available to be drawn look unhelpful, that you want to get some more tickets, if nothing else to give you an objective to build towards. With the dice you don't get that breathing space, even with two players who're famously fond of collecting lots of tickets we just didn't find ourselves with the time to do it.
It's a different game, but it seemed to work. I'd certainly try it again.

The Doomwood Curse

Back in the olden days, when Doctor Who was off the air, and Russell T Davies made TV shows that seemed to set out to annoy the people that weren't watching them, it carried on, as books and later as audio recordings. The books seemed to work very hard at becoming incomprehensible as fast as they possibly could, but some of the recordings were rather good. Made by Big Finish, they feature 'real' TV Doctors, often with 'real' TV companions supporting them.
At their best the Big Finish audio stories can be very good indeed. The one in which the Tardis arrives on the doomed world of Mondas just as desperate measures become essential remains the greatest Cyberman story yet told in any medium. At their worst the writers start to become obsessed with companions having only a single story hook, which has to be brought out every time. There was one girl slotted into the space between two Peter Davison stories who could be relied on to have a fight with the Doctor every adventure, and wonder if she should leave the Tardis and settle down where ever they happened to be this time. And in the end she did of course.
The revelations though have been that Colin Baker would have made a pretty damn good Doctor given decent scripts, and even more surprisingly, that Bonnie Langford could have made a good companion. Really.
As well as better special effects, the audio adventures do allow a modicum of time travel adventures rather more easily than can TV. For some years India Fisher played Charlie Pollard been a companion to Paul McGann. Eventually the relationship became a bit tired and McGann went off to do a different style of story, leaving Charlie to a happy ending. Except a few stories later Charlie pops up as a companion to Colin Baker, knowing rather more about the Tardis and the Doctor than he really expects, not letting on half of what she knows for fear that it might alter the Doctor's history and prevent her Doctor from ever coming to be. It makes a different and really rather jolly dynamic.

This story's pretty much a romp. There's a bit of pretext for a highwayman melodrama, but it doesn't really matter. Bodices are ripped, horses are chased, lost siblings are discovered through matching birthmarks. All very silly and a welcome sign that Big Finish aren't taking themselves too seriously.

Congratulations Gary & Sue

Another wedding. That's two this year. They seemed to dry up for a few years, but now they're happening again. This time two members of the Dive Club coming round for a second time. Just to make this one a bit different Gary, who maintains that he is more Scottish than it sounds, asks that guests should come in highland dress, so it's down to the hire shop for kilt and everything.

And it really does come with everything, though it seems that I managed to drop the bow tie out of the top of the suit carrier while trying to bring it back to the office. Which I only realised with 30 minutes to go before the taxi turned up and no time to whiz into town to buy one.

The ceremony is out of town at a golf course, and it a good one. Not noticeably religious, but you don't expect that in a golf course, indeed it might be rule. After that a good meal and then Scottish dancing. Dancing is not something that comes naturally to me, but there is something splendid about a good ceilidh is that no-one has a clue what they should be doing, and there's normally someone in the next group heading left when it should be right more often than you do. Much more fun than a disco, when everybody else seems to know what they're doing and you don't.



Who should be there with the band, but my old friend John Batchelor. John used to work for us, where he developed whole heaps of the dominant work management system, before being forced into redundancy at about the same time I was. It made some kind of sense for me, though I didn't know it at the time - I was an OK Cobol programmer in a company that didn't want the bother of doing it's own programming any more. John was a guru. He understood how the whole thing fitted together, which given that we relied utterly on the few people who understood everything to inform the plebs, should have meant the bosses fighting to keep him.

But no. John's here with the band, trying to steer the people to the right when they need steering and stepping in to complete a set when someone disappears to the bar instead of coming back in a circle. Great guy. Doing a useful job supporting the band there, but should be doing so much more.

I'm going to bed...

...please God don't let me wake up to a surprise.

It's almost 3 in the morning. It looks like Obama has managed to pull it off. There was this horrible idea that people wouldn't vote for a black man, despite telling pollsters that they would. But unless McCain manages something unprecedented, like taking California, there's no possible way he can win.

Got round to it at last

Pictures now uploaded. More of them can be found on http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickpheas

24th-25th October: Auckland to York

And away.
Up in the morning playing sliding block puzzles with bags. Books, why did I bring so many, I've only read two in dead tree form, into the hand luggage, diving gear back into the side pocket, half a tonne (OK, 1.5kg) of chocolate into the end pocket, noodles to the bin. Drive about a bit after leaving the motel then to the car's drop off point, which is opposite the cheaper motel I kipped in. A bit earlier that actually needed, but what do you do with 90 minutes in an airport serving suburb?
Stooge about the outer zone of Auckland International for a bit, the into the heart, intending to get a meal in there, only to discover that AI is ill equipped with pubs & restaurants. Guess it's something of primary benefit to transit passengers, and they probably don't get that many. Typically, just after I've bought some nick-naks and a Steak & Cheese pie and Flat White from the coffee shop, I spot a book I'd actually want to buy, that would have previously used up the last of my cash rather nicely. Still, I'll be able to get it from Amazon, though if the pound continues to hemorrhage I'll wait for the 'New & Used' copies to turn up.
The plane to Singapore is a rather more nicely fitted out 777 than on the last leg. More comfy seats and better entertainment facilities. I'd have even been able to write (if not upload) this blog if I'd thought about it better.
Shrek 3 (as you'd expect, though I've no idea who the very butch Princess was), In Bruges (OK, though I didn't like it as much as Croz did), Speed Racer (very strange, a live action film based on a Whacky Race style cartoon we never saw in the UK, that looks exactly like a cartoon. I think probably very clever, and had I any idea what the references were I'd appreciate it better. Or a complete load of rubbish).
The second, longer leg, from Singapore back to Manchester, comes at last after four hours hanging about Changi like one of the living dead. It's subjective five in the morning before we're away and thankfully the plane is half empty. The couple in my row decamp to the empty seats immediately behind, leaving me with a row all to myself. I even get to lie down and sleep properly for some of the way, before arriving at dawn on a dry but cloudy Manchester morning to discover that the line across the Pennines is closed so there's faffing with buses needed. The plump bloke co-ordinating things at Picadilly seems to have two buses and no passengers wanting to go to Hatfield, and dozens of people, myself included, wanting Huddersfield. Eventually an appropriate coach arrives, complete with a driver who's never been there before and has to call for advice from the passengers.

23rd October: Waitomo to Auckland

Back to the caving place. While the quick trip was pretty much all tubing, this one starts with a huge great abseil and ends climbing up water falls, with a kilometre or so underwater.
When I was about 11 there was an abseiling do on a scout trip. Just walk off the edge of the cliff says the scout master, it'll be fine, but I can't bring myself to do it. That step into the unknown. Brrrr.
Fortunately this place actually knows how to teach. Ropes on a slope for several trips, each time adding a bit more, then, OMG, there I am lowering myself into a deep dark hole, and it feels easy. Natural.
After that, crawls and squeezes, leaping of a cliff, zip lines, waterfalls, glow worms and the works. Kind of cold, despite two layers of wet suit, but splendid. One girl, a nurse from Lincoln I think, becomes extremely upset because there's an eel in a pool we need to travel through. Quite what she thinks it will do to her is a mystery.
I still think cave diving's for nutters.
After that a quick walk through the woods, and drive on up to Auckland. Stop off in a motel, one down from the deserted place from the first night. Pretty decrepit mind you, but it does all it needs to.

22nd October: Rotarua to Waitomo

Oh boy did I need that. Not getting there, that was nasty, but the Blackwater Rafting thing has truly cleared my mind.
The flyer showed a route from Rotarua to Waitomo that seemed on my big map to be rather more direct than taking the main roads even if it was through back country. And very pretty, Shire like, back country, with several bits you'd have thought Peter Jackson would have wanted to work in somehow or other. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with C roads, the signposting was awful, there were unexpected detours, and places you were heading for disappeared from signposts, only to pop up pointing back the way you came 5km on. Would have been much easier to just take the main roads.
Still, in the end, Waitomo, wet suits, helmets, torches and riding down waterfalls on a rubber ring. Never done anything like it before, but it's blown the cobwebs out. Such fun that I've booked on to do a more extreme version tomorrow.
Bit of a disaster later - a pot of butter has melted in my food bag and I managed to get to good sized dollops onto the back seat of my car! Scrounge upholstery cleaner from backpackers, hopefully that'll get rid of the worst of the grease.
Goof off evening in backpackers, reading, watching rotten TV and chatting to and Olympic hockey players.

21st October: Palmerston North to Rotarua

The drive towards Poor Knights would have book possible, but insane. 700km. So here I am in Rotarua, wondering if this is somewhere I really want to be.
The problem is that the stuff I know about here I've done. There was a nice tour with three thermal sites, and in the evening a Mauri hangi (meal) cum 'cultural experience', which is pretty much a haka in a pre colonial mock up. Nothing wrong with it, but been there, done that.
Coming up from PN in the morning looked a bit grizzly, and the central volcanoes where shrouded in clouds, but it cleared and by Taupo it was all bright and sunny.
I stopped at a thermal site - which is to say somewhere exhibiting a range of low level volcanic activity and foul smells. Turned out to have been part of the 2000 tour. No real changes, no great excitement.
Staying in a rather small room in a perfectly nice and cheap backpackers. But I need to take control. I've got two full days before getting on that plane. I need to do something, instead of just letting it happen to me.

Later.
OK, something like a plan... Tomorrow I'm going back to Waitomo. Something mad involving caves. I need something mad. After that? Coromandel sounds nice, it's only a stone's throw from Auckland, so not a bad place to wind up on Thursday night if I don't head to the bright lights of Auckland.

20th October: Nelson to Picton, no strike that, Palmerston North

That's a bummer.
So the plan went like this. Nelson to Picton, about 155km, easy morning's drive. Already booked into Picton YHA for the night, one less thing to worry about. Go along and introduce myself at the dive centre. Get all that cards, and 'what does Dive Leader mean' and actually I've not got a paper logbook, but email Gary if you need to confirm things. Then probably a quick hike along Queen Charlotte Sound, and tomorrow the Mikhael Lermentov, probably the most accessible ocean liner wreck in the world. T at done, dash for the ferry (about 5km from the dive centre) ans across to spend the night in Wellington before starting to drive up Wednesday and Thursday. All planned, all perfect.
Brent, the guy that takes people diving has had a heart attack.
I am probably not as sympathetic as I should be.
Tania, Brent's wife hasn't known which email to look for to contact me, and while I think I gave Brent my phone number she couldn't find it. She suggests the Poor Knights as an alternative dive destination. Seems a hell of a way to go - North of Auckland. Could it be done?
Let's see... Well the first stage is get across the Straight as soon as possible. The ferry people are helpful I can change the ticket to travel in... about 50 minutes time. No time to find the YHA and cancel the night's booking, so I phone Duncan in PN and ask him to, ps can I crash on your sofa tonight. There should be a cancellation fee, but no big deal.
So let's think. The boat will get into Wellington about 5. Will need to whiz by the YHA and cancel that. Then PN, should be there 7.30 to 8.
I'm flying 1350 on Friday. So any diving would have to be done Wednesday. Could I do PN to Northland on Tuesday alone? Or should I just forget it and go do the whole volcano thing in Rotarua?

19th October: Abel Tasman National Park

Morning in Nelson, and I really should have decided what I wanted to do before going to bed the previous night.
It's a bright sunny morning, so I'll head to the Abel Tasman National Park. Last time Duncan and I walked through the middle section of the park's coastal route, I don't really want to just repeat myself, so I book a boat to take me from their car park just south of the park to roughly where we got picked up from before. That should be about 4 hours walking. Rather foolishly I leave my jacket back at the hostel. It does look such a nice day.
Of course by the time I get up to the boat start the skies have darkened, a light drizzle has begun and the wind is making it all rather cold. No time to go back. I buy an emergency poncho and lash it onto the hydration pack. I don't know if the wind's going to keep on, if the trees along the path will serve as a wind break. If there's serious rain then it'll obviously be useful, and if the wind keeps up then it'll be a barrier. But I fix my eyes on the prevalent sky and try to convince myself that the conditions are improving, and even if they don't I'll warm up a soon a I'm walking.
This becomes increasingly difficult as others arrive for the boat, properly kitted out with all weather jackets and bulging packs doubtless containing every conceivable emergency supply. Harder still as the boat is backed into the sea and we whiz off. The boat appears to be an all steel rib, very safety conscious (life vests all round) and speeds along at suck a lick that it feels even more windy and colder than at base.
Off the boat, through the surf, and then up into the hills for the walk. About 12km, not too demanding. much more life out there than the previous time, I keep seeing quail nip out onto the path in front of me, there are two kinds of shag, kingfishers, and strangely English looking thrushes, plus all kinds of alien birdsong from the woods.
Unusually it turns out that my Pollyanna approach to weather forecasting may actually have been right. The rain holds off the winds lessen and even by the end of the walk the sun comes out for a bit. Not too much through - overcast, but not actually raining is pretty much what you want for walking and this is it. A good trip. More like four and a half hours, but I did stop for a breather and went the wrong way at one point
Back to Nelson, and after a brief rest, time to look for something to eat. If Saturday night Nelson is dead, as you'd expect, Sunday is quieter. I figure on eating in the first remotely decent looking restaurant I find, which turns out to be a nice little Indian. Good prawn and mushroom curry, though the place has never heard of vegetable side dishes. The waitress is very surprised by my ordering a salt lassi, despite it being on the drinks menu, I'm the first to ever order one.

18th October: Franz Josef to Nelson

Awake in the morning a good half hour before the alarm, and marvel at my acing legs. Then the alarm, but read through it before the painful task of packing everything up, for today is the first of the big drives.
Actually the ache eases off once I start moving, and I'm a bit surprised by another alarm going off at 7.45 here to remind myself that it's my birthday. I'd almost forgotten, out here in the wilds, so many miles from anyone that might have remembered, it barely seems worth noticing. I shall consider desert for supper.
The plan is to drive from FJ to Nelson, a nice little town I stayed in back in 99/2000 (and got up very early in the hope of seeing the first dawn of the new millennium, only pedants say that was in 2001, but it was overcast and drizzling almost all day).
Before that though I take a little trip up in the direction of the glacier, to a walk to the oddly named 'Lake Wombat'. Pleasant little stroll, though two trees have fallen across the path, one can be avoided, the other climbed over. Lake Wombat itself is a bit disappointing the walk ends at a chair from which you can see water through the overhanging branches, but not much of it. There seem to be a pair of ducks. No obvious reason to think of Wombats, and not mentioned in the guide book. It has been drizzling, but my T-shirt is quite unreasonably soaked. If I'm going to carry on with this tramping malarkey I shall have to get a decent wicking shirt or two.
Then back to Franz Josef, and North. It's a long way to Nelson, almost 500km, and here I pass both the 1000 mile mark and later the 2000km barrier. At guess this trip will run to about 3000km.
Splash and dash from the most expensive petrol station yet found before discovering that all the signed petrol stations have cur their prices by 8 cents a litre, which is nice. Picnic lunch north of Hokitika, by a strange little belt drive steam engine, powernap somewhere near Murchison, and finally into Nelson after about 7 hours behind the wheel.
The ghastly place in Christchurch has rather put me off random backpackers (which is silly, the Kaikoura place was really nice) so I'm back in Nelson YHA. Actually quite possibly the same room as all those years ago.
Rather to my surprise Nelson turns out to be a ghost town on a Saturday night in mid October. Whole streets full of cafes not bothering to open in the evening and a few lost souls wandering about looking for salvation, or at least dinner. I wind up in a sports bar showing simultaneous games of Rugby and Netball. The English (or perhaps British) netball team is playing an tour of New Zealand, and naturally is being thrashed by athletic young women in black. Who knew that there even was an English (or perhaps British) netball team? I always thought of it as one of those sports only ever played in schools.
I pass on desert.

17th October: Franz Josef

Franz Josef. A glacier with a town attached. The town is given over entirely to servicing the glacier traffic. There are two streets, half a dozen restaurants, whole piles of motels and backpackers and hotels. A single rather small supermarket. At least three companies offering helicopter or plane trips over or onto the ice. The only indoor ice climbing wall in the southern hemisphere. A cinema running loop films about the life cycle of glaciers. Just the one (according to Heather in the YHA anyhow) company leading bunches of clueless numpties up onto the ice from below.
They do a half day, and a full day tour, but from the look of it the half day will let you walk from the car park to the terminal moraine, up over the rubble onto the ice and then turn round for the decent. So I've booked the full day one.
We get a buss to about 3km from the glacier and amp up the rest of the way. Split into three groups, the easy, the moderate and the demanding parties. I've been chatting to a French guy on the way up and we wind up being the oldest and fattest pair in the demanding party. While fatter and older it does seem that we're the best prepared: the only hire kit we've got are crampons and hats, everyone else is wearing tour company jackets, trousers, boots.
It turns out that the one think clothing wise they insist on is 'no jeans', which given that I've three pairs of jeans and a Marks & Spencer suit, means that I'm wearing halfway decent suit trousers under plastic overtrousers.
The Franz Josef Glacier is one of the few that's currently advancing, so there's lots of moraine to cross before reaching ice proper, which is a bit of a struggle wearing crampons. They come into their own once we do bit ice though.
And there's a lot of ice. 11km I'm told. A couple wide. Much of it rather grubby, the pressure of ice causes the surrounding slate mountains to shatter, showering fragments over the outlying ice which is conveyed to the centre. Much of it quite shocking blue. Much of it melting, sending riverlets trickling down the slope - the guides from time to time cut new channels for the meltwater to keep it away from the steps they're cutting.
The route goes through crevasses, up and down ice walls, across plains and through tunnels - this bit will look much better when I've managed to get the pictures off the camera.
In a narrow cutting I find myself almost embarrassingly stuck but wriggle free and I'm able to regain some sense of worth by getting my French friend out of the same state.
A crampon sheers as I go into another crevasse, which proves how much benefit we're getting from them, fortunately Cliff, the lead guide, has met this one before and has a spare, though it needs to be held together by elastoplast.
Up at the top of our trip (the glacier goes on for miles yet) we are visited by kea, an actual vampire parrot! It struts about us for five minutes, happily standing only a few metres away, before eventually launching itself down the mountains and into the trees.
The tour is long. About six hours on the glacier itself, plus the time to get there. By the end I'm shattered. The YHA has a sauna so I retreat into there and soak up the scorching heat before cold and hot showers restore an element of humanity once more.

16th October: Christchurch to Franz Josef

Up in the morning and out of the shabby backpackers before nine. I start walking into town, to have a look at the non-restaurant bits of Christchurch, but change my mind a block later. There's an art gallery, but I'm not in the mood, there's the giant purple sperm in Cathedral Square, the sign for which suggested that it did something from 10 til 4, but I can't be bothered to hang about for over an hour. Probably there's an explanation on the web somewhere, but I've yet to look it up. Except now I have.
So turn round, back to the car and West. The plan is to strike out for Arthur's Pass, one of the few routes through the Southern Alps, go tramping, get a bed for the night and then press on the next day for the coast.
Impressively windy (in both senses) roads lead up to the mountains, but by the time I'm up there it's pouring down. The i-site guy says it'll probably stay this way for two days, and that even the easy tracks are flooded. Doesn't seem worth hanging about, so press on.
A lookout point a few miles after the Arthur's Pass settlement has a firm instruction 'do nor feed the kea', but sadly there are no vampire parrots to be seen.
The weather clears a bit as I beetle through Hokitika and on to Franz Josef YHA.
supper in what Lonely Planet describes as an English Style Pub, which suggests their writer's never been in a pub (though I only read the entry later) and there for revelation. Let's be honest here - Kiwis make very good wine, especially white, which tends to be all I drink. Their beers on the other hand are generally a bit meh. Generally all on one level. Nice taste with the first mouthful, but no depth. Montieth Radler on the other hand is amazing. Light, zesty, exciting. This is by a country mile the best beer I have drunk out here.
Tomorrow the Glacier.

15th: Mount Sunday (Edoras)

So the trip. Outside shabby backpackers at 9 in the morning for geek heaven. A trip to Edoras. Sadly not the Edoras from the films, the sets got taken down about 15 minutes after filming finished, but the impressive enough rock on which it was built.
At 9 on the dot a monstrous truck rolls up, driven by a chap called Hammond, who was a sound recordist on Peter Jackson's last half dozen films, who does this on the side while there's no filming. Four others get on, a Pole (working in Rochdale) called Marsten, a Korean, improbably called Denis, and two girls from Bromsgrove (it sounds better than Birmingham, they say with a practiced giggle) called Simone & Victoria. The truck would probably have taken twenty, but it's just the five pulling away.
Its about 170km to go, during which time we stop for coffee, a part of the 4wd assembly manages to break the emergency radio, and Hammond keeps up a steady commentary on what we're being driven through and what it was like making the films, peppered with DVD extras.
The country around Edoras is stunning. It looked good in the film, and it turns out there's little trickery there. It even transpires that Helm's Deep is actually in the right place - most of the time the film flits like a mad feller across North & South Islands, but Helm's Deep is about 5-10 miles away in a little valley nestled in the Ered ...., just like it should be. Well trickery permitting of course. The approach shots are in the same area, most of the filming was in a quarry just outside Wellington. Not just Doctor Who ...
On top of Edoras we tack photos, pose with prob weapons and brace against the howling winds rushing down the valley, before returning to the tour company's barn for a decent packed lunch and the opportunity to buy stuff. In a moment of weakness I get a book listing as many location shots as the author's been able to pin down. Very nice book actually, but I'm unlikely to be able to use it in the rest of this trip.
Then back to Christchurch and the shabby backpackers. Stay long enough to post a blog entry (which on their hyper slow connection is rather a long time) and out. Inferior Japanese for supper, then a couple of pints in different bars. Drawn into the one I write this in by a good if slightly loud jazz band.

14th October: Kaikoura to Christchurch

A much nicer day than yesterday. Whisps of fog to the North, but the sky and sea are a brilliant blue. Pack up early and off to the dolphin place.
Having taken my snorkelling gear I'm damned well going to use it. The dolphin people seem slightly surprised by this but don't argue. Two piece 5mm wetsuits, hoods, gloves accepted. Then a quick briefing, why this is a good place to see marine mammals,boat procedures and the like. A dozen or so people with swimming gear plus a handful of pure observers. Nice clean boat.
The first couple of encounters with dolphins are abortive and disappointing. We see fins, but they don't show any interest in the boat. then another group presents and we're all sat on the back, sliding in with as little splash as we can manage and looking down in the water. All of a sudden the dolphins are in the middle of us. Flashing grey and silver through our pack as we try to attract their attention by diving (damned hard in 10mm of neoprene) or making peculiar noises at them. The water is cold, but tolerable - 12°, a mite cold on the ankles, where I've only got 3 mil booties, but the wet suit does it's job. All too soon it's out of the water (though we go in twice more) and staring at the camera to try and work out which pictures actually contain any Cetacean. Lots of water that just had a dolphin in it, lots of back or fluke.
By the end of the morning many of the passengers are crouched over buckets, despite the near flat calm, only one of the swimmers really catches it bad, a pretty red haired German girl, who misses all but the first swim. I feel sorry for her: she does know what she's missing.
Back to shore and with the weather gorgeous there's a temptation to stay another day, but there's too much else to see. So after lunch at the BBQ stall and up into the hills south of Kaikoura, heading for Christchurch largely on the strength of a flyer picked up at Wellington ferryport.
The high country is lovely, coupled with the best weather so far means it's a dream to push on. Very low on fuel at one point (annoyingly the 'fill me soon you bastard' started flashing about 10km after a cheap petrol station) leads me to understand another of New Zealand's mysteries. Every fuel station you see charges NZ$1.89 a litre. Its like there's a cartel setting the prices (Duncan points out that there's only the one oil refinery, so to a degree there is) but it's been confusing me rural stations aren't charging any more. After 40km of flashing and beginning to get a bit jumpy I find a station in the middle of nowhere. And it does charge more. But it doesn't have a sign. Is this the rule? A sign shows that you pay the standard price, a lack of sign is a tacit admission that you'll pay more?
Could probably have saved a buck with a splash and dash, there being a town with signed pumps 10km down the line, but its hardly worth the effort.
Christchurch looms, get into the middle and look for the flyer, and a payphone. I know (from the guy that called me in the middle of the night) that receiving calls costs me money, the flyer has an 0800 Number on it. Would that still be free on the mobile? Haven't yet risked it and feel little urge to start now. Yes they can accommodate me for tomorrow. In that case find exceptionally shabby backpackers and book in for two nights.
Lonely Planet recommends a Burmese restaurant, and since I don't think I've ever encountered one before I try it. Nice in a quiet kind of way. Low on the strong flavours, but not quite Indian, or Thai. Would probably try it again if there weren't so many other things to try.

13th October: Kaikoura

Chat to the (Israeli) couple sharing the kitchen for breakfast. They're off to swim with dolphins, which sounds pretty jolly. Can this be combined with whale watching I wonder? Turns out a) not all that easily, so book whale place for today, and dolphin place for tomorrow and b) the whole thing's academic since sea fog has pretty much put the kibosh on anything sea related. The first whale trip is canceled, so I book onto a later one, but that is canceled as well. Give up on the whole whale thing. They have Sperm whales here, which are better than the Grey whales I saw ten years ago off San Diego (God, has it been that long...) but haven't quite the appeal of others. For humpbacks I'd walk over glass. Instead I go tramping, in a hilly, but visually unsatisfying forest track to the north of Kaikoura. Doubly annoying since my wretched Zen case seems to have there dropped a 16Gb SD card loaded with TTRH, In Our Time and Superman. I hope someone finds it and enjoys, but that player continues to annoy me. Come on Creative - Apple do a 160Gb machine, but I don't want to let Steve Jobs own my music. Just get back in the game.
Back in town the fog continues to dominate. Decent steak & chips in a central pub, then watch dumb action flicks with German au pairs.

12th October: Palmerstone North to Kaikoura

So goodbye to John & Rosemary, who seem to think I've come out just for the Wedding. A welcome pretext I assure you, then more fuel (baby only has a 35l tank) and off to Wellington for the ferry. Which is a bit of a problem since I completely blank the one route south from PN and wind up wiggling north-east then south until after 25 unnecessary km I find myself on the south side of the university. Still, the road south is straight and largely rural, so what was billed as a two hour trip turns out to be one, despite 30 minutes of faffing.
It occurs to me as I queue up that I have never before taken a car onto a ferry, though it's a typically kiwi ferry, managed very efficiently, but sightly shabby. Second hand, too small to be competitive in European waters?


Grotty café, pie & chips, but most of the trip on the foredeck admiring Wellington and especially Queen Charlotte Sound as we come into Picton. Remind me to find out who Queen Charlotte was. Mrs George III?
Still QCS is stunningly lovely. Wellington looks pretty good as well. May move there when I win the lottery. Actually not as stupid a thing to think as it might sound. The price of property round here seems insanely cheap by UK standards. In PN the were estate agents offering palatial 5 bedrooms in 5.4 hectare hillsides for roughly what my grotty end terrace would have been worth before the bubble burst.
After disembarking go in search of dive shop, for coming trip. Do find it, though it being Sunday afternoon it's shut. Must email them to establish exactly when I'm expected. Nothing much more to do in Picton, so head south through increasingly lovely countryside to Kaikoura, marine mammal capital of New Zealand. Backpackers picked pretty much at random from Lonely Planet turns out to be very nice indeed. Packet pasta for supper.

11th October: Palmerston North

So the big day arrives.
Sky looks grim in the morning but resists the urge to dump it down. Wander into town contemplating the interweb, and also the outdoor shop on Broadway with a thought of a replacement valve for the hydration pack. Wind up getting a new flask for the pack instead. Bagel for brunch and don't bother with T'interweb.
The iron in the motel turns out to have last been used ironing some plastic, and so wants to dump burnt on specks onto my otherwise decent shirt. They scrape off with a knife, but not without stretching the pattern, if you know where to look. Replacement iron does rather better.
Duncan's church is a red brick Gothic styled something. Built in 1914, and armed with very Victorian looking stained glass, which on inspection is in memory of those lost in the great war. Presumably vitreous fashion was lagging a bit. Ceremony plain and simple, without any opportunity to declare just cause or impediment. Duncan starts off acting as usher, which raises the possibility that hardly anyone's coming, but there is a good turn out, and eventually the real usher arrives.
Photos and rest before heading to Massey for the reception, complete with good meal, speeches, toasts and a lack of painful dancing, largely because Duncan refuses to start it off. He is a bit alarmed to discover that having arranged a dual layered cake, chocolate below, carrot above, the waiters have just served the bottom bit. Perhaps because no-one explained that bit of the cunning plan.

10th October: Palmerston North

Sleep late-ish and then essentially a goof off day. Wander into town, wearing new shoes to break them in, in search of internet café. Duncan said 'everything is on Broadway' and indeed there is one, so some time spent catching up on email, the American elections, and such like.
Kate has sent a long and detailed email castigating me for missing her one year old's birthday, and telling me exactly what I should buy in recompense. Set off in search. Still Broadway, though further down than I'd expected.
Noodles for lunch then carrying on with a book on Stalin started on the plane and then largely set aside for ebooks.
Left foot aching rather, though not in the manner of one that's objecting to new shoes - more the instep.
Set off after dark in search of a meal, but PN largely closing up. Kiwis obviously eat earlier than Brits. So to Pak'n'save for microwave Chinese.

9th October: Whakapapa to Palmerston North

Awoken at 4 in the morning by someone wanting to talk about diving, then barely able to sleep because of a migraine. The crossing has definitely been closed because of rockfalls, so there's not much to do here, but bargain price of last night cheaper than the motel in PN, so might be still worth just sticking about another night, but the hotel's not offering it again.
One walk is open (just), to Taranaki falls. About an hour from the hotel. Drizzle along the way, then full scale snow at the falls. Quite pretty though, worth the walk. Normally this is on a circular route,but the second half's been closed, so back the way I came.

Worth finding another backpackers to stick about? Not obviously, the weather shows no sign of improving, so trundle back down the hill, back onto a main road and off to Palmerston North.
The map seems to show two valid routes: I chose to go through Wanganui, which Duncan later seems to regard as dangerous in the extreme. Hey Ho. The route did seem to involve a heap of 35kmph turns around clifs with rather impressive drop offs, and one emergancy stop to clear a rockfall from the middle of the road. I shall try the other route on the way North.
Arrive, and after only a little bother (resolved by actually getting the motel's blub out and finding out their address) safely ensconsed in the motel. It turns out that John & Rosemary are two doors down, though the motel owner's not noticed that they're English. John, it turns out, hasn't seen me in so long that he's expecting a beard, but he recognises the voice.
Duncan & Sandra turn up. She seems nice. I have no idea how old she is. Supper with Duncan at a Turkish place.

8th October: Taupo to Whakapapa

Awake early, stick mp3 player on to get back to sleep. Not get lagged, but not quite on local time yet. Then a bit of Kiwi TV, which is frankly rubbish.
Head into Taupo i-site (tourist information office to Europeans) and look at weather forecasest. Yuk. even more Yuk in Tongariro. Which is a pity, since my vague plan involved doing the crossing Thursday. Pick up a leaflet on Tramping in Taupo, pick something heading North along a river that's almost certainly the Waikato. About 6km to a thermal area, which is frankly a bit dull compared to Rotarua, just sinkholes that steam a bit. Apt though, I've just been listening to the Hobbit Audiobook, and this comes up just as the dwarves approach the ruins of Dale with steam issuing from the gates of Erebor. If this place had a dragon though, it's not up to that much.
Annoyingly the hydration pack I'd bought cheap off Amazon turns out to utterly depend on a fragile plastic O-ring holder, which has broken, leaving the thing awkward to drink from and dribbling down my front at very opertunity.






Return to car, and then on towards Tongariro - perhaps the forecast was wrong?
Little baby Daihatsu struggles up the hills,but eventually to the Ski resort at Whakapapa
(pronounced Fakapapa. Not quite sure why the original transcribers decided to use 'Wh' for an F sound in writing Maori, but they did. Good room for a song, good meal in a restaurant that would have a fantastic view were the weather not quite so filthy.
Superglue fails to fix the hydration pack. Twice.

7th October: Auckland to Taupo

Good night's sleep achieved,and second shower refreshing. Expensive motel finds another way to gouge, now asking $10 for their shuttle bus. FFS.Admittedly the driver never asks for any proof that it's been paid so I probably could have bluffed it.

Back at airport it turns out that the company I've booked the car with isn't actually represented at the airport and when I do phone them this is a complete surprise as they've no record of the booking. Eventually a friendly and helpful woman does turn up with a car, agrees that the printout does show something booked and says rude (well, as rude as Kiwis ever seem to get, which isn't very) about the web portal before introducing me to a sweet little baby Daihatsu.I'd like to say 'little does she know what I intend to do with it' but actually we chat about destinations and she buys me a bunch of maps from the airport kiosk, and I'm away.

After a brief stop at a mall for the forgotten stuff (do I own a pair of pyjamas not picked up in a hurry on a trip?) and lunch (a decent chicken laksa) it's away south.

The New Zealand motorway network turns out to end about five miles south of Auckland airport, but is nigh indistinguishable from the rest of their roads. Which are good enough, but even the trunk roads go through villages every 15km, with a 50kph speed limit. And a top speed of only 100kph (which by co-incidence is about what the baby Daihatsu will manage without a tail wind or a slope to speed down) in the open, so places are further apart than they seem. Then again I don't have an instinctive feel for distances in kilometres, so places turn out to be closer together then they look at a glance.

A bit south of Hamilton I need some more fuel. My God, kiwi petrol is cheap. 60-something p a litre, and almost always at the same price where ever you buy it. A bit embarrassingly it takes three people to spot the release button for the fuel tank, After that the roads get windier and the weather gets worse.

A detour to Waitomo Caverns hoping to be touristy and gawp at glow worms, but the by now heavy rain has flooded them. Press on.

By Taupo it's utterly pouring down. Stop in very retro 50's motel, Korean BBQ for supper. Then sleep.

While the arrival seemed too late, very little in the way of jet lag.

Have decided to post things as I write them, rather than waiting until the full package with pictures etc can be added. Actually the pictures for this day are pretty dull. That's pouring rain for you.

5th to 6th October: Flight to Auckland

Very long, but actually quite comfortable trip, complete with hot kiwi girl in the next seat, for the first leg at least. In Changi she was being harrassed by her mother by mobile - a huge advantage of parents who refuse to turn their phones on is that it never occurs to them that they could expect hourly updates. Sadly we were on opposite ends of the second plane, and beyond a wave at Auckland that was the last I saw of her. A pity since she seemed to be thinking about offering a bed in her motel at one point. She thought the 'pile into taxi and say "find me somewhere to sleep"' dubious in the extreme.

But it worked. The motel was a bit more expensive than I'd have liked (the cheaper first motel was deserted) but the decent shower and the good bed were more important.

As used to be traditional, I saw more films on the plan than I have in the cinema over the last year. Hancock (quite good, strange to see Will Smith playing a drunked bastard quite so well), Kung Fu Panda (silly in a good way), Indiana Jones 4 (glad I didn't pay money for it), half of Die Hard 4 (plane came into land) and the first 20 minutes of the second Hulk movie (so dull I gave up and read a book).

Begining a blog

Why not. Lots of people have blogs. Even some friends of mine.

Right now I'm in a rather shabby backbackers in Christchurch, New Zealand, having spent several hours in the last couple of days writing up diary entries. A blog would seem the most appropriate way of publishing them, though I don't know if I can do it properly until I'm home. Partly because I have pictures I can't easily get from the camera to the computer, and partly because this backpackers is unusual in having un-metered internet access (though people do look round the corner from time to time hoping to get onto the computer) so the luxury of working out how to do things won't often be available.