Australia. Hot.

Another quick post, as I'm just about to get ready for dinner tonight and I'm using the Kiwi's mother's PC, to say that it's over 30C here and the scorching weather is somewhat at odds with the snow-encrusted Christmas decorations everywhere. It's a bit weird, but after spending most of the day reading Simon Sebag Montefiore's excellent 'Young Stalin' by the pool, I think I might be able to get used to it. It's a great book, incidentally, brings this fascinating figure to life in a very even-handed, accessible way. I might even be moved to read more about him at some point in the future. I've just got to the point where he uses the codename 'The Milkman'. Would our friendly local Milkman have any comment on that? Did I unwittingly work alongside a dyed-in-the-wool Bolshevik whilst at Virgin?

Anyway, the drama of recent days is mainly that whilst we arrived safe and sound at Brisbane on Wednesday morning, our baggage did not, remaining as it did at LAX, possibly the worst airport in the world. Whilst we were queueing up for our transfer to the Qantas terminal at a fire exit onto the tarmac I did suspect they might not be an entirely competent bunch, the no-show of our bags confirmed this. They arrived today (Friday), and the Qantas people had given us AU$100 each for the trouble, so we were able to buy some new clothes to tide us over. Still, it's a funny thing - on the way over I was ruminating on how despite having travelled a bit in my life I've yet to have my luggage lost. How ironic.

Irritatingly, our bags arrived via Melbourne, which puts me in the unenviable position of having a suitcase that's better travelled than I am.

End phase two...

Isn't technology weird? Here I am in Vancouver airport, happily connected to the gloriously free wi-fi they have here, whilst for some reason Vodafone seem unable to allow me to make or receive calls or text messages whilst I'm here. Bizarre.

Anyway, lack of mobile-ness aside (which hasn't really bothered me tbh), it's been a terrific week. When we arrived on Monday, the temperatures were somewhere around freezing in Whistler village, and we got a fair bit of snow through Tuesday to Friday, which meant that by and large the runs were gorgeous, with snow like icing sugar, tons of dry powder and only the odd bit of treacherously hard ice on the upper slopes. The Peak to Peak Gondola opened on Friday too, linking Whistler and Blackcomb mountains and reducing the time necessary to get from one peak to the other from over an hour to 11 minutes. More of an event for them (it's a big part of their 2010 Winter Olympics things) than for us, but a bit of a diversion nonetheless. After the opening ceremony, we headed across to Blackcomb, where I slid down most of a totally ice-covered run on my back and promptly decided it was time to call it a day.

By Saturday the temperatures were down at around -14C in the village and below -25C on the mountain (plus (or minus?) wind chill), so we managed one long-ish run before our feet froze and we couldn't control our boards properly. The wind made it a bit tricky too, every now and then practically stopping us in our tracks with its force.

Sunday morning we decided we were definitely not going back up, so we went to the pub instead.

My second week of snowboarding has seen me acquire a fresh new array of bruises, although not as many and varied as the first week, in Italy last year. This time it's mostly knees, elbows and arse, and I think that on the whole I fell over a bit less than last time, so who knows, I might be improving. The new board and boots help, definitely, very impressed with both. I managed to whack my head on a particularly hard bit of ice on Thursday too, which has made me think that perhaps a helmet might be in order next time.

The Kiwi also tells me that I've lost some of the deeper, darker lines under my eyes too, ones that apparently had been there for months, so something's going right, I think. I'm sure though, that the next 21 hours' travelling will put them right back there... 3.5 hours to LA, 3 hours in LA, 13 hours to Brisbane... with any luck we'll be able to sleep through most of the last leg.

Very quick post...

I've been meaning to post an update all week, but in between falling down mountains, eating and sleeping, there's not been much pooter time (and they make you pay for the wireless here, shocker). I will do at some point, but for now, here's a photo of what I've been up to this week, mainly. Give it a click to embiggen it. Thanks to the Kiwi for a tremendous photo...

Last night in the UK

This is weird. Very weird indeed. After a week in Manchester, where I grew up and still call home, I'm about to leave the UK. This is my last night as a resident of the United Kingdom, and for the first time in this whole process, I'm genuinely excited. Speaking to people up until now, everyone's said 'this must be so exciting', and my response has always been a dutiful 'yes, it is'. The truth, though, was always something different.

You see, the word isn't quite right. Excited is what you feel on your birthday morning. On Christmas Day. Unfettered positivity, happiness, joy etc. The feeling I've had isn't quite that - there's been lots of positive stuff, yes, about the future, the quality of life, the ability to finally settle, starting a very grown up life with the Kiwi, but along with all that was the sadness of leaving my family and friends here, of friendships that have just started and those that've lasted many years, and in particular putting distance in between me and my family, who mean so very much to me and on whom I depend probably more than they know.

This week has been one of saying goodbye to those people, and it's been painful in the worst way. Not the quick pain of whipping a plaster off, but a long, drawn-out ache, a week of catching people's eyes mid-conversation and both thinking the same thing, of last hugs that neither wants to end, of tears and the hope this isn't as final as it feels.

Tonight we're staying at Yoog's with his wife and son, as we have been for the past few nights. It's fantastic that we can spend this time having dinner with one of my oldest and closest friends, in such a calm, welcoming atmosphere, drinking brilliant wine and, from the smell of the cooking downstairs, soon to be eating excellent food. Tomorrow we drive to London, fly to Vancouver, and begin a phase of our lives we've talked about, dreamed about, and planned for for years.

Now I'm excited.

Explanation

Following on from yesterday's brief post, let me go into a bit more detail about the shape the next few weeks are going to take. As I've worked with laptops provided by work for the past four years or so, I've not had to buy a computer of my own since, like, 1999, so the prospect of leaving my place of work and subsequently having no computer was a bit daunting.

So I put aside a bit of cash to buy one, and mentioning this to my current work, they told me not to worry, I could buy my laptop off them for about a quarter of my budget. Nice. Thing is, I found out yesterday that their policy is actually not to sell laptops to leavers; something we could have done with knowing before we shipped the Kiwi's laptop to NZ.

So I got a bit stressy about it and generally acted like the world had come to an end and so on. And then I realised that it's not all that bad - I have an iTouch which can deal with emails and internet access, and there'll be the odd PC available most of the places we're going. And it's saved me a fair bit of cash too.

The upshot of this is that, whilst I'd hoped to be entirely blogtastic during my travels, it might be a little less prolific than I'd intended. Posting from the iTouch, whilst mainly very convenient, doesn't lend itself to particularly wordy posts. That said, I'm sure that's no bad thing where I'm concerned!

Stuff moves on here in the UK, this week's mentally busy for me and I can feel the physical effects of several flavours of stress building up. The Kiwi's under slightly different stress at her place, but stress all the same.

More later - last post from this machine on Friday, perhaps...

New Blogging Tool

So as it happens, work have decided they're not going to sell me a laptop for my travels, so in order to keep up with emails, blogs and the world in general, I'm resorting to using my iTouch. This is being laboriously typed using LifeCast... We'll see how long I can keep this up for.

Posted with LifeCast

The last week in London

I can't believe it's been two weeks since my last post. It seems like about five minutes. Five very packed minutes, but nonetheless it's gone by very quickly. It's been a fortnight of catching up with people, saying goodbyes, spending too much money, getting stupidly busy at work and generally not stopping once. Both of us are knackered.

So here we are at the start of our last week in London, for both of us our last week at work, and I can't speak for the Kiwi but I'm feeling a bit emotionally numb right now. There's been so much stuff twanging around my head for the last few months that it's almost like I'm becoming acclimatised to all this, or maybe I'm just coping with it all by studiously ignoring it.

Anyway, this week is about tying off loose ends at work, trying to close off my UK tax stuff, trying to remember if we've sorted all the last bills out, changing addresses, our last few drinks with various friends, and our last meal at the brilliant Turkish restaurant near our house. With our flat all empty and bare, and the weather doing that peculiarly British thing of just being... crap, I'm sort of keen to get moving, if I'm honest. With our worldly goods either on their way to New Zealand or in suitcases on our bedroom floor, it feels like we're properly IN the process now. There's quite a lot of it to go, though, and hopefully I'll be near enough wireless networks as we go to keep you updated.

Big Milestone: The Visa Has Landed

Very quickly, as this is the third post today and that's all just a bit extra: my passport came back from New Zealand Immigration today, complete with a two-year returning residence permit. That means that I can live in New Zealand, leaving and returning freely, for two years. After that, I go on to be assessed for a permanent one.

What a relief. I have to confess I got a bit emotional on leaving the embassy (not outwardly shown, of course), as the excitement of leaving began to feel really real, and some of that stress started to melt away. When I got down into Piccadilly tube station, a fairly good busker was knocking out a pretty good version of Here Comes The Sun, and I dug into my pocket and dropped all my change into his guitar case. Something I never do, but as I said I was feeling a bit emotional. Anyway, how very appropriate.

Also, the Kiwi's new snowboard arrived today, and all packed up, our snowboard case weighs in at around 0.25kg under our limit, AND I got an overdraft charge withdrawn from one of my banks, so all in all it's been a pretty productive day.

Goldfrapp, Brixton Academy, 10.11.08

The Kiwi and I have seen Goldfrapp live a couple of times to date, and have always been impressed by the live shows. You'd be hard pressed not to, the lengths they go to to put on a real spectacle, and last night was more of the same. It was the last gig we'll see in the UK, now Ben Folds in Manchester has been postponed until next May.

In general, overall, it was brilliant, like always. We knew she's ace, we knew every track would be a winner, and we knew they'd do Black Cherry and Strict Machine as encores, and we weren't disappointed. A blistering version of Train, and Happiness complete with dancing mop / sheepdog monsters (pictured) were the highlights, along with Strict Machine, which absolutely shook the building.

Image from Dave Smith on Flickr, used with thanks but not permission.

But something seemed missing somehow. She did mention that the whole band had colds (in a rare moment of verbosity); perhaps that was it.

The first few tracks suffered from a weirdly bass-less sound, none of that gut-shaking thunderous bass-ness that we know Brixton can summon up. This came back, to an extent, later in the night, but it left the whole thing feeling a bit of a lack of punch. The odd bit of feedback didn't exactly make it feel like a professional production.

Secondly, and I know I've ranted about this before, but the crowd sucked massively. It's part of that whole thing where, once a artist gets to a certain size, no one at the event seems to be there to listen to the music, and seems perfectly happy to stand around yapping to each other. In recent Goldfrapp tours this probably wasn't such an issue, but with the recent tracks being a little more subdued the chatter was all too obvious.

So on the whole, the band were brilliant as always, but were let down by a dodgy sound system and a bunch of idiots in the crowd. My last and lasting impression of London gigs.

Shipping Vol.2

All of it. All 47 boxes, tea chests, packages and so on, packed up by our shippers in three hours 20 minutes, with the Kiwi cracking the whip throughout, no doubt. I have to say, I was nervous yesterday about how it'd feel once I got back from work and saw our empty flat, but to be honest it's brilliant.

Not only is the flat considerably more spacious and minimalist than it was - just like when we first moved in really, but it feels like the whole thing we've been planning for for the last year or so has finally started. And that feels pretty good.

Last night we semi-celebrated (there's a lot to do yet...) with a visit to Brixton Academy - more on that in the next post.

Shipping Vol.1

I wasn't going to blog about this until it'd happened - rather than leave you on tenterhooks - but I'm so nervous about the whole thing I can't help it. It's moving day today, and whilst I'm at work fretting, the Kiwi's in our flat, presumably trying to make sure all the right bits get shipped.

Fortunately, we've gone for a slightly more expensive but probably more professional bunch of movers, who're packing all our shipping stuff up for us, so all we really had to do over the weekend was separate out everything we're going to carry with us when we go, but even that was no small order. At the moment, our best guess for when we'll see our stuff again is about 10 weeks, and in that time we've got work in cold London, snowboarding in cold Canada, beach in hot Australia, beach in hot New Zealand, interviews in hot New Zealand and potentially even work too.

That's pretty much my whole wardrobe, and Sonya's too, so with baggage allowances, we've had to make some compromises (and you know how much I hate that). Here's hoping we can carry it all come December - we're literally right on our weight allowance, so we're not allowed to buy or otherwise acquire anything in the coming four weeks.

More on this once it's gone, and the empty flat's weirding me out. On a more optimistic note, we're going to see Goldfrapp tonight at Brixton, so hopefully that'll take our minds off it. Much like a pair of cats with buttered paws.

Last Supper (sort of)

I'm a simple chap at heart, and in general it doesn't take a lot to keep me happy. This sort of explains why, at 0630 on Saturday morning I was wide awake and heading for the kitchen, all wide-eyed and excited by the prospect of chopping, roasting, reducing and boiling stuff for the rest of the day. Which is exactly what I did.

The event was the last dinner party I'll cook in my own kitchen, and E&T, who I know from Oddbins days, were coming up all the way from darkest Surrey, so I thought I should do it properly: haricot bean and tiger prawn soup followed by venison with chocolate sauce, followed by the Kiwi's amazing lime mousse, and some carefully chosen cheeses from various Borough Market stalls.

Wines were Ruinart NV to start, then a superb new white Burgundy with the soup, and d'Arenberg's 'Dead Arm' Shiraz from 1998 and 2003 with the venison. We moved on to a tremendous Southern French beast with the cheese, and then, possibly ill-advisedly, continued on with Port Ellen and Ardbeg for a bit too long.

Sunday was a bit of a write-off. But it was SO worth it.

This weekend we'll be packing up all that kitchen stuff (and some other bits and pieces), because some men are coming round on Monday morning to take it all away. Ten weeks later, customs and quarantine and bureaucracy notwithstanding, it'll arrive on our (or to be more precise, some kind friends') doorstep. The interim weeks, involving London winter, Canadian snow, Australian summer, New Zealand summer, interviews and so on, we'll be living out of suitcases, which poses an interesting wardrobe conundrum.

It'll be fine. I'm sure it will.

Curry, wine: Edinburgh

WHAT a weekend. After a fairly legendary lunch with my boss on Friday afternoon (finalising the deliverables for the coming four weeks or so...), I kicked off the weekend by watching the brilliant Spaceballs with the Kiwi. I'd forgotten how shamelessly puerile that film is, possibly one of the last spoof films whose tone is 'gently mocking', rather than simply vicious or way over the top.

Saturday morning involved a train to Edinburgh, all six hours of it, and that evening we caught up for a curry with my brother and his wife. Both were on sterling form and blessed with a superb local Bangladeshi restaurant. One of the things that's been bothering me 'n' the Kiwi lately is that it seems to be impossible to get a decent Indian or Chinese meal in London unless you're in the market for a £60+ a head dinner. It's a real treat to be able to get back to good, local food again.

Excellent to see them both too - it's been years since I saw either of them, and it's the first time they've met the Kiwi. Good to knock back a few whiskies with my brother too, for the first time in waaaay too long.

The Oddbins wine fair on the Sunday was a whole lot of fun as always, smaller than in previous years (or perhaps I've just got bigger), but the old crew were still there as always. The range is looking a fair bit better than it did in April (at the London version), with some astounding French wines on the way for once, and the German range finally worth a look. It's fair to say though, that these last two are more indicative of trends within the countries in question, but Oddbins has been notably light in these areas for the past few years, so it's refreshing to see something interesting there.

We ended up buying a mixed case. Quite what's in it I've very little idea.

Testing New Toy

As I'm sure you've noticed, I tend to use this blog rather a lot as a testing ground for new things, some of which I go on to use regularly, some I don't. I'm posting this post from Ping.FM, at this point through a browser, but possibly in the future from some other device. It collates lots of things into one interface; Facebook, Twitter and lots of others, so I might be using it a bit in future. We'll see...

Elbow, Roundhouse, 11.10.08

I'm obviously a bit preoccupied at the moment - with all the stuff that's going on at the moment I'd totally forgotten to tell you about the brilliant Elbow gig on Saturday night. What a perfect (almost) evening.

I'm fast becoming a fan of the Roundhouse, generally the sound's great and it rarely feels that full, either through great capacity management or tardis-like architecture, I'm not sure. Weirdly, their normally dull beer selection was complemented by the addition of Sagres, which we'd just been drinking in Nandos down the road. Little things like this help, I find.

They were supported on the night by Jesca Hoop, who I suspect is really quite good, and judging by some of the streaming tracks on Last.FM, I think she probably is. Unfortunately her delicate voice combined with the relative lack of interest from the crowd meant she was more or less inaudible, and as she only played a handful of tracks (including a duet with Guy Garvey) I'm not sure she didn't wander off out of sheer annoyance. Poor lass, I thought she could've been great in the right circumstances.

The main event then. The Kiwi made a great point at the beginning about how good the sloping floor in Brixton Academy is, in that you're more likely to be able to see (especially for her, she's ickle), and this was one of my two criticisms of the venue. The opening track was spoilt slightly by us shuffling around trying to get somewhere we could stand next to each other and still see, which depended largely on a very specific configuration of people of certain heights going all the way forwards to the stage, so it's safe to say it didn't really happen.

The band, without exception, were tremendous. Opening with 'Starlings', complete with a trumpet wielded by each band member (whether mimed or not, I don't care), they had the audience grabbed from the word go (or in this case 'How'). By the second track, the bloke next to me singing at the top of a voice so flat it had canals was getting to be too much, so we moved to the middle back, and better sound.

On that note, what amazed me throughout was the quality of the sound, and the preciseness that they got in playing almost note-for-note versions of the tracks we were all so familiar. There's a time and a place for innovation and so on, but a band at Elbow's stage in their career and with their sort of fanbase, should know that they're not going to get away with Jazz Odyssey: we want to hear what we've got on our stereos, just louder and in real life.

And that they delivered. Unusually, one of my favourite tracks of the night was one which didn't really grab me on the record; "The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver", which Guy really seemed to enjoy and absolutely took it by the scruff of its neck. It's great to hear a proper Manchester accent in song - a friend of mine once mentioned how much she loves hearing regional accents on singers, and I have to agree. Not only is it so... honest, but it gives the work a sense of place, and much like terroir in wine terms, embraces its origins. One other track stood out, but you'll have to come to our wedding to hear more about that one.

On a final note, whilst writing this, my iTouch has been in an unusually capricious mood. I've had it on a Genius playlist it's built around Elliott Smith's perkily scornful 'Somebody That I Used To Know', and it thought to include Ben Folds' slightly mawkish but still touching 'Late', his posthumous tribute to Smith. It's a bit like a Spielberg film, in that it's a bit cheesy and predictable, but in such a way that you can't fail to be moved by it. The 25th and last track is Fleet Foxes' gorgeous 'Ragged Wood', which reminds me that we're going to see them in November and it promises to be an amazing night.

Stress notches up, application submitted...

This morning I took a big file full of carefully collated stuff to the New Zealand embassy in London, and submitted my application for a permanent resident's visa, on the basis of my relationship with the Kiwi. £460 lighter, and the wheels are in motion.

The process is unfortunately extremely lengthy. It'll take them two to three weeks to get a case officer assigned to my application. They'll then look over all the documentation and assess whether I look healthy, intelligent, crime-free and sufficiently enamoured of my Kiwi to be allowed in. They'll get in touch with me, and will let me know how long and arduous the process is likely to be. Timescales from this point in are, at the moment, about three months, but it's fairly open-ended in reality.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that that takes us beyond our departure date, but apparently that's ok. I can get into New Zealand on a tourist visa, as long as I have a valid ticket out of there, but I won't be able to start work until it's processed. Provided everything goes smoothly, this will be ok. If things don't go smoothly, this will most definitely not be ok.

So, not ideal, but ok. Worryingly, the lady who took my application mentioned that some of my blood results were marginally outside the normal range, and that they've been very strict on that lately. I may be asked to undergo (and pay for, presumably) another medical, but right now I'm focusing on that not being necessary. I am a big pile of stress and nerves and freak-out at the moment and I really just want this all to be over. More on this as I get it...

Two sorts of limbo, 80s soundtrack

So it's a Friday afternoon, about four pm, and I'm officially clockwatching. I've got myself into a bit of an odd situation at work where I'm sort of on standby for two reasonably big things, putting finishing touches to big-ish presentations for both but not... actually... presenting them. Once the clients are ready I'll spring into action, but until then I'm a bit devoid of busyness to be honest.

With this in mind, I'm here waiting for five pm and pub time, experimenting with iTunes 8's 'Genius' tool and actually finding it rather helpful. I'm normally a curmudgeonly old soul when it comes to software having the audacity to second-guess my musical taste. Although I'm always going on about Last FM, all I really use it for is for the glorious statistical wonder that is my listening habits - geeky I know but something I find genuinely fascinating.

In terms of Genius, I'm actually rather enjoying it. Whilst I don't actually take any of its' recommendations on what I should actually buy, I do make use of the playlist generator a fair bit. For example, being in a bit of an 80s mood this afternoon, I stuck on Scritti Politti's 'Word Girl', feeling the need for a bit of that sleepily precise bass and all. The playlist Genius made out of it looks pretty good so far, with a bit of Elvis Costello (I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down), The Specials (Do Nothing), Depeche Mode (See You), The Smiths (Girlfriend in a Coma) and plenty more besides. Weirdly including the Keane single 'Spiralling' which I actually rather like. Am I a Bad Person?

So ok, it's not technically recommending me anything, as everything that's in my iTunes library is there cos I put it there, but it's doing a good job of getting my mood I reckon.

This weekend will hopefully see the arrival of my completed visa medical, which will be dropped into the NZ embassy on Monday morning along with the numerous other bits of paper and things that they require. Apparently it can take about three to four months from now, so I'm rather hoping it'll be a bit quicker. The timescales don't bother me, as I don't see myself needing to start work til the beginning of Feb, but what is a bit of a concern is the lack of a postal address or regular email access between Dec 1 and Jan 5.

Hmmm. Let's focus on this working out ok, shall we? Fingers crossed, everyone...

Half marathon done, legs falling off

Well, there we have it. My first half marathon completed in the pouring rain, wind, cold etc, in what the Kiwi and I think was about 1hr 52mins or thereabouts. I can't verify this yet as the organisers continue to compound what was a pretty poor event by not telling anyone their times. Judging by the forum posts on the website, it's unlikely we'll get them at all, as some people have had texts, some people haven't, and most people seem to have been sent the wrong times. If the data's that messed up, it won't get unmessed any time soon.*

Still, I know I beat 2hrs, which was my goal all along, so I'm relatively happy. The pain in my legs, hips, knees, shoulders and feet all feels sort of worth it, especially as the non-localised muscle pain suggests that I've not damaged anything significant. That said, I've never experienced pain quite like the final four miles or so. It felt almost solid, like something I could hold onto or bite down on, quite a new feeling for me. The weirdest moment was right at the end, coming across the line and slowing down, and feeling the endorphins wearing off as the pain notched up every few minutes. Amazing things, bodies, eh?

As I mentioned though, the event management was a bit of a shocker. Looking through the website this morning has reminded me of a few things. Firstly, that the distance most runners with GPS's ran was actually about half a mile longer than stated, so it's not actually a true half marathon, and the mile markers were all wrongly places, so we couldn't pace properly. Secondly, that no one had the faintest idea where to start - I stood in the rain for about 40 minutes and ended up near the start - other runners had to jog/walk for about half an hour before they got anywhere near the start line. Thirdly, that the course is listed as 'mainly flat' when in reality it had some pretty mean hills in it. It was compounded by the weather (drizzle turning into torrential downpour) and the transport issues (the whole tube network being snarled up, pretty much), but even without these things it was pretty poorly handled.

In fact, some kind soul has detailed the route here: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2248895, showing not only a half-mile extra, but also the distinctly not 'mainly flat' elevation.

Anyway, I'm happy with my time, as I said. I reckon I need to do another one before too long though, and to prepare for the next one properly. I can honestly say I did no training for this one at all, and I reckon I could aim for 1hr 40min without too much trouble. The Kiwi was absolutely brilliant throughout, waiting in the rain for me to start, hurrying to meet me at just past the halfway mark, and hurrying back to catch me at the finish, all on her own in the rain (everyone else, supporters and runners alike, had dropped out due to illness, transport issues or general can't-be-arsed-ness). I can't tell you how good it was to see her bouncing up and down and yelling encouraging things half way through.

So that's the last event for this year. The next scheduled bit of physical exercise will be snowboarding in December... then I think I'll have to look for another half marathon to run in Auckland!

 

 

*edit: the provisional results came out at 1630 on the 6th Oct, and show my full time as 01:54:35. Still happy with it, puts me in the top 25% anyway. Looks like I need to work on my tactics though, as I passed the halfway mark at position 1413, and the finish line at 1795.

Keep calm and carry on...

Saw this in a shop window in Cambridge today, somehow felt like someone trying to get a message to me:

 

It helped :)

First hurdle over

There are some things that invariably make me go a bit dizzy. One is bleeding, the other is spending lots of money; both of these things happened to me this afternoon. I had my visa medical.

It wasn't all that bad to be honest: the Polish receptionist directed me to a brusque but good-natured Australian doctor, who poked me and peered into bits of me and tickled me and hit me with a hammer and took plenty of blood and asked me very politely for a, erm, sample. He relieved me of £300, and sent me to the South African on reception at radiology. This person sent me in to the Kiwi radiologist for my chest x-ray.

Somewhere at the back of my mind I couldn't help think that this farrago of nationalities was there to rub it in that they'd been able to emigrate whilst I, thus far, have not. Smug just isn't the word. Still, they were all very helpful and pleasant, and the whole thing was over in ooh, about an hour. I'm dizzy now for two reasons.

The next steps seem simple enough. I have to collect my test results a week on Saturday. They will be in a sealed envelope. I must not open the envelope. I must enclose it with my other documents (application form, police certificate for me and the Kiwi, various bits of proof that we're an item etc) and get it to the New Zealand High Commission. It's the only copy, so if it gets lost we have to go through the whole thing again. It's not clear if I'll ever get to find out what my test results actually were, which if that's the case will be a bit of a swindle, if you ask me.

Apart from the slight dizziness, which is almost gone now, I feel quite unusual this afternoon. I'm really happy that one of the steps in the process has passed without incident, and as the excitement about leaving mounts, so does the pain of doing so. Friends and colleagues, as the date's getting closer, are reacting less with the excitement they initially showed, and more with sadness that I'm leaving. I almost want to say to people 'I know you're upset, but please try not to show it, at least not in front of me - it makes this all so much harder'.

Unreasonable I know, and I suppose it's selfish of me to say so, to an extent. Something I struggle with a bit sometimes is the desire to make everything ok for everyone else, before thinking about what's a priority for me personally. Seeing people upset because of something I'm doing pricks that emotion, unleashing waves of guilt. I don't have a solution though. I know what I want, and I know what I'm doing - the next few weeks though will be a case of putting my head down and getting on with it. It's going to be very hard indeed, but we knew that, didn't we?

Two months to go

A productive weekend, then. Faced with a couple of months of mental busyness, we'd decided not to go to Wales this weekend, tempted as I am to see the house I was born in one more time before we leave. Not only did another weekend away seem extravagant, but the opportunity to have a relaxed weekend together was too good to pass up.

Saturday I can barely remember, such was the level of inactivity. I know there was cheese involved at some point, a light, chalky chèvre, and some ridiculously creamy brie, and possibly a slightly disappointing St-Agur. I also know there was a brilliant hour or so spent on the phone to my sister (the younger of the two), talking about our week in Manchester in December and sharing plans for the future in general.

Sunday, bar a wander down the river for lunch in Putney, was mostly spent working out the insurance value of our shipping. Seemed like a fairly innocuous task to start with, but as it turned out, working out the detail of what we were shipping, leaving and packing, and the value of it all, was actually a bit of a mission, and at points pretty traumatic. The trade-off between 'what do we think it would cost to replace it' and 'how much will it cost to insure it' isn't a pleasant thing to do at all.

Still, we got through it, and the Kiwi even managed to chuck out a whole load of clothes she's not work in years.

Tomorrow is Medical Day, which I'm not looking forwards to at all. One more thing out of the way, I suppose. And yes, in 8 weeks' time, we'll be leaving London and starting our journey over to Auckland. Not all that long, really...

Banks. Grim the world over.

Whether you like it or not, I thought I'd introduce you to an intriguing little sub-plot to the whole emigration thing. One of the points that's been troubling me a bit is the piece of the puzzle that concerns banking.

As I've hinted at before, I'm not entirely without debt. Perhaps not as submerged as I was about three years ago, but still enough to be a millstone for another three to four years. It's all on payment plans, so there's a finite element to it, which is nice. Light at the end of the tunnel, even if that tunnel is extremely long.

So there's a certain amount of money that needs to go out of my UK personal account every month. Not having a UK salary to pay into it poses some issues. So I read with interest that HSBC offer what they call an 'International Personal Current Account', which purports to allow you to pay in and out in different currencies. Brilliant. Or so I thought.

Phoning HSBC was a bit of an experience, as no one person out of the five or six that I spoke to admitted to the existence of such an account. The most sense I got, having been shuttled from department to department, waited for a call back for a week, tried to arrange an appointment to no avail etc, was from a chap I spoke to this morning.

He said, and I'm so fed up with the whole thing that I'm prepared to believe him, that what it actually is is a number of individual accounts in the various currencies you need, which are loosely federated and allow you to transfer funds between them. At a cost, admittedly a small one. So far so... average.

The next bit's the punchline. The privilege of having them set up an account for me in New Zealand will cost me £100. This will save me a few weeks (and presumably a ton of hassle) getting it sorted once we're over there. I've not read all the documentation yet, but so far it looks like it might actually be worth doing in the general scheme of things.

Tell you what, this is like getting married. Wherever I turn there's another inflated charge that I can't really avoid paying. I'm seriously tempted to follow my grandparents' example and keep it under my mattress...

Visa worries, cathartic blog post

We're almost down to two months out before we leave - two months and one week, give or take a day. Still left on the to-do list (amongst things too numerous to mention) is the tricky issue of a New Zealand visa. Now, were we to start the application process now, we'd stand a bit of a chance of getting it sorted before we leave. As it is, I still need to get a medical in order to apply.

Not just any medical, you see. This is a full-on, total head to toe MOT given by one of only two clinics in London which are authorised to do it, costing £250, and involving laboratory work which can take weeks. That's assuming they don't need to have me back for more tests. So as you can imagine, I'm a bit stressed.

On the whole though, I'm reasonably calm about the whole thing. There are nerves, yes absolutely, and I'm about 85% terrified. The thought of leaving my friends and family is horrible, and things like seeing a friend's baby boy last weekend, and knowing that he's basically not going to know me when he's growing up, really set me off.

And yes, the opposite is also true. The thought of bringing up my own children without my family, and without friends I've known since school, is hard to deal with.

But the thing is, I've been through this all in my head over and over again for years now. For so many reasons (not least that I'm completely in love with the Kiwi) I know this is absolutely the right thing for me. Also, staying here in the UK, I couldn't see myself actually getting to the point of children at all. There are so many reasons why I'm looking forward to the move, and I'm never more excited than when things are going right. That said, I'm prone to being a bit doom-y about things sometimes, and when there's as much at stake as there is right now, it doesn't take a lot to go wrong for me to let all the scary thoughts get a bit overwhelming.

So this is what's left to do, the big bits, anyway, and in no particular order:

• Medical
• Visa
• Bank account (international & NZ)
• Job interviews for January
• Saving (more)
• Shipping
• Buying stuff (laptop, mainly)

Not all that bad, when you look at it in list form. I've got an appointment for my medical next week, which is a bit of a relief. The saving thing's a bit of a challenge too, given the amount of various things (the visa's £460 too) we need to pay for between now and then. I'm also counting on a fairly significant bonus payment before I leave, which in this economic climate isn't quite as sure a thing as it was.

Anyway, thought I'd document what's going on. This blog was always supposed to be about documenting transitional periods and so on, and there are few bigger changes one can make to ones life than this. Expect more, hopefully bearing mostly good news...

It's Talk Like A Pirate Day

Yarrrrr.

Sore legs, decent result

I’m in a rather unusual situation at work at the moment, in that I’m trying to write a paper on maintaining levels of service across an organization or some such, and in order to do so I need to refer to some stuff on the internet, and our internet access is currently down, so I’m a bit stuck. I’m also completely devoid of blood sugar and thus concentration, so trying to even draft a structure for the thing is futile at this point. So, I’ve decided to write a blog entry in the 30 mins or so that remain before it could be considered reasonable for me to head out to lunch, for one of those amazing ciabattas that the Tasting Room serve in Borough Market.

One of the main reasons my blood sugar is so low, I’m sure, relates to my efforts yesterday in the London Duathlon. Without a doubt, it was one of the most demanding things I’ve done, right up there with the second sprint triathlon I did a few years back. A 9k run, 20k bike and 5k run strung together, I was a bit concerned before going into it, especially as I’d done next to no training, and had spent the previous week drinking and eating to excess in southern Spain; not ideal.

On the day though, after I’d warmed up in the first 3-4k, I began to really enjoy it. The legs were starting to feel a little fatigued towards the end of the 9K (45:08 – bit below par), but a decent transition of 02:23 went smoothly enough and gave me a bit of time to get some fluids in comfortably before getting on the bike. Two laps of Richmond Park is something I’ve done before, but not after a 9k run. To be honest it wasn’t that bad; running then biking is ok, it’s the other way around you’ve got to watch out for. Two downsides on the bike: firstly I’d done pretty much no training, so my legs weren’t as up for it as they could’ve been, secondly the fastest downhill bit of the course suffered from a massive headwind, so I managed a time of 49:45, some way off what I think I could have done.

Still, a slightly quicker transition (02:07) got me out on the run without any trouble, save the inevitable crunch when you start running and the pain begins. It was basically 5k of sheer slog, with a slight incline up the first 3k or so. Quite a few walkers on this bit, which sort of spurred me on to not stop at all. Kilometer 4 was probably the worst; constantly thinking my legs were going to give out and a few of the quicker runners flying past me. I got home in 25:41, surprisingly quick considering how slow it felt and only a few minutes off what I’d have done with fresh legs.

That gives a total of 02:05:03, which is an improvement on my target of 02:15:00, which is great. Making the day pretty much perfect was the sight of the Kiwi and some friends of ours cheering me on every now and then, and being there to meet me at the end. The highlight of the day? Hearing that wonderful woman say ‘I’m so proud of you’ at the end. Simple things, but there you go, means a lot to me.

Now, I’m hoping that I can get my legs to work properly again in time for the Half Marathon. I’m still short on sponsorship, so all are welcome to donate at http://www.justgiving.com/[my name with no spaces]. Thanks!

Holiday good, gloomy home weather bad

What's happened to the weather? I go away for a week, ok - 9 days, and suddenly winter's crept in the back door whilst I wasn't looking. Not happy with this.

Anyway, we got back yesterday, so the memory of our stay in a brilliant villa in San Juan de los Terreros, which is here. The satellite photo was taken a little while back, so it doesn't look like the houses on our street are finished yet, which they all were.

It was a week of 30+ temperatures, lots of sleeping, both beside and in the pool, plenty of brilliant food, both in and out, and some truly excellent wines, the best from the Ribeira del Duero.

I have to say though, that Almeria, which we flew into, is a bit of a dump. We were lucky enough to chance upon a really good restaurant for dinner, but otherwise it's not all that. The one thing it has to recommend it is this hulking great contraption sticking out into the harbour.

It's some sort of industrial revolution-era device originally used to allow freight trains to drop stuff into waiting boats. Most cities built docks and the like, but the Almerians did this instead, and when it was decommissioned (assuming it actually was...) the mayor of the town decided that, given it was one of the only things the town had to differentiate itself, it should stay. Interesting, yes, but the appeal is somewhat limited as a tourist attraction.

The rest of the coast, up through Pulpi towards Alicante, alternates between beautiful desolation and near-desert conditions, and massive, semi-built urbanisations forming either second homes for wealthier Spanish families, or boxes for sunburnt cabbies from Romford to stash their horrible kids and sullen wives in for a week or two's drinking and complaining there's no chips on the menu.

Fortunately the Kiwi, in her infinite wisdom and skill, chose a predominantly Spanish town for us to stay in, so the only football shirts we saw were in Murcia airport on the way back. Seriously - whole families in them. I really feel for respectable football fans, like the Mighty Melvin - this lot really gives that garment, which I'm sure some people quite rightly wear with pride, a terrible name.

So anyway, the week's bookends aside, the holiday itself was one of the best to date. The villa we rented was pretty much perfect, with loads of space, air conditioning and a large enough pool to actually get a proper swim in of a morning. The perfect way to get us both to chill out a bit, before we begin the 11-week countdown to leaving London. The remaining diary pages are beginning to look very small indeed...

New internet toy! New internet toy!

Once in a while you find something on the internet that you suspect might change the way you use it. It's a rarity, and you have to trawl through lots of crap to get there, but when you find something like this it's well worth taking a few minutes out to get to grips with it:

http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/

 

Watch the video, install it (and if you're not using Firefox 3 by now, more fool you), and trust me, you'll notice it.

Tarts and other diversions

What a weekend. Scouting for engagement do venues on Friday night followed by dinner at home, once round Richmond park on the Black Panther on Saturday morning, drinks out on Saturday night, Gordon's with T&E on Sunday afternoon followed by dinner & movie at home (Cloverfield, don't believe the hype), long walk by the river this morning followed by a day in the kitchen at long last. This evening's dinner worked pretty well, though I say so myself, roast lamb rump with puy lentils, rosti potatoes, glazed shallots, tomato concasse and herbed gravy.

The bit I'm really pleased with is in the photo; bitter chocolate tart, served with a splodge of sour, cool, sharp crème fraîche. The crumbly bits on the top are a result of some last minute emergency pastry trimming needed to get it out of its case. I've had a bit of a challenge with tarts lately (ho ho), as they've all refused to set properly, but this one seems to be holding its shape reasonably well. The crisp vanilla-tinged pastry is a bit of a winner too. Both recipes from Gordon Ramsay's Passion for Flavour, one of his earlier books that's still a bit cheffy and not quite so 'posh Jamie Oliver'. Sometimes you do want to spend 6 hours on dinner, rather than trying to fit preparation of a memorable meal into 30 minutes.

Sitting alongside this little lot was a bottle we brought back from Australia last time we were there, a 2002 Vasse Felix Shiraz, which I reckon is just about peaking right now, at least this bottle was. Good luck finding any in the UK though, we tend to drink all our Aussie wines shockingly young, so there's never anything of this sort of age around.

And so ends the last bank holiday of the year (I think). Three and a half days of work and we'll be heading out to southern Spain for a week in a villa somewhere near Almeria, with nothing on the agenda but reading, drinking, eating and the occasional dip in the pool or, should the effort seem worth it, the sea. I can't wait.

On the reading front, I'm currently sailing through M F K Fisher's excellent 'The Art of Eating', which I'd recommend to anyone, whether they care about food or not. It's so brilliantly written, without a hint of pretence or self-consciousness, and provides a valuable missing link between the likes of Brillat-Savarin and today's food writers, not to mention a fascinating and well-researched insight into culinary culture over the past few thousand years.

I'd take it on holiday, but it's about five inches thick.

A gentle reminder

To those of you who've already kindly donated to my day of pain, thank you very much, you're guaranteed a place in the heaven of your particular denomination.

To those of you who haven't, go on, click the button - it's for a good cause and if I don't get to the target I'm going to wet out. If I do I promise to put myself through it.

Oh alright then...

In response to Kathryn's comment below (and the numerous requests on Facebook), photos of the ring have now been added to the album.

The ring thing

So if you're on my Facebook friend list, you'll already know this, but last night I asked the Kiwi to marry me, and cor blimey she only went and said YES, so we are now officially betrothed, I believe. Brilliant!

Very briefly, as I need to get in the shower and prepare for a fairly intense day in the pub, the whole night was excellent from start to finish. We started with Champagne (Pol Roger NV, if you're interested) at Vertigo, where I mumbled the question. At 600ft, it's the highest building in London, a real landmark, and the view from the bar's tremendous. Our table faced northwest, towards the Telecom tower - the weather was perfect too, watching the sun set over the most amazing city in the world.

Following that we got a cab over to Wild Honey in Mayfair, the sister restaurant to Arbutus, which we've also been to. Terrific food and superb wine was somewhat overshadowed by how excited and dizzy we both were, but it was superb nonetheless. Would definitely recommend it. It turned out that a friend of ours was having a birthday party over in Soho, so we dropped in on that on the way home.

I feel absolutely tremendous. And I can't believe the ring, whose size I guessed, fits perfectly and looks so completely natural on that wonderful girl's finger.

Singin' In The Rain @ Somerset House

Quite how good this was can't be expressed in bloggage - watching Singin' In The Rain in the open air at Somerset House. Perfect summer evening, lying on a picnic blanket with the Kiwi, watching one of the most heartwarming films around. It's right up there with It's A Wonderful Life, in my opinion.

This, as you might be able to make out, was the scene - you can make out the south block of Somerset House in the background, onto which the film was projected.

One of the things that made the evening was the fact that his widow and daughter attended. It got me wondering what goes through a widow's mind to see her husband on the big screen, looking his absolute best, and with hundreds of adoring fans still hanging on every tap, jump and twirl. Fascinating stuff.

I know it's a cliche, but they really don't make 'em like that any more.

Sponsor me!

After a few years of running, I've decided to do something worthy with it, so on October 5th, I'll be running in the Run To The Beat London Half Marathon. I'm running for Woolworths Kids First, who're not only providing me with a place, but do all sorts of brilliant things... you know, for kids.

So, chart my progress on the widget to the right, and visit my fundraising page to help me out!

Gold cockles?

Is this the biggest piss-take in the entire world? Homemade pasta (ie flour, water, eggs), cockles (ie weeny shellfish), mushrooms & lemon (ie cheap), for £13.50?

For those of you on the NZ$, that's $36.65 for a fairly unremarkable bowl of pasta, eaten in a stall to the side of London's Borough Market.

Tut.

Bicycles

I've just opened up Windows Live Writer to find a blog post I started writing on Monday but didn't actually get round to posting, so you'll have to do without tales of me 'n' the Kiwi cycling to Hampton Pool on the weekend, oh yes we did - all 17k there and back. We're so proud of ourselves. It's probably about time I got the Black Panther* out again to be honest - the Duathlon's in about 6 weeks' time and I've not bestridden** it in almost two years.

It's hard to believe we're in August already. This means there are only four months left before we leave London; five months until we arrive in New Zealand and it all suddenly becomes very real. The excitement's really starting to build now, both of us I think just really want to DO IT. In the meantime, there's a ton of stuff to do; my visa application needs to start this month, really, and that's just the start of it.

This weekend we're off up to Manchester - I'm getting all the visits in that I can before we leave as you can imagine. Should be fun; lunch with the family tomorrow and spending a bit of time with Yoog on Saturday night. Presumably the latter will feature a Guitar Hero challenge, presumably with me getting my arse kicked again despite buying my own one in an attempt to get better at it.

Something tells me August is going to be a fun month. Watch this space - I'll try to document as much as possible...

Oh, and the new addition to my page on the right? Wordle is a truly brilliant application - try it for yourself, it's completely addictive.

 

*ironic macho naming of my bike. Ironic in that with me on its back, it's anything but.

**is this a word? it is now.

Perils of online translation

This is brilliant. Obviously the owner used an online translator to work out a name for the restaurant - unfortunately assumed the error message that was returned was not an error...

Terrific.

Woo for the internets

I've finally got around to buying a domain name - rather wish I'd done it years ago but there you go, every day's a school day, isn't it? So I've gone and bought my first name last name dot co dot NZ, and currently there's nothing of any real worth there but just owning it is immensely satisfying. I've just got dot net as well, and am considering going to the arse who's parked surname dot co dot NZ and seeing how much they're going to charge me for it. Imagine how cool that email address would be...

Anyway, beyond my absurd geekiness, stuff is definitely good right now, although the Kiwi and I looked through the diary to try to find a spare weekend before we leave, and horrifyingly didn't find ONE weekend we can fit anything else into between now and then. We've got the whole of November free to do moving stuff, but other than that it's pretty much full, which in many ways fills me with dread - apart from anything else it makes it all seem so very close...

On the moving front, things continue to fall into place. HSBC have just added NZD to their supported currencies on their international current account, and the job trail is warming up, I think, as the housing market is cooling down, which is precisely the way I want things to go. It's almost time to start my visa application too...

On that note, my train's just pulling into Cambridge, so off I go to bang my head against the client's wall for another week. What fun.

Houston, we have a sore head

It's the last day of the conference and I'm hiding in the main hall, pretending to be working so that no one will try to talk to me - I'm suffering a bit from what's basically been a three-day bender and am in no fit state to talk retail strategy. It's been a lot of fun though and, despite the lack of sleep, insane heat and the occasional moment when I realised I was completely out of my depth, I'm really glad of the opportunity to do this. I'll be coming home with a sheaf of business cards, a pretty good understanding of how partnering with Microsoft works, and a firm resolution to detox next week.

Naturally, the thing I'm looking forwards to the most is getting back to my London, my flat and my Kiwi, but there's a whole lot of time in between now and then; two flights (including that horrible connection again) and hopefully not too much stress. What I want to do right now though, is just go... to... sleep...

Houston, we have a conference

A bit of a day of firsts for me, yesterday (or at least, the past 36 hours or so, thinking in terms of days is challenging at the moment). Getting into the Virgin Atlantic lounge was one, all lovely and great and all but somehow not quite the land of dreams I'd hoped for. Perhaps, because we only had about 30 minutes in there, I didn't really get the full effect. That said, it was a damn sight better than the alternative, fast track security and free wine and all.

Second on my list was actually flying Virgin, which it sort of surprises me I've not done before for some reason. Although the promised upgrade to Upper Class didn't materialise, I was in Premium Economy, which is better than it sounds. I spent most of the flight in the bar being force-fed red Bordeaux by the barman.

Third was actually being late for a flight. I know how anal this sounds, but this is something I just. don't. do, and haring through Newark airport trying to negotiate the (irritatingly chatty) immigration and customs people, pick my bags up, re-check in, go through security AGAIN (this time with the plebs) and get to the gate isn't really my idea of fun. Travelling's mental enough without that sort of stress, and to top it all we proceeded to spend the next hour on the tarmac. Fortunately, for some reason I was in first class, which meant there was a lovely lady on hand to make sure my wine glass didn't get empty. So much so that I had to pretend to be asleep so she'd stop.

So after all this, we got into Houston at about midnight-ish, which as far as my body was concerned was 0600. Getting a good 6 hours' sleep meant today's been reasonably ok, but I'm not sure how tonight's going to be - a networking cocktail thing followed by a dinner we're hosting for some people or other. I'm currently wearing a pink striped shirt with a frankly enormous collar, which I'm rather enjoying - most Merkins are so excruciatingly dull and conservative with what they wear that I'm standing out as if I was wearing a clown suit.

Fortunately we're taking cabs everywhere. I don't imagine they like pink shirt-wearers here, it's still very much a moustache and cowboy hat sort of place*. Over lunch, I was introduced to the various forms of the contraction 'y'all': 'y'all' refers to one person. 'All y'all' refers to more than one person.  And, dear god, 'y'all's' means 'your'.

Needless to say, my accent has moved into the sort of RP register of which Laurence Olivier would have been proud. I might even start drinking tea.

 

*yes, the irony hasn't gone unnoticed. The Village People are probably seen as 'good hard-workin' decent men, 'cept for that injun' by those who remember them.

Sore head, busy week ahead...

I am physically destroyed. We went to a wedding reception last night, which was brilliant, danced like fools and drank like bigger fools, and wore a lovely new suit which I'd bought the previous week at Ted Baker as part of a horrifying splurge of clothes-buying. Tremendous event it was, both bride and groom looking superb and very happy indeed.

But this morning was a bit of a challenge. In fact, the whole day has been, and I'm a little concerned about the impact this is going to have on the week to come. You see, I found out on Tuesday afternoon that I'm being sent over to Houston (yep, the one in Texas) for a week to attend a conference over there. I'm flying out on Sunday afternoon, back on Friday morning, mental schedule in between and hopefully I won't have to present.

Now, today should be the day on which I print out all the stuff I'll need in order to get onto flights and into hotels etc, and although I'm fairly sure I've done all I need, I'm also acutely aware that I turn into a bit of an idiot whilst hungover so I'm bound to have forgotten something crucial. Ah, well.

So there we are, little me representing my company's retail function to lots of Merkins. It's either going to be REALLY REALLY GREAT or horrible, and I've decided to shoot for the former. If there's interweb access at the Houston Holiday Inn Express (I know), I'll see if I can squeeze out a blog entry or two whilst I'm there. Wish me luck...

Minor changes, new blog toys

The eagle-eyed among you (you know who you are, I'm sure) will no doubt have already spotted some tiny changes I've made to this blog. Along with the brilliant SnapShots I've been using for a while, I've put Lingospot onto it too. This is quite a sexy piece of fun, which picks up words I've published and gives you a little run-down of what they're about. Check out some of them further down the page - you'll see a little arrow next to them which, when clicked, opens up a window where you can see the Wikipedia entry for that word, plus some Flickr photos and so on. Nice, no?

I've also shuffled some of the ads around, including this one at the top which I'm not sure about really. Don't forget that advertising on this blog does actually pay me money when clicked...

Oh, and the other thing is the little doo-hickey on the right hand side that cleverly dumps my blog into your feed reader, should you use such a thing.

That's about it, will write more shortly. This past weekend deserves a bit of bloggage, I'm sure.

Not so bad after all...

It's occurred to me lately that this blog's turned into less of a worrying insight into the byzantine workings of my 7-year-old mind, more a sort of 'this is what we did on the weekend isn't it nice' thing, which isn't what I'd planned at all. I'll do better in future I promise.

Despite that, this weekend has been fairly pleasant; tapas and cocktails on Friday night and a bit of a drinkathon with Keef on Saturday, strangely woke up feeling bright as a button this morning which sort of made up for Friday morning, when I woke up feeling disastrously hungover having (purposefully) not drunk a drop the previous night.

So we made use of the day, wandering out around Kensington in the sun, downing a massive, largely fried brunch at Café Continenté after which I'm fairly sure I went into shock for 30 minutes or so, heading to Oddbins for some of their amazing own-label rosé, and slowly winding back home via Tesco for lots of exciting spicy things to cook over the coming week.

So just before I wrote this, I was in the kitchen watching the Kiwi bake some banana oat muffins. She's wearing a gorgeous royal blue maxi-dress with a halter neck, the afternoon light's coming softly through into the kitchen and she's a perfectly beautiful image of femininity to me, and just at that moment, I hear the living room stereo, with Adele singing 'all the wonders of my world...', and it occurs to me, not for the first time today, that stuff can get pretty good really, can't it?

70s food, Kiwi-less, plans

Oh hilarious. I'm watching, as I have been doing every Tuesday evening for a few weeks now, 'The Supersizers Go...' with Giles Coren and Sue Perkins. This week, it's the 70s, and it reminds me quite how much I really like prawn cocktail. I remember having it at my eldest sister's wedding when I must've been all of five, and thought it was about the most exotic and brilliant thing I'd ever had. It was served with buttered brown bread, out of which I made a prawn cocktail sandwich. Classy.

I still make it, if the truth be known, with my own marie rose sauce and big fat tiger prawns - and it's still ace.

Anyway, childhood food aside, I'm writing this stretched luxuriously out on the sofa, as the Kiwi's in New York this week, generally attending numerous parties and watching films, I think, damn her, and so here I am, all by my self. She's back on Friday, which at this point is seeming very far away indeed.

My weekend was spent back in Manchester, which was brilliant - catching up with the folks and the family Yoog, then back to London on the Sunday night for drinks with my old housemate which were probably more enthusiastic than they should've been; Monday morning was a bit of a challenge.

I do have a bit of news for you all. The kiwi and I have been thinking about it for a while, but we've decided for definite to move to New Zealand. In about six months' time. Scary stuff, but massively exciting too. We'll go via Manchester for a week (early Christmas), then Canada, snowboarding, then Australia for a bit of time with the folks, then NZ for New Year. And then back to reality with a crash...

More on this later, but I wanted to let you all know. Funny, I started this blog to document some work-related changes in my life, but I guess the changes will be a little more wholesale than that.

In other news, Nick Drake has been in my headphones a great deal of late, what terrifically brilliant lovely stuff it is too. All three albums, in sequence, at least once a day.

Being very grown-up (sort of)

This Friday saw our annual 'doing something loosely defined as 'cultural', when the Kiwi and I went to see Pygmalion at the Old Vic. It got off to a slightly shaky start, when (being used to films and concerts) we turned up on the dot of 1930, expecting it to start some time afterwards, and were made to wait upstairs and watch the first act on a monitor before being let into the theatre. Nonetheless, the remainder of it was superb, Tim Pigott-Smith attacking the Henry Higgins role with evident relish and Michelle Dockery brilliantly timed and spot on as Eliza Doolittle.

I've not seen the play before and, although this could be as much down to the performance as anything else, I was surprised by the savagery with which Shaw tears into the privileged classes, showing through Higgins a thorough hypocrisy and lack of humanity, particularly in the face of Eliza's articulate, grounded and self-aware father. Whilst Col. Pickering offers some hope of redemption for the upper classes, he's still shown as fundamentally juvenile and short-sighted as Higgins.

It also reminded me how damaging a 'happy ending' can be to a play's message - in stark contrast to My Fair Lady, there's no closure to Pygmalion. For the viewer, this means the questions raised in the play are still firmly in the mind long after the show's over; it doesn't offer answers, forcing you to mull it over for yourself.

Anyway, following that we wandered down The Cut to Livebait, where the food was brilliant but the service, unfortunately, was catastrophic. Hey ho. The rest of the weekend involved travelling down to East Sussex to see some friends of ours and their 5 month old baby girl, who's a right bundle of smiles - although for some reason the sight of the Kiwi was enough to reduce her to inconsolable tears at first.

Fortunately they made friends before too long and that afternoon I was treated to the mildly alarming sight of my girlfriend displaying what can only be described as something of a maternal side - even taking over (bottle) feeding duties for a while. She didn't even seem to mind being vomited on, which is totally not my experience of her. Well well, how times change...

Another bank holiday, toddler tantrum

Another bank holiday sort of crept up on me this weekend, although this time I can profess to having found out about it a little earlier than last time (Wednesday? something like that). Following a week that was a bit like wading through treacle work-wise, it was very welcome.

So, if you're interested... on Friday night I started to teach the Kiwi how to play chess, and from the looks of it she'll be beating me soundly in relatively little time. She has a naturally analytical, strategic mind that lends itself well to the game, whilst personally I struggle to have the patience. We'll see. We're both about as competitive as each other, so perhaps I'll develop a bit more aptitude for it out of sheer bloody-mindedness.

Saturday we both caught up with friends separately, and Sunday we went to the rugby sevens at Twickenham, at which England beat New Zealand in the first quarter-final round and thus were out for the rest of the day. With that and the tennis result I'm uncharacteristically smug for an English sports fan - we don't often get the chance so I'm rather milking it. That said, rugby was definitely a secondary attraction of the day, the first being smuggling as much alcohol into the ground as possible, along with the usual results. Streakers, pitch invasions, hailstorms of plastic pint glasses, cardboard beer trays, hats and at one point, the construction of a snake of empty pint glasses being constructed that stretched pretty much from the back of the stands to the front, and the length of one whole block.

We called it a day afterwards, and came out of it relatively unscathed. I did run to a cashpoint (run? why? I don't know) and back during the course of the day, out of the ground what I reckon was about 1.5k at a sprint in my non-running shoes, which I think is responsible for every muscle and joint in my body aching today and a suspected pulled calf muscle. Hopefully this will be a learning experience.

Yesterday was hilarious from start to finish, the highlight being the sight of my Kiwi, face down on the living room floor throwing a proper toddler tantrum about having to tidy her clothes off the floor of our bedroom. Fists banging on the floor and everything. Second to this, superb food all day, with a brilliant borlotti bean minestrone for lunch (her) and good ol' roast chicken & veg & pan gravy for dinner (moi). And a short week ahead of us! Brilliant.

One Year In

Oh, and I forgot to mention. I've been in this company for exactly one year today, and what a year it's been. Tremendous stuff, feels very good indeed.

Run of the mill mentalness

So I'm sitting here at my desk in London, wondering why I'm so dog tired, and then it hits me - it's 0745. I'm precisely one hour early, and for no good reason. Note to self, if you're going to get up that early, either don't, or do some exercise or something. I blame the Kiwi, she's the one who's always in shockingly early, she works way too hard that lass.

Anyway, so in the lead up to the Move, a few interesting things have been happening at work. Firstly an offer of a contract came in with a different employer, which would have enabled me to save a fair bit of cash and, being self-employed, would have some decent tax benefits. So I took this offer to my current employer, told them the context (ie the Move) and the offer, and fortunately they came back with a counter-offer, despite the impending Move. This slightly changes my role here, and adds a huge amount to my workload, but the benefits are... tangible.

This will rather annoy the party who made the original offer, but I suppose it's all about No.1 when it all comes down to it. The rest of this year should be a bit of a challenge.

Back to reality today though, it's one of those 'head down' days where I finally get around to writing up stuff I've been talking about for weeks. Visio and Excel will be getting a bit more of my attention than they're used to I think, oh joy.

Oh, and I've decided that the new Martha Wainwright album is about 85% brilliant, the new Elbow album is still 100% brilliant, and I'm undecided about Santogold. Seems about 40% brilliant, about 50% meh, and 10% barking (and not in a good way). Recently I've had two songs going round my head constantly: Kate Bush's 'Moments of Pleasure' and Elliott Smith's 'Tomorrow Tomorrow'. The latter has been ringing in my ears since New Zealand (March), and is now feeling like a sort of muso-y tinnitus. Could be worse I suppose. Both of those last links will enable you to play the full track should you wish - just press the Play button.

Hoots

What. A. Weekend. Kicked off on Thursday night (as the best weekends are) with a work social at which we threw a baby shower for one of our consultants, complete with milk-based cocktails served in Tommy Tippee mugs. As with many of our work socials, it doesn't sound like it'd work but curiously, it did.

Friday was mental throughout, full of meetings in the morning and struggling over to Hampshire to the Hatter's house with boxes of wine and shoes, for 'twas his WEDDING on the Saturday morning and we needed to get ready and such, being as I was his very Best Man and very proud of it as well.

Those of you who have befriended me on Facebook have access to photos of the event, including one or two of your blogger in a KILT for the first time ever (and yes, I was wearing pants). A truly tremendous garment, I have to tell you - would happily wear one more often. Were I a true Scot, I would, but I'll have to settle for Sassenach Troosers as it is. Hey ho.

I am a fool

How did that happen? Where did that bank holiday come from? Seriously, I've always been bad at working out when they were, but this really takes the cake - it was 1600 on Friday (FRIDAY!!) before a colleague mentioned it to me and this was quite literally the first I knew about it. How does one find out?

Anyway, twas a nice surprise and a much-needed break in the eternal scramble that my professional life has become. Friday night I took the Hatter out for dinner cos he's getting married this weekend and I'm sort of his best man. We went to the French House, which although they always overcook the steaks I really do like, and we drank rather too much.

Saturday I took my hangover round to a friendly American's house and killed it with red wine, the Kiwi having gone to the Nuremberg Horse Trials or some such. Sunday I cooked a semi-disastrous set of creme caramels to take round to dinner with some recently-married Kiwis nearby (it literally did take all day, in between Wii bouts and screwing up the caramel-making bit. The kitchen was covered in strands and blobs of caramel in various states by the end of the day, which the Kiwi and I left to dry and then went round cracking bits off and munching on them like Hansel and Gretel).

Monday (MONDAY!!) I finally got around to getting my bike out of the wardrobe, putting it together and cleaning it.  The resultant pic of the Black Panther I posted on Facebook provoked a fair bit of response, which presumably means the respondents thought I'd actually ridden it, when in fact having cleaned it I celebrated the act by doing nothing for the rest of the day.

One step at a time, sweet Jesus...

Exits are here, here, and...

Good lord - has it really been that long since I posted anything? Things have been rather hectic since, admittedly, but there is an element of laziness about the last few weeks that I'd be wrong to deny. My running record to the right says all you need to know about that.

Work-wise, am more in Cambridge than anywhere else at the moment, have managed to get rid of the Bradford thing (I think) and am back billing more or less full time. The Cambridge thing is taking a little time to get off the ground, which is how come I'm writing personal blog entries during office hours.

Recent non-work things have been somewhat more eventful, me finally cashing in the Kiwi's birthday present from last year on the weekend and flying an actual HELICOPTER, of which I'm inordinately proud. 30 minutes in the air was all it took to convince me that 1. it's brilliant and 2. I'm crap at it.

Now, I can pat my head and rub my tummy at the same time, which I've been told qualifies one to be a helicopter pilot. Although I've suspected for some time that the actual exam is a little more taxing than this, the real dexterity required to pilot something that moves across all planes of movement using highly sensitive controls is something else entirely.

So, when the instructor hands you the controls, with the aircraft in a perfect hover, and you make no perceptible change to any of them AND YET the thing lurches violently 30 feet to the left and jumps 20 feet in the air whilst lazily spinning anticlockwise, you start to appreciate why he's been so smug for the past 20 minutes or so. Brilliant fun.

In other news, we've got ourselves a Wii Fit. It's ace. Oh, and I've entered the London Duathlon, so I'll let you know how that goes. I think I need to get my bike out of the cupboard sooner rather than later.

Oh the glamour pt 2: Bradford, Cambridge, London

I'm writing this post on a train, reflecting on how much this particular environment will be a feature of my life this week. The two projects I've found myself on lately (the Irish thing does indeed seem to have let me go... fingers crossed) are helpfully located in Cambridge and Bradford, so I've seen a bit more of Kings Cross than I normally prefer to of late.

Small mercies: the majority of the work for both can be done either at my home office near the city or the offices of a creative agency in Piccadilly, but nonetheless this week I'm in Cambridge this afternoon and tomorrow afternoon, Bradford Wednesday and Thursday and hopefully London on Friday but who knows.

Both are good, fun, broadening projects which I'm enjoying a lot at the moment, but the travelling thing does put a bit of a dent in my life and my cashflow (racking up near £500 in travel expenses every month can be tricky to manage). Still, I'm not complaining, it pays the bills, most months.

Last week I ran another wine tasting for the team at work, with attendees from various other parts of the business taking the numbers up to around 30 or so, an improvement on previous evenings and weirdly for some reason suggested that a room of 30 people is easier to control than 20 - or perhaps I'm getting better at it, I dunno. Still, they seemed to enjoy it, and for the Facebookers amongst you the photos are up on our company group somewhere should you wish.

The weekend which followed was great, if surprisingly brief, with E&T coming round for dinner on Saturday night, which involved a morning's barging round Borough Market and Tesco and an afternoon's increasingly frantic cooking. Most of it went well, with the notable exception of me screwing up a lemon meringue pie AGAIN - this is turning into something of a culinary nemesis for me.

I'm sure I've made it perfectly at least once, but for some reason over the past few years they won't hold their shape properly. It all generally tastes great, but it's just a bit runny. I set some of the curd separately this time, and it set perfectly, so I think it's my meringue that's the problem - I think I need to spend a bit more time making sure it's properly robust, otherwise it sags a bit and (I think) causes the filling to sort of unset.

The Kiwi has got tickets to the wrestling tonight. Can't wait.

Toys, changes

Now I know I've said this before, but I think I might just be finally off the Irish project. There'll be a few bits and pieces I'll probably be hassled about in the coming weeks, but I'm now committed to two main things: an entertainment project and a pitch for some retail work, both of which are intriguing and exciting to say the least. This all kicks off on Monday. I'm also coaching a junior BA onto the Irish project - hopefully this won't take up too much time but we'll see, I suppose.

This weekend's been fun so far - yesterday the Kiwi and I went to the 'Opportunities New Zealand' show to get some info on things relating to moving there; freight, money transfers, jobs and so on. I'm not sure how helpful it was, but we did meet a shipping company who seemed to know what they were talking about, and I picked up a brochure from a recruitment person who had lots of technology delivery jobs by the looks of it. I'll be the first to confess that this isn't precisely where I see my career going, but it's the most likely option in an industry where ecommerce isn't really happening at any scale.

We also had a look in Trailfinders for flights over there via Canada (snowboarding), terrifically expensive as always, but some reasonable deals to be had and to be honest we'd sort of expected it wouldn't be cheap. Irritating that a single ticket is about the same price as a return though, not news to me but it always gets on my nerves. More on this as it develops.

In other news, I have a new toy to share with you. In the box on the right, I've linked up my Nike+ account, which shows all the running I'm doing. It's a little widget that fits on my running shoe and onto my iPod, which then tracks my pace, distance and times, and when my iPod is connected to my PC, uploads all the data to my profile on the Nike+ website. Brilliant.

In fairly typical fashion, I bought the widget and then had to buy an iPod; fortunately I picked one up on eBay for not very much. Today's run was to the tune of the new Elbow album, which is brilliant. I got the new REM one the other day too, but it still leaves me cold, much like every other thing they've ever done. I've really tried hard with that lot, but it's never worked, with the possible exception of Up, which most people seem to think is their bleakest and most depressing album... not sure what that says about me but somehow I found it a little more, um, profound than Shiny Happy People. That song provokes some very dark and violent feelings in me for some reason.

Oh the glamour

Proof that the consultancy life isn't all flash hotels and Michelin-starred dinners, I have here evidence of my rather unusual breakfast at the inimitable Leeson Bridge House, Dublin. On the plus side, they do cook your toast to order, and offer both "white" and "brown" varieties.

The Kiwi's Hot Buns

Apologies for the lack of bloggery lately. The past fortnight has been a bit mental to say the least, to the point where there've been several evenings when I've not even opened the laptop (unheard of in our house). So, here we are, at the end of the Easter weekend and rather than watch Hollyoaks, I'm getting back into it.

Following on from the last post, the review went well, salary bumped up a bit and more training on the way. Feedback from colleagues was excellent, some constructive feedback but on the whole a reasonably pleasant experience. So on the work front, I'm happy.

Two weeks left to go on the seemingly interminable Irish project, and although I know I've said that before, it looks like I will actually be off it on April 4th. Looks like I'll be onto a number of things following that date, one of which might be the Irish thing but I can manage a couple of days a week I reckon.

That said, they're squeezing what they can out of me whilst I'm still full time, going to Dublin tomorrow evening, coming back Wednesday night and going again next week. Bah.

In other news, the Kiwi made hot cross buns on Friday, and they were brilliant! Here they are... very impressed with her I am.

How good does this feel

It's been five long years, but this one's finally finished. There's still something of a mountain to climb, but this is a bit of a milestone for me nonetheless.

We are having a glass of (relatively inexpensive) wine to mark the occasion. I have my annual review tomorrow too, which could be interesting. More on that later...

Food, finally

Much as I really enjoyed our recent holiday and everything, sun, food, wine, friends, plans blah blah blah, how brilliant has it been to get back in my kitchen this weekend? Yesterday was spent mostly in a pub in town watching the rugby (boo) and eating rubbish but brilliant pub food. Today, I was feeling the need to get back into the cooking thing.

So, following a morning spent sharpening knives and plotting, harissa roast chicken, patatas bravas and purple sprouting broccoli turned up on the dinner table. Simple, but oh. my. god. how good. The only challenge remaining, apart from the industrial-sized clean up job to be done, is what to do with the small vat of bravas sauce we have left over. Superb cheese from Neal's Yard, too; Cropwell Bishop Stilton and Lancashire Poacher - both impulse buys on the way back from Monmouth on Friday afternoon.

Two other things of note before the week starts again:

1. This is an infallible and brilliant recipe. So much so that I managed to make it this afternoon without the Kiwi noticing.

2. The new Goldfrapp album, Seventh Tree, is brilliant. I have it as MP3, but it's well worth £7.99 - don't steal music, kids. Eagerly awaiting the next Elbow album, too...

The (very) cold light of day

And so back to earth with something of a thud. The flight back wasn't too bad, all things considered, but it was still 24 hours in the air and two in Hong Kong getting continual electric shocks from the luggage trolley and marvelling at their rather groovy new airport. Monday, returning at 1400ish, was a bit of a challenge, and Tuesday was just plain weird. I'm almost back to normal, I think.

So, work. Although Kathryn's earlier and highly perceptive comment about my apparent work/life balance does strike something of a chord with me, I'm going to give you all a quick work update nonetheless, as I'm sure you're all simply dying to know what the latest is in the ongoing saga.

The plan, as I think I might have mentioned, was for me to roll off the Irish thing upon going on hols, and to be onto something new on my return. This spectacularly hasn't happened, and as such I'm stuck in this role until the start of next month, whilst the project manager goes on holiday himself. I'm feeling pretty sanguine about it though, it's another month of billable work which means the whole of this quarter will be, and so hello bonus. Which is nice.

To be honest, the past three weeks have reoriented the Kiwi and myself a fair bit. With the prospect of moving to NZ now a firm reality, priorities have shifted towards making plans, saving cash and (in my case) working out what to do with the mountain of debt left over from my misspent youth that I'm still shovelling through. We're also keeping an eye on the Auckland housing market (slowly slipping... fingers crossed for a monumental crash) and the exchange rate (currently in my favour, not that great for sending pounds over though).

So, work-wise the remainder of this year will be centred around reading worthy work-related books (have just hit Amazon up for a load of very dull but probably useful books), not spending any money at all and getting some relevant training out of work before I leave. Oh, and trying to get a new job in a city 20,000km+ away without actually being there.

I've also promised myself that if at any point I don't use the gym at least twice a week, I'm cancelling my membership, as it's currently costing me around NZ$160 a month, which would pay for a sofa or something within a year, I'm sure. Although reading that, the irony of trading a gym membership in for a sofa isn't lost on me.

This could get interesting...

More holiday stuff...

The past week's been a bit of a whirlwind, and internet connections have been few and far between (and, hopefully understandably, finding one hasn't exactly been high on my agenda), hence the lack of posting. Looking at the coming couple of days, this post won't get published until I'm home.

Anyway, this is the start of our last night in Auckland, and I'm in the Hilton apartments on the quayside typing this quickly whilst the Kiwi and her sister are off exploring. Apparently there's a wedding somewhere in the hotel and they've gone to do whatever women do when in the proximity of one of those.

Following the last post, the wedding was lovely, the rain didn't let up until the late evening, and the Sunday was brilliant sunshine all day. We even managed to wander down to the beach for a swim, and fired up the barbeque in the afternoon, and a perfect day was rounded off by some of the biggest mosquitos I've seen coming out of hiding and getting themselves a piece of me. Those bites have been with me now for almost a week.

On the Monday we drove down to Hamilton, stayed with the sister that night and then carried on down to Hawke's Bay to stay a night with Nana. This was ace for a number of reasons: the drive from Taupo to Hastings has to rate as one of the best in the world, Hawke's Bay is proper wine country so we stopped in at the Black Barn for some of their excellent Pinot Gris, and I discovered Napier, which styles itself 'The Art Deco City', and mostly lives up to the name, particularly up on Bluff Hill, one of the prettiest residential bits of New Zealand I've seen.

Wednesday meant the drive back up to Hamilton, and another night with the sister featuring visiting a friend for their birthday, then Thursday we were back up in Auckland in a hotel. That day we drove around, lots, getting a feel for what each of the 'burbs are like and picking up the property press. Depressing stuff alright, but at least some of it's within what we expect will be our price range, unlike London, where absolutely none of it is.

Last night, Friday, we drove up to the north shore and had a look at some of the beaches up there, warm seas and soft sandy beaches, gorgeous stuff and only 30 mins out of the city.We spent the night with M&G in Titirangi, to the south and west of the city, almost on the southern coast. My favourite suburb to date, it was originally built up by a largely hippie-ish community, who helpfully didn't completely clear the land to build on, which means each house is nestled in the bush and the whole place, despite being quite close in, feels very secluded and quiet. Big old houses too, and not generally that pricey - the downsides unfortunately are 5 minutes too far out of the city and possibly a bit too secluded for some. Lots of hills mean you have to pick your house carefully or you'll end up with one with no sun - not good.

Anyway, this evening we'll be spending with Kiwi No 3 and her chap. She's been in hospital this week, poor thing, having fallen off her bike about 5 weeks ago and cut her knee, which developed into an infection up her whole leg. Hopefully the surgery will have sorted it. Kiwi No 2 is staying here with us too. The past few weeks have been nonstop weddings / babies / houses so tonight will be a nice respite from it, none of us having any of the above.

Wedding, storms, island

So we're out on Waikehe Island, just off the east coast of Auckland, for the wedding of two friends of the Kiwi, which is tomorrow. We're staying out here in a house with a handful of friends, in a gorgeous house with views out over the bay to the north east (possibly) and everything's ace.

Tonight we were out in a local bar, with the predictable local band playing, who (for their first gig together, apparently) weren't bad at all. About half way through the evening they played Pink Floyd's 'Wish You Were Here' which, cheesy as it is (knowing how simple it is to play), I couldn't hold back the memory of Paul teaching me how to play that particular track, not least the fact that he'd got me into Pink Floyd in the first place, and that his David Gilmour impression was absolutely spot on.

I guess this sort of thing will happen.

It's stormy here, with blistering winds whipping through the trees, making the telegraph lines whine and moan and rattling the windows. Our house is right in the path of it, rendering our beautiful deck and barbeque area useless, but there's something about being in a house that feels like it's barely holding back the elements that does feel rather cosy somehow.

Here's hoping the weather clears for the wedding tomorrow, but somehow I suspect it might not... fingers crossed anyway.