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.

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.

Australia, New Zealand, funeral

So, moving on from the events in my last post, here we are in Auckland, following a few days in Surfer's Paradise in Australia with the Kiwi's parents. The flight over was a bit of a trial, 10 hours from Heathrow to LA, several hours in transit in LA whilst they do all the immigration nonsense, fingerprinting and photographing and such, even though we don't actually want to enter their daft country, including the comedy questionnaire which I might write more about in another post.

Next, 11 or 12 hours over to Auckland, then a couple of hours wait before a 3.5 hour trip over to Brisbane, where Mr Kiwi met us to drive us down to Surfer's. Fortunately my wonderful girl had upgraded us to business class for this leg, so we spent the time stretching out in their first class seats, drinking all sorts of nice stuff and eating as well as you can on a flight, I reckon. Being in front of the engines makes the whole thing a lot less stressful: quieter and, I reckon, less vibration. We checked out the price of the full trip in business, and it would have cost about three times the price, possibly not entirely worth it even so...

Anyway, superb couple of days in Surfer's, beach, pool, restaurant, boat sort of stuff, we treated to the best the place had to offer by the folks and shook off the tiredness of the journey and the pallor of London in a few days. We arrived in Auckland yesterday afternoon and met up with a few friends, tonight we'll be seeing a whole lot more of them after spending the day researching places to live in this city. We'll be moving here within the year, so this is an essential bit of orientation for us both, as I've only ever spent a couple of days here and she's not lived here in seven years.

Paul's funeral is at 0020 tomorrow morning NZ time (1120 Thursday GMT). It's slowly been sinking in over the past few days, has thrown a lot of things into sharp relief for me. I'll be sure to take a moment whilst it's all going on - it's still hard to find any words to make sense of this.

More on our travels when I get the chance - we're rarely in one place for that long but some of our places advertise wi-fi so I'll do what I can.