Busting out all over....

Those of you I have emailed will know that this refers to my burgeoning waistline, which has miraculously expanded over the last couple of months. In fact I am pretty sure it did most of its expansion over the last couple of weeks. Perhaps I could try to blame it on cabin pressure? Or perhaps not…so the healthy eating regime has begun and I have taken to walking to & from town. Distance-wise this is not too far and only takes about 20-30 minutes, but the return leg involves trudging up one almighty hill. I’m hoping that a couple of weeks of this will at least go someway to reducing the wobbly load. Stranger things have happened.

Due to limited internet access I have also made the executive decision to make blog entries once a week. We have kindly been loaned Jo’s parent’s laptop, so I can lurk in our basement boudoir and concoct entries in Word that will then be transferred to the blog. It kind of makes sense, you know it does.

So…Wellington in winter. Having been used to dealing with the seasonal & time difference from the UK to NZ angle, I am really struggling with switching it around. My brain just can’t quite compute that the weather will get warmer as we head towards the end of the year, and that I am now ahead of the UK. This hasn’t been helped by the weather here being unseasonably fine for the last week (I have still insisted on wearing my woolly hat, which is slightly greying from Inca Trail filth), although today the southerly chilly breeze appeared and I was required to wear my flouncy denim rock star coat to keep my bum from freezing. It gained lots of what I can only assume were admiring looks from passers by. Either that I had achieved the dreaded ‘geography teacher’ look. If I carry on wearing it I suspect I will become known as ‘the woman in the bloody awful coat’…hooray! Have spent most of the last week acquainting myself with Wellington, demonstrating my natural coolness I accidentally ventured into one of the city’s most fashionable cafés, although this was somewhat negated earlier in the day by getting myself eaten by a lift door (of course the lift was full of people) and then having to athletically leap back out when Jo pointed out it was the wrong lift. I think Jo was actually more humiliated than I was, for I know I am a spaz.

On the plus side (as I am now), I have found a job to apply for. Fingers crossed I’ll have some money heading my way, assuming they actually even want to interview me. Today was spent writing my CV, and desperately trying to remember what I used to do for a living and how I could make it sound impressive. The post requires some knowledge of or desire to learn about Maori issues, language etc, so I have been off to the library and am desperately boning up on subjects like the Treaty of Waitangi. Unfortunately my pronunciation is ludicrous, so I should look and sound fully fresh off the boat. Oh how I look forward to that. I have also been scouring the volunteering positions that are open. So far my eye has been caught by the SPCA, which is quite near where we will be living, and a couple of environmental groups. So you can look forward to tales of my being attacked by dogs and falling onto kiwis. I also considered the Samaritans, but thought that this might not be my best introduction to a new country. I thought a youth group might be fun and get me off my butt and doing something entertaining. Who knows? But I think that will be my task next week – to get out there and meet some people.

Tonight we are off to the cinema to endure the delights of Tom Cruise in “War of the Worlds”. I’ll let you know if he manages to save us all from impending doom. I’m guessing he will, and I’m also guessing that they won’t stick to the original ending. Let’s hope it’s a better conclusion than “Independence Day” where I seem to recall the aliens were defeated by a lack of Norton Anti-virus. I’m also keen to start checking out some of Wellington’s 400 or so nosheries, although may have to start at the cheaper end of the market.

So, Wellington doesn’t seem so bad so far. I’ll keep you updated.

Lots of love
S
xxxx

Sunday 21st August update…
Seeing as I seem to be getting rather rudely heckled by some of you for my tardiness in blogging I thought I’d better add a quick update here, but be warned I will become immune to your abuse!

The redneck hat is being ‘rested’ right now thanks to a combination of it being winter here and it being very windy here, although it does have a rather dashing cord that can be used to stop it flying off your head (presumably whilst sitting in the back of a pick-up truck). It shall be whisked out with a flourish come springtime. But my woolly hat is doing a fine job in its place.

The big news is that Jo & I are now the proud owners of a car! Despite our hopes of being very new age-y and buying a hybrid car we ended up getting a Holden Barina, which as far as I can tell is a Vauxhall Corsa with a different name. The important thing is that I can now start driving lessons, and that it has a CD player. Gotta have priorities. So we whizzed up to the beach house to dig out our insurance documents from the garage, along with some DVDs and some car music CDs drank all of Jo’s parents’ red wine, crashed out then headed back to Wellington earlier today. We stopped on the way for ice cream, but I had manuka honey & fig and manuka honey is meant to be very good for you & figs are v. healthy so I am considering it a part of my healthy eating plan. I then, in a fit of enthusiasm, began to dig what I hope will become a vegetable patch in the garden, but I think I may have chosen a really crappy shaded spot. We shall see.

What else has been going on? Erm, ‘War of the Worlds’ was actually much better than I thought it would be, and they have stuck to the original ending, Amy took us to a very nice Malaysian place afterwards where I proceeded to pig out on a vast plate of stir fry & rice, but the healthy eating plan is still a plan. I managed to finally write my CV and send off my job application, so should hear next week if I’m going to get an interview and I’ve been trying to think of things to do to keep myself occupied. I went to the SPCA to find out about volunteering but it seemed to be mainly staffed by unusual volunteers of the type that ‘prefer animals to people’ and it was all a bit whiffy, so I mumbled some weak excuse about having to check the validity of my tetanus jab and swished out in my rock star denim coat. Then I was going to help with the replanting of natural plants at a local stream, but I should’ve been there at 9.30am on Saturday and I didn’t wake up until 10am. Oops. So, no joy there. Not sure what else I have on my hectic social agenda. I quite fancy going 10 pin bowling to relive some of my Streatham days/nights, but that would involve persuading some other people to go with me, maybe I’ll try my powers of persuasion tonight and lure folk with tales of sweaty miscoloured shoes?

Will endeavour to keep it regular from now on – wouldn’t like to disappoint my fans….

S