Scary Christmas adverts already on TV!

It's gradually getting warmer (except for today, which looked lovely and sunny, but was somewhat marred by quite a nippy breeze), but as it is now the 2nd week of November the Christmas decorations have started to appear...why do they (the generic "they" = whoever it is who thinks that it's appropriate to try to flog horrible Christmas cack 6 weeks too early) do it? Are they demented Christmas-ites who just love the festive season so much that they cannot bear to wait another minute? I was just getting myself psyched for Guy Fawke's Night and, boom!, there's a fake Christmas tree in the supermarket.

But enough of my ranting, I suppose you are desperate to hear what I've been up to for the last 7 days.

Most importantly, and despite our severely restricted team numbers (basically Jo, Harriet & me), we came a glorious 2nd at The Office pub quiz last Wednesday, which means a $30 bar tab. And this is despite our almost total lack of knowledge about sport (I know about British stuff, but sod all about rugby or cricket) and a slight intra-team dispute about the name of the group that starred as themselves in 'Speed 2' (none of us had seen it, but Harriet had the gall to suggest it might be 10 000 Maniacs - for those of you who care, it was UB40). Next week we'll have one of the founder team members back, Nick, from his stint doing some professional acting. I was a bit giddy at the quiz as I'd had an attack of being energetic and had spent the afternoon doing a 40km bike ride round the bays followed by 40 mins on the treadmill at the gym and a massage. Of course, I had decided to rehydrate with beer. Also, Jo's pal Hollie (who some of you will have met in London) has now resurfaced in NZ and is living at her sister's place just up the road, so we had to catch up with her too.

We also took the houndbeast to dog school. She didn't have to do anything as we were just there to do a recce and see if we liked the look of the place, but she proceeded to suck up to the dog trainer and get loads of treats for sitting attentively at her feet. She also decided that her new best pal was a bloody huge bull mastiff called Millie and proceeded to jump all over her head. Of course, since then Gert has learned that sitting quietly will get her a treat, but she only does it on her own terms...but she's still fabulous.

On Friday morning I headed up to the cafe where Amy works to help with the school lunches - each Friday one of the local schools let's their kids order a special lunch from the catering company Amy works for ('Dusted & Delicious'). The menu is classic kids' crap - hot dogs, pizza, pies, crisps etc - and I am temporarily checking the money etc. I have come to the conclusion that any kid who spends more than $5 on their lunch is either suffering from worms or has a quite astounding capacity for junk food (or maybe they are just lardy?). The afternoon was spent visiting my recruitment consultant, Lynley, and 'discussing' my job hopes (mainly we actually talked about films). In the evening we went to check out Amy in a play, "Attempts on Her Life", at The Garage, one of the spaces at the drama school. I quite enjoyed it, but I think mainly for the groovy moving scenery and because Amy had spent so long telling me how awful it was nothing could possibly be as tedious as she made it sound.

Saturday was spent at Jo's parent's place celebrating Jo's grandad's (Jim) birthday (79th) with the traditonal beer & BBQ, where Jim almost did for himself by getting macho and trying some scary chilli pickle. Anyone who's ever met Jim will realise quite how ludricrous the idea of him being macho is...but we did agree to try to play golf with him one weekend soon. Jim and Glenn (Jo's uncle) both became quite taken with young Gert and even took her for a walk for us! Excellent, should save us some energy over Christmas. As it was Bonfire Night we had planned to watch the fireworks in the harbour from the deck at Washington Avenue, but we soon realised that there were some very pesky trees in the way, so we switched to plan B, ie go into town. Then, out of the blue, Len phoned (for he was on shift on the ferry) to let us know that the ferry would be in dock and that he could get us on board to watch the fireworks close-up - huzzah!

So that's exactly what we did.

We were on the 'new' ferry (new to NZ, but a 'previously loved' ship) so got the grand tour, including the galley, which was bloody huge and had one of the scary uber dishwashers that uses water temperatures of about 1 million degrees, the like of which I hadn't seen since I worked on a dig in Israel in 1991 (where it proceeded to regularly scald the crap out of my hands whilst I was on kitchen duty). The fireworks rocked, by the way. However, Jo & I were slightly distracted by noticing that some genius had managed to set fire to the brush on top of Mount Vic, one of the larger hills overlooking Wellington. The Fire Brigade seemed to have it all under control by the time we headed home. Gertie seemed completely unfazed by the fireworks.

Sunday saw a day of total slackness. Our DVDs of series 4 of 'Alias' and series 2 of 'The L Word' arrived the day before, so most of the day was spent lounging on the sofa watching DVDs and eating.

As for today - Monday - all I've managed to achieve is to persuade the people we bought our car from that they should fix it for free seeing as it has an unnerving judder once it gets over 3000 revs and to buy some secondhand office shelves for our study/spare room. Also I have been commandeered to assist with some more catering tomorrow, which I'm really quite looking forward to and should earn me an extra $50. Marvellous!

On that note I'll get back to some important TV watching.

Arrividerci!

S
xxxx