We made it out alive!

I feel it is my duty as an ex-pat to flaunt my sunny Christmas by letting you all know that I did indeed manage to get myself sunburnt on Boxing Day. I'm not sure how because I did go through the ritual of dunking myself in enough factor 30 sunscreen to cover an entire British summer, but guess that's just the way it is...

If it's any consolation Jo & I will miss the best of summer over here by coming over to Finland/UK and freezing our butts off. Great.

Back to Christmas/New Year - we arrived at Jo's folks place at Waikanae on Christmas Eve all ready for a few days of R&R, dog in tow (who Len had very kindly built a rather fabulous kennel for - it even has her name on it), and proceeded to raucously celebrate pre-Christmas with much alcohol and a surprisingly vocal game of Scrabble. Jo & I had brought our tent as we realised that if we were planning to go camping over New Year then we should check that it was still in one piece and, sensibly, had put it up before we began our Scrabble frenzy. So off we staggered, clutching torches, into the pitch blackness of the back garden (sending the dog off to her new kennel for the night), and crashed out. Not for long though, for mysterious snuffling noises awoke me from my slumber. Feeling courageous I flamboyantly unzipped the sleeping section of the tent (our tent is really quite roomy) to find out what kind of beastie had dared to sneak into the entrance bit only to find myself up close & personal with Gertie's nose. She'd figured out that she could easily crawl under the flysheet and was making a valiant effort to claw her way through the inner tent to get to us. Jo was adamant that Gert shouldn't be allowed in the sleeping bit with us, but seeing as there was sod all we could do to make her go into the kennel, she spent the rest of the night sleeping in the central part of the tent, stretching the inner liner as far as she could in an attempt to be as close to us as possible. Considering how knackered she was the next day I'm guessing it wasn't the best night's sleep she'd ever had. In fact, Jo's grandad spent most of the day suggesting that there was something wrong with our dog seeing as she was practically comatose.

The rest of Christmas passed without anything significant happening and we headed back to Wellington so that Jo could savour the delights of work before we went a-camping for the New Year. Which would have been great if we hadn't arrived back at Green Street and realised that we'd left our house keys at Waikanae...luckily we had the spare keys for Jo's folk's place and were able to hide out there until Amy returned to town.

Thus, on Friday 30th Jan we found ourselves once more heading north (stopping briefly at Waikanae to leave Gert with Jo's folks) to the heady delights of Vinegar Hill's annual New Year gay extravaganza - woo hoo! Now I really do not have the energy to go into any gory detail about Vinegar Hill, so I shall summarise our trip in a series of bullet points.

. It is not advisable to camp in close vicinity to the campsite's giant bonfire - people/cars/tents all end up with a slightly updated Pompeii theme
. Really good earplugs = essential
. if entertainment is voluntary/free expect little in terms of quality, but the predictable in terms of range ie. drag queen, lesbian singer/songwriter guitarist (even the 'love' songs were depressing), drag queen, buttocks & boobs, elderly drag queen, drag king, Guns 'N Roses karaoke, drag queen, disco (Hi-NRG/Euro).
. if entertainment is voluntary & gathered from a pool of about 500 people expect the worst. You won't be disappointed.
. Bring your own teabags
. Don't drink the majority of your booze on the first night, despite the temptation/feelings of desperation
. Kiwi lesbian campers (I can't comment on the blokes for obvious reasons) seem to have very low squeamishness thresholds when it comes to campsite toilets
. they also seem to have a very low cold temperature tolerance when it comes to river swimming
. Jo is very very good at hitting leaves with pebbles in fast flowing water
. Glow worms are very pretty
. Kiwi lesbians seem afraid of London S&M ladies (clearly not versed in the old 'just maintain a disinterested eye-contact & keep walking/smile politely and decline' protocol)
. People who park their motorcycles right outside my tent and then decide to start them up at 4am are wankers
. Repeatedly playing 'Push the Button' by the Sugarbabes doesn't make it any less crap

So, having realised that 3 days was our limit, we headed back to Waikanae to collect Gert and then back to Wellington. Upon our return to Green Street this time we noticed that one of our living room front windows had fallen out, frame and all. Luckily no one else seemed to have noticed and everything was intact, and lucky we came back that day because the overnight weather was a shocker and would have wrecked the downstairs of the house if we hadn't boarded it up. Well, if we hadn't asked the bloke next door to do it for us and paid him in beer. Just to confirm our weather worries one of the neighbour's windows went kablooey too.

Since then we've been pootling around the house making the place look half-way decent, drove to Auckland & back to attend a wedding party (great party, bloody long drive), Gertie passed her puppy school grading with flying colours (and has since been a pain in the arse - we are still working on getting her come back everytime she's called rather than just wehn she feels like it), and we've just had a long weekend in celebration of Wellington Day (?). We hightailed it out of town, but there was some extreme sports BMX/skateboard thingy on in the city for the young folk. I noticed them building the ramps etc for it as I cycled past on the way to the gym last Friday, but thought I'd best leave it to the professionals.

Only 3 weeks until we hit Europe now. Scary. But hopefully I'll get back in the blogging zone and be ready for some more Monday updates.

Adios!