All quiet on the western front.

Yes, Gert & I are taking full advantage of having the house to ourselves. We've ensconced ourselves in the study/spare bedroom/room that desperately needs re-organising & tidying, the heater is switched on, I have a cup of tea and the newly donated cordless phone is on my desk, so I only have to leave the room to use the loo and/or get more tea (the two seem oddly connected). This is the only really sensible course of action as a steady rain is falling outside (G & I have already fearlessly ventured out for an hour of vigorous yomping up & down the hills of Melrose) and a particularly unpleasant & chill southerly wind is due to hit Wellington later on. Which sucks because I have to return a couple of DVDs (Brokeback Mountain & The Brothers Grimm - an accidental Heath Ledger marathon) before 6pm and that means going out in the rain.

Brokeback Mountain. Can't say I was too excited by it, didn't find it anywhere near as affecting in the banality of tragedy/tragedy of banality stakes as The Remains Of The Day or Vera Drake, but I guess it would have annoyed many a manly man. And the 'ageing' make-up was shocking, looked really like something out of a school play. The Brothers Grimm just had an awful lots of distractingly 'northern' accents considering it was meant to be in Germany.

The steady rain that is falling is causing some concern as an equal amount of it seems to be coming through our laundry ceiling - about 2 inches yesterday & an inch & a half so far today - and the crack in the ceiling is getting significantly larger. I did the obvious thing of getting out the ladder and climbing up to peer at the roof and though there don't appear to be any holes the roof is not sloping as it should. So the water is just pooling and seeping through. And the weather forecast is for rain for the rest of the week. Somehow we're going to have to fix some temporary tarpaulin to at least try to stem some of the flow, otherwise we're going to be in big trouble. Christ alone knows how though.

So. Jo & I went snowboarding for a few days up at Turangi. I can now officially state that I am a much better snowboarder than I am a skier, but that isn't saying much because I was a terrible skier. Really appalling. But when it comes to snowboarding I managed to not only get down the kiddie slope without killing myself, I also managed to stop, do at least one turn and was able to get up when I fell over. Hooray for me! Jo is very pleased that we may finally have a winter sport that we can both participate in, but I'm thinking I'll need at least a few more days practising before I'll be able to do anything much more than just slowly creep downhill with a scowl of grim determination. After a couple of days the weather got a bit grotty, so we decided that we would drive back down to Waikanae to meet up with Len, Amy & Gertie, giving me ample time to do some driving practise. I managed to get us safely to Wanganui via State Highway 4 despite the rain, landslips (one clipped the back of the car) & trees in the road. Very exciting. For anyone who is interested, SH4 is one of those winding, hairpin, up hill & down dale, only driven by the people who own farms up there, take this corner too fast & you'll end up in a field 40 feet below type of roads. And of course we went down it after heavy rains.

Once back in Wellington Jo spent a the next few days helping Amy finish off her packing and get ready for her departure to Auckland, all of which was pretty straightforward despite Amy misreading her ticket and arriving at the airport as her flight was departing. Actually that was just as well because she'd left her purse in our kitchen & it gave Jo time to drive back home & pick it up before her brand newly booked flight left at 4pm. A couple of days later Jo Ecclestone headed back up to Auckland prior to her onward journey to LA, and Jo & I had the place to ourselves. Unfortunately, Jo went to play netball that lunchtime (Thursday) for the Telstraclear company team and managed to spectacularly sprain her ankle (though she did drive home - no one knows how). It puffed up quite magnificently and by Saturday she hobbled to the hospital to get it looked at, they promptly signed her off for another week. But it meant that we had plenty of time to finish watching Bleak House on DVD.

Jo finally got back to work today, ankle still swollen (the physio says it may take another couple of weeks to get back to normal) and the grot & I are languishing in the silence of the house, just the rain to keep us company and only another 2 hours before I have to take the DVDs back. Might wear my waterproof trousers, should do the trick.

Adios!