Not being an idiot. It's a pain in the ass.

Not being an idiot is the reason I found myself standing outside Christchurch Airport at 6:45am, freezing cold, having waited 30 minutes for a bus that should have been there at 6:30.  I'm not having a go at all.  I mean Jesus, it's not good in Christchurch at the moment, not good at all.  I couldn't care how long it takes them to turn up given what is happening up there, and I completely blame myself for waiting for so long.  You see, if I was an idiot, I would turn up at 6:30 on the dot, or 6:31, and hold the bus up while all the non-idiots who understand these things run on a schedule so it's a good idea to get there early so it can get away on time get to sit around and wait for even longer while I obliviously stumble down the aisle of the bus twatting everyone in the head with my idiot elbow and idiot bag.

Deep breath, rewind a second.  It's March now.  That's the third month, and I haven't let you guys know what's been happening in my life for almost 3 months now.  For that I deeply offer absolutely no apologies whatsoever.  I began writing something in the new year, but for some reason couldn't be bothered to finish it.  In fact, I know exactly what the reason is - click here for an explanation.  Just to clarify, that link is NOT porn.  Porn is the foremost and best reason not to get anything done on the internet, but this time it's not the fault of porn.  I guess I have just been too busy.  Or maybe too happy?

So I am now in my 95th hour of my latest, and hopefully last effort to quit smoking.  What made me do it this time?  Strangely it was something that hasn't had any effect on me before now, a warning on an anti-smoking advert.  I've known ever since my first cigarette that they ain't good.  They taste like rigor mortis and will turn your eyes purple and your bladder inside-out, we all know that.  Warnings on packets, billboards, television, no effect at all.  In fact there was once an advert on television showing the clogged artery of a smoker.  As it was sliced open, a fatty substance not unlike lard leaked out like toothpaste being squeezed out of a tube.  As a big fan of fatty food, rather than put me off smoking, all I could think about was how bacon would taste if I fried it in that.

But just recently there was an advert in Australia, a guy coughs into a handkerchief and as the camera pulls away, it's full of blood.  And that's what got me.  I don't want to ever have that cough.  That first one where it slowly dawns on you that this signifies the sped-up countdown to the day you die.  I fucking love smoking, and I love nicotine, and I love the feeling you get when you haven't had one for a while - you have that first drag and get the feeling of elation and euphoria.  And until now the risks have been there, but in the background.  But this one advert hammered the risks home, so that's it.  Game over.  No more.  From now on, it's just me and the crackpipe.

Australia, that's right.  I have been to Australia recently.  In fact that's why I was at Christchurch Airport.  I spent a bit of time in Melbourne catching up with some friends there.  Mostly drinking to be honest, 3 almost solid days of it.  Then spent some time in Sydney catching up with friends there, and doing touristy stuff like the Opera House, Harbour Bridge and Bondi Beach before returning to Melbourne to catch up with a few more friends before heading back over here.  The trip up to get to the airport is around a 7 hour journey.  The first six I spent rubbing my right eye as my vision was blurred as I looked out the window.  As it transpired it was just a greasy window and not my eye.  And upon running home from work to collect my luggage before running to get the bus, my earphones broke.  Which is typical just before a journey of that length.

Running home from work to collect my luggage?  Yup, I can do that now.  Late into January I moved house.  Where I was around a 25 minute walk from town, I am now 2.  2 minutes.  I can spit from my bedroom window towards the centre of town, casually saunter down towards the centre, and stand there with my mouth open ready to catch it again.  It's dangerous, but yet so much easier.  The only down side so far is that in the first few weeks it came with the guy who owns it living in another house out the back.  And he can talk. Being 79 (I presume.  He has mentioned a thousand times that he is nearly 80), he has many stories.  A lot involve the previous tenants and the state they left the house in (he has told me 'No snowboards in the house' at least once for every year of his life), even more involve basic things like how to flush the toilet, but most involve friends of his that, naturally as he is approaching 80, are all dead.  Something he seems to take pride in, maybe deservedly so.  He is a man you only read about in stories.  His eyebrows are both resplendent and relentless, with one eyebrow hair permanently tickling his lower cheek.  He appears every now and again at the window like a septuagenarian human embodiment of the Microsoft Office paperclip, if the Microsoft Office paperclip were to say "I see you are flushing the toilet.  Would you like me to remind you that you should only tap the button lightly so it doesn't get stuck? By the way, I'm nearly 80, I don't want any snowboards in the house, and all of my friends are dead".  But by far the most amazing moment I have had with him has been in the bathroom.  Stop sniggering, it's going elsewhere.  As someone who relishes the opportunity to say the most repugnant things sometimes purely for the reaction and resulting awkwardness, he outplayed me at my own game with this one.  Stood in the bathroom, he was talking about baths, showers, and his wife.

"You see at my age (I'm nearly 80 by the way), I like nothing better than lying in a nice warm bath.  It does wonders for my joints.  But my wife, she has to shower a lot.  You see when you're a woman at that age you can't have a bath because there is seeping, and if stuff can seep out, it can also seep in" - and if you imagine the word seeping coupled with his hand waving around the general area of his genitalia, you will understand why I developed a little soft spot for him.  And also why I spent the rest of the day trying my utmost to keep down my cheese and crisp sandwich.

But he is now gone (back to Dunedin I mean, not 'with his friends'), and the only way he interferes now is by phone - it would seem he has spies in town as he called me yesterday to tell me it's about time the lawn was mowed.  I presume it's spies, and not webcams.  Or at least I hope.  But then being nearly 80, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't know what a webcam is, even though I have no doubt he would be able to offer much advice on how best to use one.  All in all though, it's a good move.  It has rendered taxis a thing of the past, which I could have done with on New Years Eve.

So New Years Eve, I've lost count of the amount of times I have bitched about fireworks so I won't go into the evening.  Aside from to say that the entire population of Queenstown was trying to get a taxi the same time I was, so I ended up walking home drunk after hitting a bar and a club which played some of the most up to date music in New Zealand (mostly from the Manchester scene in the 80's).  However I was thinking about New Years Resolutions this year.  I have made them in the past, and they never last.  Quitting smoking has always been a big one, but then it gets to after midnight, and I'm still drinking, so I may as well carry on smoking until the following morning.  Which is ultimately a fall at the first hurdle on that one.  Getting fit/joining a gym?  Rubbish.  Go once or twice, cancel membership.  Eating healthily is also crap.  What's the first thing you need after a night out on the piss?  Junk food.  Another immediate fail.
I have tried others too, stupid ones like speaking in Haiku's all the time.  That one didn't work.  It's way too hard to do that.  So I just gave up.
And talking in bullet points, harder than it looks.  So this year I have come up with one that I intend to follow through on, spending time with boy-mates.

I have boy-mates.  I left most of them at home (in England) but I do have some.  For some reason over the past few years, maybe longer, I seem to have spent a lot more of my time hanging out with girls.  Not that it is a bad thing, not at all.  In fact it's amazing.  I have a job in a position that is mostly filled by girls and I love it.  It may have something to do with childhood obesity, and not being the most attractive kid so I am trying to make up for it now.  But I know nothing about football or cars these days, and most conversations I have with guys are generally non-starters unless we are talking about girls, so it works.  However, I've discovered there are downsides.  Sometimes there is nothing better than spending all day down one of the many locals drinking, chatting, putting the world to rights until that time you stand up to go to the toilet, and your legs buckle underneath you, with another guy.  A mate.  Someone who understands what it is like to have a penis and lots of girl mates.  So this year my resolution is not so much to go out and find boy-mates, just to spend more time with the ones I already have.  Go out for beers with them more often.  Hang out more.  Do guy shit.

Which brings me right back to Christmas.  My Christmas was great, thanks for asking.  You didn't, and you don't really care, but I don't care that you don't care, and you got this far so I'll continue.  A few of us were meant to be going rafting Christmas day.  Would have been great.  Didn't happen.  The weather wasn't great, the river was quite high, people kept dropping out, so it got cancelled.  Not a bad thing at all.  We had some people staying over for a few days, so the house was full, there were a few of us over Christmas dinner, and I proceeded, as usual, to smash the shit out of a bottle of Jim Beam until I couldn't remember what talking without closing one eye, pointing and dribbling was like.  It was an amazing time though.  We hit up a party later on, and things get blurry from there, but essentially Boxing Day at work at 7:20am was one of the worst, lowest points of my life.  Ever.  And just recently, I caught up with one of the visitors over Christmas in Melbourne, which brings me right back to....

Christchurch Airport.  I flew in and landed from Melbourne at about 11:30 in the evening.  My bus was picking me up at around 6:30am.  That is a window of 7 hours, some of it taken up by customs and baggage reclaim, but the majority of it time to kill at the airport.  And so I propped myself up against the wall and slowly sapped the battery out of every portable device I had to hand.  Laptop and iPod, that's it really. And it's not like I am standing out from the rest at all.  There's a lot of people there in sleeping bags, with their baggage.  It's obvious that they are travelers from the amount of wristbands they are each saving the world with, as well as that they are sleeping next to huge backpacks, but I don't think I stand out from them.  I'm sat there in clean, and in fact relatively new clothes, just listening to my iPod.  Minding my own business.  Trying my best not to smoke, which is surprisingly easy if you just, don't, smoke.

I'm slowly approached by a gentleman that reeks of cigarette smoke.  I can smell it now, I'm a self-righteous ex-smoker of about 12 hours by this point, so I can instantly smell it on the unfortunate.  He doesn't look too scruffy, his clothes look reasonably clean.  He has a straggly, but not entirely unkempt beard which is stained yellow above his top lip, and looks like he may appear substantially older than he actually is.  He has a gammy eye, it's grey, marble like. I presume it's cataracts, but the entire eyeball is grey.  It's the type of eye that would scare the shit out of children if he unexpectedly looked at them.

As he approached me, I hovered over the pause button on my iPod, and I just about made out his greeting.  It was a generic 'Excuse me mate' greeting, I didn't need to hear it to know he said it.  I hit pause, and looked up with a slight tinge of sadness into his one good, one bad eye.
"Do you have any money for a coffee or anything"?  He asked me.  I honest to God had nothing.  I had about 50 Australian cents at the most (which probably could have bought a coffee farm in NZ), but nothing else.  And I felt bad as I patted my empty pockets, shrugged my shoulders and said:
"I have absolutely nothing on me at all".
He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a wad of notes, and started peeling off a ten to hand to me.  I had to interrupt...
"I mean, I have the means to buy one if I want, I just thought you were.....",
"No", he said, "I wasn't scrounging, it's just you look so down and desolate....I just wanted to help......".

And at this point I had no idea what to feel.  At first I was offended that he thought I was desperate.  I mean, admittedly it had been going on 20 hours since my face last saw sleep, but it's not far off the face I normally have on me.  And it's not like I was wearing old clothes or anything.  But then I felt embarrassed, because I thought he was homeless, and he clearly knew that I thought that from my reaction.  Then my heart was warmed slightly by the fact that in these sad times, there are still people out there that are willing to help out complete strangers in their hour of need.  Even though it clearly wasn't my hour of need of course.  And that I could be so much more unlucky than I am, I could be living in a country where that didn't happen, where no-one gave a shit about anyone but themselves.  And I was enveloped, and confused by all these emotions in a split second (to be honest, probably more offended than anything), so I sat there in my first ever homeless/not homeless stalemate, and did what any good human being would do in that situation.

I slowly looked up with tears in my eyes, and a tremble in my voice, and said:
"Yeah.........times have been kind of tough mister.......".
Ker-ching!

---

HEY, LOOK AT ME, I'M BONO!!!
Not because I am wearing sunglasses indoors.  Nor because I am wearing leather pants, despite having both the legs AND the buttocks for them.
Mainly because I am putting a link here for donations.  If you feel like it.  The most recent earthquake has hit Christchurch hard.  It's sad to see the amount of damage done to a city which just a week before seemed to be recovering from the September quake.  At the time of writing, the death toll stands at 154, however with many more missing, this is expected to rise.  The damage estimate for the city is $12 billion.
If you feel so inclined, you can donate here:
Red cross or
NZ Government Appeal
What makes me a smug little Irish twat?  I've donated fuck all so far. Not a cent.  Not yet anyway.  At the time of writing, I have just caned my entire bank account in Australia.  It's expensive over there.  However I have just quit smoking.  So any cash over the next week that I would have spent on cigarettes will go to the people of Christchurch.  Which is really the least I could do.

Be prepared.

Way back in December 2003, myself and three friends went for a weekend in Amsterdam. I am sure it is a lovely place, however we were staying in the middle of the red light district, so my views of the city were tainted by, to be frank, drug dealers and whores. Not my cup of tea to be honest, those drug dealers. And the closest we got to any kind of sex show was in Hooters, which was just ropey girls with huge knockers, covered by t-shirts. Nothing against that, they're not pieces of meat after all. But if I'm paying exorbitant prices for tepid lager, I would like a side order of at least a bit of nipple please. Especially when that glass of lager is only half full due to the other half being taken up by head (too obvious). Their refusal to top up our lager only led us to spend a lot of time in the hotel bar.

It was during one of these afternoons that I was casually gazing out of the window, across the canal. On the other side of the road, there was a bum. A tramp, not an anus. He was ambling along the sidewalk, staggering a little, clearly worse for wear. After stumbling for a few minutes, nature called and he slowly worked his way towards a covered doorway. I assumed he was just going for onesies, but he slowly pulled down his pants and squatted, and did his dirty business right there on the street. Impressed?? Of course not. Neither was I at the time. In fact up until this point I was positively disgusted. But then as he stood he slowly reached into his jacket and pulled out a full roll of toilet paper, ripped off a couple of sheets, wiped, discarded, pants up, staggered on. And as disgusting as the initial act of defecation was, I can't help but feel he redeemed himself somewhat by actually carrying a roll of paper around with him for such emergencies. I was pretty awestruck if I'm honest, it takes a special person to be that prepared.

Preparation has never been one of my strong points, which is how I found myself at Heathrow airport after travelling for around 40 hours, maybe a bit more, with a mouth that felt like I had spent the entire journey licking Amsterdam Bums bum. Once again I had loaded my bag with entertainment - laptop, more books than I could read in 3 lifetimes, magazines, iPod, camera, a huge bag of gummi bears thanks to the wonderful girlfriend, but no toothpaste, or toothbrush, or anything that would make sitting next to me on a nigh on 30 hour flight a pleasant experience.

The first 9 hours of travel was by coach, essentially the same journey I made from Christchurch to Queenstown almost a year ago but in reverse. From Queenstown to Lake Tekapo the driver was a chap I worked with during the winter, so the journey was filled with chat. Being an occasional miserable bastard, I would have been quite happy with the iPod in, but decided to be amiable for a while, however when New Driver took over at Tekapo he began by asking me a few questions about how I knew Previous Driver which I cleverly parried with one word answers, before settling in to listen to inane chatter on the iPod. And becoming silently enraged by a husband asking his wife rather loudly as they boarded the coach where the best place to sit for her travel sickness would be. Please. That loudly? Mentioning travel sickness? Sorry, would you like me to give up my seat at the front of the coach so you don't get all queasy? Or wait, is it because you want to sit at the front of the coach to get better views? I'm not moving, so I would suggest you just man the fuck up and deal with it. We are human beings, we were designed to move. Get over it.

As we entered Christchurch in the early evening, we became embroiled in the first traffic I have seen for a while. Given my ultimate destination - the United Kingdom - this just brought back memories of being stuck in four lanes of stop/start traffic, moving an average of 3 inches per millennia. This was no M25, this was New Zealand traffic, which essentially consists of more than 5 cars but less than 20, so we moved on pretty quick. My eyes lit up as we passed Warehouse Extra, then my heart sank as I remembered it's as disappointing as gearing up for a huge poo only for it to drop out in pellet form. My heart sank even further as suppressed memories of Masturbating Israeli reared their ugly heads again.

I arrived at Christchurch airport with approximately a third of the gummi bears left, and began the epic flight back to England. I am completely torn as far as flying goes. It's clearly a necessary evil, and I would rather do the entire New Zealand to England in one trip without breaking it up, but it's a lot of time to sit in one place a zillion miles in the sky. Sure, they try and make it as comfortable as possible by supplying you with a fibre-glass blanket and a pillow made up of 4 sheets of A4 paper folded in half, pritt-sticked together and stuffed with shredded paper, but there is no getting around the fact that the person in front of you will always recline their seat as fast and as hard as possible at the exact moment you are taking a sip of molten coffee. I'm not worried about Deep Veined Thrombosis, which is another thing that just requires people to stop wearing stupid socks and running on the spot for 10 minutes out of every 15, and just manning up a smidgen. I'm not too worried about major incidents either, after all whatever is going to happen, is going to happen. What does concern me is who I will end up sitting next to. Will they smell? Will they be fat? I paid for this seat, I don't want half of someone else spilling over into it. Snorer? Frenchman? The horrific possibilities are endless. The last thing I want is what happened on the way to Canada a few years back. A French-Canadian woman who insisted on talking to me instead of her husband, but only when I was eating. Asking me questions as my fork was nearing my mouth. Irritating to the nth degree. And French-Canadians are the worst kind of person. These guys are Canadian, but they actually want to be French. Imagine that.

But on the plus side, and this is what I really look forward to about flying, I have pretty much an entire day where I don't have to worry about food. The only critical decision I have to make is do I want chicken or beef. Or lamb or chicken. Or chicken or fish (chicken; as a seafood-phobe the thought of sitting in an aircraft cabin filled with the aroma of fish disgusts me almost as much as sitting next to a French-Canadian). I don't have to stand in the supermarket going back and forth over what I want for dinner, what I already have to make the dish, what I need, oh no. For a day I am told when to eat, pretty much what to eat, and that to me is utter bliss.

Another plus side? Oh yes, I am completely on a roll here with the positivity, I was flying back via Hong Kong. Hong Kong airport is great. L.A. is terrible. At L.A. when you alight the plane they usher you into a room for a few hours where you have to sit and wait for refuelling, with no opportunity to do anything else but sit there and concentrate on not looking like you are about to do something bad for fear of getting shot by an over-zealous gun-toting cowboy who clocked you as a potential fundamentalist just because you have a little bit of a beard. In Hong Kong they let you back into the departure area. You can walk around, check the Internet, have a Starbucks, and more importantly have a smoke. There are still smoking rooms in Hong Kong airport which is phenomenal in my opinion. Sure, they have glass fronts which I assume is so that you can sit in there and watch the world go by still feeling like a part of it, when in fact it actually makes you feel like a monkey in a cage, a relic of days gone by, a window for children to point at and ask their parents what those creatures are doing? For the parents to reply that they are smoking, and that it used to be a really cool thing to do in the old days and that it used to be good for you until science got in the way. But still, breaking up the journey with a smoke? Awesome. Yes please.

When I got back to Heathrow with rotten-arse-mouth, I was collected by my Father and taken home where I have now been for a little over a week. And it has been a manic week of catching up with people. My time is limited, and I have spent a lot of it writing this fetid nonsense, but I am catching up with who I can, when I can. It is difficult to get everyone in as for some reason people have jobs which means their days are filled with essential activities, but I have been doing what I can. And there is a lot to catch up on and a lot of things I have done that I didn't realised I missed so much until now.

That list includes, but is not limited to family, friends and everything that has happened in all of their lives while I have been away, good curry, McDonalds breakfasts, breakfast in greasy spoon cafes filled with gypsies, proper pubs, black pudding, Wensleydale with cranberries, pickled onion Monster Munch, Space Raiders, Pork Scratchings, Chocolate Caramel Digestives. So apart from the people I love, I have mainly missed food. It seems there isn't much about the U.K. itself I have missed. I haven't travelled too much on the motorways so the traffic I touched on earlier hasn't been much of an issue. I have used the Underground a few times which is always a great experience if you like every inch of your personal space occupied by the founding members of the London Halitosis Society. And I have also tried the train too, and enjoyed one half of a chavvy conversation from a lardy chick whose clothes were way too tight, which went along the lines of "Nahhh, but oi'm ahhnly entoitled to a two bedroom haaarrsse innnooiii".

So despite the general public getting on my tits a bit, which was nailed on to be honest, it's been a great trip back so far. It's been great to catch up with those I have managed to see so far, and I hope to squeeze in as many as possible, but please accept my apologies if I don't get to see you as my time and funds here are limited, it doesn't necessarily mean I don't like you.

And you'll be glad to know the very first thing I did when I got back was stock up on tiny soaps, toothpastes and deodorants in preparation for the journey back to NZ. As it transpires I can be prepared if I really put my mind to it.

Road Trippin'

We have already established that I am lazy, and that I am a very bad tourist. The worst, in fact. Present me with the most beautiful scenery in the world and the chances are I will sit and people watch the whole time whilst making snidey, derogatory, and if I may say so myself hilariously witty comments about the gurgling bum-wits staring open mouthed at the natural beauty I should myself be bum-witted about.

For example, spending three and a half months in Wanaka in New Zealand, then coming home. I traveled all the way to the other side of the globe and didn't venture out of my temporary home town that much at all. Yes, it's true. I was berated by friends for that one, so wanted to do something about it this time round.

Way back at the end of 2009, I managed to get my hands on a pair of tickets to see Faith No More in Christchurch. For the uninitiated, Faith No More are by far the single greatest band ever to have come into existence, until they split 11 years ago. My excitement at the reformation, and upcoming tour, was immense. I purchased the tickets at home on the internet, but yearned to take them to a house up the road, drop them off with someone, then pick them up later and half run, half skip home clutching them tightly in my hands and waving them in the air like a Frenchman with a white flag, all the time feeling like I had just got the last golden ticket to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. The girlfriend suggested incorporating this into a road trip. Take in a bit of Faith No More, catch up with friends in the North of the South island, and then come back down the West coast, which was an immensely complicated conversation for someone like me who still has to do the whole Never Eat Shredded Wheat thing accompanied by pointing to understand where each one lies to comprehend.

So we set off on Monday afternoon. She had to go into work so I stocked up on gummi bears and busied myself in the toy section of Warehouse while waiting, a shop not unlike supermarkets in the U.K. in that it's handy because it sells everything under the sun but deep down you want to leave empty handed because it's really all shit. In fact the toy section comprises of no more than 3 aisles, one of which I generally ignore as it's mainly dolls, and a 33 year old man hovering around a doll section in a shop is generally about as welcome as Kevin Costner in any one of his films. I paced around waiting for a while, and went back and forth between the cd/dvd and the toy section, out for a cigarette, back in wandering around, and was collected probably a good 15 minutes after I had been tagged as a potential shoplifter.

The second stop was Christchurch (the first being Burger King on the way out of town). It was a journey very reminiscent of travelling from South to North in England. The further North we got, the dingier landscapes became and the worse the weather closed in. We traveled up past Mount Cook, and through the nearby glacial fed, milky blue lakes Pukaki and Tekapo, which I am sure would be hilariously renamed to Bukkake and Takeapoo by the type of person that hangs around toy aisles in shops (as an aside to anyone who isn't down with the ancient Japanese art of Bukkake, it's a little like the ancient art of Origami, but with less paper and more ejaculate). We entered Christchurch approximately 6 hours later and found our accommodation, which was to be a hostel called the Jailhouse.

As you can probably guess from the name, Jailhouse is an old jail converted into a hostel. Built in 1874, used as a jail, and a military camp, it finally closed in 1999 and was bought and converted into a hostel in 2006. It's a novel place to stay in, and when you think about it hostels and jails have so much in common it's a surprise this hasn't caught on more often as they are both cramped, noisy rat infested hell-holes full of mental delinquents and ass rape. There are a few rooms which have been preserved with prison art on the walls, but the rest have been decorated, given comfortable beds and installed with televisions, and it would be so incredibly lazy and exceptionally obvious to insert a joke here about it being like a British prison but with less Playstations, and pool tables, and full body Swedish massages with happy endings or whatever else people are up in arms about prisoners getting these days that I'm not going to do it. After a long drive up there, we checked in and pretty much crashed out on the first night.

The next day we awoke and set out to fix a chip in the windscreen caused on the way up to Christchurch, and to get new windscreen wipers. Having been to Christchurch before, I was still not convinced that there is much to do there, and to be honest even being there brings back memories of the Masturbating Israeli so I was happy our time was occupied with essential errands. We also took the time out to visit Warehouse Extra, which had all the promise of a regular Warehouse, but with Extra. Extra what? you may well ask. Extra stock I think is the answer. Just a regular warehouse, but bigger and more full of the same shit as regular warehouse. Crestfallen from this experience, we went out to catch up with a friend of the girlfriends for lunch, and then headed back to the hostel where she caught a nap, and I bounced around with excitement at the prospect of Faith No More being but a few hours away. The gig was awesome. I felt a little old inside the arena, not because of a low average age, but because I really felt the need to tell people off for smoking inside. I started to feel young again when I noticed a guy at least 10 years my senior standing next to me. Until he pulled out a pipe and stood there smoking weed. I won't go into the details of the gig for fear of sounding like a gushing teenager, but needless to say after 18 years of waiting to see them again, I wept from all four eyes.

We made an early start the following morning to head up to Motueka. It was a long drive, and we finally arrived early evening, grabbed some alcohol and food, met up with some friends, and went back to their place. Their house is as close to a living embodiment of a Beatrix Potter book as you can get. They share with the lady that owns the place, an English couple, four cats, too many chickens to count, some chicks, roosters, and a talking magpie. All animals that ensure a good, unbroken nights sleep. "There's a chicken in the house......AGAIN" is a sentence I really never thought I would hear in my lifetime. Motueka is quite typical of a quiet, New Zealand town. On entering, you have a feeling that there is only one road in, and no roads out. Quiet, unassuming, and despite not-quite-throngs of people milling around it still has the feel of a ghost town. We spent the evening at home enjoying a quiet few drinks over a game of Wii bowling, a terrible, terrible game. Because I lost.

The following day we set off to see some of Abel Tasman. The heavens opened and it rained hard, so we did the only thing you can do faced with that situation - pub. We sat in the pub, caught up, chatted a while, watched as a bird continuously flew into one of the windows in a desperate but largely failed bid for freedom, and as soon as the rain passed headed out to see some of the sights. Which culminated in a game of mini-golf. A terrible, terrible game. Because I lost. After more sightseeing, we grabbed some more beer, pizzas, and went back to chill and watch the Olympics.

From Motueka, we made our way to Hokitika down the west coast of the country. The scenery on the way down the coast is stunning until you get to Greymouth, which looks so shitty they didn't even bother to try and dress it up with a fancy name. The only reason I can think for it to have been called Greymouth is that Shittypoo Town was taken. As you drive past, as we did, you can smell a faint whiff of stabbings and teenage pregnancy in the air. We got to Buller Gorge, and stopped at what was claimed to be New Zealands longest swing bridge, spanning the Huxley River. Much to my dismay, my illusions of recreating the final scene from the Temple of Doom were short lived as it turned out to be a rather robust affair, but being the kind of 33 year old that hangs around toy aisles in Warehouse, it was fun to walk as fast as I could without holding on.

We also stopped off at Pancake Rocks, which are rocks. And they look like pancakes. When pancakes are stacked that is. They are essentially a heavily eroded limestone area where the sea bursts through a number of vertical blow holes during high tides. I can't really elaborate more than that for a number of reasons. Firstly, I am sure you can imagine what a stack of pancakes in rocky colours looks like. Secondly I don't actually know much more than that. And thirdly, the only wikipedia entry for them is cut and pasted into the above sentence. Once we got to Hokitika we checked into the hostel and went out to grab some fish and chips. Hokitika is a town much like I described Motueka. Nothing much happening, but it looked and reminded me very much of Sandford from Hot Fuzz.

Finally from Hokitika we began the final leg of the journey back into Queenstown. We went via Franz Josef and Fox glaciers, although we didn't have the time to stop off and explore either. We did however, take a dirt road down to Gillespies Beach, about 20km West off the Fox Glacier highway, and had crisp sandwiches for lunch. We then stopped off at the Gates of Haast, a single lane bridge over a gorge with massive boulders, nearby Thunder Creek Falls. A popular destination for both tourists and sandflies alike, which resulted in so many bites that the other half ended up with a cankle.

For those interested, most of the photographic evidence that I completed this journey can be found by clicking here. Though being a typical crap and lazy tourist, all I did was point and shoot, and have no idea what most of them are of. Aside from the shots of the only train I have seen here in New Zealand, which was about 73 miles long.

Since arriving back, the only thing I have been doing aside from working, is trying to delay my return to the U.K. by going through the visa application process. Part of this was a full medical, which came back clear which is a result. I don't have syphilis, I don't have the HIV, my blood is good which is a rather nice compliment I have not received before, my piss is a fine vintage, all in all it seems I am not dying of anything which is always a good start to a Tuesday. Testicular examinations were not included, I was informed, but was told I should check them at least once a month. The rest of the examination was a little awkward after I told the nurse I check them far more than once a month.

After 3 weeks of waiting, and stressing purely because denial of the visa would mean going back to the U.K. and doing something grown up with my life, it came back approved so I now have another winter season down here to look forward to. Fuck yeah.

Auckland - Christchurch - Queenstown

Without going into any boring details, the flight to Christchurch was painless. In fact unbelievably so. After travelling through UK and US airports, where even being 1kg over the weight limit generally adds a billion pounds to your airfare and a thorough fingering up the jacksy, it is a positive relief to fly internally in NZ where it seems the only thing you need to do to identify yourself is look in a mirror and say "Yup, that's me". I think I went through more rigorous identification checks going into bars in Auckland.
I checked into the hostel at Christchurch, which is just opposite the Cathedral. I took no photos, but it is quite an impressive building. In fact, to avoid any disappointment in some, and to evoke elation in others, I took no pictures whatsoever in Christchurch. Although to an extent, I wish I had a picture of the beggar outside the Cathedral, as he played tunes on the recorder. Which I thought no-one played after the age of 7.
Having heard about the penthouse in the hostel I was staying, I decided to fork out the extra buck per night and stay there. 3 rooms, with a total of maybe 20 beds spread between, but with the bonus of a kitchen, bathroom, sky t.v. and Playstation 2. There were 3 Israeli guys already in there, one of whom had hair like Sideshow Bob. And two big fat black eyes from a fight in Australia.
The room wasn't all it was cracked up to be. It was just under the roof, which I can only assume was made of balsa wood, and had a corrugated plastic skylight. Given that I arrived in the midst of what seemed to be a 3 day hail storm, sleeping would have been easier if I was buried up to the neck and consistently stoned for 72 hours.
I moved out after three days, into a 4 bed dorm room which had one current occupant. Another Israeli guy, this one called Serge. A memorable character, he sounded a little bit like Borat. The room itself was a mess. Cigarette butts on the carpet, rubbish strewn all over the place, and an odd smell. Serge offered me "chocolate sandwich". I politely declined, in case that was a jew-phamism for something undesirable. It wasn't, it was actually a nutella sandwich. As he was making the sandwich, he started singing.
Now, for those of you that don't know, I have a recurring fantasy about Celine Dion and Alanis Morisette duetting while lying naked, face upwards on a bed of molten cheese while I am repeatedly stabbing them in the abdomen with a pitchfork. This "singing" of Serge's was not unlike how I would imagine that duet would sound. The only other times I have heard this is when it is on the news, sung by guys waving AK-47's in the air. I promptly made my excuses and left.
Most of my time in Christchurch was spent hanging around the hostel watching season 6 of The Shield on my laptop, or hanging out with a friend from Canada who lives there. Or trying to subtly cough very loudly and for a very long time while watching season 6 of The Shield on the top bunk while Serge begins making the bottom bunk rock oblivious to the fact that I am up there.
There really seemed to be very little else to do there. On the way back from a bar one afternoon we drove the mountain route, which took us around the top of the Gondola. The views from up there were amazing, I never thought Christchurch could offer such views. But that was it.
So on Sunday 24th I packed my bags, walked to the bus stop and embarked on the 8 hour coach ride down to Queenstown.