I'm not too sure about vegetarians. They may be stupid.

With their stupid dreadlocks, and stupid sandals, and stupid attitude about not eating one of the most delicious foods ever.  I arrogantly refuse to quantify that further.  But even more stupid, and we all know them and all hate them, are those that are 'vegetarian' but just eat chicken.  Well done you.  Now the cows are happy, and the lambs can frolic, and the pigs can roll around in shit to their hearts content.  All because you aren't eating them.  And all the while you are looking down on me from your pedestal of a toilet, with your healthy bowel movements, you know what I'm doing?  Eating your share of animal. Naked.

But what I don't understand is why, out of all the meats in the world, they choose to eat one of the blandest, most boring ones?  What's wrong with having a bit of blood to dip your chips into?  No one can resist the smell of bacon.  So instead of having bacon flavoured rashers of tofu, or whatever rubber concoction you eat instead, just have bacon.  You're only going to comment on how good it smells when I cook it, so goddamn well eat it.  If I were to ever be a proper grown-up (unlikely), and hold a sophisticated dinner party, the only dietary requirements I would take into account would be 'I'm afraid I only eat raw beef', or 'Sorry, I'm vegetarian - however I will eat monkey'.

Being a carnivore is no easy ride though.  There are so many delicious, cute, fluffy little animals out there just waiting to be chewed up, swallowed, digested and flushed that I am always faced with the dilemma; lamb or beef?  Pork or chicken?  Venison or sloth?  Well now there is no need to have to make these critical culinary decisions for I have created the perfect solution.

You're welcome.

Step 1:  Buy meat.  Lots and lots of lovely, delicious, once cute but now butchered beyond recognition, colon clogging meat.  Here we have lamb mince, bargain bacon (a few rashers required), a pork butterfly steak (I didn't know until now that a butterfly is made from pork, but now I do I will eat more), some chicken schnitzel, and some beef schnitzel.

Step 2: Get some garlic (2 cloves), and some rosemary, which is like, herby shit.

Step 3: Mash up the garlic and herby shit with some olive oil in a pestle and mortar, until it's like a bit of a paste.  Not too stodgy, not too runny.  That's right, I own a pestle and mortar.  And I even know what to use it for.  I just swan around the gaff these days thinking I'm Gordon fucking Ramsay.

Step 4: Mix the rosemary and garlic paste in with the lamb mince, add some salt and pepper, and knead that shit until it's well mixed in.  Place in a ziplok bag (which may or may not have been originally used for the purchase of a criminally large amount of Gummi Bears), and throw it in the fridge.

Step 5:  Place the pork steak in between two sheets of cling film and batter the shit out of that bitch until it's flat.
Top Tip:  Pretending it's Celine Dion makes it a whole lot more satisfying.

Step 6:  Once it's flatter than Julia Stiles' face, find some old white wine in the fridge, fold the pork up into another ziplok bag, pour in what's left of the wine, seal and place in the fridge next to the lamb.  Leave the lamb and pork to marinate overnight, and have wet dreams about how good this shit is gonna taste.

Step 7:  Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees.  I think that's the C, not the F.

Step 8:  Get your pork and lamb out.  Roll the lamb into a sausage shape, until it looks like a giant, ill turd.  Unfold the pork too.  Ignore hole.  This may be getting a bit too sexy.  Roll the pork around the giant cock-shaped lamb sausage, which I may one day try to use in polite conversation as a euphemism for sex.  I forgot to take a picture of this stage, but you should be able to cope.

Step 9:  Once the lamb is rolled in the pork, roll the whole thing in some bacon.   I've chosen to use 2 bits, but they are quite thick.  You can use more if you like.  Go on, you know you want to.

Step 10:  Once the pork is wrapped around the lamb, and the bacon is wrapped around the pork, wrap the chicken schnitzel around the outside.

Step 11:  Once the pork is wrapped around the lamb, and the bacon is wrapped around the pork, and the chicken is wrapped around the bacon, wrap some beef around the entire bitch.

Step 12:  Coat in some mixed herbs, to try and dull the impending smell of post-death bowel voiding.

Step 13:  Get some foil, and wrap that bitch up tight.  I mean tight.  In a few layers.  Like the BEST pass the parcel EVER.

Step 14:  Throw that bitch in the middle of the oven, and leave for around 3 hours, because e-coli is seriously NOT fun.  Once your 3 hours is up, remove from oven, and let it rest for 20 minutes.  I've got no idea why, but all the professionals do it on T.V. so it must do something, right?

Step 15:  Unwrap carefully.  Don't get too excited and rush in with fat little fingers keen for the meat prize inside.  Remember - the lack of steam is not due to a lack of heat, it's due to you wrapping that bitch up tight.  Then step back and marvel at the giant poo you appear to have created.

Step 16:  Marvel at it from a different angle, and wonder to yourself if it will actually look any different when it comes out of the other end.

Step 17:  Slice.  Inhale.  Lick.  Taste.  Be proud that you have just made the worlds best and longest scotch egg.

Step 18:  Serve on a bed of pasta, with a large helping of something that may do you some good.  I got carrot.  It helps you pee in the dark.

Of course, I have been up to much more over the past few months that I haven't updated you with, but I really can't be bothered just yet.  Look, up there ^, I have lots of faeces shaped meat to eat, so I will do it soon, I promise.

In the meantime, I can only see two possible outcomes.  Either my guts are going to be fully backed up for the next month, or I am going to spend a full week squirting dirty water out of my bum-piece.

I'll let you know.

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.

Festive bitching, other cultures, free shit and disableds.

New Years Eve, 2009, and I am standing in a taxi queue just after midnight. A few of us had walked down to the lake front to watch the fireworks after being at a house party for a bit. Although I wasn't too fussed about the fireworks, I have voiced my opinion on them previously, the atmosphere itself was buzzing. The front was full of revellers having a good time, we all wished each other a happy new year at midnight, however my lady wasn't feeling too good so being ever the gentleman I took her home.

The taxi queue was long, about 45 minutes long, but you know what? I'm British. Therefore I am genetically predisposed to love queuing so I was completely in my element. I had had a good night, I was on my way home, and I was already in my first queue of 2010. What more could a Brit want out of life?

Then my moment was spoilt. Someone tried to edge into the queue in front of me with utmost stealth. Two people in fact. To the untrained eye maybe it wasn't even noticeable, but God-damn it, I know how to queue, they weren't getting ahead of me in a million years, so they squeezed in behind us jumping approximately half the queue in the process. Nothing was said by anyone. Presumably because one of them was in a wheelchair.

I like to think I am very tolerant of others. I will not judge you based on the way you look, your gender, the way you dress, the colour of your skin, your sexual preference, your disability, we are still all human after all. But is it wrong of me to get angry at a disabled for trying to jump the queue presumably just because she is disabled? I don't think so. If anything I think people should have been able to jump in front of her, I mean after all we are all having to stand and wait while she has a nice comfy seat.

So 2010 is here already, and I have been gainfully employed now for just over two months, and it is largely going great. I say largely, obviously taking advantage of the free stuff I get thrown at me helps immensely. Since my last entry I have been busy reaping the rewards of a job that allows you free stuff.

I spent one morning kayaking across Lake Wakatipu to Pigeon Island in a sea kayak, a two person kayak with a rudder at the back operated by the person sitting in the rear seat. It's a company run by a pleasant dread locked hippy, and includes a guided tour and commentary around Pigeon Island, situated funnily enough in the middle of the lake. As you would expect, the island is a large land mass with trees, bushes, birds and insects, surrounded by water. But it's a nice serene setting, with a hut which is free to stay in as long as you can get over there, and is very reminiscent of the Evil Dead. Once you have toured around the Island, you paddle around the side of it before heading back to main land. The morning was marred only by the sour faced Scandinavian "girl" steering the kayak I was in. On the way back she pointed out that it wouldn't matter how hard I paddled to try and make us change direction, the way we were going was completely controlled by her. "So how about you steer us in the same direction as the rest of the fucking group then you dumb bitch", I imagined myself saying before imagining my paddle accidentally scalping her.

I have done my first bungy jump, the Nevis. A cabin suspended by cables 134m in the air which you obviously jump off attached to a long piece of elastic made of multiple strands of that white round elastic you used to get in those black plimsolls you wore at school. There's something they don't advertise. Plummeting towards the ground for 8ish seconds was a bizarre feeling. People have previously said that the scariest part is jumping off. That's crap, absolute crap. Jumping is easy. I jump down the last 3 stairs at home all the time. Toddlers can jump, animals can jump, disableds can jump (granted, just queues but it's still jumping). No, the scariest part is the few seconds after you have jumped, when all you can do is question whether jumping was a sensible thing to do.

On the same day I did the Nevis Arc, the worlds highest swing, in tandem with one of the girls I work with. You are loaded into the swing and dropped, free fall for a while and then get kicked into a swing across towards the canyon wall at around 150kph. In all honesty I found this scarier than the bungy, purely because the control is passed onto someone else so even though I knew the fall was coming, I still screamed a VERY masculine scream (the girly ones belonged to my tandem partner) when we were released.

The Canyon Swing is a similar experience, the main differences being that when you drop you can go a variety of different ways, you drop down the side of a rocky canyon wall, and the crew mess with your head in a big way. Generally asking if you are ready to die, that kind of humorous thing. Questions such as "How many times have you done this?" are met with a response like "This?? Never, it's way too dangerous. I know when the ropes were last changed". I went off on the chair, you are strapped into a plastic chair and told to rock back onto the rear two legs. As you dangle precariously over the edge, the crew mess even further by slowly releasing you only to pull you back up at the last minute a number of times. Eventually, exasperated, you cry "For Christ's sake, will you just get on wissssshhhhhhhhiiiiiiiitttttt".

Finally, I eventually got on a sky dive. 15,000ft, 60 seconds of free fall, a very concerned look on my face as they strap me to a chick about half my size. No offence, she was awesome. Knew what she was doing, had thousands of jumps under her belt, I appreciate her keeping me alive. But it could very well have been a different story if it was her week. While everyone else on the DVD looked like they were having a great time, I was masking my joy with the face of a man unable to work out how to get air into my lungs. Make no mistake, I loved it, and would do it again at the drop of a hat. I just look like I am concentrating really hard on something, and I am going to assume it was either the amazing views of the Remarkables, or just keeping my mouth from making some "jokey" sexist remark that would get me all kinds of dropped out of the sky without a parachute.

I can't say it's all been fun and laughter though. My job involves dealing with people. And people are generally idiots. Sure, there are some great people you meet, and it's kind of heartwarming when someone stops by to say thanks. I've done nothing but facilitate their trip/experience by taking money off them and reserving them a place, the experience or trip is made by the operators, the crew that take them out there, the experience itself, so they have no need to come and thank me, but some do. And it's nice. But the idiots far outweigh the genuinely nice people.

I've had a couple moaning a little that their trip to Milford Sound was boring. "Boring?" I asked. It's some of the most spectacular, testicle numbing scenery you will see, how was it boring?

"It was 5 hours on a coach". I would have liked to have pointed out to her that the boredom was most likely instigated and perpetuated by her travelling companion, who looked like he could turn the most orgasmic experience into a dull, trudging funeral march.

And other cultures who are used to bartering. Obviously being from the U.K. we aren't so into haggling when we make a purchase, but I believe that to get a discount on something you are buying, you at least need to offer something in exchange. Maybe that you are working for a similar company and can promote whatever it is you are buying, or at the least produce some kind of coupon. Every day I wake up wishing I was in the position to offer discounts if people dance for me. Not just a little jig, a proper dance for two straight hours. And they also have to provide me with sharp objects to throw at them, and snacks too, I'll need snacks to keep my throwing arm nice and strong. No sir, you can't get a group discount for booking two people instead of one. A second person barely counts as having company for the day, it certainly will not get you a group discount.

Finally, before I put this entry out of its misery, Christmas came and went. My Christmas was great, thanks for asking. There was a house party at my house, at which I sank about half a litre of Jim Beam in a relatively short period, and another house party later in the evening which I don't remember much of due to the Jim Beam from the first party.

It didn't feel like Christmas largely due to the weather, and it being light late. I associate Christmas with cold, crisp winter evenings, darkness, and the bustle of people late night shopping in towns adorned with festive decorations. Queenstown was bare. The only festiveness available was at Starbucks, where they were using cups with a Christmas design, and playing Christmas music halfway through November. I know I should avoid Starbucks, the amount of coffee I drink on a daily basis can't be good for my guts anyway, but coffee and festive happiness at least half a month before December I can't deal with in any kind of sane manner.

We had festive adverts though. Almost 2010, and the must-haves for this Christmas in New Zealand were Enya's Greatest Hits (honestly - I didn't realise she had more than one song), and Soda Stream. Honest to God. Well into the 21st century, and it seems New Zealand is only just getting busy with the fizzy.