So - I’m back in the UK.  Back to the cold.  Miserable, grey, dreary, etc.

But - a quick synopsis of my trip to NZ.  (Ed: Having just finished it, maybe not so quick)  Got to Melbourne early in the morning, quite intoxicated already.  Elise picked me up from the airport.  Met a few people, had a few more drinks - and somehow stayed awake.  Until my flight that evening.  Got in the car - and off to the airport.  Got dropped off, then figured I didn’t have my passport or wallet.  One phone call later, and I’m on my way back into Melbourne.  And then - well, met a few more people, a few more drinks, and somehow stayed awake into the wee hours of the morning.  Really rather messy - all in all.  Called Qantas the next day - and bought a ticket on the next flight to New Zealand.  Happened to be Auckland rather than Wellington - not ideal, but my wee sister had taken time off work to be in Taranaki, so I just took whatever I could to get there as soon as possible.  So - arrived in Auckland about 10pm - very very exhausted.  Tried to get a rental car.  The nice people told me everything was booked out - and my best bet was to go into town, and get a rental car from one of the city companies the next morning.  So - wandered over to the domestic terminal to check for flights.  The domestic terminal was deserted.  But - there was a phone, and I found the next flight to New Plymouth was in the morning.  By this point I’m just kind of wandering aimlessly, unable to think properly.  Headed back to the international terminal to try and find a hotel somewhere, anywhere.  Noticed the rental car offices at the domestic terminal were open.  So - as a last-ditch option - stopped in to ask for a car.  Not expecting to have any luck - seeing as they were the same companies as those in the international terminal.  And surely they’d talk to each other, right?  Wrong.  I ask for a car, and the nice man says “sure”.  Fill out the paperwork, pay much more money than I expected - and I’m off.  The very first intersection, I drive through a red light - not noticing different lights for traffic going straight, and traffic turning right.  Pretty lucky there was nobody coming the other way, I treckon.  Very nearly did the same at the next set of lights also.  But - eventually got myself together, stopped to buy some L&P, and started the long drive south.  Didn’t start hallucinating until a few hours into it.  Kept thinking I should pull over and grab an hour or two of sleep - but didn’t find anywhere suitable, or kept finding an extra little bit of energy.  Until I was so close, I figured I might as well finish the job - and arrived at Stratford about 3 or 4am.  Nobody up - and door locked, as I’d sent a message I probably wasn’t going to make it that night.  So - woke people up, staggered inside, and collapsed.

And after that - it was pretty much a two-week blur of driving from town to town, visiting people, eating dodgy pies/sandwiches on the road, and usually delicious roast dinners in the evening.   Matt’s wedding in the middle was a welcome respite - if you can call it that.  Not really much of a rest - mostly consisting of driving from Wellington to Levin & back several times - and then the obligatory binge-drink at the wedding.  Lovely wedding though - and I just hope my messages of congratulation in the guest-book & my hastily bought/filled-out wedding card managed to convey my sentiments adequately & appropriately.

Next day - barbeque brunch - and managed to give everybody a fright with the old “pushed into the pool while holding my camera” gag.  Bought myself a waterproof camera on the way over, you see.  Got called “cruel bastards” by one chap when he figured it out.  And then - some more driving - back to Wellington initially.  And then onwards.  But to where, it seemed I didn’t really know.  I just started driving - got an hour out of Wellington, then realised that I didn’t know where I was actually going.  In that I didn’t really have a destination.  Or - I did, but my plan was completely unfeasible.  I think I had set out with the intention of going to Hawkes Bay, visiting somebody (anybody, hadn’t figured out who yet) - and then onwards to Reporoa/Rotorua to meet with Mum/Angela for dinner.  Until I had it pointed out to me that I probably wouldn’t be arriving in Reporoa/Rotorua until very late.  Found myself completely unable to think properly and make a plan - so had one made for me.  Ended up staying in Palmerston North - and having a lovely dinner with the Whitson clan, and young Katie Pi.  Not sure how they felt about having their daughter’s ex-boyfriend thrusted upon them at short notice - but it was a nice evening, and it was great to see them all anyway.

That ended in my giving Genevieve a lift back to Wellington - and then finding myself in another state of being unable to decide what I was doing.  I was very very close to just giving up, and sitting around in the Wellington sun for a few days - but finally got myself moving - and finished off visiting most of the people I was hoping to visit.  And finally, left myself with nearly a whole day of being able to relax in the Wellington sun.  Dropped off the rental car, complete with cracked windshield (luckily - this was the first time I’ve ever opted for the additional insurance - so didn’t cost me any extra), and quite a few more ‘miles on the clock’.  Except it was, of course, kilometres.  Because some countries are progressive enough to use the metric system.  While others aren’t.  You know who you are.  Anyway - it seemed that over the course of about 12 days - I’d driven somewhere between 3,500 & 4,000 kilometres.

And - back to Melbourne (managed to book a flight at much more expense than usual - due to booking it about two days prior) - where Elise tried to get me to ‘make a plan’.  ie: decide what we were doing that night, and where.  I don’t think she really understood that this was the last thing I was inclined, or able, to do at that point.  So - I might not have been too helpful.  Apologies Elise.

Anyway - I finally left, and I think it was probably the first time I ever looked forward to getting back to cold miserable dreary London, and back to the regular monotony of 9-5 work.  That viewpoint changed within an hour of being back in London of course.  I was absolutely buggered when I got back - and the brain wouldn’t even allow me to figure out what train I needed to catch from Gatwick to Balham.  I ended up just asking the nice man at the information counter - who spotted this immediately, and suggested I sit down and have a coffee before continuing my journey.  I declined his advice - figuring I would probably go comatose if I sat down.  So - continued on, got to Balham, and then resolved to stay awake as long as possible, so I would hopefully sleep through the night - to be relatively refreshed for work the next day.  Middling success on all counts.

All in all - I managed to visit most people I hoped to.  And to those people - apologies if I wasn’t my normal bubbly entertaining self.  Well, entertaining at least.  And to those people I didn’t manage to catch up with - apologies, but if it makes you feel any better - you probably didn’t miss much.  I was a broken wreck of a man by the end.  Well, from the beginning, really.

I have only now recovered completely.  Finished unpacking my bags over the weekend (lots of warm clothing from NZ - have really been seen without my SwannDri since I returned).  Tallied the overall cost.  Financially - I transferred some money from my UK account to my NZ account to pay my NZ credit card.  It just happened to be around the same time as my monthly pay.  But was more than my monthly pay.  Not including the major airfares.  Not often that I spend more money than I earn in a given time period - but this was certainly one.  But - in spite of the whinging tone - it was of course, overall, definitely worth it - in respect to the money, the effort, everything.  Next time though, I might just get a beach house somewhere, give people plenty of advance notice - and the mountain can come to me.

So… until next time…

Hi all - just a token update.  Too busy travelling - and it’s a fiasco so far.  Missed flights, booked out rental cars, etc etc.

But - hoping to see as many people as possible while in New Zealand.  I’m bound to miss quite a few people - due to the shambles that it’s been so far, and my complete lack of any planning.  And hopefully I’ll be able to remember enough of the trip when it’s finished that I can write down some of the more interesting bits.

So - that’s finally over.  2009, that is.  And the whole 10 years of naming years with “Two thousand and …” - which was rather tiresome.  Now - we can get back to being lazy.  I actually read an article the other day about somebody being horrified by the possibility that people were going to continue calling 2010 “two thousand and ten”.  Horrified.  He was some official chap as well - and insisted that this was not correct - pointing out how every other year in history is pronounced, except the last ten.  Despite, of course, that technically - it’s always been wrong, and it just took the ‘noughties’ to force us back into pronouncing a 4 digit number the way it should be.  Oh - and I have heard some people all excited about the thought of what this decade is to be called.  It’s obvious.

Wow - did I just write a paragraph on THAT?  Okay - let’s get back to normal transmission.  The last couple of weeks - well… you can probably guess how this goes.  Just the same as every other time I’ve bothered to write - but multiplied by the ‘Festive Season’.  Various sessions of ‘drinks’ leading up to the end of December.  Then - the 25th.  Nicky Osborne’s birthday.  Jeebersmas.  People kept asking me if I was going home for it.  I had to point out that I didn’t even go home for MY birthday.

Anyway - on the 24th, did the fashionable thing and did some telephone/video calls with various people.  Then - went to bed in the wee hours of the 25th.  Woke up much much later.  Put on the trusty jandals, and went a-wandering.  I had been meaning to stock up on muffins and eggs the previous night - but had got waylaid.  So - had to wander around Balham, trying to find muffins and eggs.  Our local trusty 24-hour Tesco was closed.  Not cool.  BP - they sell nothing but death-deisel.  Finally found a little dairy - and had to settle for hamburger buns instead of muffins.  Worked remarkably well though.  Had two courses of eggs florentine/royale.  Did my laundry.  And felt like I’d had a good day.  But - then had to go meet Caitlin and her friends who had had a dinner party, and were now in the post-dinner phase.  Which seemed to involve plenty of booze and what-not.  Walked home at about 8am - ready for a nice Boxing Day nap.

Not to be, however, as I was awoken several hours later by flatmate Chris.  Who had promised his mother that he’d bring me along to her place, so I could be part of some kind of family thing on Boxing Day.  Which was nice, except I wasn’t really in a suitable state for such things.  But - along I went.  Snacked at some food, and had a couple of polite drinks.  I really can be quite polite when I put my mind to it.  And at about 3 or 4am, found my way to bunk beds - to complete the whole family-gathering type feel.

And then a week of work.  Well - I had actually been working throughout the above - as I was on-call for the week covering the 25th.  But for the week leading up to New Year’s - actually back in the office.  Which, of course, felt great.  And then… New Year’s Eve.  I don’t think I need to go into too much detail about that.  We prettied up our house for a party.  I went to the local bottle store, and the nice chaps carted my purchases back to our house for me on one of those cargo-trolley things.  And then we had dinner.  And then we had a party.  And then it was about 6pm the next evening - and there was myself and one girl sitting on the floor drinking, after somebody had foolishly suggested that one of us was more adept/determined at the consumption of alcohol than the other.  I honestly don’t know how it started - but it seems that we are both rather stubborn fools, with high opinions of ourselves.  And fair enough really - the evening ended with the swapping of mutual admiration - and an agreement to ‘call it a truce’ - which sounds suspiciously like a situation which could erupt again, now that I think about it.  A ‘draw’ would have been a much better term.  Oh well - too late now.  Anyway - she headed back to see if her husband had changed the locks, while I stayed up to try and sooth the razorblades in my throat with Kahlua.  I have pointed out before that if one drinks too much champagne, it feels like razorblades in one’s oesophagus.  Well - on the evening of the 01/01/10 - I was definitely experiencing this.  After two/three days of drinking nothing but Kahlua, and chomping down anti-heartburn medicine - it finally dissipated.  But for a couple of days there - wow, everything hurt.  Coughing, drinking anything, eating anything.  Luckily, I didn’t really want to do many of those things very often.

But - all in all, a fairly good ‘festive season’.  Not a ‘White Christmas’ strictly speaking - but there was a fair bit of snow just before, and just afterwards.  Including now - still snowing now.  I believe the ever lovable british media has coined the term “The Big Freeze”.  I wandered over to look at the fountains in Trafalgar Square this morning - and yeah, they’re pretty good and frozen.  And of course the media is complaining about airports being closed.  “In cities like New York & Moscow they have much more snow than this, and THEY never close their airports!“  Coming from the same people who would be up in arms if they actually did something about it… “What do you mean - you spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on snow-clearing machinery, when it might only be used once or twice a year??!!“  I think I need to stop using talkback radio as my alarmclock station.  It really doesn’t help one start the day with a smile.  If anybody knows of a radio station without any ‘Wacky Breakfast DJ Team’, or preferably any talking at all - I would be very grateful.

New Year’s Resolutions - I didn’t seem to get around to actually confirming those.  And it might be getting a little late now.  But - in the theme of album titles:

• Hold Steady’s Stay Positive - ie: try to be a little more cheerful (or at least pretend).  If one ignores all the complaining above, I’m doing really well.
• Faith No More’s Midlife Crisis - not strictly an album, but a song.  I will try to find a suitable album title - but I am going to attempt a deliberate and measured midlife crisis…
• .. maybe Kings Of Leon’s Youth & Young Manhood ? - in that trying to recapture my youth - is essentially a midlife crisis, innit?

And the New Month’s Resolution for January is Darts.  And maybe Celebrity Big Brother.  Darts - because it’s cool, and exciting - and some championship or other is on TV at the moment.  And Celebrity Big Brother (CBB) - because I need to try and immerse myself in British culture - and what is British culture if not celebrities, reality television, and generally all things ‘tabloidish’.  CBB - perfect.

It’s farewell Oval, and hello Balham.  I have left my jacuzzi, monster kitchen, and local pub.  I believe that the Oval was the longest time I’d lived in one place since, well, school.  Kind of depressing.  And made me realise that this job - actually, just the project I recently finished - is the longest I’ve been in one job since the Dairy Board/Fonterra.

Which makes my feet kinda itchy.  Well - they were itchy anyway, both metaphorically and not.  But now - well, I’m certainly casting my eyes about for some kind of escape route.  And, my plan of North Korea is slowly being refined.  Unfortunately - it’s also being postponed.  The new plan is September 2010 - but now involves catching a train from one side of the world to the other.  Have a look on a map - and check out the line from London to Beijing.  The plan is now to do that.  Twice.  Well, nearly twice.  London -> Moscow, via Mongolia, with a couple of stops on the way.  A couple of weeks in North Korea - bowing to the almighty Kim Jung, and not taking photos unless given permission.  And not being allowed cellphones, video cameras, or cameras with a lens over 150mm.  No internet.  No credit cards.  And no going for a “walk around the block”.  And then - train from North Korea back to London, via Siberia.  Oh yeah - it’s been a long time since I had a plan as good as this.  It does mean, however, that I need to do something in the short-term - so that I don’t go crazy.  I have discovered that I have a disorder where I actually require international travel.  Otherwise, I… ummm… die  break-out-in-hives  sulk get a little bit sad.

I think I’ll be making a trip to Aotearoa in January/February (should probably start looking into that) - but I’m not sure if that counts.  I might have to stop off somewhere on the way, or on the way back - for a few days.  Dubai doesn’t interest me too much, but if anybody’s got other opinions on it, or places nearby - I’m happy to hear suggestions, thoughts, etc.

In other news, I have started playing squash.  I am a squash player.  I play squash.

And - there’s a New Year’s Party at our place this year.  Probably.  For those who have experienced Opononi, Lake Taupo, Waikaremoana, Houseboats on Waitemata… this will be kinda like those.  But in a house.  In Balham.  And cold instead of hot.  And no barbeque.  (hmmm… maybe no barbeque).  But definitely no swimming.  Which means no bombs/staples/bellyflops.  But - it will still be good.  So come.  Airfares are cheap around that time of year - so all you people in NZ/Oz - no excuse.  And yes, we have heaps of space for cricket and/or tents, in the snow.  (Really).

Well - the project that I’ve been working on for the last 15 months or so is over.  They are officially ‘live’ - and I have officially left.  The key word in that is ‘officially’.  In practice - there are still plenty of issues, plenty of those related to people, not technology.  And - the company has paid for an extra 5 days of my time - to be used on an ad-hoc manner… so I’m expecting a phone call of “HELP!!!” fairly soon.  But - in order that I had some small time of recovery before this - I cleverly misplaced my phone on the night of my leaving drinks.  So - I was complete uncontactable over the weekend.  I had completely forgotten how awesome it is to actually have a weekend off.

But - the weekend wasn’t nearly enough.  Especially considering that the night before my leaving drinks, was Ben’s leaving drinks.  So, as can be expected, there was some dinner and drinks.  To the point where the owner/manager of the restaurant approached our table.  Unfortunately, I was closest to him - so he started chatting to me.  I thought he was a homeless guy asking for change or something.  It took quite some time to realise that he was actually the manager, and he was offering to give us a bottle of something for free.  He asked what I wanted, and I said something like “well… we’ve been drinking quite a range so far…” - in order to lead up to pointing out that we would love another bottle of champagne.  Unfortunately, he broke in with “Yes - my daughter told me that, and I can see that.  This is why I think you would appreciate something special, that you can’t get anywhere else.”  And from there, it all went downhill as he brought us a bottle of sparkling vodka.  I managed to refrain from having too much, as I had figured I’d had a little too much approximately 30 minutes previously.  Luckily, as I and a few others went downstairs for a spot of air, Ben & Chook started racing each other - and the bottle was gone by the timewe returned.

Cue - very very drunk Ben & Chook very very soon.  Luckily - being around people that are drunker than me somehow sobers me up.  So - when Chook & Ben started annoying me with quick jabs to the guts while on an escalator - my trick of sunddenly jumping onto the aluminium centre piece and sliding down worked remarkably well.  The delightful Transport For London people try to prevent people from doing this kind of thing - by having large bumps at regular intervals.  Well - I somehow managed to jump the one I needed to, and then fairly gracefully hurdled back onto the ground at the bottom.  Leaving Ben & Chook speechless.  To be honest - I was rather speechless myself, as it really shouldn’t have worked as well as it did.  It sets a dangerous precedent - as I know that one day I’ll try to replicate the feat, and this time hurt and/or embarass myself terribly.

But - it is now back to work.  But work in the head office, which is usually incredibly boring.  I don’t have to wear a suit, which is a bonus.  But - very very little of my time is actually working for clients in a ‘billable’ sense - which means no more monthly bonus, which is terrible.  Slightly easier to get to each morning, which is good.  No fixed desk, so have to carry laptop and everything else to/from work - and can’t have breakfast supplies sitting at work, which isn’t good.  Food around here is horribly expensive also.  £1.25 for a cuppa tea at the closest breakfast/cafe joint.  It was 50p at my local one during the project.  £1.25!!!  Converted to NZ$ - I remember when I used to pay that for a pint of beer.

But - soon I’ll be saving money, when I move in with Chook & Chris.  Might even start cooking my own meals again.  My local is going to be gutted.  The new manager is already complaining about his weekly takings.  I haven’t pointed out to him what fraction of that I have calculated is going to disappear fairly soon.

Oh - and no more trips to India!  That is really quite good - but is probably another part of the project that I will kind of miss in a perverse way.  I calculated it yesterday - I spent just over 2 months in total in that hotel in India.  That is a decent portion of the year.  I probably should have arranged one last trip over there - at the end of which I could have taken a month or two off, and gone travelling in the country properly.  But - instead I’ll wait until next year, when I’ve got quite a plan in my mind for some travel.  To be done in Jan/Feb/Mar, isn’t it Ben?  When you’ll be busy working.  Sucker.

So - the end of an era.  No more project sucking up all of my time and energy.  And, although everybody kept telling me during the last few months (both work people and real people) that it had been doing that, and that nobody could understand how I was doing it - I didn’t really think anything of it until after it actually ended.  And - moving house, probably this weekend.  Which should be resulting in quite a few lifestyle changes also.  Cooking at home, instead of eating at the pub.  Going straight home off the tube, instead of straight to the pub.  (I really hope there isn’t a pub between new tube and new flat.)  Having people in the flat to chat with, instead of the pub.  Playing sport, instead of the jukebox at the pub.  Etcetera.  Etcetera.