Sometimes

Sometimes, I find myself remembering my beautiful little island in the Andaman Sea - Koh Poda. There you didn't need to care about the "euro" or the American right or crazy Muslim clerics or the price of bacon. You just took your book and your bottle of water to a shady place on the beach and when the sun got too hot you put your mask on and snorkelled out over the turquoise bay. One afternoon, when I finally raised my head from the salt-water, I noticed that I was a hundred metres offshore and an angry,  charcoal-coloured storm cloud had arrived from nowhere. By the time I made it back to the beach, rain was lashing down like no tomorrow. I just stood there laughing, waiting for this sudden tempest to pass. There was nobody else there. My book - "Bangkok - A Cultural History" was completely sodden. 

I looked back at my photographs of Koh Poda today. Did I really go there? Was it really me?:-

And on the mainland, in the fishermen's cave at Railay Beach, wooden phalluses had been placed as offerings to some ancient sea god:-

Thick

Two short planks

Yes I'm thick folks. In England we use the term "thick" to describe those whose mental capacities are under par. I have just been watching news footage from Greece. Street riots have greeted the news of yet more austerity measures for that blighted country as the "euro" struggles from one crisis to another. Meanwhile, the European Court of Human Rights has decreed that the Jordanian hatemonger- Abu Qatada must be released from a British jail. Apparently his human rights must be protected! But who I wonder is paying his massive legal bill?

I am thick because I have no idea what European unity is all about. How can you have unity if some of us are less equal than others so that when the going gets tough the weak get punished? And why is it that British justice can be overruled by overpaid and unelected legislators in Strasbourg, Brussels or The Hague? A straw poll of British citizens would overwhelmingly conclude that the odious Abu Qatada should be sent back to Jordan immediately and billed for his air ticket. We wonder what the hell the guy was ever doing in our country in the first place and how he got to tap in to our welfare benefits while championing a nasty vision for the world that is utterly medieval and anti-Western.

In my profound thickness, I have other questions about Europe. How come petrol is far more expensive in Britain than anywhere else and how come we pay far more for wine and other alcoholic drinks? Why do we contribute more to the American adventures in Afghanistan than any of our European "partners"? Why are the borders open for Eastern Europeans to swarm in willy nilly and why did we allow countries like Romania and Bulgaria to join this so-called European Economic Community when they were clearly economically backward and would become liabilities propped up by the rest of us?

Back in the day, economic "experts" and transient politicians decreed that the only way forward for our continent was monetary union. European people assumed that they knew what they were talking about though many of us were very sceptical - imagining that this drive for union was mainly about big business, banks and suchlike. But how could we see into the future, being as thick as two short planks? We had to bow to the experts. They knew best.

The state of an economy has an enormous bearing upon political stability and the contentment of ordinary citizens. It was economic chaos that led to the rise of the Nazis in the 1930's and economic gloom that has caused so many suicides, so many relationship problems and so much anger all around Europe in recent months. I know I'm thick but looking back I'd have been much happier if rather than joining the European feeding frenzy, Britain had stepped aside, choosing instead to fortify its economic links with the rest of the English speaking world and historical allies from the British Commonwealth such as India, Pakistan, Malaysia and Nigeria.  The world is a small place now. Did we really need Europe? Or am I simply being thick?

Cook

A visit to a faraway country like New Zealand is not something you file away in the back of your mind like a beach holiday in Spain. New Zealand was at the top of my "must visit" list. A special country. I knew a lot about it before I went - it's Maori heritage, its unique flora and fauna, its settlement by Europeans - mostly of British stock. And of course there was the connection with Yorkshire through master mariner Captain James Cook who circumnavigated the North and South Islands in 1769 aboard the "Endeavour" - a buoyant vessel that had once carried coal from the north east coast of England to London. 

A hundred and twenty years beforehand, the Dutch "discoverer" of New Zealand - Abel Tasman had not set foot ashore, didn't realise there were two big islands and never even saw the east coast. In contrast, Cook spent six months carefully mapping the country with astonishing accuracy and made contact with Maori tribes. Sadly this involved some musket fire and killing. Scientists aboard carefully collected hundreds of previously unknown plants and  The "Endeavour" was careened in Queen Charlotte Sound. Lovely word that - isn't it - careened. It simply means that the ship was beached so that its hull could be repaired and stripped of seaweed and barnacles.

Last week through the magic of "Amazon" I acquired Alistair MacLean's affectionate, authoritative and thoroughly readable account of Cook's life and achievements as a master mariner. He was an intensely private man and little is known of his personal life or how he progressed from such obscure origins in the North Riding of Yorkshire to become England's finest seaman and arguably the greatest explorer the world has ever known. That mystery exists in spite of his copious journals which pretty much limited themselves to factual matters surrounding the weather, the ship's position, problems with supplies etc.. 

MacLean refers to Cook's first landfall at Gisborne. While we were there, I went to find the Cook Landing Monument. It was erected in 1906. Every New Zealand schoolchild had been invited to contribute a penny to fund its construction and the monument was duly unveiled with much pomp and ceremony. (I guess that Maori families might not have been too happy about parting with their pennies!)  Today the monument sits close to Gisborne's gluttonous timber docks and there are ugly industrial units hiding it from the sea.

Though New Zealand is growing up now, it is still very much a young country. Even America seems ancient in comparison. New Zealanders still revere Captain Cook in statues and street names and of course he supplied the country with so many of its familiar geographical names - Young Nick's Head, Poverty Bay, Bay of Plenty, Cape Turnagain, Hawke's Bay, Cape Foulwind etc.. In fact, no one who has ever lived named as many places as Captain Cook did - though admittedly  he would occasionally ignore the fact that there were many pre-existing Maori names.

Below, the unveiling of the Cook Landing Monument in 1906 and my own photo taken last month:-

Wrinklies

Often on a Thursday morning I walk into the city centre to take advantage of  a cinema deal for the over fifties. It's offered by our independent Showroom Cinema not far from the Midland Railway Station. For £4.50 you can have a cup of coffee, a cake and a ticket to see a current movie. Last week I saw "Like Crazy" and this week it was "Young Adult" starring the gorgeous Charlize Theron - who is also becoming a mighty fine film actress.

It feels odd being in a large audience of people who are all over fifty. I look around at the grey or dyed hair, the wrinkles, the sensible winter coats and I think to myself - these people were all young once with their lives ahead of them and now they're on the downward slope. I still can't really believe that I am one of them.

Both films have been excellent - the kind of films that absorb you - where you lose track of time and accept the illusory world that is being unpeeled on screen. Starring Anthony Yelchin and Felicity Jones. "Like Crazy" is a love story with a difference. Meeting as students in Los Angeles, Felicity's character - Anna is British and she overstays her visa limit in order to have more time with Jacob. This causes future travel difficulties that eat away at their love like dry rot. The sense of time passing in this film is expertly crafted and I enjoyed it very much.

"Young Adult" is about a Minnesotan ghost writer of "young adult" fiction. Selfish, self-absorbed and semi-alcoholic, it's as if Mavis (Theron) has never truly grown up. She returns to her hick hometown - Mercury - expecting to just pick up where she left off with her high school sweetheart - Buddy Slade. But Buddy is married now, with a new baby and he has put his high school years where they belong - in the land of memory. At first, like a spolit brat, Mavis can't accept this but there is hope for her at the end as she drives back to Minneapolis.

Why Theron's performance hasn't won her an Academy Award nomination for best actress is beyond me. If you're reading this Charlize - please call round for a cup of tea next time you're in Sheffield! Daytime would be best. The strapline for her film could be my own life motto:-

Schooldays

The notion of "school" probably means a lot more to me than it does to most people. I was not born in a hospital but in a rural schoolhouse - right next door to the village primary school where my father was the headmaster. I wrote about this back in October 2010 and have probably alluded to it on other occasions during my seven years in the blogosphere.

After advancing successfully through my primary and secondary school years, I joined the last cohort of eighteen year old British school leavers to become  V.S.O. (Voluntary Service Overseas) volunteers. It was 1972 and I was posted to the most northerly of the Fiji Islands where of course I was a teacher in Rotuma's only high school.

Later, in Scotland, my degree was in English Studies with Education and during those four and a half years at university I visited or taught in a range of Scottish schools before embarking on my teaching career proper. Thirty two years flashed by teaching English in secondary schools in and around Sheffield.

So naturally, after all of this, I have many memories of things that happened in schools. Do we ever choose the memories that resurface or are they chosen for us by the "id" deep inside us? Some of my school memories are rather dark - often to do with injustice while others are light and quite joyful. In another post I shall reveal some of the darker school memories that still rankle even as they become fuzzier with the passing of years. But today, as February makes us shiver and a silver-grey cloud blanket shrouds the sun, let me think positively. The happiest days of your life?

I was in my last year at primary school so I was just eleven years old. It was my turn to lead a morning assembly. Usually, the Junior 4's just told stories from  a book called "The Bible" - you may have heard of it. But another idea was stirring in me. I wanted to give a speech that questioned the very existence of God and challenged the authenticity and origins of the "good book". In the days leading up to my assembly, I scribbled down some of my budding ideas. I had never shared them with anyone before but even at eleven and as a solo-singing member of the church choir I had come to realise that religion was all a load of poppycock. "The Bible" was just a story book, written by men and the idea of an afterlife was really quite absurd.

The night before my assembly, a voice in my pubescent head told me that the sky might fall in if I delivered my planned assembly talk. I imagined the stony silence that would follow my profane oration and the stormy ripples that might follow. So I ditched the idea and hurriedly reconstituted the safe and comfortable biblical story of Daniel in the den of lions. The next morning that tale was met was met with nods and applause.

Daniel in the lions' den - perhaps a suitable 
motif for my life in education

A few weeks later, the teacher - who was my father - asked my class if they knew the names of any great composers. I was thinking Beethoven, Handel, Bach... but Dad had noticed that Joyce Collingwood's hand was up so he asked her. Beaming with confidence, she said "Albert Hall!" - London's best known concert venue. A few of us tittered but I guess that others admired Hall's great symphonies!

At secondary school, though I was always an average footballer, I discovered that I was naturally good at rugby. I was a Yorkshire terrier, ripping the ball from the hands of other forwards and muscling through. I was at the heart of the scrum  - a fearless warrior, from scrum to line-out, from maul to ruck. I had a great "engine" as they say and I especially loved playing the game on muddy winter grounds. 

At the age of fifteen I was promoted to the school's first fifteen even though the other boys were all seventeen or eighteen. The standard of rugby was higher - harder and faster - but I learnt to hold my own and gave as good as I got. And one of the proudest days of my life was when, after county trials, I was selected to play for Hull and East Riding schoolboys.

Soon after that, I transferred to the sixth form at Beverley Grammar School where the rugby tradition was not as strong and where I grew my hair long and became enamoured with modern music, poetry and art. Even so, I still turned out for the inter-house competition and remember the acclaim I received when, in the final, I had to take an "impossible" conversion kick from the touchline. The ball sailed between the posts as sweet as a nut and we had won the game!

Fast forward to September 1978. It's breaktime at Dinnington Comprehensive School and I'm in my leaky shanty town classroom on the edge of the school campus. I notice two new first year boys in fresh blazers walking across the adjacent sports field. I go out to them. 

"What are you doing here lads?"

"We're trying to find the science department."

"Well it's not on the field is it?"

"It's supposed to be," one of them says.

He shows me the map his form teacher has given him and there smack in the middle of the sports field is indeed the science department! The amateur cartographer has put it there for convenience because science is on the first floor of the main school building and the one-dimensional map can't overlay floors. That's why there's a big arrow to show that in actuality the science floor belongs on top of humanities. I chuckle at the boys' confusion and try to explain their error but they look at me blankly. To paraphrase The Jam - That's Education! 

And that's the end of this post. I have waffled on long enough... for now.

Today

In 2008, a publisher called Florence Sandeman decreed that the first Sunday in February would henceforth be known as British Yorkshire Pudding Day. It would be a day to celebrate this humble "pudding" - that has accompanied roast meats in the British Isles for at least three hundred years. Mrs Sandeman had various reasons for picking this particular day - mainly its temporal distance between Christmas and Lent.

Though I support the idea of a day designated to rejoice in  the existence of Yorkshire puddings, I am affronted, nay hurt that Mrs Sandeman did not think to discuss arrangements for the day with me - a man who after all changed his name to Yorkshire Pudding several years ago - someone who has always been a loyal ambassador for the kingdom of Yorkshire and a champion of all things Yorkshire.

If she had met with me, I would have proposed the following for Yorkshire Pudding Day:-

1) All Yorkshire schoolchildren to wear larger Yorkshire puddings like flat-caps for the day or two smaller yorkies as ear muffs.

2) Yorkshire pudding hurling events to be held in Yorkshire parks - flinging the pud like a floppy frisbee to win various prizes in several age groups.

3) RAF Red Arrows acrobatic team to drop thousands of small Yorkshire puddings on troubled hotspots around the world like Syria, Canton GA and Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The delight engendered would create genuine pathways to peace.

4) For charity, all members of the British Coalition cabinet to be force-fed burnt Yorkshire puddings - which should of course normally be avoided at all costs.

5) If snow is on the ground, extra large Yorkshire puddings to be baked then allowed to dry till hardened before being used in municipal parks as sledges by young families from urban areas that are blighted by poverty and joblessness.

6) On BBC, a musical talent show to be launched in which contestants are only allowed to sing self-penned songs that are about or refer to Yorkshire puddings.

Perhaps next year Mrs Sandeman will pick up on some or all of my ideas and the whole world will notice that it's Yorkshire Pudding Day!

Six years ago on this li'ol blog I posted my Ode to the Yorkshire Pudding. On such an auspicious day the time seemed right to recycle it:-

How simple thou art, risen through the years

I recall you marked my Sundays

Fat laughter and glass tears

Golden wert thou - a vessel for mum’s gravy

Mashed potato memories

Brown ocean for a navy

Of minted garden peas

What an ordinary pudding you are

Milk and eggs and plain flour

In a hot oven for half an hour

You’re even made now by the famous Aunt Bessy

Supermarket packaging being not quite as messy

As beating those ingredients

In an old mixing bowl

You bear my county’s name

My land of hopes and dreams

From Flamborough’s chalky cliffs

To Barnsley’s deep coal seams

But in googling the world wide web

I find your fame at last has spread

From Timbuktu to Kalamazoo

The Yorkshire pudding rises…

Alport

Alportdale - off The Snake Pass. Above, the hamlet of Alport - a cluster of stone farm buildings that predate the pine forest behind this isolated settlement. Below - The Tower - the central rock formation at nearby Alport Castles.

I walked above the Tower on barren snow-dusted ridges that overlook the winding Alport River valley. After a mile, and very carefully, I descended to the icy stream below, thinking I would make my way back to Alport along its rocky banks. However, in three places, progress was blocked by rock walls that were curtained with thick icicle sheets. Should I climb back up the treacherous slope to the ridge above or wade across this Arctic stream? I waded, three times, up to my knees, then squelched back to civilisation praying that the god of  frostbitten toes would spare me.

Another invigorating Pennine adventure in lovely, sharp winter sunshine... Oh a rambling we will go/In the February snow/ And its nice to walk alone/ Without a mobile phone!

Pastrami

They use the word "tramping" in New Zealand but I was simply walking, high on the very backbone of England. In the image above you can see the upper valley of the River Derwent. At this point it is really just a moorland stream that burbles its way into Howden Reservoir that then cascades over a dam into the Upper Derwent Reservoir which in turn feeds the next reservoir - Ladybower. These man-made lakes supply most of South Yorkshire's water.

In Sheffield, it was mild and sunny this morning with daffodils poking through too early, unaware that winter's    hunger is not yet satisfied. But on Howden Moor the snow was six inches deep. I was wrapped up warm like an Inuit and every step was tiresome. The snow hid hollows and springs, clumps of heather and loose millstone rocks. There was no path to follow and my destination was hidden from view on the moorland plateau above me. I laboured up Horse Stone Naze and then there she was - The Horse Stone - remote and ancient, sculpted by wind and time, frost and rain, revealing millstone layers that were formed before dinosaurs tramped this land - laid down in some ancient shallow seabed, long long ago - way past our imaginings.

And to the east on Crow Edge, I could see The Rocking Stones but if I had also gone up there it would have been dark by the time I got back to the car.

There was absolutely no one else about on those moors this afternoon. If I had fallen and injured myself, there would have been nobody to hear me yelling "Help!" or instigate a dramatic TV helicopter rescue. I'd have had to crawl into the lee of an outcrop, like the sheep do and curl up in sub-zero temperatures till tomorrow morning. That was just one of the crazy thoughts that flashed across the silver screen inside my head. And I wondered - why did they call it The Horse Stone? It doesn't look like a horse. It looks like a mega-pastrami sandwich - the sort they serve in delis in New York City... The Pastrami Stone?

Security

Over the last ten years, I have been on many aeroplanes and have had the somewhat dubious pleasure of visiting a wide range of airports - from Kavala in northern Greece to Knock in northern Ireland and from LAX (Los Angeles), California to Durban, South Africa. During these travels, I have been making mental notes about airport security and have been amazed to find so many variations and so many discrepancies.

Perhaps I am naive, but I have this idea that airport security should follow agreed international standards, enforced through rigorous inspection and licensing. Nobody likes security checks but in a world that has been blighted by inhuman terrorist attacks, travellers have a right to expect that airport security checks will, as far as possible, guarantee their safety.

Regarding our recent trip to New Zealand, we were allowed to take bottles of water on our internal Jetstar flight from Auckland to the South Island. Why? If liquids are a security problem on international flights, why are they allowable on internal flights? At Dubai, I did not have to take my laptop from my carry on bag whereas at virtually every other airport in the world laptops have to be scanned separately. In fact the guy at the X-ray conveyor belt was insistent that the laptop should stay in the bag.

Also at Dubai, when we were "airside", we bought some water for the onward flight to Brisbane only to find security people at the boarding gate insisting that we binned these expensive bottles. Interestingly, there wasn't an equivalent process when we returned to Dubai three weeks later and boarded our connecting plane to Manchester.

At some airports, they make you take off your shoes as a matter of course, at others they don't. Before passing through some X-ray gates you are asked to remove watches and belts with buckles but at others you aren't and yet when you pass through those gates the alarms fail to sound. Why would that be? Are the X-ray gates sometimes purely for show?

Once at Treviso airport near Venice, I accidentally went through security with an umbrella in my hand luggage but it wasn't detected even though the security signage insisted that umbrellas would be confiscated. At the same security check, a bottle of water was removed from my bag but the second bottle of water - at the bottom of my bag - was missed.

Our daughter, Frances, tells me that security was extremely lax at the airport in Birmingham, Alabama even though she was connecting with a transatlantic flight in Atlanta. Her hand luggage was not scanned and the X-ray gate was redundant so she boarded her later flight to Manchester without being screened at all.

I could go on and on about this subject. But finally I'd just like to make a point about water. Generally speaking, travellers are not allowed to take bottles of water "airside". You have to throw your bottles away and then buy new bottles of water in the duty free shopping zone. Invariably, this water is heavily overpriced. At Auckland Airport we paid $4NZ (£2) for a 500ml bottle and once at Shannon Airport in Ireland there was no water for sale anywhere. When travelling by air - especially long distance - it is vital to be well-hydrated. The small amounts of liquid provided by cabin staff during flights are often insufficient. In my view, if we are required to throw water away before passing through security, we should be provided with free or very cheap bottles of water when "airside". Besides, there are surely quick tests that could check the contents of a bottle so that travellers would not be required to needlessly throw their water away.

Dear reader - have you got any tales or thoughts of your own about airport security?

Photography

I took over a thousand photographs in New Zealand. It was an exceedingly photogenic part of the world. However, my trusty Hewlett Packard digital camera is clearly due for replacement. Apart from anything else, it now has a mysterious tiny chip on the lens which has caused a few irritating flaws in some of my pictures. Besides, at Christmas my best and most unexpected present was a cardboard mock-up of a camera from Shirley and our children. Frances had made it . Puzzled, I prised open the back of the fake camera to discover a large wad of cash - sufficient to pay the lion's share of the cost of a new Nikon or Canon digital SLR.

Finding out about cameras available in the current market is like pursuing a degree course in photographic jargon. I just want a great camera with a lens that has reasonable zoom capacity and the ability to take satisfying close-ups - but the explanatory details never cover such simple requirements. Undoubtedly, there are people in the world who have more significant problems to deal with.

Anyway, I have spent a three or four hours sifting pictures from my NZ collection to add to Google Earth. It can take a while because of the need to find accurate picture locations within the Panoramio mapping facility. While in the "land of the long white cloud", I was drawn to tatty or empty buildings that spoke of earlier times when New Zealand settlers arrived slowly by boat and were then very disconnected from the world they had left behind. Very different from today with air travel, television, telephones and the internet - facilities that in  a real sense have made our planet shrink into manageable and sadly less mysterious proportions:

Back

Pukeko bird

Back to winter in England. We flew from Auckland to Melbourne, Australia where I noticed the tennis star Serena Williams heading for first class on our Emirates flight to Dubai, following her early exit from the Australian Open. That flight was thirteen and a half hours long but made easier to bear by the entertainment console on the back rest of the seat in front. I played the inflight trivia game several times and watched the film "Thor" directed by Kenneth Branagh as well as reading most of "No Country for Old Men" by Cormac McCarthy.

Dubai Airport terminal is massive and though "award-winning" is most unpleasant in my view. There are  pathetically few  lavatories which are greatly oversubscribed and constant teams of attendants from poorer Asian countries are required to maintain them. The airport is supposed to be home to some of the best duty free shopping in the world but my investigations prove that electrical goods, watches and jewellery can be bought more cheaply in British high streets. At the airport, you see all creeds and nationalities as travellers from every continent pass through this vital "hub". We boarded a huge five hundred seater A380 airbus bound for Manchester and were delighted to discover that it was only half full - meaning we could spread out and feel less like New Zealand sheep crammed on to a truck.

Speaking of New Zealand, I think that one of the things we will always remember is the birds that live there - from kiwis to pied stilts and from tuis to unfamiliar hawks pecking away at roadkill - usually brush tailed possums. We would sometimes wake to tuneful birdsong we had never heard before and at Rotorua, as we observed a bubbling vent, a pukeko bird strutted out of the undergrowth. Of course we saw keas on the South Island and a recently deceased yellow hammer by an electric fence. Victorian immigrants - mostly from England - not only brought sheep, cows, cats and dogs with them but also house sparrows, thrushes, blackbirds - presumably to make them feel more at home.

New Zealand was once a land of birds. There were virtually no mammals - just a few bats and seals. That's why flightless birds evolved in the forests - they had no predators until the Maori people arrived. They obliterated the moas and several other species long before Captain Cook's cabin boy, Young Nick, first spotted the headland near Gisborne that was later named after him. 

Human beings have done their best to wreck the living aviary that was New Zealand. The destruction goes on. Keith  Woodley at the Miranda Shorebird Centre has seen a steady decline in shorebird numbers during his nineteen years in charge there. Meanwhile the government has endorsed a widespread poisoning campaign to reduce brush-tailed possum numbers on the South Island but precious and unique birds like the weka are also tasting the possums' poison - and dying. I dedicate this post to the native birds of New Zealand.

Variable oystercatchers at Whangarei Heads

Weka at Cape Foulwind

Giant moa in Auckland Museum

Taupo

Great Lake Taupo, New Zealand

Gisborne

We're now in Gisborne - the far east of the North Island. We're in a veritable mansion called Cedar House and seem to be the only guests here. The owner is a happy clappy lady called Catherine whose philosophy allows us to roam freely around her beautiful old property with its large dimensions and expertly crafted woodwork. Our bathroom with its hardwood floor is gigantic - the premier feature being a large, modern spa bath which Shirley lounged in as I swam in the outdoor pool this evening.

Today we drove up the coast to Tolaga Bay, hiking over to Cook's Cove where on October 28th and 29th, 1769 the "Endeavour" was anchored. Captain Cook's men took on board wood and fresh water while botanist Joseph Banks collected yet more unique plant specimens.

Cook's Cove north of Gisborne

Bus shelter on the road to Tolaga Bay

Shirley's spa bath

Captain Cook 's statue in Gisborne

Livingstone

Today - at Whakarewarewa, Rotorua

When I was eight years old, a new teacher arrived at my little village primary school in the heart of East Yorkshire. She was tall, slightly exotic in appearance and spoke English in an accent we had never met before. She was Miss Sanderson and she came from New Zealand.

On several Friday afternoons, she led singing sessions on her ukulele. The songs she taught us were as unfamiliar as her accent...”Riding home from Bangor on an Easter train/Met a student fellow, handsome tall and plain/ Quite extensive whiskers, beard, moustache as well...” But the song that really stuck in my little eight year old mind was "Pokarekare Ana", sometimes known as "The Waters of Lake Rotorua".

That’s where we are tonight – Rotorua - in the geothermal heart of the North Island. Our cedarwood chalet looks out on Lake Rotorua itself. This morning we visited the Whakarewarewa Maori village, built around an area of significant geothermal activity. Some of the pools are so hot that the people cook in them. For forty minutes we watched a little Maori cultural show in which the performers sang a languorous version of the song I first heard from the mouth of Miss Sanderson some time in  1961.

Yesterday was a true milestone in the history of blogging as when Livingstone met Stanley or when McCartney met Lennon. I visited the Tauranga mansion of Katherine de Chevalle with its lofty riverside views and there I met the great lady herself. I know that Mr Brague of Canton, Georgia will be extremely jealous about this but I don't care. Katherine gave Shirley and I a lovely homemade lunch which we consumed with Katherine’s affable daughter. The roast kiwi was succulent. Embarrassingly, I managed to drop some of our gracious hostess’s delicious green tomato chutney upon the tablecloth. Silly me!

Dr Livingstone I presume?

This is only the second time I have met with a blogger I have often linked with but I was glad I called in on Katherine. We got on fine in spite of initial and mutual nervousness and I wish we could have stayed longer. It was great to see some of Katherine’s portfolio of artwork – surrounding her investigations into the lives and perspectives of bees. Thank you Katherine. It was lovely to meet you and visit your characterful home.

Tomorrow we head for Gisborne on the east coast of the North Island.

Miranda

Sorry I haven't posted much since arriving in New Zealand. As a mean Yorkshireman, I don't really like paying extra for internet access.

We enjoyed four lovely days at Whangarei, about a hundred miles north of Auckland. It was a human-scale city with spectacular coastal scenery nearby. I swam in the ocean twice but as the water was not bath temperature Shirley only deigned to paddle. We saw two captive brown kiwis at the Kiwi North project. How salutary it is to recognise that these precious birds became endangered just because of Europeans' introduction of dogs and stoats and earlier the Maoris' introduction of the Polynesian brown rat.

Maybe it's just me but I feel a sense of sadness when I think of how New Zealand must have been before human beings ever happened upon these remote islands. It was surely a Garden of Eden with unique flora and fauna. Some of that still survives but much is lost or compromised by the things that man brought here. The towering kauri forests - containing trees five centuries old - must have been a true wonder to behold.

Anyway - here we are at Miranda - the NZ Shorebird Centre. Unfortunately we missed today's high tide with its promised excited conglomeration of shorebirds but in the late afternoon we walked upon the shoreline and saw some interesting birds pecking around in the mud flats - including white-faced herons, godwits and by an electric fence we found the sad corpse of a dainty yellow hammer.

Miranda - a picture by Katherine de Chevalle who we hope to meet tomorrow.

Alive

The Pudding heart is still beating. We have not been pecked to death by kea birds or savaged by warring Maori rugby players with sticky out tongues.

We are on New Zealand’s South Island now. We stayed in Koa Cottage, Little River on the glorious Banks Peninsula that Captain Cook mistakenly believed to be an island. It was named after the influential eighteenth century botanist – Joseph Banks. On Saturday night, the Earth moved for Shirley when  we were abed but it also moved for me in the form of a minor earthquake that measured 5.2 on the Richter scale.

We drove across the island yesterday via the breathtaking Arthur’s Pass, stopping off in the NZ village of Sheffield to buy a steak and onion pie from Sheffield’s Famous Pie Shop. I also noted the Sheffield Community Hall and the village’s only pub – The Sheffield Hotel. The weather was magnificent as we drove through obscenely beautiful mountains with hardly another vehicle in sight.

Annoyingly, just outside Greymouth I received a ticket from a traffic officer for overtaking another car on double yellow lines. Nothing was coming my way and the battered jalopy I chose to overtake was crawling along at about 30mph. Bugger! A $150 fine. Should I pay it? That is my current moral dilemma.

Birdling Flats, Banks peninsula

Kea bird at Arthur's Pass

Franz Josef Glacier earlier today

Today we drove southwards through lush forests and over gushing river plains, watched by snow capped mountains as we made our way to the Franz Josef Glacier. We walked up to this wondrous spectacle in blazing sunshine and later picknicked on a “scenic reserve” as we headed back up the coast to Greymouth. Another “grand day out”.

Rangitoto

It wasn't the bluest or sunniest of days on Rangitoto. We walked up a scoria track to the very summit of the island where we stood on the rim of the crater that spewed out this harsh black lava island only six hundred years ago. There were a few old bachs (NZ holiday homes) down near the shore and there were excellent views back to Auckland. It was as Wallace might have said, "a grand day out".

NZ

Above - the new Sky Bridge at Manchester Airport. Below - a place we were not meant to visit. It's Brisbane, Australia. Look very closely and you will see Helen from "Helsie's Happenings" frolicking barefoot in her garden. The plane was meant to refuel at Bangkok.

And finally, Auckland in New Zealand. Thirteen hours ahead of us timewise. It seems a very sleepy city but characterful too in the sultry sub-tropical warmth. People have so much space here and there's greenery and birdsong and one of the most popular pastimes seems to be waiting to cross roads even when there are no vehicles in sight. Two men were guarding a warehouse full of tens. And the Sky Tower - the tallest building in the southern hemisphere soared above everything like a guiding lighthouse. Tomorrow we hope to take a ferry to the volcanic islet of Rangitoto - assuming we can escape from our hotel room with its dodgy plastic key. We were locked out for over an hour earlier this evening waiting for the staff to figure out a way of getting us in. That's technology for you - sometimes it works - sometimes it laughs in your face.

Diversion

It was impossible for our flight to touch down as scheduled in Sri Lanka on New Years Day. This was because of tropical stormclouds piling up creating violent meteorological conditions over the Andaman Sea. We had chartered a seaplane to fly us from Colombo to Blogland but in the event we never got there. The pilot ignored my desperate pleas and kept going on and on through day and night, until we arrived in this place:-

Recognise it? We have never been here before so we are going to stick around for a while as I make new onward travel arrangements for Blogland.