Thursday, March 31, 2005
Mat's secret shame
Mat: It's been getting worse recently. I got a good fix over Christmas at Ben's, and I'd kind of forgotten about it, until I saw it again in town the other day. Now increasingly I'm thinking about it all the time, and it's distracting me from work. I found a supplier on the web the other day and this morning I rushed down to the shop to get the Buy, Sell, Swap and feverishly scanned the adverts looking for it, but no joy. Hillary Clinton calls it "a major threat to morality" and says that it encourages children to have sex with prostitutes and then murder them.It is of course Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. (For any other addicts out there, you may be interested to know that some geeks have recently hacked the game to allow you to play it multiplayer online!) But while I've still got work to do and the weather isn't too bad to go paragliding, I must resist. Resist...
On a completely different note, to make you northern hemisphere dwellers feel better, we had to buy slippers and turn our storage heater on last night.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Rain stops play
Kat: It's been a rollercoaster of emotions since Friday, or at least a fairly giddy tea-cup ride. We had resigned ourselves to a weekend of rainy day activities without much excitement when Jane and Martin rang out of the blue to say they were driving over from Christchurch. Saturday morning we woke to glorious sunshine so we booked a kayak trip for the next day and went out for a tour of Nelson and a visit to the Saturday market (we were recognised from the local paper again, this time by a woman selling scarves). In the afternoon we drove to Rabbit Island for an extremely pleasant barbeque by the beach. Luckily the first raindrops fell just as we were munching the last mouthfuls of food, so we missed the shower and saw a fantastic double rainbow on the way back to Nelson. We make our own entertainment here in Nelson so it was an evening of speed Scrabble, gobble and Lovely Princess :)Sunday couldn't have been more different: the rain was torrential throughout the night and not much better when we got up. The kayak trip had been cancelled and even the Easter fair at Mapua was rained off. We drove to Abel Tasman anyway, hoping the weather would improve, but the further west we went, the more it deteriorated. Disappointed, we headed back to Nelson and stopped for lunch at Jesters café - a rambling, arty sort of place where you can stay overnight in a giant shoe and feed tame eels in the river. Sod's Law, back in Nelson the sun was shining. After a vigorous walk up to the Centre of New Zealand we went to the Suter Park Cafe where Nigel showed us his stigmata biscuits and Lynda plied Martin and Jane with pizza and hot cross buns for their long journey home (it's over 400km and a 6 hour drive).
I was back at work today and so of course the weather's fantastic again, although too windy for paragliding. Much relief was had when we got our laundry back this morning. The laundry opening hours are erratic and when we tried to pick our clothes up on Saturday it had already closed, so Mat & I had little more than what we were wearing for the whole weekend.
Cadbury creme egg count: 6
Friday, March 25, 2005
A Traditional Easter
Kat: No matter how far you travel you can be assured that some things never change and it seems the weather on a public holiday is one of those things. It's been almost continuously hot and sunny before now but of course the one weekend we plan to visit Golden Bay the clouds roll in and the heavens open. Typical! Today the rain is torrential and forecast to stay until Monday.I had a festive week at the cafe making bunny biscuits covered with desiccated coconut to look like fur, but drew the line at wearing bunny ears. Word quickly spread about Lynda and Nigel's hot cross buns and by yesterday they were baking to order (one customer admitted she was going to pretend she made them herself). In NZ, everywhere must close on Good Friday and Easter Sunday although the Suter gallery and cafe can stay open.
The Suter Park Cafe crowd is extended and complex: the chefs Lynda and Nigel are brother and sister while the owners are their respective partners, Barry and Kerry. Kerry is chief roaster at Pomeroys, Nelson's coffee roastery, and Barry is assistant principal at Nayland College (the school that my relative Jack goes to, incidentally).
Lynda and Nigel are also artists and know a number of artistic types in and around Nelson. Last night, Barry borrowed a Nayland minibus and took a group of us to the opening of an exhibition called 'Holes' at Tim Wraight's Sealevel Studio near Motueka. All the pieces were impressive and inventive but Nigel's was definitely the most disturbing: six disembodied plastic doll arms powered by windscreen-wiper motors which seemed to be trying to clamber out of a rusty metal pot.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Shreddie heaven
Mat: Today was pleasant but fairly run-of-the-mill, until we went shopping in Woolworths (which is a regular supermarket over here) this evening and discovered that they've started stocking Shreddies! They're my all-time #1 breakfast and we've been looking everywhere for them since we left the UK. The only other time we've seen it was one lone box in a New World supermarket in Wellington before Xmas, and so we bought four boxes today in case they stop stocking them tomorrow. That'll keep me going for at least a week - I had them for dinner tonight to celebrate. I was seriously contemplating buying a suitcase-full when we come back to the UK, but it looks like I might not have to.They're not your regular UK packaging though but some strange bilingual Canadian version which have a variety of disgusting recipes that you can make using the cereal, including the wonderfully titled Shreddies, Nuts & Fluff.
Shreddies Tex-Mex mix anyone? Sacrilege.
Monday, March 21, 2005
It's winter, but not as we know it
Kat: Today officially marks the first day of winter, but with clear blue skies and a high of 23ºC I'm not piling on the jumpers just yet. A few trees are starting to drop their leaves and the mornings and evenings are a bit more crisp but other than that the weather is still fantastic. We put the clocks back yesterday, so we're 12 hours ahead of the UK until British Summer Time starts at the end of March.Mat had one of those days yesterday when you wish you could just crawl back into bed. It started out badly with an air NZ woman telling him that we couldn't come back into the country in August on a single ticket (palpable nonsense which was confirmed when I rang back in the evening), went downhill as he wrestled to install software for work and hit rock bottom when he went paragliding afterwards and landed his instructor's new glider in a big cowpat! It wasn't all bad though; he escaped from computer hassles at lunchtime and was quickly drawn into playing Sylvia and Wayan's latest purchase: Boggle. I came over to their table on my lunch break and found them all in silent contemplation - it was a very serious game! We're planning another soirée with them for a proper tournament. What a difference a day makes - today he was back at Barnicote, riding thermals without any help from his instructor, and the computer behaved impeccably.
We went for a walk up to the observatory before supper. There are many fantastic walks around Nelson and the hills give superb views over the town and Tasman bay. It's been almost a month since our first disastrous attempt to do this particular walk but it was well worth the effort and we were rewarded with a lovely sunset.
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Back to Blighty
Mat: We're going back to the UK for a month in July/August - Mel (my best man) & Joel are getting married on the 24th July and we simply have to go! It's going to be the event of the year, dahling. Actually we decided a little while ago, but we were waiting for our RSVP to arrive before we went public. We posted it back to Blighty on the 3rd March and since it stil hasn't arrived we decided to just call them to say we're going instead. Never trust international post. We decided that if we're going back at all it might as well be for a decent amount of time so that we can see everyone and enjoy the UK summer while it's mid-winter in NZ. Hopefully by the time we come back on the 20th August, Spring will have started to poke through.This evening Kat's relatives the Herveys are coming over for dinner so we went to the fruit & veg market in town this morning to get ingredients for the pizzas that we're making. Much to our shock and embarrassment a woman at the salami stall recognized us from the newspaper article!
That I'm addicted to technology is no secret, but I've recently discovered a new toy that really blew me away. Skype is a free piece of software that allows you to make free phone calls anywhere in the world through the internet (VoIP). The quality is really amazing, it's like they're in the same room rather than 10,000 miles away. If they don't have Skype you can still call them, but it costs around 1p per minute and the quality and delay are better than a regular phone call. So get it now and give us a call!
Friday, March 18, 2005
More fame but no fortune yet
Mat: What a shock to the system - we got woken up by an alarm clock for the first time in about six months. The radio interview was at 8am, so we crawled out of bed at seven and tried to remember why we were up so early. We'd just about got it together by the time we got to the studio in town.The radio station, Fresh FM, is a bit odd - anyone can do a show, you just have to apply to them and say what you're doing. Last night Sylvia and her boyfriend Wayan came over for a game of Speed Scrabble and Wayan told us about the show that he presents on Friday nights. They play a pretty random selection of music, get the same callers each week and read out the weather on the hour. They used to read the news too, but they're not allowed to do that anymore, but he wouldn't say why!
Matt Lawrey, the DJ, was in a typical cheery-radio-presenter frame of mind and we both chatted with him on air for a quarter of an hour, at the end of which he took some calls and gave away a copy of the book to the first caller who had a belief about toilets. Sam, 10 years old from Nelson, thought that the Bogey Monster lived in his toilet and was scared until he dreamed that he made friends with him, and it was okay after that.
After the show finished we got a call from a freelance journalist who wants to write a feature on us, so we're meeting him at the Cafe on Tuesday. He's a Brit living in Nelson who likes the angle that we've had the book published everywhere except Britain!
I was thinking 'Tonight with Mat' has a nice ring to it for my TV show :)
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Fame and fortune
Mat: The local radio DJ that I was told to bribe turned out to also be a journalist and photographer for the local free paper, the Leader (this in itself is amusing since our free local rag in Brighton was also called the Leader!) I met Matt Lawrey in the Suter Park Cafe on Tuesday, where he only had a free muffin and tea, and we had a good long chat about the site and the book. He works fast with cake inside him because this morning as we were setting off for a run we found ourselves on the front cover of this week's edition! The article is in the gallery. It's by far the most accurate article that anyone's written about I Used To Believe, and he even spelled both of our names correctly! We're appearing on his radio show tomorrow morning, so by lunchtime there won't be a soul in Nelson who doesn't know who were are...My own TV show surely can't be far off now ;)
Monday, March 14, 2005
The earth moved
Kat: Our first earthquake, and we slept right through it! It happened at 4am and measured 6.4 on the Richter scale at the epicentre in the Tasman Sea. The front page article in the Nelson Mail reported that in a Murchison store three packets of crackers moved. It doesn't get much more exciting than that. Murchison was largely destroyed in 1929 by a 7.8 earthquake which caused landslides and all sorts of untold damage, so the residents probably twitch nervously every time a box falls off a shelf.Mat has been flogging Butter Comes from Butterflies around town and a couple of bookshops have agreed to stock it - with the possibility of a book-signing! The site continues to attract a steady flow of traffic and new beliefs: over 350 were submitted last week and there are more than 33,000 on the site in total. He's going to hit the local radio next and the Suter cafe staff have kindly pointed out a DJ who runs a weekly art slot on his show and offered to bribe him with doughnuts.
After three days of paragliding Mat's looking forward to the excuse of some work to keep him grounded - flying is proving fun but exhausting!
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Fun stuff
Mat: My, don't I have an exciting life. Yesterday we launched our new website (you're looking at it) and today I got to spend the whole day Paragliding (while Kat watched). And tomorrow I get to fly from Takaka Hill which is 3000ft!First, the exciting website. We both got bored of the old style, and it was getting very messy as it evolved. So we've moved everything around (and probably broken lots of links in the process) and made it much more funky - that flowery look was so 2002, darling, and the use of all lowercase letters is terribly outdated now. Most importantly we've added themes, so visitors can now change the site to look how they like. Every time you come to the site it'll display a random theme, so you can have a look and decide which one you like best (probably Accessible). If you've got a nice photo that you like, send it over and we'll make it into a new theme! No rude pics please ;)
Paragliding is possibly slightly more exciting that a website, but it's a lot more dependent on the weather. Today was absolutely perfect flying conditions for Barnicote Hill (warm, some puffy cumulus clouds showing the thermals, no wind) and I had five fantastic flights, each around ten minutes long. I feel that I'm starting to get the hang of flying and on good flights I feel that I'm actually in control of the glider, rather than just going along for the ride. To get my full paragliding licence I need to do 40 flights and notch up 90 minutes of flying time. The flights might take a while, but if I have another day like today I'll have done the required time with no problems - but there's no way I'd fly on my own yet!
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Unwelcome visit
Kat: We had our first house-guests yesterday: Dan and Sarah are on holiday in New Zealand for three weeks and they drove over from Christchurch to see us before flying home on Saturday. We showed them the (limited) sights of Nelson and had a scrumptious meal at Spices Malaysian restaurant which serves authentic Malay dishes as well as the fabled dosai we've been hunting ever since we enjoyed them in Singapore. Heaven! We also sampled some delicious local wine. This was our first excuse to eat out in Nelson though we've already lined up a list of other places we'd like to visit.After the meal and a few rounds of Lovely Princess and Trumpy Trumps we went to bed, only to be rudely awoken by a cat frantically scratching at the glass of the back door. Mat and I both threw water at it, but it was very determined and was still loitering around the front door in the morning. Dan charged at it with a fearsome yell and we haven't seen it since. We assume it belongs to a neighbour and was used to being allowed in by the last tenants - and is therefore probably responsible for the flea plague that greeted us when we first moved in. It certainly won't be getting a warm welcome from us!
Mat's been beavering away at a revamp of matnkat.com which is ready to launch in the next few days. Some folder restructuring will be involved so if you have any problems with broken links or missing pages, email him to complain :)
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Divided by a common language
Kat: Meeting and working with Kiwis at the Suter Park Cafe I've come across several words which have flummoxed and/or amused me. Here, in no particular order, is a print-out-and-keep guide to some New Zealand colloquialisms.| Gladwrap | Clingfilm |
| Brush and shovel | Dustpan and brush |
| Trim milk | Skimmed milk (semi-skimmed is not understood) |
| Flat stick | Flat out i.e. very busy or fast |
| O.E. | Overseas Experience, travelling or living abroad |
| Togs | Swimming costumes (male or female) |
| Bogan | Lower-class suburbanite with mullet and attack dog |
| Ice block | Ice lolly |
| Lollies | Sweets |
| Chips/chippies | Crisps |
| Hot chips | Chips |
| Dairy | Convenience shop |
| Trundler | Shopping trolley |
| Cut lunch | Packed lunch |
| Stove/range | Cooker |
| Docket | Till receipt |
| Op shop | Charity shop (short for opportunity shop) |
| Revue bar | Strip club |
| Pokies | Fruit machines |
| Lay by | To reserve goods, pay in installments then collect when paid off |
Friday, March 04, 2005
Bottoms up
Kat: To celebrate my first weekend off work and to remind ourselves that we are still tourists, we went on a tour of Mac's Brewery, a local producer of tasty lagers, ales and ginger beer (apparently it's available in the UK from some branches of Sainsbury's). There's something perversely satisfying about bottles clinking along conveyor belts and watching a label-glueing machine in action. In addition to learning about regular beer production we picked up some more ginger beer know-how and Mat's already cooking up a second batch as I type. This time we've gone for grated ginger and more of it, plus a planned tasting after 36 hours to see whether it needs a full week of fermentation.The tour guide had an entertaining dry sense of humour and his speciality was making motorbikes from beer caps. He's originally from Wigan and this is a case in point. The number of British people we've met living in Nelson is unbelievable: our landlord Sarah is from Winchester and her gardener is from Britain, when I phoned the power company to reconnect our electricity I spoke to a girl from Preston, our neighbour is from Cirencester, we bought our futon from a woman originally from Hackney (and bought our table from an Irishman), a Glaswegian lady works at the Red Cross shop ... and there are so many more. What's more, I don't think we've come across a Kiwi who, on finding out that we lived in Brighton, hasn't said "Oh yes, we had fish and chips on the pier there". It amuses me that in a country famous for "fush and chups" so many people go abroad and eat the grotty ones on the Palace Pier.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Crossword fun
Mat: I've got my paragliding PG1 licence, so I'm officially qualified to throw myself off hills as long as there's an instructor watching me plummet to my doom. Yesterday I jumped off Barnicote Hill (2000ft) and it was fantastic! I spent about ten minutes in the air, and after the initial shock of being all on my own that high I loved every minute of it. The next step is PG2 where I'd be allowed to fly on my own, but that might have to wait until we've got some more money.We've decided that at the end of this year when our NZ visas expire we're going to live in Australia for a year. I applied for our visas online today - we needed to do it sooner rather than later as you have to be under 30 to apply but luckily not when you arrive in the country, because I won't be. Thirty? Doesn't time fly when you're enjoying yourself.
We've been emailed by a number of people recently to say that reading our blog cheers up their cold, dull mornings at work stuck in front of the computer. So to brighten up your day and stop you working for a few more hours we present matnkat.com's prize crossword #1! As the title implies, there's a prize and everything. Closing date is 1st April 2005 so get cracking...