It never rains, it pours!

When composing this blog in my head on Monday morning, I began with saying ‘I feel ill equipped to write another blog after the spectacular lesson learnt of not ‘building’ on flood plains’.  However, by Monday evening I had already composed this blog’s title of ‘It never rains, it pours’.

We spent the beginning of the week in Taupo, enjoying time with my god-mum and her family and entertaining ourselves with our self-guided Lord of the Rings tour – we have ‘done’ Mordor, don’t know what Frodo was complaining about – a perfectly agreeable volcano with a super set of rapids to play in.  We headed towards Wellington for the weekend, unawares of the Rugby 7s but thoroughly embraced the fancy-dress by going as ‘tourists’.  Once losing the final against New Zealand, we slunk back to Sophie’s flat (old Saudi friend) and hibernated, drowning our sorrows in fine NZ wine and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.  Sophie, a newly crowned ‘resident’ of NZ had never seen any of the films.  Thus we introduced her to Peter Jackson’s work as he was due to be starting the Hobbit just up the road soon.  We bid our farewells, giving Sophie her bed back as she’d kindly given it up and slept in the living room all weekend, onwards and downwards to the South Island.

Anyway…onto the ‘exciting’ part.  The Weather.

Once again, the scene is set; cloud overhead but glimmers of hope as the sun endeavoured to shine through.  Some word of a shower (there were isobars on the weather forecast which implied as such, however my Geography A-Level failed me once again and I didn’t know what they meant, nor do I know the capitals of Europe Daddy) but it was heading north past where we were staying so we should not worry. 

3pm. We find a site with glow worms, gold panning and river tubing.  Oh and 90 teenagers should be arriving. Ace.  Nevertheless we set up our tent away from the kids and just before the drizzle.  Drizzle?  The drizzle turned to rain, morphing to small lakes being released from the clouds and we were told that the kids were unlikely to come.  So I tentatively asked that if they weren’t coming could we have one of the cabins?  The campsite was flooding.  I couldn’t believe it.  Luckily the common room (cement room) had snakes and ladders and a TV to watch the news.  The rain was due to clear.  Really?!  It wasn’t doing a great job of it so, we agreed to ‘splash out’ (excuse the pun) on the cabin and leave the tent to do as it pleased in the rain.  2 out of 3 camping experiences have included flooding.  I know I only teach 6-year-olds but I know that they aren’t good odds.  Anyhoo.  We survived.  In the cabin.  The nice wooden shed-like cabin.  The sturdy-rain-won’t-come-in shed-like cabin.

Since this event we have spent 2 water-free nights in the tent.  Surrounded by ducks.  Tim likes feeding the ducks.  Thus, we have ducks wherever we go.  One stole my apple today as I was sitting by a lake.  I think they’re the evil ducks (Eddie Izzard quote).

In other news…

My accent is almost fully kiwi – I now use vocab such as jandels, togs, undies, rellies and chucks.  Tim’s accent is still more Australian than it is kiwi but endeavours to call ‘cliffs’ ‘cluffs’ and asks whether any bird we see is a kiwi. No. They’re nocturnal.  

Kiwi radio is brimming with quality music from all eras – today’s highlights were Five and Blur.

Oh and Cloudy Bay wine tastes best at the Cloudy Bay winery, looking out at the vineyards, backdropped by mountains under a crystal clear blue sky. (After which, Tim insisted that we play swingball which was in the winery garden. Idyllic-ish.)

TTFN

Tic Toc xxx