home!

Am at Mum and Dad's in Timaru at the moment. The big surprise went as planned and Mum, Dad and Angus were extremely surprised to see me walk through the door on Friday night. I don't think Fiona could have kept it a secret for much longer and I was starting to think that they had cottoned on - but actually they had absolutely no idea which was great. So Dad was extremely pleased that I was there for his birthday - and that we all were there (apart from Tiana, Angus's girlfriend, who couldn't make it down from Nelson for the weekend).

Flight out on Air NZ was very impressive. The flight was only half full and so I had three seats to myself the whole way to Auckland. Nice opportunity to spread out and get some rest. I had taken some melatonin pills which are meant to help with jet lag - I thought that they would help me sleep more, but I only got about four hours on the first leg and none really on the second. But I haven't really suffered from jet lag since I've been here - have been sleeping at normal times and not been too tired. Will be interesting to see how they work going back. Food and entertainment on the flight were great. Had a connecting flight from Auckland to Christchurch which was totally full - a bit of a shock to the system!! Fiona met me at Christchurch and we drove down to Timaru after John finished work.

On Saturday Angus and I went down to Smithfield beach so that he could go sea kayaking (there was a bit of a swell). Was fun to watch although there were a group of surfers there as well and he didn't want to steal their waves too much.

We celebrated Dad's birthday with a long Italian lunch - he had 15 people in all. It was a gorgeous day, really sunny. We had the antipasti in the garden and all the hats had to come out. The rest of the lunch was fabulous, including a lovely tiramusu, and a specially decorated cake with 'Buon Compleanno Ken' on it, and red, green and white ribbons and stars. Dad had been given some dominoes for his birthday so we had a mini tournament to round the evening off. Had some excitement between courses when some of the scrub down by the railway track caught fire and two fire engines raced down to put it out.

On Sunday Fiona, John and I went for a walk around Dashing Rocks - there's a nice cliff side track there now, all sign-posted, not like when we were kids!! They then went back to Christchurch and Mum, Dad and I went to an exhibition down in the Landing Services Building of a Queenstown painter, Angus Watson. While we were there, one of the artist's friends told a story in a loud booming voice about a relative who lived in South Africa and had been a victim of a home invasion, shot six times etc. A bit alarming!

Off to Wellington on Monday morning to visit friends up there.