End of an Era

Bill and Toni have sold Fernside! What shall I do at weekends? 'My' bedroom at Fernside is bigger than my apartment in Wellington! I need to grab grapefruit, lemon, walnut, and palm trees before they move out in mid-November!

Stonyridge Vineyard

Each year, immediately following the School of Coaching, the 'presentation team'/tutors give ourselves a present of staying at our favorite downltown hotel, The Heritage. We get double upgrades so we each end up in huge suites with separate lounges, dining and kitchen areas and, after 10 days staying in a girl's school in stupidly small, hard, narrow beds we deserve the pampering.

This year we'd booked return flights to Wellington for late afternoon so we had the Monday to chill out. Sleep in, late breakfast and then a 30 minute ferry ride to Waiheke Island for lunch; what a great idea. When we landed we piled onto the island bus and set off for somewhere, anywhere because we had no idea. However, as we are trundling along I look at the tourist map from the ferry and think we may go close to Stonyridge Vineyard. I'd been there with Hammy before the 2006 Commonwealth Games and tasted their starship wine, Larose. As you can see, its billed as one of the top 100 wines in the world and, indeed, it is very good.

One of the other bus passengers overheard our chaotic mumblings and told us she would put us off at the gate to Stonyridge; excellent.

The walk from the gate to the vineyard is quite long and dusty but its also interesting with a lovely three-level, tiered lake which would make a totally suitable model for Rancho Relaxo (argghh!!). At the top of the driveway you are met by a lovely 'old' building (nothing's really old here). The restaurant is on the other side of the building and overlooks a beautiful valley filled with vines and horsy-type things.

Larose wasn't on offer for the tastings which was a disapointment but there's always a silver lining. This silver lining was a deep purply, maroony colour; Fallen Angel Mourvedre 2005 Barossa Valley. Definitely some wonderful things going on in that wine.


The restaurant was filled with local taxi drivers having their annual outing so the real menu was 'off'. However, we persuaded the waiter to go find some bread and dips and we feasted well.

New Zealand IS a Village

Last Wednesday evening I get a message from our National Coach, Jan Cameron in Auckland; will I phone her? Sure.

She's in a line-up at the grocers but she needs to unload on me and bring me up to date with all the various unstraightforward goings-on with the High Performance group we have in Auckland. The call last 42 minutes.

As I end the call I get a txt alert:

'Standing next to jan cameron in grocery store - She's in a v intense phone call about our only realistic olympic medal contender who ...... (remainder of message deleted because its personal about the swimmer).'

Auckland is 658km from Wellington. It's a 9:15 drive or a one hour flight. There are 1.25 million people in Auckland. How come one of the blondes (the one on the left during a production of 'Hair') is standing next to Jan at the precise time she's calling me?

New Zealand is a village.

Seeing Clearly

You remember I ordered new glasses at Lenscrafters in Richmond?

It all started here in New Zealand; I was having difficulty using my computer screen so I had my eyes tested. 'There's only a slight change, you don't need a new prescription.' said the man. 'Oh yes i do,' quoth I and I hauled him outside so I could stare at shop signs some way off. With the 'slight change' I could read them no problem, with my old glasses I couldn't. 'I need new ones.'

So, back inside we go to do the math. New everything, including frames,graduated lenses, anti-glare, anti-scratch and whatever else they had on offer. There's a new graduated lens which allows a bigger central area for mid-range viewing and that's what I wanted. They were on offer at a $200 discount and, surprise!, they were exactly $200 more than the old design they were replacing. Total $1,250! On top of that the nice money-grabbing man suggested I get a second pair of glasses which would be purely used for computer work. I don't think so. As I was due to be in Canada and US within a couple of weeks I took the prescription and headed for the Northern hemisphere.

The nice Muslim lady in Lenscrafters, Saadia, took me through all the usual stuff and came up with a quote which was about $500 cheaper than the NZ one. Because the graduated lenses can't be made on site they had to be made in California.

'Very good because I'm going there in a few days.'

Saadia sadly said, 'No, they have to come back here because we are responsible for them being made exactly to the order.'

'OK, then you'll have to courier them back to me in California.'

Off I go to California.

After a few days I phone Saadia. She's not in but Allen takes the call. He doesn't speak English, hasn't a clue where to look for orders and is very, very slow. He also leaves the phone unattended for long periods without so much as a 'Please hold caller.' The outcome is no glasses have arrived. I try again the following day, and the following, following day. 'Yes, they're here.'

'Please send them to California.'

'Not enough time. We'll send them to new Zealand.

'Terrific; do it.'

Once back in New Zealand I wait some days then get an email from Saadia asking what my address is!! I email back, then get a fax asking if the address is correct because there's no zipcode. No, we seldom use them because there's only two and a half people here among the 40 million sheep and the sheep don't get mail deliveries (there's some excruciating puns there just waiting to jump onto the page but I'll resist). Lenscrafters trust the package to UPS - 'celebrating 100 years of service'. It will become all too clear why it's taken 100 years!

The days drift past with no sign of the glasses. Then I receive a card from UPS in Auckland saying they can't deliver but none of the cause of non-delivery options are checked. I phone them. I have to pay $2 to cover the import duty unless I can send them an email saying I bought them in California but they weren't ready when I returned to NZ. Well $2 is $2 so I hit the keyboard! I also arranged to collect them at the UPS depot at Auckland airport the following day because that's where I'd be. Excitement was building.

The following day I eventually find the UPS depot and ding the bell on the counter. A guy arrives, listens with a puzzled look on his face, then vanishes into the back of the depot. Vanishes. Just gone. Even Hermione couldn't have said 'Evanesco' and had a more satisfactory result. Eventually (good this, isn't it; 'even', Evanesco', eventually'?) I find a receptionist and ask her to find the vanished guy. He reappears ('Aparecium') and tells me the glasses were sent to Wellington the previous day. I sense a tale turning into a story wanting to become an epic.

I ask him to arrange a return flight to Auckland and delivery to the school where we're staying for the 'School of Coaching'. He agrees to do this.

The following day no glasses have arrived so I phone the dear UPS people. Apparently they had twice tried to deliver to the hostel reception but there was no-one there.

'OK, let's try the swimming pool around 3.30 this afternoon.'

'No problem.'

3.30 arrives but brings with it no glasses. Things are busy so I don't get a chance to phone until the following morning. Guess what! Go on, guess. There's no way you'll get it right. No matter how imaginative you are I defy you to crack this one.

The glasses were still in Wellington!

How, you may ask, as indeed I did, could the delivery man attempt to deliver the glasses to the School reception in Auckland if they were in Wellington? Hermione must have been involved again and used her Time-Turner. We agree the glasses will be on the 11 am flight from Wellington to Auckland and we will collect them in person at the depot when they arrive.

They arrive.

We collect.

I can see :)

Still alive and kicking!

I know.
I know ...
I KNOW.
I KNOW!!!

Yes, I know I haven't posted since August 20th but I've been all over the place and almost without a 'base'. Forgiven? Please?

What have I been doing? I presented a pilot certification weekend in Nelson, then went to Hamilton for a different certification course before driving straight to Auckland to fly to Vancouver :) Nelson is an incredible place and I always stay at The Honest Lawyer, a lovely, oxymoronic title for a neat place with draft Boddingtons and draft Guinness. there's also a 4-poster bed in one of the rooms but I haven't landed up in that one yet.

Then, from Vancouver, I went to California, met up with Hammy and 'did' the Santa Barbara area of wine-tasting. We drove from LAX to SB and then did about eight vineyard tastings of maybe 8-10 wines each - we 'spitted' of course! Some wonderful stuff.

Hammy had brought a mixed case from his 'cellar' in the UK so we worked our way through that during the American Swiming Coaches Conference in San Diego. I can't remember how many times I've been to that but it's probably 5 or 6, and this was the best. During the wine-tasting/conference transposition Bill Sweetenham, the British Performance Director, 'suddenly' resigned which was a surprise to many but a relief to a lot.

Check out Chateau d'Yquem because that was one of the wines Hammy brought with him!

Then, when I returned to NZ we were straight into a serious HP meeting, immediately followed by our Spring Competition, then our annual School of Coaching; all in all it was over 30 days straight without a break.

More blogs over the weekend I promise :)