Auckland

So here’s the first entry in what I hope will be a regular blog to keep you all informed of Laura’s regular mishaps and gaffs (Oh, and keep people informed about our life in NZ too).

So first things first, the flight. 24 hours on a plane, sounds like hell, right? Wrong! It was awesome! I don’t even like TV but the choice was phenomenal. I watched recent releases, cinema classics, entire series of TV shows! I had some intention of dropping off to sleep at some stage in the 24 hours but the entertainment was too good.

We sat for an entire day watching great TV, eating really good food and drinking cocktails, beer, wine and bubbles. Now, I know that some of you spend your time doing this anyway, so if you were thinking about coming to visit, you might as well do all this on a plane and wake up in New Zealand at the end of it.

We had timed it perfectly; we arrived in Auckland at around midnight and were definitely ready to sleep. We collapsed in a heap (literally), as our mattress was so soft that we both rolled into the squidgy middle.

Now Laura always plays devil’s advocate with me about jet lag. She claims that there is no such thing and that it’s just a myth, whereas it takes me two months to adjust to the clocks going forward an hour. And so at 5:30am, Ping! I was wide awake whilst Laura was still busy snoring, dribbling and generally snuffling away.

When she did finally wake up, we set about (as with all good adventures) doing some admin tasks, setting up tax numbers, opening bank accounts etc. Laura was in her element, making lists, starting folders,creating spreadsheets. She loves all this stuff. I think for her upcoming birthday, she’d really enjoy some ring binders and a hole punch. She is going to have a great birthday, I can sense it.

I occupied myself with important tasks too. I had to read all about the England vs Portugal game on the BBC website and checked out all of the player ratings, so I had
something to talk to Laura about later, she really is a lucky, lucky girl.

That evening we were both struggling to stay awake. Not even the excitement of Dobble could keep us going. After every game my head flopped to the side and I slumped down onto the mattress. ‘No Ryan! You can’t go to sleep yet, it’s only 6:30pm!’ With some considerable effort, We struggled on and managed to stay awake until there was a nine in it. Surely, now we’d be ready for a full night’s sleep but once again, I was wide awake in the early hours, only this time it was 3:30am! Damn you jet lag!

In the morning, my addled brain went to brush my teeth. I squeezed the toothpaste onto my brush, only to discover that I’d emptied a fair size dollop of bath gel all over my brush and hand. I looked at Laura to see if she’d noticed but she was already bent over double, laughing her head off!

With my sleep deprived brain, I decided it was a good time to start researching buying a car. Back in the UK, we loved the beautiful Mr Car. He took us on many wonderful adventures (after he’d warmed up and as long as it wasn’t too hilly). Replacing Mr Car would be hard. Fortunately, New Zealand is filled with cars for sale from 1993, with advertisements like, ‘It’s only done 350,000km!!’

I’m not quite sure how it happened but I came across a guy in Auckland who had a few cars for sale and we found a 2010 Nissan Note with only 48,000km on the clock. It was a fresh import from Japan and we’d be the first New Zealand owners. He’d also personally cleaned and polished the car. It was beautiful! We’d take it!

We celebrated that evening my getting off the bus early and climbing Mount Eden on the outskirts of Auckland to watch the sunset. From here you could really sense what a wonderful city this is. Surrounded by sprawling suburbs but with still so much greenery on show too, islands in the distance and beautiful blue water surrounding the city centre. Laura and I looked at each other, knowing that Auckland is quite a few people’s least favourite part of New Zealand and yet it was
stunning.

We awoke the next morning to find that the grotty hostel had bedbugs and they had savaged Laura but fortunately they’d left me well alone.

Although I was happy that I hadn’t been bitten, I couldn’t help but feel that maybe I needed a shower if even the bedbugs didn’t want a piece of me.

I went for a wash, being careful not to squeeze toothpaste all over myself rather than bath gel.

At reception, the hostel were actually very good with dealing with the problem and they refunded our stay. We had to wash all of the clothes that we’d worn but we were probably going to do that anyway (Well Laura was).

This was win-win. I’d had free accommodation, my clothes had been washed. There really was no downside to the whole event, not one that I can think of anyway.

The next day, we picked up our new car and drove out of Auckland, heading north to Whangerei. We now got a sense of what a wonderfully modern car this was. It felt like we were adults driving an adult car. No longer would we have to be embarrassed if we had to give people lifts. No longer would we have to say such things as:

‘Sorry, it takes five minutes to warm up, it’ll stop spluttering and shaking when it’s ready.’
or
‘Ignore that engine light, the car’s not about to catch fire, it’s done this before.’
or
‘We can’t go that route because it involves an incline of more than 8% and there are speed bumps.’

We drove with beaming smiles, appreciating the novelty of being able to accelerate up hills. I almost caught myself saying, ‘Good Mr Car.’ but no! This car needed its own identity. We opened it up to WhatsApp. Emma suggested Gareth, Dunc suggested Norman, Dan suggested Jeff, Burt suggested Roger but none of the names quite fitted. I was surprised no one suggested CaryMcCarFace.

We had decided that it was definitely a boy car (we had been previously tempted by a garishly pink car, just so we could have called it Mrs Car).
We had also decided that we wanted to embrace its Japanese ancestry, especially since the car occasionally talked to us in Japanese (Hopefully not with warnings like ‘This car is about to explode, please pull over immediately!). Also the stereo is in Japanese, which adds a new element to trying to tune the radio.

Then it hit us! Of course! We’d carry on the ‘Mr’ theme but with a Japanese twist.

And he was christened…Mr Miyagi.

Just then Mr Miyagi chirped up with,

“しかし、私の名前はあなたが英語をだます、マルコムです”

‘Well put Mr Miyagi,’ I thought, ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’