Manly men don’t surf

Opera House hunting started bright and early at five in the morning when the alarm on my phone went off. Stupid phone. It had forgotten we were now on Australian time, not New Zealand time. So it was two hours earlier than it thought. Oh, how embarrassed the phone was when I pointed out it’s mistake, in short, angry, sweary words...

Opera House hunting started again four hours later, after more bleary swearing, a shower, an overpriced breakfast full of noisy tourist people*, and a lot of fumbling with the hotel’s courtesy map. In the end I found it hiding about three minutes' walk from the concierge’s desk. Ah yes, it thought it could best me, but I showed it! I SHOWED THEM ALL!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAaaa...

*ahem*

Anyway, so, yes: it’s big and white and looks a bit like Sydney Opera House, as featured on TV and things. Only smaller. And slightly less shiny. And with a hell of a lot more tourists** milling about. But I didn’t have time to dawdle. No: because I had to catch a ferry to the other side of the bay and up a bit, for lunch with the inestimable Michael Robotham and his family.

Circular quay isn’t a monkey’s gargle from the opera house, so I slouched over there, doing my best to look nonchalant. Yeah, I’m cool, I fit in. Tourist? No, dude, can’t you tell I’m a traveller? Yeah, I’m taking photos, but that’s, like totally research... No, I don’t want to buy a knock-off Rolex.
So then I goes up to the gal behind the ferry terminal counter, put on my best smile. “I’d like to take the ferry to Manly.”
She looks at me, the way a starving tramp looks at a half-eaten Big Mac. “You don’t need to take no ferry to Manly,” she says, licking her lips. “Baby, you’re already there.”
Mind you, given the huge hairy moustache she has, I get the feeling she got there before me ... and then ate all the pies.

If you’re ever sodding about in Sydney for a while, may I recommend taking the ferry out to Manly? It’s a surprisingly restful trip, given the damn drunken hoons that seem to be dotted all over the place. The worst bunch on the way out were French, so technically: les fichus hoons ivres. Hanging over the side of the boat and drinking beer in that irritating cock-weasely way that seems so chic when you’re fourteen and have more spots than a swimming pool full of dalmatians.

Anyway, I’d met Michael at those ITV3 crime award things last year and he’d foolishly said, ‘If you’re ever in Sydney...’ as you do, never expecting that the ghastly person you’re talking to will actually turn up on your doorstop. But like a bad penny, or smell*** there I was. Hahahahahaha! But being the consumate gentleman that he is, he took me on a wee tour of his home town.

There's something really weird about Manly: it’s full of blokes dressed in wetsuits****, usually stripping off at the side of the road, showing off their shampoo-commercial hair and unfeasible abs. Clearly surfing isn’t a manly pursuit. Even if they’re actually surfing in Manly... I mean, if you’re really a manly man then surely you don’t have time to spend all that time sitting up and washing your hair. You're too busy putting up shelves, mowing the lawn, and working the barbecue. Stuff like that.

Looking at these golden-tonsured poo-heads, Michael told me why he never surfs any more (it involves stitches), and then took me back to his house for a lovely lunch of slow-roasted lamb with assorted vegetable delight. And very nice it was too. For a bloke that's sold 1,300,000 copies of his first crime novel***** he’s remarkably down to earth. If it was me I’d eat nothing but caviar and wipe my bum on pink parakeets.

But maybe that’s just me. Certainly when I conducted a covert search of the Robotham family bathrooms there was no sign of a parakeet dispenser.

After a very tasty lunch Michael took me to a wee beach of his acquaintance so I could go paddling in the Tasman Sea. I’d tried to do this from the New Zealand side, but it was going to be pretty suicidal, so Russell talked me out of it. Sensible chap that he is (if you ignore his millinery choices). It was lovely to stand in the surf on an Australian beach while the sun went down. And not get eaten by sharks, stung by deadly jellyfish, or bitten by venomous spiders out for a day at the beach (and probably sporting eight little inflatable water-wings*****).

After that it was back to the ferry for me, leaving Manly behind, but forever carrying it in my heart. You know, in a manly kind of way. Not a hair-washy, ab-crunching kind of way. My abs don’t need crunched. Well, they probably do, but I’m relying on self-delusion to see me through to the end of this paragraph...

* Because I’m over here on business, I’m a traveller. Not a tourist. And if you see me standing in the street gawping at things, then taking their photograph, it’s research. Yes. You heard: research. Not tourism. No, because obviously I’m way too cool for that.
Shut up.
** But not me, because I’m a ‘traveller’, as we have already established.
*** Like for example, the kind produced by a New Zealand Fantasy writer.
**** Like a big rubber-fetish pervert convention.
***** You heard right: one point three MILLION copies. I'm thinking of erecting a statue in his honour. ****** Spiders not being the best swimmers in the world. That’s why they always envy their relatives the crabs, and never invite them to Christmas dinner. Mind you, no one ever jokes about Paris Hilton having spiders, so I suppose they can't complain too much.

Yeeee-haw...

A lot of people think the Fourth of July is a purely American holiday – one where they celebrate getting rid of the steeeeenky British Aristocracy and it’s crapulantly corrupt parliament* - but it’s also an important day in the New Zealand calendar. Yes, the Fourth of July is officially ‘Try To Drown A Scotsman Day’.

But they don’t do it in a hands-on fashion. No bag over the head, concrete block round the ankles and into the nearest harbour for the Kiwis – oh no, no, no. Everything in New Zealand has to be environmentally friendly these days, so they use the weather to give Scotsmen a watery grave...

I was fifteen minutes from the slightly manky** hotel I’d ended up in after the event in Hamilton, when the attempt on my life was made. It was bloody stoating it down, bouncing back off the tarmac for optimum wetness. By the time I’d gone half a dozen paces my trousers were sticking to my legs like ... wet trousers. I’d spent the morning in the Auckland museum, looking at the Maori exhibits and wondering why everything seemed to be so incredibly lifeless. More than a little disappointing, to be honest, thought they’d made a much better fist of it with the volcanic exhibition.

Unfortunately there wasn’t time to get dried off, so I had to spend my taxi ride to the airport in a small steamy fug, with squishy shoes and squelchy socks. Never a good look for an international bearded write-ist. Finally managed to get the feet dry by performing vaguely-obscene contortions beneath the hand driers in Auckland airport. The socks were a lost cause, so they were wrung out and stuffed into a plastic bag -- so they wouldn’t leak all over my hand luggage -- but I was stuck with the squishiness of shoes. Aha, thinks Stuart, I know, I shall stuff them with paper towels! That’ll do it.

So it was that I spent an hour and a half on a plane from Auckland to Sydney, wearing no socks and shoes lined with paper. Like a crazy person. All I was missing was the wool-and-tinfoil hat.

Still got through immigration though. They didn’t even want to clean my hiking shoes. Though that might have had something to do with the presence of my bare feet, newly developed eye-twitch, and angry muttering in a French accent. Well, everyone’s got to have a hobby, right?

By the time we landed in Sydney it was dark, so no dramatic view of the opera house from the plane window, just a huge carpet of lights stretching away into the darkness. Jordan*** -- who’s going to be my minder for the eventy part of proceedings here in OZ -- was waiting at the gate, clutching a review copy of Halfhead. Which was pretty damn cool to finally see the thing after all these years in proper book form. Strange to think it’s actually going to hit the shelves in September. I imagine the hate mail will start flooding in a couple of days later from people telling me I have no right to write anything that doesn’t feature Logan McRae and Aberdeen. And can they have their money back. But for now, it’s pretty damn cool.

Tomorrow I go hunting for the opera house. With a pointy stick and a butterfly net. That’ll teach it.

* Insert topical ‘thieving cock-weasels’ reference here.
** ‘Slighty manky’ in the same way that the Atlantic Ocean is ‘slightly moist’.
*** No, not the vacuous plastic tart so beloved of British tabloids and gossip magazines.

Just like the Hulk, only shorter and less green...

Friday morning dawned about three and a bit hours after we finally got to bed in Christchurch. Bloody dawn. Bloody damn drunken hoons... I had to be up and sensible* for a live telephone interview, pimping Blind Eye to the unsuspecting Kiwi audience, with a bit of extra event-related pimpage thrown in for later in the evening. For this was to be my inaugural event on the Bearded Wonder Down Under tour: Penny’s Bookstore, Hamilton.

Now that Russell and I had survived not only the snowy battle through the mountain passes, but a whole week in the car together, the end was drawing near. Like a motorbike hurtling towards the back end of a lubricated elephant. Or something. All we had to do was hop on the plane back to Auckland, then survive lunch at a service station on the way down the motorway to Hamilton.

Jesus, and I thought the food at the BUFFET OF DOOM was bad...

The event went reasonably OK, I think -- given the tiny amount of sleep involved. Everyone was arranged in a semicircle of chairs just outside the front door of the bookshop, which put them right up next to the escalators in the shopping centre. Meaning that every time I got them all to swear in Polish, their rude words echoed around the whole place. Which was kinda fun.

And then, at the very end of the evening, when the last book had been signed, Russell and I said our goodbyes, shook hands like manly men do, then he walked off to his car. Free at last from the bearded Scottish bloke. It was a bit like that bit at the end of the Incredible Hulk TV series, only without the ‘Doo-doo-deee-dooo’ music playing over the credits.

In a way this past week’s been a bit like a huge sprawling fantasy novel. Two disparate characters from foreign lands thrown together to travel over fantastical landscapes, hunting for food (some of which was truly awful) huddling around camp fires (of the three bar electric variety) talking in outrageous French accents (not so common in fantasy novels, but I’m sure it’ll catch on). One traveller is tall and bearded; the other is short, has hairy feet and a novelty woolly hat. Their trusty steed a Subaru estate thingie with almost enough power to haul the clingfilm off a British Rail sandwich ... almost, but not quite. The only thing we didn’t do was kill things with swords, though Russell’s morning emanations would have been more than a match for even the toughest Uruk-Hai.

I’m certainly going to miss the little fella. Not only is he an excellent tour guide, fixer of iPods, producer of noxious smells, promoter of obscure-yet-finky** music, prone to lapsing into a strange French accent, and wearer of an ever-expanding wooly hat***, he’s a damn fine bloke too.

It’s going to be very odd going on to Australia without him.

‘Doo-doo-dee-dooo, doo-doo-dee-dooo-dooo, dee-dooo...’ etc.

* Well, up at any rate.
** Which is like funky music, only less inclined to attract people wearing flares.
*** It was head-sized when he bought it in Dunedin, but by the time we got back to the North Island it was big enough to sleep six. Like a knitted condom for a sperm whale it was. Which would probably be kinda scratchy, now I come to think about it. Did you ever get a hand-knitted Fair Isle jumper from your granny? We did: they were hell with sleeves. She might as well have knitted the damn things out of stinging nettles and fibreglass insulation. I’m sure these days it would count as a kind of child abuse.
And if a sperm whale did use Russell’s hat as a condom, it’d go even baggier in the water, which would probably make it a pretty inefficient method of contraception. That’s why knitted prophylactics never caught on amongst marine mammals.

Damn Drunken Hoons...

Thursday morning failed to dawn. We’d been staying a slightly more swanky motel than normal, one with a couch and a microwave and a kettle and stuff. And, as an added bonus, just because Russell and I were so damn manly, they threw in a power cut.

Now that doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Little power cut. OK, so we couldn’t use the microwave, or the kettle, or the shower, or the heating*, or anything else powered by the magical electric pixies, but we still had the couch, right? We could sit on that to our heart's content. And we did. Man, we sat the hell out of that couch.

Apparently what happened** was that a pair of hoons*** ran out on a $500.00 bar bill at half two in the morning, screeching off in their hight-powered sports car for the sort-of-nearby town of Franz Joseph. Looking for somewhere else to get another bucketful of the demon drink. Now this is a pretty long, wiggly waggly road that threads through the mountains, across floodplains and glacial moraines, but hoons are hoons, so off they went. About five minutes from Franz Joseph they careered off the road and into one of the big concrete poles that hold up the power lines. BANG! Wiping out all the power from just south of Franz Joseph to somewhere I can’t remember how to spell way, WAY down the coast.

Then they drove off. Damn drunken hoons.

So the early start Russell and I were meant to get, never materialised. It’s a lot more difficult to pack your bags when it’s pitch dark outside and you’ve got no lights.

After yesterdays glacier-related disappointment -- couldn’t actually get anywhere near the damn thing, remember? -- and the horrors of dinner**** we were planning on doing a shoot to Franz Joseph to see if their big chunk of moving ice was feeling any less shy. Only with all the sodding about, it meant we couldn’t leave Fox until the sun was far enough up the watery sky to let us see our own socks.

In order to make up time, we skipped breakfast in Fox -- probably not a bad idea, I get the nasty feeling that if they’ll happily marinate fish in Fanta, they’ll probably serve rice crispies with Marmite-infused semi-skimmed – holding out till Franz Joseph instead. Where we blundered into the World’s Grumpiest Waitress competition. Semifinals.

Then Russell and I clomped our way through the mist and fog down the valley carved out by the glacier, picking our way over boulders and through the concrete-like silt deposited by the beast as it retreated back up towards the mountains. Battling like manly men across the debris, fighting our way through the weather, surrounded by waterfalls crashing to the valley floor from the hills above, and Japanese tourists pushing wee kids in baby buggies, grinning and taking photos. Which kind of spoiled the whole Sr. Edmund Hillary thing we had going.

But the glacier was well worth the trip. A huge wall of dirty ice, forty-feet high, with a heart of unnaturally glowing blue. Apparently it’s been growing for the last few years, slowly making its way back down the valley under the weight of all that snow.

Slightly more intrepid souls than us were clomping their way up the side of the mountains for a guided tour in the drizzle, but Russell and I didn’t have enough time to be intrepid -- due to those damn hoons and their power-cutting antics – so we had to do with a few photos, a bit of drinking it all in, and then a slog back down to the car park. Next stop Christchurch.

At least that was the plan. By the time we’d driven the four hours to Arthur’s Pass, it was closed with snow. So we turned around and drove another two hours to the next one up ... and that one was closed too. By now the whole place is in darkness, and the snow’s hurling itself out of the sky. The roads are getting increasingly crappy, and Russell decides that as I’m from Scotland I’ll have a lot more experience driving in snow than he has. So for the first time in the whole trip I am entrusted with the car. Woohoo!

Or it would have been, if we could have gone much faster than three miles an hour on the slithery tarmac.

So instead of a couple of hours, straight across the country to Christchurch, we ended up having to go all the way up the west coast, and around the northern tip of the South Island. By the time we finally pulled into Christchurch it was three in the morning, we’d nearly knocked down a couple of seals*****, everyone was asleep, and the lovely roast lamb the lovelier Ange had made was all cold and clingfilmy in the fridge.

All in all, not the most relaxing of ways to finish the last day of our Great South Island Adventure. But if those bloody idiots hadn’t crashed their car into that power line, we would’ve been over Arthur’s Pass long before the snow hit.

Damn drunken hoons.

*New Zealand in the depths of winter, remember?
** And I say ‘apparently’ for legal reasons, this is just what we heard.
*** A great New Zealand term for ‘young tosspots’.
**** Not as bad as the BUFFET OF DOOM, but still pretty horrible: fish fillets in a citrus sauce with boiled tatties should have been reliable enough, but the cirtrus was orange, and the sauce was sweet. So it was a bit like someone pouring Fanta all over a packet of fish fingers. And the tatties were ... let’s be nice and call them al dente.
There seems to have been a bit of theme in New Zealand cuisine where they like to put sweet sauces with meat. I think it’s meant to be all nouvelle and swank, but it’s actually seriously sodding nasty. Stop it! Bad New Zealand chefs, naughty!
***** When the weather’s crappy they like to shuffle out of the water and up onto the road, where it’s a little bit warmer. Doesn’t help that they’re the same bloody colour as the tarmac in the dark.

Glacier Mints and a small resurrection...

I have come to the unlikely conclusion that Russell Kirkpatrick* is a pocket genius. When I say ‘pocket genius’ I don’t mean that he does new and exciting things in his trouser pockets. That would be unwholesome, especially whilst driving. But there’s certainly a whiff of the clever about the man** -- remember my iPod died the death of a thousand swearwords yesterday? Well Russell managed to bring it back from the dead with a small amount of fiddling with the buttons. Also known as a ‘reset’. I didn’t even know you could do something like that with an iPod Nano, but you can, and it works too.

So I am with tunes again! Hurrah!

This meant I was able to join in with the ‘play-weird-music-in-the-car-athon’ competition as Russell drove us out to the West Coast and up to the Fox Glacier.

Eight o’clock in the morning and Arrowtown was absolutely sodding freezing. A real nipple-stiffener of a day, complete with thick blue shadows and vast plumes of smoky breath. it’s really dry in this part of New Zealand, so the cold’s deceptive. It’s a dry cold so you don’t really notice it to begin with, not until it’s leached all your body heat away, leaving you shivering like a jelly on a spin-drier. Good job I’ve got the special naughty hiking socks I bought yesterday, or I’d probably have lost a dozen toes by now.

The road out to the west was crap, winding away under a thick pall of dense grey cloud that hid most of the mountains from view. What’s the bloody point of coming half way around the world to ‘Ooh!’ and ‘Ahhh!’ at the scenery if you can’t even see the sodding stuff? Grumble, grumble.

The clouds stayed with us for mile after mile, until finally -- and all at once -- they buggered off and everything was blue skies and spectacular vistas again. I got to see my first sub-tropical rain forest too. It’s huge. Mile after mile of untouched virgin forest***, all dusted with frost and deep-frozen at its heart. Next time I’m going to try tropical rain forest, none of this ‘sub’ malarkey. It’d be warmer on the nip-nops if nothing else.

But the point of this six hour driveathon was to get to the Fox Glacier in time to see it in all its icy goodness. And we did. Sort of.

We took a helicopter tour up the glacier, which included scaring the living bejesus out of a mountain goat at 9,000 feet, and then chasing it along the ridge with the rotor blades. Imagine it’s Cary Grant, the Cook Mountain is a corn field, and the helocopter’s a crop duster with a machine gun fitted to it, and you’ve sort of got the picture. The damn goats up here must have Velcro feet, because the one we saw was defying the laws of physics in general, and gravity in particular.

Then we landed on the top of Fox Glacier, had a poke about for ten minutes, then were shepherded back in the helicopter for the trip back to base. About 40 minutes start to finish. And as Russell and I still hadn’t had our fill of all things glacial, we drove up the valley to view the great icy beast from up close...

Or at least we tried to. The closest you can get to the glacier’s snout is now about half a mile, due to two tourists getting themselves squashed with falling chunks of ice. The joys of Health and Safety. So we never got anywhere near the actual Fox Glacier, instead we had to make do with standing on a muddy path behind a rope cordon, swearing curses of doom down upon the Department of Conservation. Really disappointing, given that this was what we’d just driven six hours to see.

Poop. POOP, I say!

* Or Russell Fitzpatrick as he likes to be know while planning, or carrying out a heist, just in case the rozzers are after him.
** Along with other, more recently documented whiffs.
*** Though the boy next door has been peeking through it’s bedroom window, trying to catch a glimpse of it in its bra and pants.

Ooh! Ahh! ... And the art of buying socks

Determined not to be out done by Russell, this morning I was the one making the unwholesome aromas. Yes. mine weren’t in the same league as his, but I tried, and that’s what’s important. Personally I’m blaming the fish and chips we had last night. I have a love/hate relationship with fish and chips, where I love them and they do horrible things to my insides. But like a fool I always go back for more. And this morning, Russell was the one suffering the collateral-damage-related consequences.

Revenge is a dish best served smelly.

After we’d done the door-barricading and duct taping, Russell and I headed out to Queenstown airport for our 08:20 flight over the mountains to Milford Sound. Which was delayed till 11:00 instead. So bleary of eye we went for a wander to take some photographs. Not a difficult task in New Zealand, you can’t hurl a Pentax SLR without braining at least half a dozen photo opportunities.

-- Just a quick aside here, in the pause between paragraphs I thought I’d break out my iPod Nano and listen to something epic (you might think this a little rude when I’m travelling in company, but Russell’s in the shower right now making mammal soap), but it’s buggered. Broken. Pish all use. Bloody thing. It’s been a loyal and faithful companion to me for two and a bit years, and now it’s decided to curl up its metaphorical toes and join the ranks of the undead* --

Where was I? Yes, right, so eventually we get on board a tiny Cesna, six-seater, single engine plane – piloted by Dan from Essex – and into the wild blue yonder we doth climb.** And from the moment our wheels left the tarmac it was ‘Ooh!’ and ‘Ahh!’ all the way to Milford Sound.

Actually that makes it sound as if we were in a low-budget porn film. But trust me, if you ever get the chance to visit the Armpit of Queenstown, hop on a little plane to Milford Sound. Don't take the bus. Don't drive. Fly. It’s wonderful, stunning, and a whole bag of other superlatives. I had a big cheesy grin on for the whole flight.***

And then we came in to land. It was straight out of Jurassic Park: flying down the Sound, blue water sparkling in the sunlight below us, massive mountains to either side, rain forest, palm trees... Ooh, ahh...

Then we got on the boat for a two hour cruise out to the Tasmin Sea and back again. Tell you what, Russell may be capable of producing nature’s own mustard gas, but he’s one hell of a tour guide. Having a degree in geography probably helps. Yesterday he explained the whole glacial thing (yes, we did it in school, but there’s a big difference between reading about glaciers in a book, and hearing about it from a fantasy author in a comedy woolly hat**** while looking out at a vast valley and lake formed by one of them), and today he narrated most of Milford Sound. Very clever chap is our Mr Kirkpatrick, for someone of restricted height.*****

The Sound was every bit as groovy as I’d been told -- only more so -- and on the way back we flew over loads more mountains, hidden lakes, and valleys. My cheesy grin was still intact by the time we touched down back in Queenstown, which isn’t bad going for me. Normally I can be relied upon for a good grump at least twice a day.

Of course, when we got back to the walk-in fridge/motel my iPod was suffering from hypothermic death, but other than that it’s been one of the best days off I’ve ever had. And as if flying over one of the most beautiful parts of the world wasn’t enough, I had cold feet this morning, so splashed out on a pair of uber-expensive merino socks from an eager sales lady at the airport. I wouldn’t normally do something like that, but I had cold feet, she had lots of socks, one thing led to another...

Just don’t tell She Who Must, OK? She doesn’t like me accepting hosiery from strange women.

* Why the undead have curly toes, I have no idea. Actually, I have the nasty suspicion that the poor wee thing’s frozen. The motel apartment we’ve got in Arrowtown is colder than a witches knicker drawer, every time we come back from a day out it’s like walking into a very big fridge. Assuming that the fridge was being used to store furniture, rather than chunks of greening cheese and mouldering ready meals.
** That’s the trouble with travelling around with best-selling fantasy authors, you end up speaking in ‘thee’s and ‘thou’s.
*** It was under my seat along with the life jacket.
**** Russell thinks it makes him look sexy.
***** Don’t want him getting ideas above his station... Which is about 4’3”, though he claims it’s 5’6”. Never trust a man in a comedy woolly hat.

Biological Warfare meets Lord Of The Rings

Beer doesn’t agree with everyone. Some it makes merry. Some it makes horny. Some it makes sleepy. Some it makes miserable. Some it makes angry. And some end up producing the kind of smells that would make a tub of margarine run for the hills screaming for medical assistance while it’s eyeballs melted. Now, can you guess which kind of person Russell is?

Half past six this morning and he’d managed to produce an aroma that peeled off most of the wallpaper in the bathroom. We barricaded the door and sealed it off with duct tape, but still the foetid stench of rotting badgers oozed through to curl the carpet.

So we abandoned all hope, and the motel apartment, and sought refuge in the car instead. When the shrubs and trees surrounding said apartment started to go black and all shrivelly we high-tailed it out of there. For we are manly men! And manly men don’t hang about waiting to be suffocated.

Instead we set out on a jet-boat wilderness safari thing, figuring that the six hours trip would give Russell’s contribution to the world of biological warfare time to dissipate.

The trip started with a bus tour along Lake Wakatipu, pausing for a brief photo shoot as the rising sun painted the Humboldt Mountains with diluted Ribina. Huge grey and brown and white peaks, jagged like an Irish folk singer’s teeth, catching the first glints of the morning sun – absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately it was also cold enough to freeze the nipples off a walrus, but it’s a small price to pay to be out there in all that outdoorsy-wonder.

We tootled along for about an hour to the tiny town of Glenorchy, and then clambered off our bus and onto another one, for a diesel-grumbly judder into some of the most lovely mountains and valleys I’ve ever seen. Crisp white frost. More photo opportunities. More frozen nipples. All narrated by Ian our tour guide, who did almost as good a job of explaining stuff as Russell. Which is high praise indeed. He may be short, and he may produce the most unbelievably foul smells after a night on the beer, but he really knows his schist*.

And then it was time to disembark from the rumbly diesel bus and go on a brief nature hike. Dear Hairy Jesus and his Sainted Immersion Heater, it was cold! By the time we’d gone a hundred yards all the men were talking two octaves higher, because their testicles had retreated to somewhere around their armpits. It was like being kicked in the nadgers by Nature’s frozen flip-flop.

By the time none of us could feel our faces we were shepherd on board a wee jet-boat for a breakneck wheech down the Dart River back to Glenorchy. Turquoise water, gravel beds, shallow channels, all bordered by sodding huge jaggedy mountain ranges, dusted with snow and glowing against the clear blue sky. Not just stunning** but numinous. No wonder this bit of New Zealand gets used for every film going.

Then, following a brief but nasty lunch in a wee cafe, we got back on the bus for the trip back to Queenstown. It’s supposed to be the Geneva of the south, but it’s really more like Aviemore. An unbelievably ugly town surrounded by unbelievably beautiful scenery. The place is an armpit. And not the good kind of armpit either: it’s the kind of armpit that follows you down a darkened street, then mugs you and urinates in your hat.

By the time we got back to the motel the smell had moved on to decimate the wildlife elsewhere, so Russell and I celebrated with New-Zealand-style fish and chips.

I’m not buying him any more beer though...

* As the geologist said to the cartographer.
** OK, so I know I’m using that word a lot, but fucking hell this is seriously jaw-dropping stuff here.

Penguins, sex, and Pirates

I have important pearls of wisdom to impart to you. 1: Never get Tabasco sauce in your intimate masculine areas. 2: Never trust anyone who says ‘this won’t hurt a bit’*. And 3: Never, EVER eat at any restaurant with a crudely-drawn pirate on the sign.

Actually, I’m going to expand Pearl Of Wisdom Number The Third to include any form of nautical doodle, theme, motif, or smell. But mostly pirates. If you see a pirate on the sign, RUN FOR THE HILLS!!! There, all you have to do is run around the hill one way, then tun around and go in the opposite direction. The pirate chasing you will be unable to handle the sudden change of direction, owing to only having one leg – the other being wooden – and will promptly fall over. Then you can rip the aforementioned artificial limb from his lower appendage and hit him over the head with it till he passes out, or away. Depending on how energetic you feel.

But I digress.

After his game of golf – which he lost – Russell and I set off for Oamaru, about three hours of flat motorway southwest of Christchurch. And when I say flat, I mean flat. This stretch of New Zealand makes Holland look lumpy. We tootled into Oamaru just in time to see the tiny blue penguins come in from the sea. Which was pretty damn cool. OK, so when they clamber up the steep stone incline from the crashing waves to the relative safety of their little penguin condominiums they move a little bit like rats wearing tuxedos, but other than that they’re very sweet.

Well, I say sweet... There was a lot of high-pitched rattly snoring going on**, and at one point a pair of the randy little buggers put on a live penguin sex show. And I’m not just talking about a discreet cut away to waves breaking and choo-choo trains going into tunnels, this was a full-on Bom-Chicka-Wa-Wa ‘Give it to me you vast 30cm-high flightless waterfowl of love you!’ kind of thing. But other than that, they’re just what you expect little penguins to be like.

Then I made the terrible mistake of letting Russell pick where we were going to eat that evening. As the All Blacks were playing France that evening, Russell wanted to find somewhere near the motel we were staying at. There was a place right next-door. Why don’t we try that?

And this brings us back to Pearl Of Wisdom Number The Third. It was truly, truly, fucking awful. Now I want you to bear in mind that I’ve eaten barbecued pig testicles, OK? My bar for what’s a bloody horrible meal has been set pretty damn high. And this place came close to clearing it without so much as a running jump. It was a buffet***. A buffet of the kind only ever spoken of in terrified whispers wherever chefs gather to tell their tales of woe. A buffet of the damned.

Seriously, if they serve food in hell, the bloke who committed this buffet is in charge of the catering arrangements. Russell opted for roast beef – which looked as if someone had burnt a couch and then sliced it thinly – and I had the gammon. Now, the gammon itself didn’t look too bad, and when I was up being served, the chef**** dolloped a little ladle of plumb sauce on the side. OK, thinks I, plumb sauce and gammon: that could work.

Ha. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...

If you want to replicate the taste try this: take a handful of gritty mud, vigorously rub it into the arsehole of a scabby dog, then dissolve the resultant sludge in a small jar of mouldy jam. Even then, that would probably be less offensive on the palate than what I ended up with.

But even this weapon of mass revulsion paled into insignificance when faced with the criminal negligence of the dessert section. After disappearing for five minutes, Russell came scampering back to the table, all excited and revolted at the same time. ‘You’ve got to go see the custard!’ he says, eyes glittering like a mental patient. ‘Go! Go see the custard!’

And he was right. It was a sight to be seen. Lumpy, pustular, revolting. As if a very large spot had been squeezed into the bain marie, then mixed with half a packet of wallpaper paste. Badly. I have no idea how anyone could possibly do that to a poor innocent custard, but somehow the grinning fiend in the poufy hat managed it.

The next morning – which contrary to common sense didn’t see us waking up in hospital with death-defying doses of food poisoning – we headed off before the crack of dawn. Just in case someone came and offered us breakfast, we travelled under assumed names: me dressed as a pilgrim father, Russell dressed as Widow Twanky. No idea why, but for some reason he had the costume with him*****. We didn’t stop running until we got to the Moeraki boulders.

From there on it was a rainy, foggy, cold and windy poop-fest of crappy weather, all the way from Moeraki to Alexandra, and then the sky turned blue, the clouds turned wispy, and the rain buggered off. After that we were in ‘Dear Jesus, that’s pretty...’ territory again. Huge mountains, gorgeous light, frost, things, stuff, and woo-hoo.

Tomorrow we go see if we can drown ourselves at 60mph.

* See Pearl Of Wisdom Number The First.
** Apparently that’s how they tell each other that everything is fine and no one has to worry about being eaten by a visiting crocodile.
*** ‘Buffet’ a word I’ll be giving the same kind of welcome as I would ‘Rectal Polyps’ from now on.
**** I use the word ‘Chef’ but I really mean ‘Sadistic Culinary Fuck-Weasel’
***** Even though he doesn’t really have the legs to carry it off.