Pomp and Circumstance

Helen: Visiting our friends on Marnie at the moment (the one's who rescued us when we were having a horrible time in Tahiti and made me a 30th birthday cake) - had pancakes and strawberries for breakfast, and pizza and smoothies yesterday so feeling totally pampered. Walt got out his guitar and harmonicas last night and he and C played and Tigs and I sang and it was all very silly, probably not all together tuneful, but wonderful fun :)

Went for a wee stroll after lunch to the suburb of Devonport where there's a hill (a volcano, Auckland is full of them - apparently there's 53 cones in the city - makes us feel right at home after living next to Arthur's Seat for so long) - and the hill had bunkers and gun implacements on the top. Daddy would have been in his element. Apparently the guns were for keeping the Ruskys out last century, but were only fired once and then decommissioned (because the locals complained about the noise and the vibrations cracked several windows!)

Still haven't managed to find any lamb (other than chops and legs) - I guess they must export it all! (Actually, we haven't seen all that many sheep so far - I was expecting sheep as far as the eye could see...) And today we're using the free internet in the marina to upload all our photos, so check out www.flickr.com/charlieandhelen to see what we look like now...

We found an ipod in the middle of the road the other day - we tried to return it (phone numbers through letter boxes) but to no avail - so it looks like we've inherited it. We were trying to work out the owner's nationality based on the music choices - some are the same as ours...some are very strange! One of the albums is the sound track to A Clockwork Orange which has lots of Rossini and Elgar - we were blaring out March 1 of Pomp and Circumstance (Land of Hope and Glory) whilst sitting at the traffic lights (makes a change from gansta rap) and the car next to us rolled down his window to approve - he said he was an Englishman and it was very patriotic. He didn't have a big bushy moustache, unfortunately, but C has said that we can try to get some for us for the next time that we play that particular track.

OK, had enough of internetting now - been in here for an age
Lots of love - don't forget your advent calendars tomorrow
Hxx

PS C says I have to tell you about our hostel experiences of the last week - we were very pleased with ourselves for having chosen a lovely hostel in the suburbs - cheaper and much more civilised than the city centre venues for drunken 18 year olds. But then the police got called out twice in two days! First time was for an intruder who stayed without paying (and who C caught stark naked shaving his nether regions in the middle of the boys loos at 2am); second time was for a lady who was very very drunk and screaming the house down. Takes all sorts!