Despite unemployment

Goble still does all the work.

Yes. Thanks, Mister.

Until I was 4, we lived above our shop in Ruislip. I used to look out of our first floor window and down at Ruislip Manor High Street. Across the road there was this ice cream window, and sometimes I would see people buying and eating a double-cornet. But I never got to have one of these.

When I was 6, after we'd moved house to a residential neighbourhood across London, the ice cream van used to come down my road and park right outside my house. Father used to give me 5p pocket money a week, so when ice creams went up to 6p, so did my pocket money.

There was this one time when I wanted a 99 - the ice cream with a Flake stuck in it - but I couldn't remember what the brown chocolate thing was called. So I told the ice cream man that I wanted one with "some of that brown stuff in it." He gave me an ice cream with brown sauce or something squirted all over it. It wasn't what I wanted, but I took it and ate it anyway. What I'd really wanted was a Flake.

Today I stood outside Mr Hippy's van (at half-past midnight). I watched as he took a double-cornet, filled both halves with ice-cream and stuck a 99 Flake in each one before kindly handing it down through the open window to me. "There," he said, "is that what you wanted?"

The Girl With Kaleidoscope Pizzas

I have a lovely friend who I call Pizza Girl.

I call her Pizza Girl because she works at Pizza Haven around the corner from the hostel, and is always bringing free pizzas back with her after her shift. She gets these when people phone-in an order, but then never show up to collect it.

It occurred to me that, hypothetically, one of us could ring up an hour before the end of her shift, place a bogus order, not collect it, and then an hour later she could bring us home our free custom-made pizzas, but obviously I don't know of anyone who could ever even conceive of cheating the system that way.

Tonight, I was waiting outside the hostel for a lift from Mr Hippy, (as I shall now call him) when Pizza Girl turned the corner with a whole tower of pizzas! She's a lovely girl – cute, pretty, fun - but I guess I really like her for her pizzas.

She gave me three of them, and then, just when things couldn't get any better, Mr Hippy showed up in his ice cream van.

He drove me, with Pizza Girl's pizzas, to New Windsor to meet his friend Patrick.

Y'see Patrick runs a Christian music radio station from his house, and I was keen to get on the air again. The pizzas were a handy gift to take with me, until I learnt that Patrick was a vegan. Whoops.

Nonetheless a great time was had by all present, and Mr Hippy even opened-up his ice cream van for business for us all!

Free pizzas, free ice creams, and free radio – does my life get any better than this?

Getting Whipped

Trev, as mentioned elsewhere, drives an ice-cream van. When he bought it, it was a bright shining MR WHIPPY van. He got it's W.O.F. (M.O.T.) approved, and for 6 months successfully sold ice creams from it to all the kids around the suburbs of Auckland. Then the evil accountants at MR WHIPPY got wind of what he was doing, and determined to put a stop to him. They told him that MR WHIPPY was extremely displeased at his name being used without his permission, and insisted that Trev stop. Trev was outraged, incensed even. But when all was said and done, Mr Whippy was after all right. And so it was that, after much prayer and soul-searching, Trev reluctantly got out his paint-stripper, went to his ice-cream van, and scratched-off the letter 'W'.

Church camp

It was a cunning bit of misdirection.

I was to spend the weekend at Willow Park Christian Camp and Convention Centre, off Eastern Beach in Howick, at my church's annual retreat. On the plus side I'd been kindly given a substantial discount due to my current unemployment. On the negative side, everyone had to bring their own bedding.

Sure, I had bedding. But it was about 10,000 miles away.

Of course, the youth hostel had lent me some bedding, but that was presumably for use on their premises, and I reckoned that they might not take kindly to my asking if I could borrow some to take away with me for a few days. What to do?

I turned this over in my mind at the hostel yesterday while I was making my bed with clean sheets before leaving. It would be so easy to just rip these sheets and quilt off of the bed and stuff them in my bag, but anyone who spotted my bed's nakedness while I was away would quickly put two and two together. There was nothing else for it.

Leaving my bed neatly made, I closed the door behind me, and caught my lift with Dean to Howick.

Once there, obviously, I opened my rucksack and unpacked the duplicate sheets that I had stripped from my hostel bed immediately prior to making it with clean ones.

Heh heh heh, the perfect crime...

It was great to have a weekend away, even though, technically, every day of my life was spent away now.

And yet, as I lay on my newly made bed in Howick just relaxing in the daylight, (daylight! In my bedroom!) I discerned a pattern in the differences between British and kiwi cultures: one or two people here didn't understand that I was happy just lying on my bed relaxing. There was the assumption that that meant that something was wrong with me.

Like the recent weekend down in Hamilton, these two days were another great chance to spend some time getting to know my friends better, and I had to reflect on God's grace in providing me with people to be my friends while I was so alone on this side of the world.

And there would be tons to do here. Crazy golf, tennis...


... table-tennis...


... football...


... table-football...


... pétanque...

... the list goes on, even though there was sadly no table-pétanque.

After the evening service, Trev the ice cream salesman and I headed out through the darkened streets to Howick town centre, where we located the local Pizza Hut. Trev has a ton of stories, some of them about punching people. But hey – that's why he's the tough-talking no-nonsense ice-cream salesmen with a heart of gold, right?

Sunday

Slept in my bedding. Ahhh...

This afternoon, being on the coast, people were getting baptised. They'd taken preparation courses and things, and so for at least some of them, this day had been a long time in coming.

I gotta say, baptism is one of those things that I've never quite 'got'. In fact, I don't think many people quite 'get' it. In my experience, everyone I've met says that Christians should get baptised, but that they don't have to, but that they should. Whoa - which?

I guess I've always assumed that I myself would get baptised one day, but I figured you'd want your public declaration of your faith to be done properly, y'know, with your family there and all.

But I knew that, if I was waiting for those circumstances, I would simply never ever get onto to it. I also knew that I had thrown my lot in with God, for better for worse, so I should really get baptised. To not do so, I felt, was backing away from embracing that.

So I sat on the shore, watching all those who'd prepared for this afternoon, wading into the sea, getting dunked, exchanging words with the leadership team, and wading out again as live music was played and singing floated across the sand from the assembled church standing around. It looked like this:


I wanted to go in and get baptised too, but I hadn't taken the course, which of course no-one in the Bible seemed to have taken either. I guess I was hoping that someone would invite me. I even had my towel with me, just on the off-chance.

Then they finished. The last person had been 'done.' So that was that.

And then one of the team in the sea called to the crowd, "Does anyone else want to get baptised?"

I seized my moment.

I thrust my camera into a stranger's hands and asked them to take a picture.

I strode into the sea. Mike looked at me in surprise. I said, "I've been a Christian all my life, but I've never been baptised. But hey – I'm here, you're here, let's do it."

So they got me to place my arms across my chest in a cross, as they took hold of me on each side, ready to lower me down.

Mike asked me, "Do you acknowledge your need for Jesus Christ in every part of your life?"

I think I replied, "Yes, I do."

At this, they dunked me under the surface, my hair floated briefly up in that way that it always does when your head goes under the water, and then they lifted me straight back up again.

Mike and the others prayed for me, a thrilled Mike saying "Lord, you've brought him all the way around the world, just to be baptised!"

Then suddenly I was one of those people striding out of the sea to the cheering crowd.

Afterwards I showered all the sand away, and actually did feel kind of energised, but this may well be just because of the shower.

I didn't know where my camera was.

Later that afternoon, Nathan (who's a window-cleaner by trade) had some ropes strung-up the side of one of the buildings, and was giving guests the chance to try to climb the side of the brick building. So of course, I had a go.

The 2-storey building was made out of big bricks and cement, and had an abseiling rope attached to it, me and Nathan, who was on the ground taking the strain at the other end in case I fell.

The first few steps up the sheer drop were quite easy, but as I got higher, I found that there were fewer and fewer gaps in the mortar for me to place my feet and hands. Grimly hanging on, I found that I had blood running out of my finger-tips and down my hands, but I kept on going. I got most of the way to the top, certainly above the second set of windows, before deciding that the remaining stretch was just too smooth, so I decided to call it a day there.

Way below, Nathan yelled up to me what a great job I'd done. So I yelled down that he'd done all the work taking my weight at the other end of the rope. At this, he flicked the slack rope at me to prove that I'd climbed the whole building without him supporting me at all.

Whu...?

I mean, if I had fallen, then the rope would have caught me, but I thought the rope had been taking my weight the whole time, but it hadn't. The rope had done nothing. So I could actually have climbed it with no rope at all.

The rope just enabled me to have faith that I could do it.

Was this an analogy for my baptism?

Monday

Found my abandoned camera again.

Timeslip (in color when available)

I read TV Zone in Borders today. It has an item on the ATV series Timeslip from about 1970 - just as colour tv was coming in.

The first six episodes were set during world war 2, so they made them in black-in-white, probably in truth to save money. Then the rest of the series was made in colour, with the intention of selling the whole lot to America, who were into new colour shows.

Then there was a union strike. The union refused to let any of its members use the evil new colour tv equipment. So the final three episodes (set in the silver-costumed future of 1990) had to go back to being made on the old black-and-white equipment again. So the Americans never wanted it. So the second series was axed. So the series was wiped.

Today of course some of the episodes have been recovered. All except one of the recovered colour episodes now exist, you guessed it, only in black-and-white.

The thing that I have to do in London on Monday has been cancelled. Literally, with less than a day to go before getting on the plane, I've moved my flight back. New flight-date is just before Christmas.

Dog Gone

Barking movie about a police dog who comes back from the dead to see his assassin brought to justice.

It's all tremendous fun, mainly because it's been written by someone who clearly 'gets' how silly the whole premise is, and is enjoying milking it for all it's worth. The doggy jokes just never let up, and the levels of ridiculousness just keep on escalating.

Great fun. This film should win a lot.

TV Remote

I guess it's all down to my mate Bill.

Back in March he told me all about a local Christian TV station, and even pointed it out to me in town. This had been a personal revelation to me – community TV? Really?

As both a long-term low-budget film-maker, and a community radio broadcaster, that idea fitted me like a glove.

Bill subsequently showed me their front door, but I felt as though it would be imposing of me to ask him to hang on while I went in for a - possibly lengthy – look around.

Even the morning that I had left NZ I had silently wanted to go and make contact with them on the way to the airport, but for the same reason felt bad about holding-up my driver.

Today, however, it was different. Today, I had made contact with one of the directors over the internet, and set-up an interview. Thus today, I walked from the coach-stop to the front door myself, and boldly determined to take the world of local TV by storm.

It was locked. And all the lights were off. Even the street was utterly deserted.

Apparently they'd forgotten that I was coming.

I left my heaving rucksack in the doorway and headed-out to find him. There's something intangible about that town that reassures you your stuff will be safe.

I located him in the church across the road, where I think he'd naturally assumed that I would come to find him when I arrived. A fair enough supposition, for a man who ran a Christian TV station.

The service was just finishing, and there was much debate about the sermon, which had – controversially – not been based on the Bible. Was that liberating the truth, or an abandonment of it? As I tucked into the free barbeque afterwards, I couldn't decide.

Seeing around the deserted station was fascinating. It was being run by computer-equipment similar to the one I'd already seen round up north, but which had been plundered from secular stations who had been throwing it all out.

I watched the start of a shopping show, and then the middle of a cookery one. The latter was weird. The presenter was from somewhere in the UK with an incredibly thick regional accent, which immediately made me feel as though she was an old friend. We were both, after all, a long way from home.

Afterwards the guy invited me back to his house for the afternoon. We actually did some baking together before he piled me up with food in preparation for my long journey back to my cupboard.

As I'd promised to, I dropped-in on Bill, but sadly he wasn't about, so I never got to thank him for giving me the contact. I did manage to finally drop-off some chockies and other European souvenirs for him and his family though, not to mention some photos I was asked for. Sheesh, they've been burning a hole in my fridge for the entire three months now!

Two more old friends later, I retook a few photos that had originally been damaged at the Kodak lab in Austria, and caught the coach back up to the city again.

And the position at the TV station? They offered it to me, on one condition: that I honestly believed that God wanted me there.

Out of the 100-200 applications I've made here, it's the only offer I've had.

And it's been yet another entire day that I've spent getting fed for free.

And They Have Lunch At Midnight

It's a well-known fact that water goes down the plughole clockwise in New Zealand.

What's less well-appreciated is that it gets hotter as you head north, NZ is in the centre of the world atlas here, and the maps of South Island have north flapping around at the top-left-hand corner somewhere. (It's easier to fit it on a page if they tilt it)

And did I mention that they reckon down is up too?

Churching

Awaking once more in Hamilton, I had naturally intended to go to Gateway Church again this morning, but somewhat pushed for time, in the end I climbed up a winding path off of Victoria Street to drop into St. Peter's Anglican Cathedral instead.

I was there for just ten minutes, but I don't think I'll ever forget them.

As I slouched in with my huge rucksack hanging off my back, initially I was alone. The service hadn't started yet, and it didn't look like it was going to until after I had left.

Next I met the priest - a grinning fellow - who invited me to join a small gathering in the little foyer there. I duly deposited my rucksack, and gratefully took-in a lovely cup of tea.

They began their gathering. The priest welcomed their guest for the morning (me), and promptly began to interview me in front of the group. Suddenly we were forming an impromptu double-act, as I told him where in London I was from, and he revealed that he had a relative from a nearby town there. We were joking and bouncing off of each other, and then it was time for me to go.

Everyone wished me well, and as I heaved my belongings onto my back again and returned down the winding path out into the great big world again, I reflected how these people – much older than myself – had just done church really well.

In a faraway town, I'd met a group of complete strangers who had all become my friends for ten minutes.

You can't do it better than that.

Leading With Excellence

As things stand at present, a week from today I will be touching-down at Heathrow Airport back home in the UK once more. (I have something fairly important to do in London the following week)

To round my three-month trip off then, I accepted an invitation from my church to join them on a retreat down to Gateway Church in Hamilton for a Christian teaching weekend entitled "Leading With Excellence".


I'm not sure how I wound-up pursuing a subject like Christian leadership skills, but my plan all along has been to just go through the doors that God opens, and to refuse the opportunity just seemed like turning away from that.

So after the drive down with Nev (during which we spotted a car with the numberplate EIEIO, which we both really hoped belonged to a farmer named McDonald) the motel he dropped me off at turned out to be a lesson in experience.

When I learnt that there were no padlockable lockers to stash my gear in, I sagely booked a private room. I knew I was going to be out most of the time, and leaving my stuff on display for anyone to pinch seemed a bit inviting.

Or was I – a novice backpacker - just being paranoid?

After I'd locked the door of my private room, I peeked into the much cheaper dorm that I'd turned-down, and quickly ascertained that no-one was staying there. Oh well, what else had I been going to spend my last remaining NZ dollars on anyway?



The course was inspiring. It was a good chance to get to know some of my new friends better, and I was genuinely pleased to find myself sitting down outside to eat sandwiches with my pastor, and chatting about something as trivial as football. (a subject I know little about) I also made one or two other new friends, and found myself delving quite a bit into 1 Samuel afterwards.

By coincidence, my co-pilot from my first trip down under also lives in Hamilton now, and I was aware that it might hurt their feelings if I went home without having offered to catch-up while in town. So having fulfilled the obligation to offer, and been charged by said amigo to keep in touch, I took the opportunity to re-explore the town centre alone. It was sloshing down with rain, but when you only have one night, you take what you've got and swim with it.

And Hamilton town centre is long. New Zealand's fifth largest city takes much longer to walk across than Auckland's CBD, but there were a heap of places that held prior meaning for me. As the raindrops splashed down, and I and my course-notes got soaked, I took some comfort in the knowledge that, since I returned to New Zealand three months ago, I have honestly given living in Auckland my best shot.

The North Shore

With the end of my three months in NZ looming, colleague Leanne kindly insisted that I couldn't return to the UK without having seen Auckland's North Shore.

So it was a nostalgic evening, and reminiscent of my time down under in February / March, as I got shown around by a local, and once more got to listen to a kiwi girl's voice chattering a heap of Maori place-names.


The first point-of-interest was a lamp-post opposite Auckland railway station. And only a local could point this out. Can you see what we stopped to look at? The answer's in the picture. Clue: ho-ho, the shadow knows...


Next we caught the ferry across to the North Shore, taking some time to admire the Harbour Bridge (above, obviously) and other surrounding features such as Rangitoto Island.


One Red Dog in Takapuna provided the most awesome pizzas I've ever enjoyed. When their advertising describes them as "gourmet pizzas", they ain't jokin'...

Then it was off to see the city from a distance at night. Alas, vehicles aren't allowed to stop on the motorway, so I knew taking a time-lapse was never going to work...


North Shore: done!