Matthew's blog

Hope everyone is doing ok out there. I’ve just come back from a cycling event the company I work for sponsor in Christchurch, where I got some spectacular sunburn, and am now suffering from equally spectacular peeling. Hopefully I won’t have any long term significant facial scarring. Anyway, Christchurch is a cool place – not so much a city as a really large small town, if that makes sense. It’s mad to see all the half demolished buildings in the centre, and every third house with a bit of plastic sheet where the chimney once was.

Actually, I’m becoming quite jet set; I was in Sydney two weeks ago for work – meetings and a conference. Its a pretty interesting place too, but I’m not sure I’d want to live there. Its too hot and busy and big, a bit like London I guess. The Opera House looked smaller than I imagined it would be, but the Harbour Bridge was massive.

We are well in the grips of a typical Wellington summer: that is, volatile - blistering sun one day, violent storm the next. Currently I am looking out of my office window to dreary, grey drizzle. Nice. All this wacky weather makes for some of the landings at Wellington airport that inevitably accompany my new found worldliness very interesting indeed. Returning from Christchurch for example, felt like the plane was falling down some stairs, despite the pilot insisting that the landing  would be only be ‘slightly bumpy’ due to some ‘light breezes’.

In other news, our vegetable garden is coming along nicely, despite a relatively poor showing from our broccoli plants. Come the end of summer we are going to have approximately 60-70 thousand tomatoes, so anyone in New Zealand that we know is bound to get a punnet or two, plus perhaps the odd butternut squash, which are starting to sprout. I’ll post some pics soon.  

That’s about it from me, more exciting musings to follow. M x