Saturday, 26 July Cinquale, Italy

We are two-thirds of our way through our time in Italy. This has been the first chance we've had to send a couple of emails to family and to update this site. When I'm home next week I hope to post some further trip information, after-the-fact.

We travelled to Italy by coach, with our entire travel time from Wimbledon to Cinquale being about 27 hours including breaks. Oak Hall, the organisation that organised this trip, has two brand new coaches, which were hand-built to their design. Apparently these two coaches are the most well-appointed coaches in Britain at present. Certainly while sleep wasn't great we all had a much more comfortable journey than we had anticipated or perhaps feared.

We're staying in a provincial beach town in Tuscany, popular on the weekend with Italians getting away from the heat of the Firenze ("Florence" for English speakers). Our time has been divided between organised day trips to Firenze and two other small towns, and free days that we've spent relaxing at the hotel and the beach. I've eaten pizza for lunch every day so I'm happy. I've learned enough Italian to order Gelato ("ice cream") and Pizza ("pizza") which is all a guy really needs. I will never be able to eat Pizza Hut again.

As I said, the trip is organised by Oak Hall, who are a Christian tours company. Each evening we have a worship and prayer time. Jacob, one of the leaders, is doing a series of talks in the evening on the first chapters of the Bible book of James. The theme of James is putting into practice what you believe. We're finding it helpful. It is a nice addition for us to have this spiritual input alongside the travelling experiences we are having.

Saturday, 19 July

It is mid-afternoon and has been a lovely day here so far. I thought that it was about time you were given a glimpse into our external surroundings, a little over three months since we moved in here. This is our garden. The house is on the left, where we live on the ground floor. On the far side of the garden, about a third of the way across the picture from the left, you can just make out the gate which goes out to the street. Just to the right of that, behind some of the trees is a triple garage for the house. Technically one of the garages is ours, though apparently it leaks and as none of us have cars we haven't put it to much use. (I've never even been inside it actually...) I took this composite photo soon after we moved in, actually, and the grass is not as green as this now. Despite the inevitable rain when the tennis was on, it has been dry here. Apparently it was the warmest June for 30 years or something similar, with July heading in the same direction. I know you southerners may right now be thinking that you'd like that, but when you're actually in the heat it is a mixed blessing.

Like Tony Blair, I've been caught misleading my readers due to poor intelligence information. Carolyn is back! She rang this morning to say that as Morven was singing in a wedding in Ely today (near Cambridge), Carolyn was going to return today. We finally all converged at the Wimbledon Railway station finally just before 1pm this afternoon, after Bronwyn had been out to Kingston again, this time to do some shopping herself. I'd been via the HSBC bank (not who we bank with but handy nonetheless) which is open on Saturdays 9:30am-4:00pm, but only with ATMs and personal bankers; no bank tellers. While I was therefore able to extract a wodge of pounds from their ATM I visited Thomas Cook across the road to swap them for Euros. A nice experience to get more Euros than the Pounds I had to give up. A change from most NZ$ transactions! Anyway, once we'd all met up, Bronwyn and Carolyn decided to spend the afternoon shoe shopping and getting other clothes they need for Italy. I elected to gallantly carry Carolyn's bag home from the railway station instead. Such self-sacrifice.

Nick and Hayley are on cooking dinner tonight and have proposed a picnic in Cannizaro Park. With the dedication of a true picnic-teur Nick has today purchased a flying-ring-thingy for us to play with there. It is one of those things which is a bit like a frisbee but with a big hole cut in the middle. On purpose. Doesn't work so well the other way I'm guessing. Anyway, on with the picnic!

Thursday, 17 July
Happy 32nd Anniversary Mum & Dad (Babbage)

We've had a busy week; too busy to blog until now. Looking back to last weekend, we went to the Reduced Shakespeare Company on Saturday night as planned. I've wanted to go for a long time and we enjoyed it. It was a tough act to follow Bombay Dreams though, which we saw the night before, and the Reduced Shakespeare Company didn't quite measure up. Still, I'm glad we went and it was a good night out.

On Sunday we went to church as usual in the morning. We'd gone partially prepared for a picnic for two, planning to go from church via the supermarket to Wimbledon Park. However on Sunday morning there was talk of having a church picnic at Cannizaro Park, so we decided to join them there instead. I'd once got directions before for a similar picnic that we never attended, so felt confident I knew where we were going. Well, we found the park with no problems. The park used to be the grounds of a large house. When the house was turned into a hotel the grounds were gifted to the public. I was expecting something quite small but the park was enormous. It is full of those great little hidden corners and turns, made up of a series of medium-sized outdoor rooms which give a sense of a smaller scale and privacy. There is also a large open area although ball sports are forbidden at the park: a requirement of the original legacy apparently. Anyway, we had a nice afternoon but if there was anyone else there from the church in that leafy labyrinth we never found them! Just before we left we did however see some more new birds, all around the small pond there: a Grey Heron, two Jays and a pair of Moorhens. We're continuing to enjoy working out the identity of the birds we're seeing.

On Monday night we went out with Sonja to see the New Zealand film The Whale Rider. Apparently it opened in New Zealand some three months ago but it only opened here last Friday. Sonja shouted Bronwyn and I to attend the film for my birthday. It was great. Two of Sonja's housemates were there, along with a friend; five kiwis and an aussie (counting me among the kiwis, that is!) Afterwards someone asked if I'd felt homesick. My reply: No, I just felt connected. It was a good feeling. Everything in the film was so familiar; it was odd to realise that the few scenes shot in Germany (check the credits) were filmed closer to where we are than the rest of the movie.

The rest of the week has been work. With tomorrow my last work day before I go on leave, I've been making lists of what I had to complete this week. Anticipating an insanely busy Friday, I decided certain things had to happen at my main office before I left there on Wednesday. (I work somewhere else on Thursdays.) I thus ended up being there from 8:40am until 7:40pm on Wednesday. At least the boss noticed I was still there when he left at 7:10pm! Anyway, I'm hoping that due to my preparation I will be able to get away from work tomorrow by about 6:00 or 6:30pm at the latest. Bronwyn has a significant day tomorrow too as it is the last day of the school year, and the last day that she'll be working at her current school. Fortunately, we don't leave for Tuscany until Monday (morning) (very very early) so Bronwyn and I have got the weekend to get ourselves sorted. Carolyn will arrive back here on Sunday afternoon.

Saturday, 12 July

Carolyn and Morven decided that they wanted to see a London show last night, which was fine by Bronwyn and me. They met Bronwyn at her inner city school just before the end of the day, and then travelled into Leicester Square to buy discount same-day tickets. After much discussion tickets were purchased for Bombay Dreams. I hightailed it into London after work and we met outside the theatre in time to (appropriately) have an Indian meal for dinner, across the road. The show was amazing; definitely the best I've seen in my relatively limited experience. The singing was good and the music was an intriguing mix of the show-tunes genre with traditional Indian music, which really worked. The effects highlight was surely one scene in the show where it actually started raining on the characters on stage. Not just sound effects, not just people acting like they were wet. It was raining, water falling from above in a relatively heavy downpour, wetting the characters and the stage. It was incredible. They had a recessed central portion of the stage that sunk down during this scene where the water presumably drained away... They also used this in the water fountain scene where they had something like 8 jets of water shooting up out of the stage and down onto all the dancers. The rest of the set design was also impressive. The storyline was not overshadowed by the production either. We had a great time, and I'd recommend this show to anyone. On the tube home we were of course humming the music... Shaka laka baby, shaka laka baby...

Nick and Hayley have gone away for the weekend to Bath - a surprise destination for Nick. It's a four-day weekend to celebrate Nick's birthday last week, and to help dissipate Hayley's enormous leave allowance, some of which needs to be used by the end of August. Such a chore. The house is fully empty now, as Carolyn and Morven headed off this morning too to Cambridge on the first leg of an 8 day road trip. They plan to initially head towards Scotland with the rest of the trip still to be finalised. She'll rejoin us just in time for our trip to Tuscany, departing next Monday. Bronwyn and I used the time today therefore to do some urgently required shopping for summer clothes. With Italy heading for the peak of its heat, it may be even hotter there than it was for us in Thailand. We therefore took a train down to Kingston to do some buying. Now, it is probably widely known that I do not like shopping. My definition of shopping is looking at a lot of things and failing to buy them. In contrast, buying is the process of seeing things and then actually arranging to take them home. Today probably is a record as I spent five hours in the extensive Kingston shops. We happened upon quite impressive sales: £60 for trousers reduced to £10 is hard to pass up. I came home with two ties, two pairs of trousers and a pair of cargo, um, trousers ("pants" has a whole other meaning here), two short sleeved work shirts, three short sleeved casual shirts, and two Stephen Lawhead books. Today therefore qualifies as an acceptably efficient buying trip. I may not have to shop again this summer! Bronwyn managed to get three summer tops on sale along the way also, though she rarely shops for clothes when I'm there. (Whereas I never shop for clothes without her...)

We had decided not to do anything other than pop out for dinner on my birthday as Carolyn was arriving. Instead, Bronwyn and I booked to go and see the Reduced Shakespeare Company tonight. The do the entire works of Shakespeare in under two hours... A classical education for a modern attention span. We leave in five minutes!

Thursday, 10 July  Duncan's birthday

Yes, today was my birthday. It was started with pressies from Bronwyn and then chocolate mousse for breakfast, made by Nick and Hayley who clearly understand my palette. There wasn't the opportunity to consider taking the day off, however, after my work re-scheduled to today an all-day workshop we were running. As a result I had the privilege today of doing a one-hour presentation to 30 occupational therapists, speech language therapists, physiotherapists, and psychologists, and then later in the day to run a further one-hour group exercise. In well established tradition I worked to all the available time, not leaving my office until 8:30pm yesterday. (The preparation for the afternoon group exercise was done following the morning presentation. I like to be up to date!) I'm not anxious about actually making such presentations, but it is always a stressful time preparing them beforehand. As each attendee was paying £85 to hear my two colleagues and I speak for the day, I wanted to do a good job. Anyway, it all went well and I feel what I said was useful. We repeat the exercise on another topic in September.

After work I went out for a drink with some workmates to celebrate the completion of the training day and just to enjoy the warm summer evening. (The heat was awful yesterday. Such a contrast from record cold temperatures we are hearing about in New Zealand.) Fortunately, we chose a pub only 500m from our flat, so I could quickly relocate back home, where Carolyn had just arrived with friend Morven and Bronwyn. We packed ourselves up and headed out with Nick and Hayley as well for a birthday dinner. Bronwyn had arranged for us to go to an Italian restaurant in Clapham South that we had enjoyed previously. It's a reasonable trip and I was saying to her, "Well, if we're going to Clapham South anyway, we may as well give Sonja and Steve a buzz and see if they want to join us." (The restaurant is only a 5 minute walk from their house.) Bronwyn seemed somewhat passively evasive about this idea...

I was persistent as usual, and it became harder to maintain the pretence... this was largely because Bronwyn had done such a good job of convincing me initially that we were heading for a fairly randomly selected location. Anyway, my inkling was finally confirmed when we saw Sonja already waiting at the restaurant when we got there! Steve was busy tonight on some sort of sponsored/work/charity run which in this heat must be "attributed to him as righteousness", surely. I had a lovely dinner. Carolyn did very well to stay awake and mostly look alert, even though she'd been almost continuously awake for 42 hours at that point! She was awake a whole day before flying out of Australia, slept little on her flights from Australia to Thailand then on to London, and then had been awake all day here. No doubt she was dismayed when the tube home was closed due to problems further up the line. Two slow buses eventually got us to our destination and she fell asleep as Bronwyn was attempting to explain the front-loading washing machine. Over the next five weeks we look forward to having full-power Carolyn. She will definitely benefit from her decision to stay up today though. I had a nice birthday. Thanks everyone!

(Next year is a big one.)

Tuesday, 8 July

Our weekend away was good. We'd selected Eastbourne specifically because we wanted to hike the "Seven Sisters", a series of eight (yes, eight) rolling hills along the impressive white chalk cliffs of the Channel coast. On Saturday morning, after the typically large cooked English breakfast from our B&B, we set off on this hike. We caught a bus from Eastbourne to Exceat (pronounced "ex-see") at the other end of the route. From there we leisurely walked back over the next six hours. We were not disappointed. The cliffs were impressive, with rolling farmland plummeting without warning down to the sea below. Notably there were no fences to prevent the curious from investigating the edge. The walk was replete with interesting plant life and birds. While the whole area is a national reserve, they continue to farm it with sheep in order to keep it from becoming overgrown. They encourage the development of wildflowers in the pasture, however, to attract butterflies and migrating birds. The visual effect is quite remarkable.

One of the things I'd gotten Bronwyn for our anniversary was the "Pocket Guide to the Birds of Britain and North-West Europe". This was the guide recommended to me by our ornithological friends, my previous supervisor Nancy and her husband Tim. On our walk on Saturday we attempted to identify the birds that we saw. On that day we positively identified: Herring Gulls, Blackbirds, Jackdaws, Carrion Crows, and a Greenfinch (this last one seen by Duncan only). We also saw a few other species we couldn't identify at the time. I'm fairly confident that we saw a Fulmar, a seabird which looks like a gull but isn't. We didn't manage to get a photo of that one to check, but one of the others is on film so we may know one day! On Sunday we added to the list Collared Dove, Common Swift, Rook, the tiny Wren, and House Sparrow. (Incidentally, despite many other birds we haven't seen a single Sparrow in our time in London.) To top off this list, over the last two evenings in our garden in Wimbledon I have seen some more of the above, plus: Starlings, Magpies, Woodpigeons, and a Green Woodpecker. I also think I saw a Redpoll, though could not be certain that is what it was. None of these species is rare or particularly hard to find, but it has been fun to be able to positively identify these birds. Another good reason to get out into nature! (Yes, this is my latest fad... but with me they tend to last!)

On Sunday of our weekend away we went to the Holy Trinity church in Eastbourne, which turned out to be Church of England though it does not say so anywhere in their advertising, signs, or materials inside the church! I guess they consider themselves to be the default, and all others to be deviating from them? Anyway, it was a nice service, and I thought surprisingly contemporary considering the generally older congregation. (Perhaps I am just showing my prejudice here?) We weren't organised for the rest of the day so after the service to the tourist information centre to plan the rest of our day. I was keen to go to Battle, the location of the Battle of Hastings, but it turned out that buses did not go there on Sundays. Instead, we went to the ruins of a castle at a nearby little village. It was quite interesting, though hard to get your head around the idea that these very ruins were once the location of the scenes described in the audio tour. The castle is now over a mile inland (2.2kms) although when built it was on the coast! We had our daypacks with us (all our luggage for the weekend) and planned to catch the train from there back to Eastbourne, then transfer on to our train back to London. When we got to the little local station however, we discovered the train coming through was in fact our train, that then went on to London! We were thus able to simply get on and ride the whole way back to Clapham Junction. It was nice to be home.

By the way, it took Bronwyn five hours to notice on Friday night that I'd shaved off my beard!

Friday, 4 July  Happy Birthday Carolyn!

I came home mid-afternoon today in order to do some work on a presentation for next week. Tomorrow is our sixth wedding anniversary, and we're heading away tonight on the train to Eastbourne. On hearing we were going to this seaside town my colleagues said, "Eastbourne is for old age pensioners!" However, the Lonely Planet said that was its reputation but denied this was the case, so we're giving it a go.

Coming home a little early from work also gave me the opportunity to make a few preparations for our departure before Bronwyn came home. Regular viewers will be aware that I grew a beard of sorts while we were in Australia in February. That became a goatee on our departure to Thailand, and it has remained with me since that time.

Now, with maybe a few exceptions I have to say that most women seem to fall into two groups: those who do not like facial hair, and those who just "don't mind" facial hair. It would not be divulging a family secret to reveal that Bronwyn has consistently stated her membership in the former category. Therefore while the goatee was an amusing diversion for a while (for me), I always knew that its days were numbered. May I therefore present the new, clean-shaven, Duncan. Bronwyn is yet to come home, but I suspect she'll be pleasantly surprised when she does. I'll let you know how she reacted, when I update the site next week...

Is it not written: know on which side your bread is buttered?

Tuesday, 1 July

My automatic thinking has started to recalibrate to being in the Northern Hemisphere and particularly being in the UK. The other day I was reading a book which had printed "$200" and I heard myself say in my head "two hundred pounds"... I was quite surprised as until recently I'd often caught myself saying "dollars" when referring to local prices. I've also started to adjust to the seasons. I'd always had to think twice when people on TV talked about July and August as warm months. Now we're here that seems much more natural. In a sense that should be no surprise, as it is obvious that it is warm here at the moment. I still carry an umbrella in my satchel every day (this is London, after all, and they say it always rains when the tennis is on). I don't bother to wear a jacket to work though, as I just end up carrying it everywhere. I was still in a t-shirt as we walked home at 9:30pm the other night.

We're in preparation for a number of events. This coming Saturday is Bronwyn and my sixth wedding anniversary. As previously mentioned, we're going down to the coast for the weekend. On the same day is Nick's birthday. (We'll concede he had the date before we did.) In any case, this is the first birthday of any of the housemates since our arrival. My birthday follows close on the heels of his, less than a week later. One great birthday present I'm getting on that day is the arrival of Bronwyn's sister Carolyn. She is coming up from Wanganui in New Zealand and will be in this half of the world for a little over five weeks. Some of that time will be with us here in London, and also with us in Tuscany and later in Paris. Carolyn is also going to do some travel with a friend who will be here at the same time, to Scotland and no doubt elsewhere. We're looking forward to her visit, which overlaps with four weeks of the six week summer break for Bronwyn. I'm having two weeks off during her time here, which will be my first leave since we arrived in March. Further off we're also looking forward to Bronwyn's other sister Stephanie visiting from Christchurch in August, all going well.

About a month ago I confess I was in a bit of a blue funk. Things seemed quite heavy at work and I think that the shift finally hit me. We've been missing a lot of people who are back home! I'm glad to say however that I've moved into a better space now. I think it's been a combination of time, settling further into church and work relationships, and prayer. I really appreciate my parents who I know were praying for me at that time. If there were others too, thanks! On the other hand Bronwyn is feeling like she is back at square one right now, being a new teacher in a school at this tough time of year. (She has three weeks left before school breaks up for the "year".) Bronwyn and I were commenting to church friends tonight that it has been good sharing a flat with Nick and Hayley. We are fortunate to have such compatible housemates. It is nice to always have friends to come home to.