Gizzy fizzy

Hello hello from Gisborne (motto: "the New Zealand of New Zealand.")

We've been here for 2 days and I love it so much. SO MUCH.

Much has occurred. I will be brief. In summary:

1) I arrived back in the UK from Ghana
2) I took many, many hot showers
3) There were no cockroaches
4) I was generally happy and ate a lot of food not involving fufu
5) I sorted out my NZ visa, which involved a very happy Kiwi called Dave in Immigration who was cheerful as, in stark contrast to the Brit manning the reception desk at New Zealand House.
6) We flew to NZ in the midst of unrelenting hail and misery in London
7) We got to NZ in 30 degree blazing sunshine

The first leg of our flight was on Virgin. Now, those of you who know me know my unrelenting hatred and general bias against Virgin for reasons too long to enumerate so I shall restrict myself to saying I was unbearably smug at just quite how bad the Virgin leg was. The sound system didn't work so it varied between unbearably loud and crackly to inaudible on any given announcement. The TV screens were epileptically flickery. The listings for the movie channel was wrong (devastating Tim, whose only joy in life at that moment was to watch the Alan Partridge movie - listed but not in fact shown), and the comedy channel had no sound. The food was really, really bad. In their defence, their staff were very, very lovely and I could hear them apologising mellifluously to passengers continuously through the flight for everything that was going wrong, something at which they seemed practised.

The Air NZ flight, on the other hand, was bliss in a bucket. And they had a new safety video out! It wasn't very funny but they tried hard, the sweet loves.

In conclusion: I love Air NZ and feel you all ought to fly with them, everywhere, ever.
The end.

So we arrived in Palmy on Friday and it was so nice seeing old friends, and also popping into see Penny, the amazing admin who helped us so much when we were organising jobs in NZ. I'd bought her a hunky firemen calendar (which took a lot of searching for, believe me, plus unwilling Tim in tow "I don't want to be here while you're buying that. Do I have to be here while you're buying that? I'm leaving.") which she and the other two admins absolutely loved ("this is exactly the kind of thing we need in this office.")

Saturday was the long drive up to Gisborne on a very beautiful windy road. The funny thing is that we've had a lot of mixed messages about Gisborne - Tim and I absolutely loved it when we visited (and are loving it now) and have heard from a lot of people who think it's the best thing since sliced baked goods, more or less, but have also encountered quite a few people who think it's the utter pits. Their complaints more or less centre on "there's nothing to do there, and it's so far away from everything."

At this point I always say, "What about the beaches?"
And they always respond,
"Oh yeah, I suppose it's got nice beaches."
"What about the vineyards?"
"Oh yeah I suppose it's surrounded by vineyards."
"And I hear it's very sunny."
"Oh yeah I suppose the weather is good."
"And it's famous for its surf, right?"
"Oh...yeah if you like surfing then it's ok."
"And it's surrounded by beautiful countryside, coastline, loads of walks and cycle trails?"
"Yeah yeah it's right in the country."
"Sounds brilliant."
"No, you see...it's just...well it's....it's just..."

And they can never quite finish the sentence.

Gizzy is far away from everything and it is a tiny town where everyone knows each other and it takes hours on windy windy roads to get anywhere and to be fair to the detractors if you were born here you'd probably be just about desperate to leave once you hit 18. There are also lots of issues - it's an incredibly poor area of NZ, being hugely reliant on the timber industry and farming, which have taken lots of hits, unemployment is high, and there are numerous social issues with the Maori who live here and make up 50% of the population (highest in NZ). On the other hand, it is a place of stunning, unbelievable natural beauty, people are incredibly friendly and welcoming, the Maori presence gives it a really wonderful, grounded, different feel to other areas of NZ (and I wish people wouldn't forget the Maori were here first. It's really their land, by all rights, which they're rather graciously letting us live on, mainly because of the sneaky dealings of the British, and now they're suffering all sorts of social ills related to colonialism which is too complex to go into here), and the lifestyle is pretty amazing. It's more or less exactly what I expected and I am delighted to have the privilege of living here for 7 months.

On Saturday we moved in. Our flat overlooks the harbourside and is costing us a ridiculous £500 a month to rent. It comes with its own outdoor pool (shared, of course), sauna and gym, and is in a pretty wonderful location. We watched the sunset from our balcony, which sees all the way out to sea. So that's the good part. The bad part is that it has clearly been terribly managed. Though the build is in great quality, the furnishings are pretty haphazard, and when we arrived (despite having signed the contract 6 weeks ago and paid rent for 2 weeks beforehand), there was no power (the letting agents having decided it would be superfluous to let us know beforehand), there was damp in the flat, there was mould all over the inside of the fridge, which was really disgusting, and there was almost no furniture in the bedroom - no wardrobe or drawers. We only had one set of keys (without which you cannot even get into the building), and the response to a request for a second set was "oh we're not obliged to give you any you know." Charming.

Luckily we have an incredible building manager who has an undying grudge against the owner of the flats (who he has described to us as an unbelievably tight millionaire) who gave us candles, is knocking up some furniture for us, and gave us access to one of the other flats for hot water and use of their fridge.  So we had a very peaceful candlelit evening watching the sunset, and really it could have been worse.

The next day we managed to get the power turned on and were also greeted with a bottle of 'gizzy fizzy' by a GP who works at the practice Tim is starting in. It turns out our apartment block is literally riddled with doctors.

On Sunday we were invited to a BBQ by my new consultant at his, again, ridiculous house. It was a really lovely evening - he'd invited a few other docs, who all appeared to be south africans who'd moved to new zealand 'temporarily, just for a couple of months' about 10 years ago and had produced about a million children between them. We got the grand tour, complete with constant toppings up of champagne, of his chicken coop (with slidey out chicken poop remover), veg garden (and a taste of the asparagus and broad beans), plum trees, swimming pool, billiards room, etc. After the biggest meal I have ever eaten (true story), we were then hustled into playing football with the kids, who were hilarious - there were 2 little boys, 4 and 6, who looked pretty much identical and seemed to think they were playing rugby. It was impossible to take the ball off them because they would fall over it and then the other one would jump on top and make a scrum.

So that was a great introduction to Gizzy. And today I had a very gentle orientation, together with a work badge that says 'registrar' (though it also says 'opthalmologist'....a spelling I didn't have the heart to correct). We finished the day by going to the beach for our first after-work swim of the year, and a dip in our pool as the sun went down again.

In case this is all too idyllic, as I'm typing this, Tim is writing an extremely long complaint letter to the letting agency (there is much, much more stuff wrong with the flat than I have described)...but much like the issues with Gizzy, the bad can't hold a light to the good. It's beautiful here. I love the job. I am going to learn to kitesurf.....