Happy Christmas!

Dear friends, I hope you all had a good Christmas, whatever Christmas means to you, and a chance to rest and to catch up with your nearest and dearest, hopefully without some kind of board game induced family breakdown (though those are also some essential part of the holiday season.)

I had to work Christmas Day so spent the first hours driving through a blissfully, eerily empty England, listening to Classic FM's dulcet tones and going very, very fast around roundabouts. But before that, when I woke up at 5am, Tim insisted on giving me my present, which was...

!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah I know! Exciting, right?
I was excited.
A zoom lens!
Excited and slightly concerned about how much money this present may have cost.

So excited I...

 ...
...
....
....
...

 ....
I see.

An ingenious cup!!!

At this point I was possibly even more delighted, due to relief partly that he hadn't got me a ridiculously expensive gift,  and partly because I'd noticed it didn't say Canon on the 'lens' and was wondering how to break it to him that it just wasn't going to fit my camera. But that was fine, because it was going to fit my MOUTH.

....

Except

 oh wait


then he brought out this one too.
An actual zoom lens.
And this one says Canon on it.

Thanks Tim!

So if you have a camera-loving partner and want to set them up for a fall on a special day....this is definitely the way to do it. I for one was unbelievably impressed. Even now when I suddenly catch sight of it lying around on the worksurface, it makes my heart tighten just a little bit in momentary anxiety because a camera lens really shouldn't be lying around in the kitchen like that...

And take it from me - you wouldn't even have to buy them a real lens afterwards. Though that was also tremendous.

***

So I had a lovely Christmas break at the in-laws, and looking forward to spending New  Year's at my family's too. Christmas Day, however, was spent with the Bennetts - very tolerant and generous souls to whose house I'd summarily invited myself at Christmas as they were the only people I knew in Reading - and by people, I mean, their son, whom i met in New Zealand. Moral of the story: don't live in Reading. They fed me and entertained me and also gave me a tremendously generous stocking filled with goods, which made what could have been a somewhat depressing Christmas Day a very lovely one instead. So thank you, Bennetts. Thenetts.

***

While I was in NZ, I really, really, really missed the whole build up to Christmas, especially the cold weather, and the mulled wine, and the Christmas markets, and the bratwurst, and the mistletoe, and mince pies, and stollen, and panettone, and all the SEASONAL TAT that comes with Christmas. And it was so so so so so nice to have that again this year. Although i haven't managed to eat quite as much turkey, panettone, mince pies, and mulled wine as I'd hoped. And in fact not a morsel of stollen (if such an item can be counted in morsels) has passed my lips. What kind of Christmas is this?

***

Great book I read this Christmas: Being Mortal - excellent and insightful meditation on ageing and death and the way we tackle these natural processes in medicine (clue: unbelievably poorly). Very interesting read - and lots of good ideas. It gave me a lot to think about - particularly the communication model of the ''informative doctor'' and how this, though it seems to be promising patient autonomy, can actually trap everyone in a futile diminishing cycle of suffering and overtreatment. Eye opening stuff, I recommend it to all.

Much less high brow: Crossy Road. http://www.crossyroad.com/ Perhaps the best (and free) ipad game I've yet experienced. Even though it is basically Frogger, it is so much better than Frogger. Like woah. And you can play as a kiwi. Sold.

***

Enough Christmas musings for now, time to think up some New Year's resolutions and see you in 2015.

Love to one and all.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Timothy of Morocco

Does not have the same ring as Lawrence of Arabia, but is a more accurate subtitle to this month's shenangs.

So, we went to Morocco.

This is my favourite photo of the whole time there, when we went to southern Morocco and the sand dunes at Merzouga, a little outpost of the Sahara, and right on the Algerian border. It was an impulsive decision, and one I'm so glad we made, though getting there was somewhat stressful. The country had suffered a huge slew of flash flooding and terrible destruction of houses, roads and most tragically lives - so far I think 32 people died in the floods. Along the way we heard from other tourists who had been trapped (one couple for 20 days in the desert) by the floods, others who narrowly escaped disasters - a bridge fell down after one couple drove over it, killing the occupants of the next car behind them. 

It was all very grim, and in fact when we heard about the floods we suggested that we might just cancel the whole trip and stay in Marrakech, since clearly that would be the sensible, intelligent thing to do rather than go galliva. But unfortunately (fortunately?) our driver appeared not to speak any English, French, or Spanish apart from, 'IT'S FINE. NO PROBLEM.' And obviously we didn't speak any Arabic apart from 'thank you.' So basically we sped along on this journey whihc we were quite concerned might, if not kill us, then maybe trap us in some part of the country for the next three weeks, just saying, 'thank you, thank you' every time our driver drove through a massively flooded road that was essentially a fast-flowing river, while he said, 'is normal. No problem. No problem.' 

BUT IT'S FINE. Because there was not a problem. And we got there. And it was unbelievably good. 

Please forgive me for taking as many clichéd photos as I possibly could cram into my greedy little aperture of the desert, because how often do you get to trek in the Sahara with camels? 

Camels, by the way. Unbelievably uncomfortable. Also, stirrups. Best thing ever. Why ride an animal without stirrups? Massive error. The Mongolians had it down.

I love this photo because it looks like an oil painting. Tim took this with his phone (just on normal settings) after sunset in the desert, and it came out like this. I like to think that my harem pants only add to the romantic atmosphere, even though Tim made retching noises when I bought them. I even bought only the most conservative ones, with a crotch that was basically at the normal place rather than dangling two inches off the floor, and of a normal colour rather than crazy tie die. Frankly, they look a bit like scrubs. Maybe I can start wearing them to theatre. They are outrageously comfortable...

Tim tried them on. He did at least agree they were tremendously comfortable. 

So in the desert we stayed overnight at a Berber camp. It was all very touristy and as fake as you can possiby imagine, but also absolutely fantastic and amazing and wonderful. There were two guides at the camp who could speak English, French, Portguese, Spanish, and Italian (and possibly more languages than nthat, though that was the sum of our little band), and they exercised them all. Except English. One of them decided to address me solely in French, the other one in Spanish. This was terribly, terribly confusing.

I took over 1000 photos but I thought I'd share this one with you. Before I got a camera that could take multiple shots, I never knew how funny people looked just as they were about to jump. Don't they look funny?

No need to thank me.

We stayed up for sunset and got up for sunrise and in between slid down the sand dunes on an extremely rickety snowboard and ate a lot of tagine. This will become a running theme.

Tagine!

This was my favourite one, with seven vegetables, cooked over a charcoaly fire, all smokey and delicious. 

We ate a lot of tagine. 

This is one of the towns in Southern Morocco, in an oasis. Turns out, oases are fricking massive. And they feed whole towns. How foolish was I, imagining a little oasis in the desert with a couple of palm trees. Nope. They host hundreds and thousands of palms, and the health of an oasis and its wealth is measured by how many palms there are. And the palms provide shelter for growing all sorts of other things - pomegrantes and olives, apricots, potatoes and carrots in the earth beneath, and so on. 

I like the way the buildings, all made from the same ochre earth, just blend into the background along the luxuriant palms. Apparently one way to take a besieged kasbah (i.e. another name for a walled house or fortified palace) was just to divert the waters of the oasis so it washed away the kasbah foundations after a while, being made out of mud. Cunning. 

We did a whistle-stop tour of the south, which was pretty splendid. Our driver, Ibrahim, explained to us that he liked the south and the mountains in a series of extremely informative mimes. Marrakech, he explained with his hands and a particularly sad face, was too full of people 'blah blah blah blah'ing all the time. 

I would like to say this is a very accurate assessment of Marrakech, and if you do find yourself in Morocco, head straight for the mountains and the desert right away. You won't miss anything in Marrakech, which is really a very disappointing and boring place, full of people who I'm sure are very pleasant and lovely but compelled to be a bit awful because they live in Marrakech, where everything is a bit awful. 

Go to Tagazhout instead.

We stayed with a surf company, called Surf Maroc, there, and surfed as much as we could for two days, which isn't very much it turns out. We were both destroyed after a scant 2 hours in the water in the first day, and about 4 hours the second - with a sizeable lunch to pep us up, of course. Paddling is hard work. But the water was warm, the waves were good, and our driver in Tagazhout wasn't really sure how to drive a car - he coudn't switch gear, it seemed, which made life quite difficult for himself since he appeared to got lumped with the manual - and so the time passed quite pleasantly.

If you are ever thinking of going surfing in morocco, then Surf Maroc is definitely highly recommended. Great food, lovely location, and one of these demons to keep you occupied:

This is one of the most fiendish balance games I've yet encountered. That little penguin game you play on the Wii has nothing on it. It looks so easy, yet it's so fiendish. Lots of fun. I'm not really sure if it helps your surfing (or indeed anything), but who cares? 

In short, Morocco was lots of things we hadn't looked for, and not others we had, and a strange mixture of the unsatisfactory and the divinely inspiring, which is really all you can ask of a mid-November holiday.

But don't bother with Marrakech. 

*** 

I realise I never told you about acrobatic rock and roll, by the way. It was splendid. Tim loved it. And I think we're going to join the team (!)

xxx Connie

An eyot is an island in a river

It has been so unseasonably warm for October (who can believe it's now November?), and I've been fidgeting about at work, desperate to go outside. So now the weekend is here, the first thing I did was go for an Epic Walk, starting in Botley, down the Oxford canal to Iffley and then up again through The Kidneys (who knew there was a nature park called The Kidneys in Oxford? It's my new favourite reference point now, "oh, you know - just south of the Kidneys"), and coming back on Aston's Eyot, which informed me that an Eyot is an island in a river, often used in reference to the Thames. So there we go. 

It's really lovely being back in Oxford and discovering places that I never knew about as a student - the train station, the JR, and Temple Cowley forming the borders of my consciousness. And also introducing my sister to it all (and blowing her mind, naturally.) This is where the Eyot comes out, by the way - just the other side of the boathouse island.

It was nice too to walk by the river in full boating season - lots of very posh men with very posh voices cycling along the path and shouting, 'PUSH WITH YOUR LEGS!' and 'FASTER!' etc. 

(Ps. Did anyone else read Alice through the Looking Glass when younger and not realise that when Alice rows with the Sheep from the shop and the Sheep keeps saying 'feather! feather' and 'you'll catch a crab' - to which Alice's response is 'a dear little crab! I should like that' - that they were boating references?)

(Posh men in boats.)

I walked and walked, went back through the centre of town, narrowing avoiding Ben's Cookies (a dangerous place to dally), and then met Tim up in Port Meadow to go for a late lunch at the Trout. So late that the sun set while we were still there.

It was a clear night and a very bright moon and we walked back in the darkness, accompanied by a lot of joggers who were more virtuous than we. Who jogs in the dark? Mad people, that's who. And Sophie Pooley. 

***

Last week we went to see Gary and Debbie in their new house up in Shropshire for their Halloween Harry Potter Housewarming (I love my love with an H). Did you know that Shropshironians are in fact called Salopians? This is all according to Wikipedia, which I have no cause to distrust. Debbie and Gary are some fine folks we met in NZ who used to live down the road from us and now live considerably up the road from us. About 2 hours worth in fact. It was so nice to see them installed back in the UK and gadding about in their fancy new place. And we got dressed up in honour of the occasion too.

I think this is one of my finest Halloween costumes to date, involving 2 pillows and a good deal of gold spray paint. Debbie is also featured, as Hedwig of course. Tim came as Dobby (cue everyone trying to free him by hiding socks all over the place.)

***

Otherwise life continues apace. I have finished my supernumerary 3 months in Reading and from next week I'm flying solo - and by flying, I mean, eyeing. I've been enjoying myself tremendously at work, learning how to operate the various lasers (lasering eyes - incredibly satisfying. Who knew?), doing more in theatres (I made my first opening incisions the other day and sideports - the first I've ever had to make with my left hand, which is definitely increasing in sinisterity daily), and generally feeling a bit more confident and at home with things. In fact, work is pretty much perfect, apart from the commute, which is soul-destroying. But I suppose you can't have everything. 

Tim and I are also going to start going to acrobatic rock and roll dancing after I watched a video in which someone gets thrown up into the air and then does a triple flip or somesuch and decided this is the kind of dancing I could be into.

Tim: "I don't think we can do this Connie. The guy has to be incredibly tall and ripped and the girl has to be incredibly tiny and ripped. I'm tall. That's it. And I think you've gained some weight recently." 

Me: "IT'S THE FREE DRUG REP LUNCHES."

Anyway, tomorrow's our first session (Tim took some talking into this. I exercised my finest rhetorical skills, Cicero-style. Aka I talked so much I bored him into saying, "FINE LET'S JUST GO, JUST STOP TALKING ABOUT IT." Another triumph for team Cicero!) so I will let you know how it goes. 

xxxx 

Connie

Fungi foray

Dear folks,

Sorry for not updating for so long. After the excitement of, you know, getting married and all the rest, posting about commuting to Reading really seemed like too much of a let-down. Not that I can complain about Reading. Reading's great. Going to Reading really makes me appreciate how great the other aspects of my non-Reading life are, in much the same way that hitting yourself repeatedly on the thumb with a hammer feels so great when you stop.

I should disclaim here that this reflects in no way on the hospital or the staff. This reflects solely on the fact that Reading, as a concept, exists. In Lonely Planet, England, the only paragraph describing Reading states, ''An industrial commuter town with little of interest, except a 3-day music festival which occurs on the August bank holiday each year. Expect traffic." And speaking from personal experience, the word "interesting" seems curiously lacking and inappropriate to describe Reading festival.

But there have been other aspects of non-Reading life that have occurred.

We've put an offer in for a house, which is wonderful because it turns out I can no longer house-share.  My slovenliness and desire to walk around the house wearing minimal amounts precludes most housemates' comfort and mental stability. Naturally I have reigned in my natural proclivities but I really can't wait until I can leave the washing up in the sink for the next day or leave my shoes in a jumbled pile in the hallway for when I really can't be arsed to pick them up and stow them away in the cupboard upstairs.

We've also made some sloe gin, which is almost as exciting as a house, in a slightly different way. It's part of our slow descent into unbearable middle-classedness.

And this weekend we went to Batsford arboretum, which is part of the grounds of Batsford House, which is, I discovered, associated with the Lords Redesdale - and naturally with part of the lives of the Mitford family, with whom this whole country appears perennially obsessed with.

It is a lovely spot and I do find all the Mitfords and their chequered history very charming, but I also find it completely unbearable that any one family could own such a pile, down with the aristocracy etc.

Anyway we weren't there for politico/social/economical discourse but to hunt for mushrooms.

I've forgotten the name of this one but it wasn't edible. I think it was called a "sulphur cap" (lovely) and it grows at the roots of trees, especially trees that have been "going through a rough patch" (divorce? mid-life crisis?) and are particularly vulnerable. The fun thing about mushroom hunting of course is that once you see one then you start seeing them everywhere. 

We were quite excited about the fungi foray because in Eastwoodhill Arboretum we'd seen so many very odd fungi - one that looked like a cage and indeed turned out to be called a cage fungus - surprise surprise - that we thought we'd like to identify some. Though some people turned up with a basket, obviously hoping to cart home some goodies. They were out of luck. On this foray we identified only disgusting mushrooms "technically edible, but really, don't" or deadly poisonous ones. Worryingly, one of the poisonous ones had been classed as edible for many centuries until recently someone found out that a spate of unusual deaths in Eastern Europe was in fact due to ingestion of these little beauties: below - 

The brown rolled-cap. Apparently the reason no one discovered they were deadly for so long was because they have a cumulative effect - eating a few won't kill you, even eating quite a lot over many years won't kill you - until one fateful meal and your kidneys have had quite enough and make it clear to you once and for all. 

I've never really had the urge to forage for mushrooms but really, that was enough to put me off for life. Even leaving out the dangers of incorrect identification (and there are many tremendously terrifying tales you can read about people dying/poisoning their nearest and dearest/conking out their kidneys with a charming little side dish of mushrooms fried in a little butter), the fact that you could identify a mushroom correctly but STILL DIE because the BOOKS WERE WRONG should surely strike fear into your mushroomy heart. 

 I remember distinctly once James and Maria brought back the biggest mushroom I'd ever seen - about the size of James' torso - they'd found on a tree, and they spent about a week cooking it, to very little effect. We did all eat some, and no one died, which was a relief. It turned out it was a bracket - a family of fungi growing on trees of which the tastiest is called "chicken of the woods" (bringing back worrying memories of Anchorman 2) and which "Americans would kill for" and the rest vary from "bland" to "wood-like and tough." The specimen PJ and M brought back was definitely of the latter category - apparently boiling for several hours would have been a better option than any of the cooking methods we tried. Still, it was pleasing to know that there aren't any deadly poisonous varieties of that one, and the only damage you're likely to sustain is wear and tear to your molars.


Anyway, Tim and I didn't eat any mushrooms but instead ate a substantial amount of jaffa cakes washed down with tea, which seemed much the safest option in the face of these revelations, and decided we would get all of our mushrooms from the supermarket forever and ever and ever.

xxx
Connie

Summer in the city

Ok, so we got married.

It was superlative in every sense.

And then we went on honeymoon, where we stayed in the most ridiculously twee hotel ever seen on the face of this earth. It even had the words 'Romantik' written on the side. You can't argue with that sort of branding. 

The ensuing month was spent drinking a good deal of wine...

...then moving location to a perhaps even more romantic Polish castle...

(Yes. For tuppence, you too can stay in this castle, swim in this lake, and eat more sausage than you can shake a stick at)

....but mainly attending the weddings of our beautiful friends, Maja & Maciej..

...and Amanda and Ed...

...and I fondled all the brides fondly.

This is me fondling Amanda's pouffy dress.

She was very patient.

Words cannot really describe how fantastic that month was, so I think it's best if we pass over it as any attempt will sound like hyperbole. The sun shone and everything was superb, and it was just a very, very happy time.

And now we've started work.

And I've baked a pie! Partially in honour of the Bake Off (which is great, right? Am I right?), but mostly in honour of my stomach, which had been much exercised on holiday.

A blueberry pie! Like Yogi eats. 

Excellent choice, Yogi. Turns out, it's delicious. 

No wonder he turned to theft.

Work has been somewhat tiring, but we've taken a lesson from NZ as we promised ourselves, and we have purchased a Lonely Planet, and this weekend Lonely Planet suggested to us we should go to Cornwall and do some surfing, and so we were like, 'great idea, Lonely Planet! Superlative!' 

So we did.

Turned out, one of Tim's school friends works in Cornwall now. At this surfshack. 

Superlative.

The scenery was beautiful, but it was a little bit chilly for August. 

And the waves were...well.

They weren't quite swell.

(I am the wit.)

Still, it was really fun to be back in the water and standing up on a board. I missed it so much as soon as I was out of the water, in fact, that I ordered a Ripstik which is slightly embarrassing as I think maybe it's marketed towards 8 year old boys but WHATEVER. Would Wolverine be put off by marketing? I say NO. Anyway, my consultant's wife (in Gisborne....obv) had one and she played on it all the time, and she is at least 10 years older than me so I count that as PEER ENDORSEMENT. 

She was well cool, innit.

(classic British seaside holiday scene! Oh how I have missed you.)

We ate ice creams and fish and more fish and more ice cream and Cornish crab and scallops and all the rest and we finished it off with a visit to Rick Stein's place in Padstow. I say Rick Stein's place, he basically owns all the property in Padstow now so if you just stumble blindly into a building in Padstow it probably will be Rick Stein's place. Still, it was very tasty and all that, and it was nice to gaze on Rick's very familiar-looking face as we munched our dinner. Speaking of which, we both saw John the other day in Oxford wobbling about on a bicycle in his white linen summer suit and he looked basically unchanged, which was also very nice. I accosted him by shouting JOHN STEIN! in the middle of Holywell, and then failed to remind him who I was, which left us both gawping at each other for about 20 seconds before it all clicked. 

I also ran into my old lab supervisor whilst up at the JR for a teaching session, just in the coffee room. She didn't have any kids when I left...and now she has 2. 2! And she is a senior researcher in the Foster lab. 

How times-a-change. Etc.

Anyway, here is a nice picture of the saltwater swimming pool in Bude to cheer us all up.

The sea comes washing up over the sides in high tide, which is tremendously pleasing. 

We also went for a walk around Tintagel, which I kind of imagined as tremendously romantic and huge but in fact is sort of ruinous and crumbling. I recognise that my illusions about this all stem from a BBC production of King Arthur in which Helena Bonham Carter played Morgan le Fay and Miranda Richardson played basically another version of her character as Queenie. Curse you, BBC, for instilling me with such false cultural expectations. I expect higher standards. 

Still, it was extremely beautiful. 

Here is a shot of the cove below Tintagel.

I leave you with this sunset view over Bude.

The best thing was, I found a copy of the Mousehole Cat and I read it to Tim, and he loved it just as much as I did when I heard it as a child. 

Superlative all round. 

Everything is awesome!

Actually I didn't like the Lego Movie that much.

But. It is a surprisingly addictive song.

So I'm BACK (back for good, back for gooooood) in the UK after a grueling series of films amidst a grueling series of flights, and a lot, a lot of carbs. I've visited an M&S Simply Food and I've been back to Oxford and I've entered a Boots so everything is truly awesome. And it's summer! Granted it was 17 degrees the day I landed and it had been 18 degrees in Gisborne the day I left, but what's a degree or two between friends?

So my plan for the next few days is WEDMIN, but also HOUSEMIN and CARMIN and LIFEMIN in general, so I may not update much (hahaha! big changes for all of you!). Also, what is with the Oxford property market? SERIOUSLY. I don't remember it being this bad. One guy raced us back to the estate agents to try and sign the lease before us and he pipped us to the post. All very anxiety inducing. Also, expensive. Also, everything is miniature. I'm not sure the Kiwis would survive in such a confined environment.

On the plus side, thatched roofs and buses that go everywhere. And fruit pastilles.

I leave you with a picture of the gang at the bach, at mid-winter Christmas.

I promise I'll tell you all about it once the wedmin is done.

LOVE

Connie

Procrastination

Dear folks,

How are you? I currently have the hiccups, but I am well. Do you spell them hiccoughs? I have had a cold for the last two days, but now am bravely soldiering on.

Well I think that just about wraps it up for the news for the last month or so, I can take another hiatus.

*****

Ok, so, I'm not the best at updating. Sorry. But that is due to a very good reason,

Extreme laziness.

So I am updating now, because I have something other than updating my blog to procrastinate from: Cleaning All The Things.

Yes, we are finally reaching the end of our stay in NZ. Do I say that often enough to be annoying yet? I do feel like I constantly update you all with fitful reminders ('last two months in NZ! last one and a half months in NZ! last month and a bit in NZ! OH GOD IT'S JUST UNDER A MONTH NOW.) Just another couple of days and we'll be winging it over to Wanaka to try and not break anything before the wedding. I'm so excited!

What has been happening recently?

Well, I'm now going to be working in Reading next month, not Windsor. I am of course thrilled, just as Ricky Gervais' mother would have been, for there are definitely parts of Reading I haven't been to yet.

I've been accepted as a trainee member of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists, in one of the most brilliant suspense-building letters for the least-suspense-requiring-application I've ever received ("Dear Dr Han, we have carefully considered your request for membership in our annual meeting..." - it's just a trainee membership, folks. You don't need to carefully consider it.) Indeed, how much is there to carefully consider:

"Looks like this Dr Han person wants to be a trainee member."

"Goodness me. Well what are the requirements for being a trainee member?"

"Well, you must be a trainee."

"And is she?"

"Yes."

"Jolly good. What else?"

"And you must want to be a member."

"Oh. Well, does she?"

"Well she's sent in an application. So one can only assume she does."

"You know what they say about assuming, Wilkins. Makes an ass - "

"I think we can safely assume she does, sir."

"So what you're saying, Wilkins, is that she is a trainee, and wants to be a member, and those are the only requirements for being a trainee member."

"Quite correct."

"Don't we have some kind of recommendation system with old members and the like? You know, to keep the rabble out? Some kind of initiation ceremony involving pheasants and a naked steeplechase? I remember having to do something unspeakable to a foxhound in the basement of the RCP building before being allowed in."

"No, sir. If you'll recall, that's for full membership of the College. This is just for trainee membership. Those are the only requirements we have."

"Standards are slipping, Wilkins. Why, when I was young - "

"No doubt, sir. Shall I send a reply?"

"Just go over it again with me, Wilkins. Complicated stuff, this. What exactly are the requirements again?"

***

Back to my news.

I've finished my job and now am a full fledged huswife dawdling about the place waiting for tim to get home. I sort of imagined that when this happened, I would be at the pool, going to the gym, learning 3x different languages, and generally being as productive as hell. What has actually occurred is that I've read 3 entire detective stories and read a lot of Game of Thrones related news and contracted a cold, which essentailly translates to flipping f-all.

Life. It is ever thus.

So now we've all learnt that I cannot be trusted to rely on my own devices and that a hothouse upbringing and expensive education have only served to make me totally unreliable at motivating myself. I could at the very least be reading the latest guidelines on EYES or something but I've only read one article in the last week and I fell asleep while I was reading it.

I remind you I had a cold.

Wedding planning goes apace and I am very excited about the whole matter, except the matter of my dress, which I am beginning to fear I will not fit into, for reasons which I shall shortly explain (not pregnant, before anyone wonders).

So, basically, my BODY PLAN for this year has been to be become buff.

Seriously buff.

Oh all right, I just wanted to beat Tim at arm wrestling. Which I can almost do. So I've been reading MEN'S HEALTH (Australia) and telling everyone endlessly about how much I've been reading Men's Health Australia (which, to be fair, is a pretty amazing magazine - listen to me, ladies. It has lots of awesome work-out tips, which are hilariously unattainable - things like, "To get a hot bod, why not benchpress 2x your own bodyweight for 50 reps?" or similar. I don't even really know what benchpressing means, though I have a vague idea. I just love the idea that I am allowed to read something like that without a member of the police coming by and confiscating it with a, "madam, are you aware that it is illegal to read about shit like this as if you could actually, ever, in your entire life, do? Just let go of the rag quietly, madam."

Anyway so I think I can benchpress about 0.5 of my bodyweight, which is, holy mackerel, pathetic. And when I do it I cry a little bit.

If indeed benchpressing is even what I think it is.

I LOVE IT.

Women's magazines are all, 'have you considered doing this pathetic step exercise 100000 times till you die of boredom?"  Men's Health - "have you considered doing this impossible strength exercise which will break you in half? I promise you won't be bored, just in agonising pain."

Women's Magazine: "Why not eat less and be slender and delicate?"
Men's Health: "WHY NOT EAT AN ENTIRE DEER. IF YOU'RE HARD ENOUGH. Great protein, by the way."

Women's Magazine: "We have no gadgets, unless it's to do with monitoring how many calories you're putting into your sad little mouth."
Men's Health: "I don't know if you're ready for the technology that we're about to unleash, but I think we may have just made a robot lover who also doubles as a jet-ski."

Next great thing about Men's Health (AUSTRALIA - I have to highlight this because I have no idea if Men's Health UK or indeed USA or whatever is equally titillating, so I have to be very specific as I have no wish to mislead), is that it is full of pictures of hot men.

True story.

Women's Magazines: full of pictures of hot women. No objection to this - lovely women always nice to gaze at.
Men's Health Australia: rammed with semi-naked buff bodies. Of men.  It's like soft-core porn mixed with longing aspiration.  "I wish my upper arms were like, 1/10th of yours. Or if I had 1/20th of your ab definition. Also, wow. Just wow."

***

Sorry, I lost concentration. Where was I?

***

Ok. So the long and short of it is that I have this goal which is to beat Tim at arm wrestling, and as he is pathetically, adorably puny I think that I may actually win. However to be doing this I have taken on the MANTRA of Men's Health, Australia, which is to go to the gym like a loon and swim like a loon and also eat protein like a loon. As we're still trying to eat less meat, this means that I've eaten more soy that I've ever done in my entire life before.

And I'm Chinese.

I want to emphasise that's just a lot of soy, all right? And other stuff. Peanut butter. Quinoa. Whole deer.* So I am genuinely slightly concerned I am not going to be fitting into the wedding dress, which was purchased at a stage in my life whereof I knew not of Men's Health, Australia, and thus was floating around in a bubble of slenderness which I fear I will never attain again, through my devotion to BUFFING UP.


*So in the latest issue, they interviewed Hugh Jackman, which was like,

Interviewer: "Yo, Hugh Jackman, how'd you get to be so buff?"
Hugh Jackman: "So I just pretend I'm Wolverine, and then I can lift all the bad stuff."
Interviewer: "Wow."

So Hugh Jackman's Thing - in case you didn't get it from my elegant summary - is that he IMAGINES himself to be Wolverine when he's exercising, and that's how he does it! Genius. Madness. The mantra around our house now is, 'What would Wolverine do.'

Tim: "Connie, did you just drop a piece of toast onto the floor this morning?"
Me: "Maybe..."
Tim: "And you forgot to pick it up."
Me: "Dude, would Wolverine pick up a frigging piece of toast from the floor? That's not what Wolverine is about, man."
End of discussion.

And Wolverine would, I'm sure, eat a whole deer.

But we haven't.

Thanks for listening.

***

Ok so I'm going to talk about something else other than my Men's Health obsession (which Tim has now picked up on and is now trying to eat even more than me in an attempt to buff up faster than me. YOU'RE GONNA LOSE, TIM. I WORK PART TIME AND I HAVE A BIGGER MOUTH THAN YOU.)

So, what's been up?

We've been to Auckland to see the rugby, which was a truly exciting occurrence. The All Blacks haka-d like whoa, and England put up a pretty damn good game, and Tim wore an England shirt and we got heckled for it. And it was a bit like Men's Health but in live -

Ok, I'll stop.

I've also discovered a blog, which, everyone else has discovered for like forever, but whatever, I'm in New Zealand, so cut me a break, ok? 

It is here. Like all fashion blogs it is best taken in very small doses lest the chortling it turns you to turns into a dire despair at the state of the western world and WHAT HAVE WE DONEary, but small doses are quite chortletastic. I hope this is of use to one of you during any sad revision or work times that should come upon you. 

Sun's finally come out as well for our last week here, so I feel like I ought to go out and have a swim or something or whatever, enjoy this beautiful place for all that it's got. 

I'm getting really very, very excited about coming back to see all of you. And to do a whole load of shopping. New Zealand does that to you. I was talking about this to a friend who's also been over and she said, 'yeah I know. I'm not even a big shopper but...when I went back to the UK for a visit, I went shopping. In my own wardrobe. It was amazing. I was like, 'holy crap, clothes! Clothes that...fit...and....look nice. Shit.'' So if anyone wants to join me on an expedition, be my guest. I'm going to go a little bit CRAZY, given that the only clothes I've bought in the last year have been 2 white t-shirts.  I mean, I feel virtuous, but COME ON I am a housewife currently and if a housewife can't spend all day spending her husband*'s money** and then have something alluring to slip into later as per all the housewifery advice books tell me then she is GOOD FOR NOTHING. 

*not my husband

**I am also technically being paid to be a housewife, as I've just taken leave for my last week. So also not his money***. 

***PRINCIPLE STILL HOLDS.

Speaking of husbands, Tim referred to himself as my 'boyfriend' the other day .I found that weird, given soon we'll be eternally and legally bound as HUSBAND and WIFE and I also feel that 27 is perhaps too old to have a boyfriend, and perhaps we should be saying, 'partner' as if we were in a law firm together, which is what I do say most of the time, so why suddenly revert to boyfriend? Perhaps the clue is that he used it in a sentence in which he referred to himself as, 'maybe the best boyfriend of all time?' and I do feel that 'partner' in that context would not have been just as stylistically apt, though still linguistically sound. 

To all other boyfriends/people with boyfriends out there: I'm sure Tim wasn't making a *general* statement. Anyway, I agreed with him, in spite of the likely issues related to verifying his claim, and despite his use of the clunky 'boyfriend'. 

That's just what Wolverine* would do.

*(I want to make it clear here that I am Wolverine. Emotionally supporting my partner. Being loving. Deadlifting 220lbs or whatever. Beating him at arm-wrestling. All me.)

***

See you back in the UK, folks! 

326kg

That was how much that big pumpkin weighed from my last post. I realised I never told you. Poor things, you must have been tossing about every night, unable to sleep, weeping into your respective pillows and gnashing your teeth in despair at not knowing. Well I hope this brings you peace.

326kg! When I told Graham he just said, 'they grow twice as big as that in the US.' That blows my mind.

Rachel: 'do you know what the secret to big pumpkins is, Connie?'
Me: (obviously) 'No.'
Rachel: (stage whisper) 'TPN.'

The weather's picked up again for a last hurrah but the sea is absolutely bloody freezing. I know because I tried to go for a swim in it last week and nearly froze my face off. That's the last time I make that mistake this year.

Instead I've been looking at it.

Here it is from the Coromandel.

And here it is from the Mahia peninsula.

(Fig. 1: Tim recoiling from the effort of stone skimming)

And here it is (distantly) from a pool of hot water we're burning our bottoms in in Hot Water Beach. Yes - we finally finally got to Hot Water Beach and we had a proper spade and we managed to find some hot water. We even stayed in Tatahi lodge, where I stayed with Robert the previous year.

It didn't feel like more than a year could have passed, but here we are, almost a year and a half in New Zealand, almost two years out of the UK.

And only a month and a half left until we finish work and go back (via a bit of South Island of course) and get back on the treadmill. Now that the time is almost up we've been ticking off the last few things to do on our list. The East Cape drive for one:

The East Cape drive isn't really one you can hurry and it's not really a drive that tourists do that often - it takes about 3 days and nothing really happens on it: all there is to see is wonderful views and a load of beaches 'great for lazin', surfin', and fishin',' as the local guide says (really: the guide is basically a list of beach names with apparently random permutations of 'great for'and 'lazin', surfin', fishin', sailin', swimmin', and kayakin' - but mostly 'lazin'') and some beautiful Maraes and churches:

This is the country where Whale Rider is set and Boy was filmed - real Maori heartland. It feels along the East Cape that we are heading into another country altogether, that we've barely scratched the surface of while we've been here - not The Real New Zealand, but A Real New Zealand, another version of NZ we've only caught glimpses of.

The days have definitely turned chillier now and it is autumn now for sure. We went to our old favourite, the arboretum, for a walk this weekend and everything was a glow of orange and red.

A lot of people have asked me 'what do you do when you're not at work' which is quite a hard question to answer. I can't really quantify it, but I know I have done everything I could. I've got nothing tangible to show for it but memories and a deep, abiding satisfaction and contentment and feeling completely refreshed, recharged and ready to get back onto the training ladder and work my little guts out back in the UK. But all the while knowing that there's some corner of the world that remains, as the poet didn't say, forever East Cape, forever for lazin' and surfin' and always sunny and the same, and which doesn't give a rat's ass about what I'm doing with my career. Which is tremendously satisfying.

I don't even wish I'd started writing my Great  Novel (again, for the 14th time.) This time is all about collectin' material and lettin'it coalesce. And reading fiction and doing crosswords and watching reruns of Elementary. It all settles down, I reckon, and gets used up for a great plot some time in the future, maybe.

And, in the wise words of my Ed Supervisor back at Oxford, Susie Dunachie - 'the best advice I've ever got about my medical career was from my Supervisor. And he said, 'the most important thing to know in medicine, Susie, is when to slack off.''

And she then proceeded to tell me a story about how she flew away for a 2 week holiday to Thailand when she was meant to be doing a PhD and when she came back she has to explain away her tan by pretending it was jaundice and the whole time she had been in ITU.

 Well I got my tan from a beach on the Coromandel. And I've got no regrets. And no publications this year, and no audits. And I feel pretty damn good about that too. I reckon that's about the last year for the next 40 or so I'll be able to say that, and I'm not sure I'm going to appear quite ever so jaundiced again.

Love
Connie

Brrrrrrr

Dear friends,

Another month, another tardy update, and basically no excuse since I am, as Tim reminds me every so often, a lazy sod who's only working part time. Even less excuse - it's horrid weather outside right now. Tim's supervisor spends most of her time shaking her head and wailing, "it's not meant to be like this! This is the most rain Gisborne has ever had!"

It's making me just a little bit homesick for the UK.

Easterlies are indeed blowin' hard for Easter in Gizzy.  It's been raining here 'solidly' for three weeks, if by 'solidly' one means 'in gusty showers and with plenty of fine spells in between', but everyone's been complaining bitterly about it and how it's basically 'ruined' the giant pumpkin festival.

They really are giant, aren't they? The biggest one in that group was 190kg.

And how much do you think this one weighed?

(PS - I guessed wrong.)

The pumpkin festival was a perfect Sunday activity of Gisborney joy, summing up all that's great about Gisborne - so much community, lots of farmers from the market setting up different stalls (snail races and pumpkin bobbing, for example - see above for some immense pumpkin bobbing), scarecrow making, pumpkin petanque, squash throwing.....it was just immensely enjoyable. And it made the front page of the Gisborne herald, because obviously this is front page news.

This, for example - the longest apple peel IN GISBORNE. Definitely newsworthy.

speaking of snail races....

Obviously we chose number 42 as it seemed the most lively and also, well, you know, 42. How could we not? I loved the idea that someone had been out to collect all those snails and paint those tiny numbers on the backs of each. It was just so wonderful.

Sadly, our snail came in pretty much last. It got into a big snail orgy in the middle and never quite recovered. 

We also met up with a small friend of ours who was having a great time selecting some squashes for the squash throwing competition.

Otherwise, things are going much as usual in Gizzy. My most recent clinic highlight was a nice older chap who after the examination, came over and said, 'well you've been a lovely girl, so would you like some peppermints?' and before I could react had tipped a HUGE load of peppermints all over the table - I mean, all over the notes I was writing in, and the desk and everything. 

'Good for the digestion,' he assured me as he toddled out.

I wasn't sure what to do with about 20 peppermints rolling for their tiny lives around the ophthalmology clinic so I wrapped them up carefully in a bit of tissue paper and I put them in my bag. I couldn't throw them away - I mean, really - but I'm just not that sure about eating them. How clean is the ophthalmology clinic? I mean - pretty clean - but clean enough to put in my mouth? But clearly this is ridiculous as I've been known to eat stuff that's fallen on the floor in my house and I know how dirty that is (very.)

Anyway, the peppermints remain in my bag to run away and fight another day while I ponder this conundrum.

***

I am really quite looking forward to going back to the UK, really. I've found out my first rotation, which is Windsor. I'm not sure how I feel about being so close to Maidenhead, for it reminds me of the poem. Still, Windsor looks very jolly and it's a nice eye department, so I hear. I'm looking forward to it all. And a cold Christmas! I'm definitely looking forward to a cold Christmas.

Still, we have 2 months and a bit left in Gizzy, and when the sun has been out, we've been making the most of it:

Ice creams on the beach.

These are wonderful 'real fruit'ice creams where they tip a load of fruit (blueberries, strawberries, whateverberries) in with a load of ice cream and blend it all up and then squirt it out into the biggest cone in the world. 

Note to self: you've done this before, Connie. You tried to eat a whole one and made yourself sick So when Tim says, 'no, I think we can just share one', don't have a tantrum and demand a whole one to yourself. The words, 'it's fine, I'll finish it no problem' will come back to haunt you. And while doing that once is a bit silly, doing it twice is just ridiculous.

Snorkelling in the Marine Reserve.

What is it about snorkeling that makes you so tired? The water here was so warm (and this was only a couple of weeks ago) that it was like being in a spa. A lovely, lovely spa. 

Well it's all buggered now of course. Bloody freezing out there. I had to wear a cardigan today. UNBELIEVABLE.

We also went for a walk up Kaiti  Hill, which has a memorial to Captain Cook which does not resemble Captain Cook (a plaque at the bottom apparently reads, 'who was he? We just don't know.') We tried and failed to find this statue, perhaps hindered in our attempts by this helpful notice. Where exactly are we again?

This was a lovely sunset I have to share with you off our balcony. With the eye of faith you can just see the sea in the far distance.

This was an almost daily scene for us after work, before the clocks changed anyway - a bit of post work surfing down at Makorori, which in Maori roughly translates to, 'watch the idiot beginner surfers fall over for free.' 

You can just see me in the car window...

I think there's just nothing more beautiful than this landscape.

Except for the rest of NZ, I suppose.

Mum and daughter team about to take to the water for a sunset surf.

What a country. 

Still 2 months left.