I don’t think I‘ve ever been to Christchurch. SWMBO says I spent a couple of days there a few years back when taking the kids skiing on Mt Hutt. She may well be right, she usually is, but that must have been in winter so doesn’t count. Anything in the winter in the South Island can’t count; it is too bloody cold by definition. Trout reader tells me it is like England. This makes me even more skeptical as I left there twenty-five years ago mainly because I no longer liked the place of my birth. This was very strange transformation. I was born and brought up in South London, went to University in Paddington, thought London was the centre of the universe and wogs started at Dover. I then spent two years in Papua New Guinea and realised that all these basic tenets of my existence were just plain wrong. I have now lived outside the UK for almost longer than I have lived in it. I wouldn't go back to live there if you paid me. Naff weather and too many people are just for openers.
Business meeting at midday went better than expected and next meeting is not until five o'clock. What to do? The choices are a half day conference registration for $270 to listen to a bloke from Oxford who talks like he has a pound of fruit and veg stuck in his throat prattle on about inflammatory bowel disease or a walk around town for no money at all? Tricky one, eh?
What town is not looking at its best under a cloudless sky on a late spring afternoon? Christchurch scrubs up pretty well. Excuse the camera phone images.
This is all very Oxford or Cambridge is it not? The speaker with the plum in his throat must think he has caught the early flight home. What we really need is some Japanese tourists being punted down the Avon by some joker wearing a boater.
A cup of tea under the willows watching all this pastoral stuff was pleasant enough but has as much relevance to to real life as listening to all the guff about complex small bowel immunology. No, Christchurch is not for me - where's the nearest blue water for starters? Trolling 14" lures for blue cod is not quite the same as putting them out for blue marlin is it?
Five o'clock meeting is slated to finish at six-ish. However our mob is ejected by the chairman (from Christchurch - rude sod; I'm definitely not relocating) and so it is back at the airport by six. Any chance of an earlier flight home? The leaves on the line at Penge earlier in the day are still making their presence felt and the schedules are a disaster. We easily find a seat on a delayed flight (for the normal punters) that gets us home two hours earlier than planned - all good.
Air New Zealand have taken away any pretense that internal air travel is any more than getting on a bus. No tea and biccies ( just to spite them I took two boiled sweets - both were horrible) and the seats are great if you are anorexic. The female in 19A was not by any stretch of the imagination anorexic. Her more than ample frame was intent on taking over most of 19B which meant I had to cuddle up much more closely than would appear right and proper to the gent in 19C. He was very smelly. Ms 19A (and a bit of 19B) decided to fill her flight by doing a crossword - it must have been the only hour this year she had not spent eating. She did the 'JUMBO' jous de mots from the NZ Women's Weekly. I had no choice but to join her in this literary pursuit as most of the grid was in the 19B bit of her space on the aircraft. I can report that the NZ Women's Weekly 'JUMBO' crossword is bloody easy. The longest word I could find was seven letters. However my voluminous companion made this really very easy conundrum unnecessarily hard for herself by exhibiting a quite staggering inability to spell. I mean she couldn't spell anything at all. She might have been able to manage the indefinite article but beyond that she was struggling.
Why would you chose doing crosswords as your intellectual press ups if you can't spell? It is like taking up jogging if you are a double amputee, indulging in a bit of bird spotting if you are blind, taking Baroque music appreciation classes if you are deaf. Barmy. Big Bertha was nothing if not persistent. By the time we had started our descent over Raglan she had the puzzle about two thirds complete - and it was about two thirds wrong. 'A beer like drink' - 'lagre'. 'Mechanical word entry' - 'Tipe'. Where the words crossed we got even worse nonsense. I can recall 'ch' and 'lm' occurring together without an intervening vowel. The whole thing was a disaster. However she seemed happy enough so why should I worry?
This all reminded me of another crossword and public transport story from many years ago. The London tube and a 'city gent' gets on the train and very ostentatiously pulls a copy of The Times from under his arm and folds it over to do the crossword. Now, The Times crossword is a few steps up the difficulty scale from the NZ Women's Weekly - JUMBO or not. Anyway gent pulls out his pencil thinks briefly and fills in the first clue. A few seconds more of careful thought and clues two and three are cracked. A brief pause at Ludgate Circus for breath and we are off again at a break neck lexicographical pace. A couple of stops later CG throws the paper down on the seat with the puzzle solved in six minutes flat and exits the train to take over a couple of multinational companies. Somewhat curious and a little in awe that I had been in the company of a literary genius for a couple of stops on the Circle Line I wandered over to glance at his work. He had filled in 'aardvark' as the answer to every clue. Class act.
Back at Obald Towers a couple of hours earlier than I had feared but still knackered. This international businessman lifestyle is not for me.
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