A New Year

We arrived back from our holiday in Melbourne, to a wintery Christchurch, complete with drizzle and a meagre afternoon temperature of 9 degrees! Not quite summer! When the pilot had said the Christchurch temperature was 9 degrees, I thought either I had misheard and he had actually said 19 or that it was the temperature at 15 000 ft. Unfortunately, I had heard correctly!

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It was a real shame that the weather was not on our side, as we had hoped to spend New Year’s Eve at Darren & Jen’s place, enjoying a nice barbecue and sitting in their swimming pool drinking cocktails. Being a hardy bunch, however, the barbecue went ahead but was moved under the roofed patio area. We all dressed warmly and a fire was lit but after a few beers the outside temperature was forgotten and we could have been anywhere!

It was quite warm...once a fire was lit!

Two of Jen’s brothers (Stephen and Tony), from Ireland were over, and our mutual friend Brett was over from Switzerland, which made for great company. Later on, Emma joined us, as she had finished work for the night. We saw in the New Year with sparklers and Lindauer Fraise. The alcohol continued to flow, and Darren's speciality: Irish Coffee, had to be consumed.

The first of January is also Tony’s birthday, so a cake was brought out and Happy Birthday was sung. We never saw the cake again; Jen must have hidden it away!

Darren was the first of our party to go to sleep in 2007. He retired around 3.30 am as the plan was that Darren would drive Jen, Tony and Stephen to Fox Glacier on New Year's Day. Tony was the only other driver, but seeing as he went to bed around 6.30 am their plans seemed doomed. As we later found out, they never did make it to Fox that day.

We got up around 11 am, after only a mere five hours sleep, and both really wanted to get home. Firstly, so that Chantal could call the family in Holland as they saw in the New Year, at 12 noon NZ time. Secondly, we were anxious to get home to see Tinkerbell. We really had not spent much time with her, after collecting her from the cattery. We basically dropped Tinks off at home, unpacked our holiday suitcase and were off again. The poor cat probably thought we had abandoned her again!

The rest of the day was spent in quite a daze, as we were both still working off the effects of the night before. Pete made the mistake of lying down on the sofa and subsequently falling asleep, with the cat. Chantal did not fare much better; just reading was all she accomplished.