Cricket, Sun, Beers, and Friends

Cricket, sun, beers and friends sounds like a winning combination and so it proved to be the weekend before Easter. Living in New Zealand does not present many opportunities to watch England play test cricket so we took the chance to travel up to Wellington to do so. Incidentally, of the seven England test matches and numerous one day games that I have seen, I have never seen them play in England . What that says about me I don’t know? However, I think it is a combination of cost, ticket availability, televised games, access to venues and taking it for granted.Unfortunately, there was not a test match scheduled for Christchurch as the games here have been poorly attended in recent years. Additionally, the fact that one side of AMI Stadium (formerly Jade Stadium and before that Lancaster Park ) is currently a building site would not have exactly enhanced the ambience, at this less than scenic concrete temple, but that is a different story! Instead, all three test matches were played at three smaller ‘boutique’ cricket grounds in Napier, Hamilton and Wellington . This meant that the big (big in NZ terms!) cities of Auckland and Christchurch missed out. To be fair, this was probably the correct decision as playing in near empty, at what are really rugby, stadiums does not do the image of cricket any good.

We flew up, after work on Thursday, to watch days 2, 3 and 4 of the game. Andy and Jenny (friends from England : New Forest Ladies Cricket Club) picked us up from the airport and whisked us to their place where they had the ‘question’ beer ready. In case you are wondering, ‘question beer’ is a beer that allows the ‘consumer’ to participate in and score points in sports trivia, i.e. there are questions printed on the underside of the bottle cap. Points are awarded on an arbitrary basis (i.e. biased) by the question master (i.e. consumer of the beer). Our tradition of drinking and playing ‘question beer’ was established when the four of us went to Melbourne over Christmas 2006. Needless, to say the game of ‘question beer’ was played each night then and again was an integral part of our stay in Wellington !The Cricket
Okay so the cricket was not always of a high standard and the scoring was average but from an English perspective the result was good. Not only did we witness a convincing victory but the sun shone for us too! The Saturday was a fine day for test cricket: glorious cloudless skies and a scorching sun brought a capacity crowd to the grassy banks of Wellington ’s Basin Reserve. Sitting on our picnic rug, drinking cold beers with friends, made the day one of the best I have ever spent at a cricket game. And the cricket wasn’t too bad either! We also made it onto live tv when a rather intoxicated kiwi fan fell face forwards over Andy, somehow saving a few sips of his beer! Apparently, this clip even made it on to the BBC News. See attached link. http://youtube.com/watch?v=fyc22i1hVbk

Well that was our one break away for the summer (a summer spent painting) and a good one it was too! I believe England is touring the West Indies , during the next northern hemisphere winter…

Waka Ama

Trying my hand and yet another sport! Yes, work was involved, again... Due to the contacts we made during the rowing eights, we were invited by The Waka Pounamu ( a local waka club) to try our hand at paddling a waka ama. A waka ama is an outrigger canoe.

We had our first training session on the river, which not only taught us how to paddle a waka ama, but also the Maori protocol that goes with it. The second training session was in Lyttleton Harbour. The open sea, scary! Luckily the harbour is in a bay so you are somewhat sheltered but still have to be aware of the tide times etc.

Today we could show off our talents and strengths in the finale! The three Meridian teams would race each other. The original plan was to paddle around Quail Island, but low tide prevented that. We still paddled over to the island, where we had our first race. We all started on the beach, had to run into the water and into the waka ama, paddle approximately 500m to a bhoy, go around it and back to the beach, jump out of the waka ama and back onto the sand. Unfortunately our waka ama was too big to make a sharp turn and our lead was lost on the turn. We lost that race, which we were not very happy about. However, race two was made for our waka ama. A straight 1km race. We won this race very convincingly with at least one boat length. Yah for us!! We all paddled into a bay where some of us swapped waka amas. Volunteers went into the orange waka ama to try their hand at flipping/righting. I was one of the volunteers, and after three attempts I can say we are very good at flipping...over! The aim was to try and get the ama out of the water without tipping over. We never managed that. Luckily it was a nice warm day and the showers at the yacht club were hot! We finished the morning off with a BBQ before going home, to some more house painting.

In two weeks time we are entered in a 500m sprint race, on the river. This event has so far attracted 30 other teams, so lots of competition. Keep checking this Blog updates on that event.

A new addition to the family?

This is Patch, a mongrel. When there is a norwester which is a warm dry wind, Patch likes to wander. So, she jumps over a 6ft fence and visits us! Patch is next door's dog. Great to scare of potential burglars as she even barks when she hears footsteps on our drive.

When we started painting the house, one day she spent quite a few hours just watching us at work! We have seen evidence that she visits even when we are not at home, too. Bah.....

But this was Patch last Sunday. Again, a norwester was coming through. Patch spent a few hours in our garden, following us around and very interested inTinks. This interest was not mutual!