Speaker by Various Artists

I think the stress of swapping houses is over-rated. I've never lost a spouse, but I've lost a sibling, and you can take it from me that moving house is much, much less stressful than that.

It wasn't that I didn't like Three Kings: quite the opposite. In fact, our little street of staties and ex-staties reminded me a lot of Ponsonby when it was still cool in the 1980s. Why was it cool? In one word: diversity. Omigod. Is this the rosy, unimpeachable glow of inverted snobbery I feel inside me?

I remember the junk shop run by some old guy with a life size, blow-up, Cheshire-grinning Prince Charles in full military regalia propped up on the footpath, a hand-sketched speech bubble cheerily proclaiming: 'I'm a wanker!'. The store is long gone, but the guy? I guess you can still feel the ghosts of eccentricity, even though the cafes have all got the same menu.

So our little corner of Three Kings reminded me of that, regularly. It's diverse in other ways as well: ethnically, culinarily, psychologically ... Videon up the road, all to be sorely missed. But Bongo's getting to the crawling age about now, and who knows, we may even want to give her a sibling in the fullness of time, so we traded the 2-bedroom statie for a place in the bush and 10 minutes walk to Titirangi Village. So it's bye-bye Dick Hubbard, hellooo Bob Harvey.

I've heard that Waitakere City Council has a good track record in environmentalism, although I've yet to determine this for myself. All I know is they don't pay for my rubbish to be collected, so that would seem to be one mark in the debit column of the environmental ledger. On the other hand, I also read that there has been a 30% decrease in the amount of rubbish generated by each resident since 1998, which must be about at least several points in the credit column (although whether it's the council's credit or the residents' I guess is debatable). Are these two facts in any way related? Does anyone know?

And in today's Western Leader it turns out that the Kereru (Wood Pigeon to colonials) population is three times greater than it was seven years ago. This is apparently all down to pest control, and according to the hard-copy only paper, the Waitaks boast a lower possum headcount that any other wooded region. This would appear to be more credit still, but the paper doesn't mention whether this is the lowest possum rate per acre, or just simply the lowest, which itself would be explained by the fact that the waitak's is also one of our smallest national parks. Overly literal? Prove me wrong.

If anyone in ARC has anything at all to do with Project Forest Save, can you please update your website and let me know? Apparently, you're the ones responsible for the pest reduction that caused the kereru increase, but nothing's been done (according to your own site) since 2002.

Bottom line: our property is covered in kauri, manuka and punga, there's a huge bush reserve on our back doorstep without even a track through it, the roads for miles around are only populated one house deep, and in general there appears to be more than enough of the Waitak's to go round. On the one hand, there is simply no way we could afford this house anywhere closer to - say - Western Springs (yeah right). On the other hand, this kind of house doesn't really exist anywhere East of Titirangi Village anyway.

And on the subject of environment, great disappointment of the year had to go to the recent U.N. decision in November not to impose a moratorium on the apparent chaos that is bottom trawling. Only a dozen countries on Earth indulge in this barbaric practice, and NZ is one of them, so the next time you think you're getting a deal on your orange roughie, remember: this may be your last chance to eat it before it is fished to oblivion.Greenpeace, the UNand 1,136 scientists have the facts.

Thanks to those who gave feedback on my don't-shoot-I'm-only-half-Australian comments. As Rob O'Neil pointed out, one reason that Aussies are better talkers than Kiwis is because they're more Irish, while Kiwis are more Blighty. And everyone knows the Irish are better talkers than the English.

This is probably it for me this year. Only plans for summer are to get the house sorted, enjoy the uninterrupted native bush, enjoy bFM's traditionally off-beat holiday line-up and gear up for the onset of AK05.

I'm interested to see Kirk Torrance's (Stickmen, Fish Skin Suit) scripting debut Strata. Producers Taki Rua aren't as well known in Auckland as they are in Wellington, where their productions have made immeasurable contributions to both contemporary multi-cultural debates, as well as to any kind of sense of New Zealand dramatic form.

Keep an eye out for Andrew Foster's production of Clockwork Orange and if you think you've seen all the Shakespeare you can stand, try his Villains rolled into a single show by the inimitable Englishman Steven Berkoff.

God knows what this will be like.

And the outside runner must be The Death of Klinghoffer by John Adams, of Nixon in China fame. Pro: he's one of the minute number of very cool things to happen to opera in the last 50 years. Con: being an impossibly expensive (and therefore dying) art form, NZ Opera can only see to give it a concert performance, rather than a full production number. John Adams without the images is a bit like watching the news with the sound turned off. Still, you could say the same about Wagner, but their concert performance of Das Reingold a few years back was one of the best operas I've ever seen in this country, so you never know.

Anyhow, thanks to RB for the postings, big ups to you readers for reading and backfeeding, and my apologies to all for my atrocious spelling. See you next year.

God, I love Australians, but more on that later. For now, still stranger thoughts collide high above the Tasman. The dual sensations of grossly accumulating air miles while remaining static in the aircraft's interior; the chilly, heavily air-conditioned cabin climate ironically warping the pages of my birthday Kafka biography; and the Fashion Week music programme on Channel 8 featuring none other than the anti-anti-fashion-fashioneer himself: Peter McLennan in the guise of Dub Asylum, ripping it up something wicked.

It's always a nice day above the clouds, the weather always incessantly, brazenly fine, the sun blazing with rude impunity. Love how the clouds warp past the window - it's like life inside a Chemical Brothers video. Love how The Company's laptop fits under the tray table while I'm eating, and the empty meal tray fits under the tray table when I'm tapping.

Some other nice treats and surprises on Channel 8 (Schumacher and Baitercell, Tomorrow People) and the techno emphasis seems to fit well with the seamless, dreamy, machinery of flight, but I can't reconcile it with Francesca Rudkin's voice links. Mind you, it's hard to reconcile Francesca Rudkin at the best of times. She comes across as being nice enough, adequately informed, obviously connected, but her delivery gives me the shivers. Call me old fashioned, but just because you're reading an autocue, doesn't mean you actually have to sound as if you're reading an autocue.

(I'll do it for you: I'm old fashioned. Perhaps we could see the Kraftwerk approach to autocue reading. Today, we really are the robots...)

Sydney was brief: touched down just as the day was getting started to a balmy 25C, up to low 30s in the afternoon. Not that I noticed, it was all nasty back to back meetings for The Company, then back on the plane 9 am the next day. All catered, all air conditioned, could have been anywhere, except for that sense of humour. Either that or the fact that one side of my family goes back in Australia four generations or more (the rest of me being first gen. Brit extract), somehow makes me feel - it's hard to say this to a Kiwi audience - at home.

It's also hard to say this: New Zealand is a racist society. Not that I was the first of course, but I've become more sensitised to it over the years. Everyday, I endure the gybes. From bad t-shirts to the most erudite cultural tracts to otherwise sensitive and intelligent colleagues: everywhere the message is clear that Australians just plain suck. Eventually, NZ people find out that I am half Ocker. They get embarrassed, not because they've just unwittingly sledged my cultural heritage, but because the possibility occurs to them that they may be in the company of some kind of special needs person, the value of whose friendship now requires a complete re-assessment.

I like that they have pubs in Sydney. Auckland doesn't really have pubs anymore. In Auckland, the pubs have been reworked into quasi-Irish theme parks or venues. What is a venue? I'm not sure, but it's not a pub. Pubs are old. Pubs are local. I think pubs belong to hotels, or at least former hotels. They tend to avoid naming themselves after canine genitalia, and feel less like barns and more like living rooms.

Anyway, I love Australians. They're so well-humoured, so darn affable. Even the ones you don't like are quite clear about it. There's argument, but very little of the nasty bickering stuff. You're a cunt? No worries. Spotcha.

My theory for it is that NSW was populated by English people who were quite happy where they were (albeit starving) and never wanted to leave, whereas New Zealand was populated by English people who were sick to death of it, depressed, couldn't handle it and needed to start over, settling for a microcosm of their own long-lost bourgeois middle class. As a result, Aussies are survivors and Kiwis are dreamers. Dreamers are more polite, but survivors are more talkative.

God knows what the Zambesi outfits for the cabin crew are going to look like, but they couldn't look much worse than they currently do. If it was up to me (yeah right) I'd put them in sneakers and polar fleeces like everybody else. I hate those sensible shoes they wear. In the unlikely event of an accident (as they say) I want my cabin crew to be able to direct me to the nearest exit without worrying about the angle of their beret or the creases in their military pilot's uniforms.

The sky won't fall in New Zealand this weekend.

Instead, we'll be partying hard with our gay and marriage-averse straight mates, and waking with clean hair and clothes that smell only of sweat and spilt champagne.

As excited as I am about civil unions, my life-long chronic asthma means I'm more immediately delirious about the Smokefree Environments Amendment Act finally coming into force this weekend.

Let's get something out of the way: this is not an anti-smoking, would everybody please quit now rant. This is a personal sort-of insider's guide to the social life of a non-smoker. I have my vices too, though none of them actually interferes with the air that we breathe (except perhaps my inability to get the car I rarely drive serviced on a regular basis). I wish people wouldn't smoke but I reluctantly accept the reasons that my very wise, healthy and otherwise human rights-focused friends give me for lighting up.

Actually, scrap that. I've spent years apologising for being a non-smoker ("Sorry, could you take that outside please?" "Sorry, I just need to use my inhaler."). I'm going to stop right now. Ah, that feels gooooood.

I got a taste of smoke-free legislation last year during a month in New York. The Clean Indoor Air Act came into force in April 2003. By the time I arrived in late June it was well entrenched and after boozy nights out on the Lower East Side, I'd arrive home at Busytot's (link to Busytown) 116th Street apartment clean and sweet-smelling. Not only that, my long treks home felt extremely safe because the ten-block walk from Ludlow Street across town to the right subway stop was peppered with people milling about, smoking, until all hours of the morning.

Actually, I was blissfully unaware of the smoke-free air until one fateful night when NZ Trade & Enterprise took a bunch of us out to dinner in Spring Street. My visit coincided with the "New Zealand Sounds" day at Central Park's Summerstage, which I'd had a bit to do with in my old job. So Greg Johnson was there, as were Pine (check out their gorgeous new album 'Akira Sunrise' here). After loading up on food and drink courtesy of the NZ Government someone took us on a tour of East Village bars, which only lasted as far as the first bar.

Bar-B, now closed, was still a 'smoking' bar. This was a great little place - dark and narrow, with a girl DJ spinning some wild records in the tiny window booth. The proprietor was apparently able to circumvent the law because he was the owner-operator and sole staff member, responsible only for his own health. The smoking members of our tour party were like pigs in shit there. I wanted to stay longer but half an hour in the haze was all my lungs could handle. So I bid goodnight to the fabulous company and wheezed my way home.

There are times in my life that I haven't been able to breathe. Like, the week before my 21st birthday when my mother rushed me to A&E because I couldn't string a two-syllable word together, let alone a sentence. I spent almost a week in hospital, and it took me another six months to feel brave enough to go into a bar. I am lucky. I have known people who have died of asthma in my lifetime.

Thanks to modern medicine and the breathing techniques taught to me by the wonderful Dinah Bradley-Morrison, my asthma is now well under control. At the age of 31 I've now gone two whole years without a visit to A&E, and I actually never have to use my inhaler when I'm shrouded in cigarette smoke.

But here's the thing about my lungs. They've been damaged from the long-term stress of illness and medicines. Never mind the hair and clothes that need to be washed, for me every smoky night out is followed by two days of 'productive' coughing (that means phlegm, folks). It's embarrassing, disgusting and absolutely fucking annoying. So it's better for me to just leave than to martyr my way through a big night out.

And this is the one argument against the new law that pisses me off the most - the crazy notion that bars will lose business if people can't smoke in them. Bars have already lost some of my business because people could smoke in them.

I've been known to miss the supporting act of a favoured band, because the length of the main act's set is as long as I'm willing to subject myself to inhaling 35 cigarettes simultaneously. A couple of weeks ago I had to leave someone's leaving dinner early when I found I was the only person not smoking at the table.

So bring on the smoke-free air. And keep supporting your local watering holes. To spurn them won't hurt the government that implemented this law, it'll just hurt your local businesses. Besides, in my town, the bars and venues I frequent have made great preparations for the law.

Indigo Bar, where in the past year I've enjoyed Calexico, Bonnie Prince Billy, The Fanatics and The D4 amongst others, now has a massive balcony overlooking Cuba Street. Chow opened its spunky, glass-walled balcony earlier this year. The Matterhorn, in its major revamp from 1960s-style coffee lounge to 21st Century restaurant, made sure to preserve its treasured courtyard.

The clever thing about the smoke-free law is that it's usually introduced at the beginning of summer so that smokers get used to going outside in the warmth before the cruel truth of winter hits. But frequenters of Tory Street jazz venue Happy are well used to it. Happy has been smoke-free since it opened almost two years ago, even providing a marquee to protect smokers from the rain and chill during the recent Wellington Jazz Festival. Its former incarnation, The Space in Newtown, was similarly cigarette-proof.

One Happy regular told me that the smoke-free policy was the wish of musicians who prefer to perform in clean air, saying "It makes sense when your profession involves singing and blowing into an instrument". Reminds me of a Goldenhorse gig at Bodega which featured signs asking the audience to please not smoke near the stage. Good ol' Kirsten. Those are some vocal chords well worth protecting.

And that's the heart of the law. It's not actually about me. It's about the people working in the bar, whether they be the waiter, the DJ or the drummer. I was once a waiter at the most activist- and organics-friendly café on K Road. I loved the job, the clientele, my workmates. But apart from a dinner-break, the only staff who got breaks otherwise were the smokers. It was an illegal, unfair, totally unwritten rule of the catering jungle, and the implicit message to the rest of us was 'get over it'. This is not some horrific 'hospo' secret I'm uncovering here. Anyone in the industry will tell you that this is probably still the case. Smokers have always seemed to me to get the fairer deal. But the law's changed, so... get over it.

Me? I'll be at Happy this Saturday watching Pine and breathing easy.

All you can say is on to Adelaide, and win, win, win. Last week, for three and a half days two New Zealand cricket supporters braved all types of Australian beer and cuisine, eighteen thousand temperamental ockers and the Brisbane heat. This is their story.

Day One: Thursday

On the first day of the test the ground looks like a beach. The atmosphere is like a beach carnival as just shy of 19 thousand fans bask in the Gabba sun, or relax under the shaded rooves that look like cream gazebos or beach umbrellas.

The oval is designed for cricket. There are two levels of seating encircling the arena, with maroon and yellow seats filling out the numbers of the crowd. On the ground the grass seems to be sparkling as if it were the white sand of Surfers, glinting as the sun fills the air with intense light. Beach balls and cheers go up in the uncovered seats. First beers arrive. The crowd is settling in.

Chris arrived last night with a bottle of 42 below. He got decked out on the first day in his silver fern shirt and glasses, and with our sombreros the driver waved us on for free. Cricket here is a national sport, (though we later find out public transport is free with tickets), and Test match day is a kind of fever.

A lady on the bus, with a green and gold cap tucked in her bag, lets us know that one of our fast bowlers is out over night, but she is kind. Cricket is one of those games, it happens on the day, she offers us. She was being kind. On form she said, she would have to go with Australia.

McGrath and Gillespie find a line, but Sinclair and Richardson look untroubled. Kyle Mills was in for James Franklin, giving Chris and I the jitters. Where was the pace of Ian Butler? Michael Kasprowicz, the hometown hero comes on, bang on target, brimming with aggression. He gets bounce and movement away from the left-hander, cleaning up Richardson and Fleming in an over.

The first day continues dismally for us, with neither Astle nor Styris getting their eye in completely, but the crowd loves it. All their chants seem to go to the tune off the mundane 'boring, boring' tune. They call on the blonde clown prince 'Warney, Warney'. He turns at slip to give them a bow.

The biggest mob attraction is the beach ball, with yells if it looks like ballooning out of the stand. It does roll on to the field. Glenn McGrath is down there. He has already had a yell for doing a few stretches. McGrath innocently looks at the beach ball and looks away, focused. In a moment or two he turns his head again and the crowd is beside itself. The ball is bowled and to this he gives his attention. With the cherry settled in the keeper's gloves, McGrath walks nonchalantly over, kicks the beach ball along, flicks it, and grabs it. There is a roar of boos as he reaches out as if to deflate it. The jester turns his head to the crowd with a grin, spins the ball and kicks a goal back into their midst to the cheers of adulation.

The carnival atmosphere persists despite the best efforts of the ground staff, who have banned musical instruments and whistles, which are routinely confiscated from patrons all day. The seats in the upper level are allocated, giving stripes of boozy punters crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in licensed areas, between hundreds of empty sober seats. Macmillan does alright, for a while. He hits Warne for a six, but then self-destructs in familiar style. We are five down for less than two hundred, and when Sinclair gets caught go six down. Kasprowicz has been on fire since the first ball and his home crowd is loving it.

At the end of the day: hope. We know these guys can bat. McCullum, Oram and Vettori show little fear on the pitch. Vettori comes out and hits two crisp straight drives, the best shots of the day, the kind of strokeplay we were hoping to see from Fleming. McCullum is fired by the third umpire who gives him out stumped, against highly doubtful evidence. To his credit, even when he gets fired in the second innings with another shocker, the man in form avoids theatrics and walks straight off. Oram plays solidly on what is a good batting track, with true bounce and pace. The score rattles past two hundred.

Friday

A slower crowd this morning. There are fewer delights, they think, in seeing the Aussies walk over an inferior team. Oram and Vettori are more than capable, and Oram has been a destroyer in the past. Boyo, what an exhilarating first session. It was almost as good as watching Cairns and Oram maul South Africa. Vettori got out early in two minds between batting time, and striking the ball. Oram plays a solid role, allowing the commentators to lap up the batting skills of Kyle Mills. At number 10 with an average of 39 in domestic cricket they laud his technique. He uses his feet to Warne and hits him straight and clean for a six, then through the covers for a four.

Mills can't follow through the whole way though. He plays a scintillating innings that nearly helps Oram to his century, but Warne gets him caught at slip. Oram works around twos, reaches his hundred and then cuts loose with three massive sixes, two in a row off Kasprowicz. There is discomfort in the stands, and some one calls out "what are you going to do now Ponting?" after Oram clears his un-Australian defensive field with some amazing meaty blows. We're sitting as yesterday, high up in the second tier, right behind the bowlers arm. For just a moment it looks like we might be in business.

The day is hot. Very hot. The sun here is much more intense. Martin plays his supporting role well, but it can't last. Oram is left on 126 just after lunch, but Chris and I have been jubilant all morning. We're shouting again soon, as Mills earns a little more respect swinging the ball into Hayden's pads. Hayden out! The Queensland stands are shell shocked, radio commentators taken aback and Kiwi fans ecstatic. Langer and Ponting stabilise, but Ponting holes out after reaching fifty. The 353 in the bank seems good total. Langer and Martin have other ideas, in what are now near-perfect batting conditions. The Kiwi attack looks a bit limited when the third seamer comes on.

"Styris!" yells out an indignant character behind us, a curious Asian guy in glasses and a dodgy looking moustache. On his own, it seems he obviously knows and invests in his sport. On the first day he was in a loose AFL singlet for Hawthorne, and today he is wearing a Super 12 jersey. He is an odd beacon of difference in the epitome of white bloke crowd. Chris suggests the image of the guy at home, day and night, in front of multiple cable TV stations.

We retreat to the Pineapple Hotel to air conditioning, cold beer, and a view on the television of what exactly is going on at Vettori's end. You can tell Australia is a potent test match country when the ACB has the negotiating power to black out test match coverage on Brisbane television until 2pm that day. The patrons are genial, when they find out we are kiwis. One of the bar staff looks a bit sick though, with a disease much like that all too familiar post-All Black-loss syndrome. "That was not good, this morning, not good". It gets worse for him, Vettori finds the crack just as things look becalmed and Langer is out, LBW. New Zealand has the momentum.

Clarke and Martyn, the two form batsmen get going. Two top batsmen playing fantastic top order batting shots with ease. We belatedly decide to go back and watch them bat, but it is too late, and the cold beer has settled in deliciously. With Gilchrist still to come they look ominous.

Saturday

We arrive late, and I spy a left hander batting: wicket! The score is poised at 5 down for 222, with New Zealand on top. One more wicket - just one more and into the tail.

We got on the bus a little later this morning after crazy combinations of cheap drinks the night before. "There you go," says the lady from the first day, also running late. "What did I tell you?" The only other person on the bus is a man sitting in front of her. We find out it is her husband, someone in Queensland cricket. They communicate in strange ways, intimately, but barely speaking without much eye contact.

This is a Saturday crowd who have come to party to the tune of leather and willow. Both Michael Clarke and the crowd warmed up the night before and just keep on going. We're sitting down the front of the general admission today, no allocated seats, sombreros providing shade and the Test on a knife edge. Michael Clarke has a four to hit before the break to bring up his hundred. Chris Martin to bowl. Yorker, we yell! It's short and wide. Clarke joins the immortals Walters and Waugh by belting it away for his hundred on the last ball, and demoralising the kiwis. The crowd rises to a man, dwarfing Chris and I, who don't move, numb, feeling the celebrations of the last two days on shaky ground.

The sun worn face of the Queensland ocker, a bloke getting old disgracefully in indeterminate middle age, is out in force, travelling in groups. Earlier, we listened to the rhythm of the group sage as he slowly declared Lehman to have a mug "only a mother could love".

Outside the ground, after the day, a Roman legion of them shuffles down the street towards the pub door, its splendid breastplate and armour crafted out of Gold XXXX cardboard slabs.

At the bus stop, a young English bird of a Grey Lynn disposition has a few words to me about sport culture. She displays a nouveau mullet - long down one side only at the back and short on top - and is dressed in black. Pack behaviour, with its beer-sodden communal voyeurism at the tight pants and attractive women of the sub-tropical Brisbane streets is her gripe; the sports fan the essence of the ugly ogler.

How unattractive, she says, of the competitive urge, yelling out "moron! moron!" across the busy street to a rough-haired tub-bellied bloke. He is swaying dangerously in front of the pub. He retorts with conviction, giving her the fingers, and worse, rolls into a cab and shoots off. The Amazon melts away as my friend returns, so I never find out if she doesn't like men looking at her or was just looking for some kind of ally against this sea of sport.

The Aussies grab the advantage in the arvo, pushing their way into a lead. They both show their class. Once again the kiwis fight back, behind the eight ball now, but not out of the game as they nab both Clarke and Gilchrist with barely a hundred run lead. The tail begins to tumble. I might get a five day test for Christmas.

Did I say all the chants went to the one tune? One was just a bit different. It was parts comedy and tragedy as "ooh, ahh Glenn McGrath, say, Ooh Aah Glenn McGrath" rang out spontaneously after the end of the day.

McGrath, once the ultimate bunny came to the wicket and batted like a king. He swatted Vettori with a shot reminiscent of Steve Waugh, over the mid-wicket fence. Martin and Vettori sense a wicket at any moment, to give either of them their five wicket bag to set the game up for their country. The long suffering Jacob Oram having bowled long and hard without reward has chances spilled first by McCullum and then by Mark Richardson at midwicket. The kiwis must have been distraught, and Chris was looking sick. I was just finding it a tremendous joke, one only surpassed if Chris Martin took to Shane Warne. I can't help, but have a sneaking respect for McGrath, who comes across as a hard competitor who is having a bit of fun at the end of his career. That and he went for a few in the first innings. The conga line of Australians went through the concrete underbelly of the stands, amplifying their celebrations, infectiously falling over themselves in enjoyment and surprise. A test win chance was slipping away from us, but I was still keen to see our batting line up fire. I came to see Richardson, Fleming, Styris and Astle defy the Aussies, play shots and score runs.

Sunday

Day Four we missed. It wasn't our fault- the 475 bus picked us up as normal and prepared to run to the Gabba. For some reason on Sunday the run number changes in town. Inside we had no way of knowing, and it took us a mile away down to the Bulimba Ferry. We sat impatient, a little sick and frustrated by the lost radio, not knowing what was going on. We had to retrack our steps head back into town and get another bus.

We decided to chill, de-stress and have the $4 breakfast at Cafe Rics in the Valley, before going to the second session. Possibly something comparable to Deve or Verona, it was a good breakfast until Chris got a text. 3 for 34. 3 for sodding 34. Any way you calculate it three of our top stroke makers were out. I found out later that it was Glenn McGrath. This was cold steel in the belly, compared to the fun yesterday.

Running low on money, we didn't want to shell out around thirty dollars for that, so resolved to go into town and watch the final session in a pub. The charming Grosvenor, where someone I know used to work, was the scene of the most brutal dismembering of a batting line up ever seen. Even the old fellow watching the game was calling the McCullum dismissal out of line. Feeling sicker still, we went home, ate food and went out drinking. Thank providence for the ASB bank, friends' overdrafts and the Elephant and Wheelbarrow deals on pints.

It was a test played at times in a poor spirit, and so familiarly from the series against England the team had more than their share of opportunities. Rats. I saw Jake Oram make the world champions run out of options. Bring on Adelaide.

One thing that is so much more noticeable in the Netherlands than in NZ is the changing seasons. Every day I bike to work through the Vondelpark in central Amsterdam and the impact of the season is overwhelming. It's autumn right now, the trees are golden yellows, startling oranges, intense reds and glistening browns. They're big trees, majestic even, and the leaves coat the ground in a scrunchy wet mass that is satisfying to bike through. The light too has a different quality - maybe it's the trees filtering it, or the air pollution - personally I'd like to take more romantic view - but especially at the end of the day the grass glows an iridescent green and the sky has a dreamy quality to it. And no, I'm not on drugs.

Of course this is all wonderful when it's not raining - which you'll be pleased to know happens quite a lot as well. I say that because people seem to enjoy the comparison of how much it rains in one place or another. It seems to be one of those universally shared miseries - how much rain we've had lately. Personally the only time it really bothers me too much is if I have to bike in it - but that can even be rendered bearable by the beautiful trees (although to get the buzz at that time, drugs certainly help).

I'm more of a cold person though. I like being bundled up in layers of warmth. I swelter in the hot muggy summers when it's 30 degrees and just moving your arm to raise your glass to your lips brings you out in a sweat. But I do wish we had a fire or some direct source of heat to sit in front of at home - while I am a new fan of central heating and not having to run through the house freezing my tits off in the morning until the heater is turned on - I do quite like sitting by a heater.

I certainly could've used a heater a few weeks ago when I went on a little school trip with my daughter's class. She's 4 - and at this tender age is required to go to school - and the class went to KabouterPad (loosely translated as "gnome land") for a morning visit. Sounded exciting so I volunteered. I was not prepared for a 30 minute walk with a class full of 4-5 year olds in the pouring rain. Trying to make those kids walk at the best of times is a mission, walking for 30 minutes in the rain was unpleasant to say the least.

Gnomeland turned out to be rather disappointing. I guess there's a big difference between what you expect from an outdoor adventure in NZ, and what you get in Amsterdam. It was a little garden with little paths and little concrete gnomes scattered around and the kids had to do a few activities. Maybe it's not NZ/NL as a comparison so much as city/country expectations and opportunities. I guess for my citified European 4 year old, it was still an adventure. Can't wait til she gets to play on the beach in Island Bay on a daily basis!

The bit that gobsmacked me the most though, was that after the little adventure, all the kids gathered in a little classroom to wrap up. The teacher started handing out drinks - plastic cups of something warm. It was tea! Cups of warm black tea! Ok, I could live with that, just - but then she was putting 2-3 spoons of sugar in each one! No one else seemed to think this was strange and my daughter calmly informed me that they get this every Friday afternoon. To her credit she requested water as she doesn't like tea - brownie points for her in my book. But I'm still amazed, I still tell the story, I find it incredible that in a relatively well educated and healthy society they consider it ok to give 4 year olds a big caffeine and sugar hit on a regular basis - at school!

Anyway moving on to more relevant things ... big in the news in the Netherlands recently was the brutal murder of Theo Van Gogh. Van Gogh was a director, and had recently made a film which among other things, portrayed Islamic violence against women, which was aired on dutch TV. He was shot while riding his bike through Amsterdam, then stabbed several times and left lying in the street with a message stabbed through his chest. The message was a "you're going to die" (my paraphrasing) letter to a politician who had worked with Van Gogh on the film.

Radical fundamental muslims have not really had their cause helped by this latest event. 20000 people gathered in Dam Square to protest his death. Another hero has been created in the Netherlands. Racism is nasty here (well I suppose it is anywhere). Here's it's directed at Turkish and Moroccan people mostly - and the difference I see here (as opposed to everywhere else where racism is) is that these people who are the 'victims' of racism, are fighting back. Hard.

I was just talking with a taxi driver about the recent murder- he said it's just the beginning, he showed me today's paper, where the next 6 targets have been identified in advance - all prominent people in the Netherlands, and all people who have made public their opinions about muslim fundamentalism in one way or another (and all people who must be shitting themselves about now). He thinks the problem is that the Netherlands is too 'soft', that going to prison is an easy ride here - "they even get cable TV!" - and that it's going to get a whole lot worse.

If they think this is an easy ride, let's hope they never discover the cushy life to be had in NZ.

Thanks for your feedback last time ... keep it coming :)