Things not being what they seem

We're both missing the autumn like a weird form of late-onset jetlag. It's getting hotter, not cooler, and the trees are sprouting green rather than glowing red and orange. Christmas decs everywhere look waay out of place. This time next month, when you're all roasting chestnuts on an open fire, we'll be roasting our chestnuts on the open beach. A lovely thought, if not a particularly pleasant image :) It does have a disorienting effect, a sort of dream-like unreality where you're double-taking a lot more than usual.

Kids are good for making you look twice at the best of times but this week's been mad. Imagine your typical house husband's mid-week afternoon: you've done the washing-up and there's a nice half-hour window before you pick up the big one from school. Just enough to leaf through the news with a nice cuppa tea. By the time the kettle's boiled and you slowly become aware of the eery silence it's too late... it's not like you forgot about the little one, he just slipped under your radar long enough to wreak his revenge for not paying him attention. Even before you even raise your head, somehow you just know it's gonna be bad. Well, on this occasion it's the dreaded Felt Pens, today's favourite clearly being a nice big red one. "A tiger," he says, and for once I don't need the hint; I'm actually quite impressed. It's not a bad tiger at all, the stripes up the arms and legs are neatly spaced and his paws are coloured in black, just like a real big cat. As toddlers are naturally ambidextrous, the work is more-or-less symmetrical from a whole-body perspective and stops only where the clothes start. This is impressive toddling, and it's not even the end of the ruse.

I put off washing him cos it's time to get Elly, so I just shove him in the pushcair and leave. We return to afternoon snacks and he's sitting at the breakfast bar with a glass (I know, I know..) of milk when he leans over to reach something and the glass shatters under his hand. It must have been cracked or something. Milk and glass fly everywhere and I instinctively grab his arms above the elbow to staunch the blood from all the cuts... which... aren't... cuts... they're red marker pen! Unconvinced and still shocked, I yell to Elly to get some paper towels while I check again and again each of the hundreds of red stripes all over him, for way longer than it would take for real blood to flow, but due to some kind of miracle he's completely unharmed. The panic over, he finally takes a deep breath, looks up at me and lisps, "ooh, a thcary tiger!"

Once I fully realised his incredible good luck I did the sensible thing and got straight down the shops to get him to pick some Lotto numbers. Which was hopeless of course, as he can't hold a pen properly, and Elly picked them for him. She was pretty good and only spoiled one card, so I didn't have the heart to lecture her on the statistical probability of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 being drawn from the pot, largely because I wasn't sure it was any less likely than a random pick. Nevertheless I checked the results as soon as I got up this morning and guess what? We didn't win, of course, but I got another shock because at first glance I thought we had. The first five numbers, I kid you not, were 12, 23, 34 and 45.

Ok, it's not quite the Twilight Zone but it's enough to make your head spin, it really is.

Over the rainbow

The kids have been heavily into the Wizard of Oz for a good while now. I've no idea how many times we've watched it since Elly first saw it at school – 50? 100? – nor how long it will take before the "Ding, dong, the witch is dead" earworm will leave our heads. Years, probably. We naturally brought the DVD with us and they're watching it for the second time today as I type. I always loved it but never really scrutinised its "message" before. This morning – very, very early this morning, thanks to the little one's body clock still being on Singapore time – I watched it with them again and it suddenly occurred to me that the pertinence of the film to our current carry-on might run much deeper than its title.

The "Oz" thing lost most of it's relevance when we decided to move here instead (although, as Nik pointed out, it's so very nearly the Wizard of Nz... yeah, ok, it was dead funny at 5 this morning..) and even the no-place-like-home, grass-is-always-greener theme is a bit on the thin side. No, it was the stuff the main characters are seeking that seemed to ring true to my heavily jet-lagged noggin, and the realisation that my head, heart and courage really are all present and correct, despite my faith in them waning at times. Some of the stuff we've seen and done since we got here has tested them all, the last two days.

Nothing serious, just a few incidences of, "o god, what have we done..", starting with the Airport Garden Hotel. What a dump. I mean it was clean and everything, just in the middle of an industrial estate and totally run down, with a sad, derelict ex-water feature at the entrance, weird, dated decor and cheesy cane furniture in the lobby. Big framed posters hang crookedly on every wall, their colours bleached out to an almost monochrome blue. It's all summed up by two big, brass & glass display cabinets in the lounge, both spotlessly clean, one empty, the other neatly laid out with five Mars bars, fifteen packs of Kleenex and a roll of Sellotape. Classy.

Still, that was just a temporary stopover until we got our little holiday let, which is a complete contrast. It's just a timber two-room bungalow set in the owner's grounds but it's gorgeous, like something out of Homes & Gardens. Big, mature plants and trees are set against towering virgin forest, the first blooms of Spring are all around, the long driveway lined with huge wild lillies. At the end, you go over the bridge to the turquoise waters of the bay. This is a stunning country, moreso than we ever imagined, and we've still not even left the suburbs of Auckland. We're actually in the Botany Downs, just on the outskirts of the south-eastern 'burbs, where the landscape goes from flattish to very hilly around the coast. Still very difficult to navigate, never mind describe, so I'll leave it for now...

There's a hell of a lot to take in of course. We had another OMG moment when we visited Niki's new school. It's in Otara, one of the poorest districts, and although it's very low-rise, with broad avenues and gardens, the housing is clearly really basic and there's a real ghetto feel to the place. You can almost see why gang culture is so big there, but I also got a sense of civic pride and community I've not felt since I lived in Sudan. First impressions, nothing more, are a mixture of intimidation and awe. NZ has a famously high crime rate that seems to be heavily concentrated in these urban areas. You get out into the sticks and it's all sheep and seabirds. One more reason we'll be heading out there...

Got to end here and get this posted up – our lovely landlady Lorraine has offered us use of her computer. More news soon from the yellow brick road!

In transit

This was the hilarious state of play on arrival at Heathrow. We hired a nice car and bombed it down the M1 (actually M1 / M42 / M40, should there be any route nerds reading..) arrived bang on time and E & O were just fab the whole way. A good cry seemed to be therapeutic, cos they were just wonderful all through the enormous check-in queue too. We're in Changi airport now, overnighting airside at the Amabassador Transit Hotel. It's... well, it's got two beds, so it's a bloomin' godsend. The flight was no bother, although we're not going to see the best of the place from here.

From my centre aisle seat, straining an envious eye through the window seat headrests, following a 12-hour flight and probably due to having precisely one hours' sleep in the last 24, urban Singapore looks like one of those magic domino exhibitions. Hundreds of apartment blocks become white tiles, a certain distance apart, their dark windows spoiling it slightly by making up too many spots. As we're not going to get out of the airport this time round, that's the way it'll be remembered; a big climate-controlled, bizarrely-carpeted shopping mall surrounded by jumbo jets, with nearby suburbs ready to fall at the flick of a finger. Really must make more of an effort to get out next time ;)

We're all completely fried and need to get some kip, so I'll keep this short. Actually the kids slept quite well – flight took in their normal bedtime hours – and since they've had a bath and spoken to the grandparents on the Skype they're bouncing round the room like newborn lambs. It's one of those places, Changi airport, where a passing glance into the hollow eyes of fellow travellers sparks a vague recognition of yourself: everyone's six timezones the wrong side of zomboid. It's nine at night now, we've got this hotel room til 6am then an 8.30am, second-leg, 10 hour flight to Auckland. Excited beyond belief of course, but it won't be that keeping us awake, it'll be the kiddy bodyclock refusing to budge from UK time...

Next post from New Zealand!