Cruel

I'm doing something a bit different today: still writing (and not tempted to be doing anything else, on this wet, cold and windy day) but this time for a glossy magazine about restaurants in Queenstown, most of which I haven't been to. When I go to Queenstown, it's to be outside doing stuff, like tramping or, last time, ziplining, luge-ing, Segwaying and throwing myself off a cliff - which, fortunately since my visit, you can now do by sitting on a slide and shooting off the platform so you hurtle into empty space that much faster. What I don't do is swan about from cafe to bar to restaurant, eating duck and venison and oysters and lamb.

More fool me. Though I'm not much enjoying the process of researching these places and writing them up - what I normally do is write about personal experiences - it's become, despite my early resistance, kind of fascinating in the most masochistic way to delve deep into the menus of these restaurants, invariably headed by chefs full of enthusiasm for fresh local ingredients, decide what I would choose if I were actually seated at a table there, and then source mouth-watering photos of those dishes.

I have eaten at a couple of these places - Eichardt's, the Hilton, the Cow - and enjoyed myself there; but I've missed out on so much else. Damn! Next time, maybe. I wonder if I could wangle freebies retrospectively?