Ein Guter Tag

When the Berlin Wall went up, I was only a child, and it passed me by as one of those unfathomable things that grown-ups got up to, and Germany was impossibly remote and foreign.

When it came down, I was much older, much closer, and I'd not only learnt German, but had been to Germany - yet it all still pretty much passed me by. In my defence, the First-Born was little more than a week old, and I was in such a fog that everything outside a very tight little circle was passing me by.

I do recall sitting by the fire watching it on TV with the First-Born in my arms thinking "Wow, this is big", but not actually able to summon up the energy to get excited about it.

I've never been to Berlin. After all those years of learning German, and living for 17 years just across the Channel, I've only spent 3 days in Hamburg - but the Baby, who wasn't even thought of 20 years ago, has been to Germany on exchange for two months, and visited Berlin, and Munich, and even Neuschwanstein, which I had a poster of on my wall for years.

But Hamburg was fun: we stayed at a B&B with a nice lady whose spare room had the BIGGEST BED I've ever seen, before or since - honestly, you could have fitted an extended family in there - and wandered around the city centre admiring all the wonderful old buildings that somehow escaped the Allied bombs (the landlord of our local pub, an ex-RAF pilot, said he'd never been to Hamburg "but I have seen it from the air"). We had a delicious meal at a restaurant where the starter was so tasty but so filling that we weren't able to do justice to the main course, and the chef came marching out of his kitchen when the plates were cleared to ask what was wrong. It was a chilling moment, but I was proud to be able to explain to his satisfaction what the reason was.

Unfortunately, our other restaurant experience was more shaming: we had taken the ferry across the city's pretty lake (impressed by the efficiency and brilliance of using electro-magnets to moor the boat at the jetties) and wandered around the leafy suburbs before having another lovely meal. We were into our last few hours in Germany, and after spending the previous couple of months working our way back to the UK from NZ through about 16 countries, it had become a game to be left with as little local currency as possible. So we chose our courses carefully and chortled when we worked out that we would have no change left over this time. Except, sitting there with the bill and a pile of notes and coins, our nicely full stomachs sank as we suddenly realised that we hadn't factored in the tip.

So we ran. Another dark day in the history of Anglo-German relations.

And the photo? An Irish wall - so much prettier than that ugly concrete thing.

Best view in the world

The new tent arrived today. It's a replacement for my old - very old - one that was given to me by Jean-Claude and his wife (cough) 36 years ago. It's a bit of a museum piece these days - but it's given good service. The last time I used it was when I was on the Great New Zealand Trek's second sector, from the Hokianga Harbour to the Kaipara - a distance of about 200 km that I covered on horseback, along with about 80 others, while another contingent rode bikes, and even more hardy souls walked.

It's a wonderful idea: to travel the length of NZ one week a year, so it will take about 12 years to complete the journey. Steve Old, whose inspiration it was, wanted to combine his horsemastership and experience organising treks with a fund-raising effort, and on the first couple of sectors the participants were all sponsored to collect money for the Multiple Sclerosis Society, as Steve's mother had suffered from that disease. So it was all for a good cause, but that was just the icing on the cake, because the trek itself was so much fun and such a glorious thing to do.

We spent about six hours in the saddle each day, riding through forests, along the beach and over private land, and fetching up each afternoon at the camp, which had been magically relocated since we left it in the morning. It was a major logistical operation that was wonderfully well organised, and we had proper toilets and showers on a truck, a big dining marquee serving lovely food, and even a massage tent. The horses were all safely contained for the night, while we enjoyed local entertainers before going to bed in our tents.

The weather was beautiful, the scenery ditto, the camaraderie heartening, and a great time was had by all - certainly by me. Some people are in it for the long haul, determined to go the whole distance; but I'll be happy if they'll have me along again when they reach the South Island and the real scenery.

Feeling fruity

The loquats are coming ripe now - it's a race between us and the tui and woodpigeons. Already the lowest ones have been picked by other people who walk the same route that I do, so I'm having to add stretches to the daily routine. Soft, yellow and juicy, with attractively smooth and shiny pits, they're something to look forward to - though it still seems odd to be picking fruit in spring.

Later there'll be plums and feijoas growing along the roads - very welcome, but it's a shame that we haven't the climate for the mangoes that grow so freely - in both senses - in northern Queensland. When we re-entered civilisation after our week-long safari down from Cape York and I wandered the wide, wide streets of quaint little Cooktown, I was amazed and delighted to find juicy, ripe mangoes just lying on the grass verges, so common that no-one bothered to pick them up. Well I did - and I can tell you here and now that there is such a thing as too many mangoes.

I gathered sticky armfuls to carry back to my hotel room where I indulged in a private orgy of sucking and slurping, juice dripping off my chin and elbows. It wasn't a pretty sight (I was bent over the bathroom basin throughout the whole shameful business, so I can say that with authority) and it had internal consequences much worse than simply leaving me with teeth like a baleen whale's.

Much more civilised was the fruit picnic I had in a deserted bay of white sand and Bombay Gin-coloured water on Atiu, in the Cook Islands. Birdman George had taken Eileen and me for a tour of the island, searching for the elusive kura, and he'd stopped off to shin up a coconut palm to twist off some young nuts ("These ones will taste like Sprite!" he promised, and they sort of did) and whack off some leaves with his machete. While we sucked the coconut milk and scooped out the soft flesh with a shell spoon, he deftly wove the leaves into a mat, and at the bay he arranged on it baby bananas - until you've eaten bananas picked ripe from the tree, you haven't properly tasted bananas - passionfruit, crunchy starfruit, and soft papaya sprinkled with freshly-grated coconut and drizzled with lime juice. What a feast!

Thank goodness I wasn't alone, or it could have been the mango debacle all over again.

Wusses welcome

I'm rather dismayed that the reaction of a couple of people to this story has been "Oooh, scary! I wouldn't want to go there!" - not at all the desired effect, and my hosts at Tourism Northern Territory will be disappointed if that's the general feeling.

One of the main reasons I enjoy going to Australia is that their wildlife is so much more interesting than ours, which mainly amounts to a bunch of birds - that's interesting as in bizarre, and also as in dangerous. Snakes, crocodiles, spiders, scorpions, box jellyfish, cone shells, sharks... it really adds a frisson to a trip outside the cities (and occasionally inside them too). But although I've walked, ridden, camped and kayaked through the Outback, and slept under the stars more than once (so, twice) I've never been troubled by so much as a mosquito. No snakes sharing my swag, no scorpions in my boots, no spiders down my neck - the worst I've had is a frog in the loo, and to be honest, the state of the loo itself was the scariest part of that experience.

My most frequent encounters with unpleasant Australian wildlife have been courtesy of their white-tailed spiders which are now established here in Auckland, and of which we have a sizeable population in our house. They apparently have a nasty bite which some claim can cause necrotising fasciitis, they're smallish hunting spiders and they like to lurk inside clothing dropped on the floor (still not a horrifying enough prospect to persuade my older daughter to use hangers) - I did once find one on my bra when I was getting UNdressed.

The one in the photo? A golden orb female - huge but harmless (unless you're the tiny golden orb male and she notices you mating with her). Just another story to tell after a lively but entirely survivable trip to Oz.

No, I didn't order fush and chups

Watching an old episode of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' last night, I was thrown by Lucy Lawless appearing as herself and speaking in her own Newzild accent. Even though I'm getting used to Aussies in mainstream American programmes like 'House' and 'ER', it's still odd to come across Kiwis speaking in our accent over there: it kind of destroys the fourth wall (though of course it was one of the many joys of 'Flight of the Conchords').

Accents can lead to some dislocating moments: like when I was in Scotland - home to some pretty impenetrable accents itself - and in a pub in Bonnyrigg outside Edinburgh, our waitress seemed to have none at all. Turned out she was from Christchurch - probably the only non-Polish waitress in the whole of Scotland. I was so busy asking her about what she was doing there that I completely forgot to request an explanation of this banner on the wall outside, which still has me foxed.

And my English sister-in-law, despite having already spent some days with us on our recent visit, was still sufficiently caught out by my accent when I was talking about a service in Dublin Cathedral, to say in astonishment, "A circus? In the cathedral?"

Update: And then there was the foodie tour operator driving me around East Nuek, just north of Edinburgh, who foxed me completely with her mention of "steak and eel pie". A whole new taste sensation? No, actually the much more conventional combination of steak and ale.

Making hay

It's far too lovely a morning to spend sitting inside crouched over a keyboard, either working or playing with my blog. It's warm and sunny and the colour saturation's turned right up. The bottlebrush is in full flower, the opening act for the OTT glories of the pohutukawa next month when the big gnarled trees rise up from puddles of red made by fallen petals.

The air was fresh on my walk this morning, tui were swooping low with a rustle of wings, blackbirds singing, doves cooing and for once the tide was in, concealing the mud on our little mangrovey beach, so that was good too.

The next few days are meant to be dull and damp again, so today I'll be mowing the lawn, fussing with more pot protectors for my runner beans, and pulling up some weeds in the hen run to expose some fresh soil to get the chickens excited. I'll pick some sweet peas and creep up on the frog.

Today I'm not going to write about exotic places I've been: I'm going outside to enjoy where I am.

"Remember, remember...

... the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot."

It's Guy Fawkes today and tonight there will be lots of bangs and crackles in the sky and trembling animals inside, including our Labrador who's a disgrace to all gundogs everywhere. I don't think that many kids now remember about Fawkes and the plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament - not here, anyway - and it's more usually known as Bonfire Night. It's a damp morning and no doubt firemen up and down the country are crossing their fingers for discouragingly steady rain tonight.

The best fireworks display I ever saw was in Kuala Lumpur, on Merdeka Day, their independence celebration - something Fawkes would have sympathised with, I guess, breaking free from British rule.

It was a huge day: it began with a parade that went on for hours -

>>> Involving 24,000 participants, it included 12,500 marching past where we sat awed by the sheer scale of the production. We had been expecting a fuss as the entire city was draped with flags and banners, but even the huge image projected onto the skyscraper opposite was upstaged by the living flag in Merdeka Square. Made up of hundreds of children dressed from head to toe in red, white, blue and yellow, it occasionally morphed seamlessly into other patriotic shapes. Behind them in the grandstand were more child professionals, who with an arsenal of coloured cloths, streamers, pompoms and banners flawlessly spelled out messages and executed complicated Mexican waves despite sitting in 30 degree sunshine for the whole three hours.

It was a phenomenal display: after the arrival of the sultans, princes, presidents, prime ministers and Malaysia’s own king and queen, there were children singing and dancing, 1000 drummers, military personnel marching with rifles, missile launchers and huge tanks (note to Helen: don’t fall out with Malaysia), veteran soldiers, vintage cars, decorated floats, fireworks, dog handlers and mounted police, bands with lots of brass and a remarkable number of bagpipes, plus contingents representing industry, commerce and the professions all vying to have the most colourful costumes: those in the blue and silver Flash Gordon outfits got my vote. Whenever it began to feel as though the marchers were surely circling round behind us for another go, the pattern was broken by a fly-over of heavy-duty helicopters dangling flags or MiGs and Hornets screaming overhead trailing coloured vapour trails as they did barrel rolls and other aerobatics. Amazed, I turned to our guide Hamida and said, “I’ve never seen anything on this scale before, have you?” and she replied, “Oh yes. You should see when the Formula One drivers come to town: now that’s what I call a parade.”

[Pub. Press 26/11/07]

And that night, over the city, with the Petronas Towers stunningly stark against the black, amazing fireworks scribbled the sky with colour.

Today is also my father's birthday. Or was. Miss you, Dad.