Dances With Chazzwazzers

A pitstop on the journey between Paihia and Hamilton gives me little in the way of time or choice. Muffin Break at the bottom of quayside Queen Street in Auckland it is then.
I select the Kiwi Standard (Steak & Cheese to the uninitiated) and, as the pie is being warmed through, get the spiel from the over-eager assistant advising me of their latest Get Every 5th Coffee Free offer and how I can take advantage of this fantastic offer in any of their stores nationwide.

Considering this briefly on my way back to the coach, I take my seat, and watch alongside my captivated co-passengers as, to the faint sound of Don McLean’s Starry, Starry Night murmuring on wistfully in the background, a scrap between the half-pint sized driver and a Bolshy bicycle-stowing tourist twice his size breaks out. It adds a little unexpected spice to my lunch break.

After the handbags have been put away and a seething, uneasy truce declared, I get to work on my pie. Unlike last week’s astronomically inspired effort, today’s is standard pie shape. The over-thick pastry encases an inconsequential, measly waft of white cheese and a film-textured grey gloop that takes me back to my march across the mangroves this time yesterday. While any meagre steak morsels there are contained within the pie drown helplessly in the quicksand. Then on my second bite I’m greeted with an unwelcome bright yellow chunked stowaway.

Sweetcorn!

Really?

Now I’m quite fond of surprises, but this is one I could do without. What crazy, sacrilegious business is this? Like turning up to a Stone Roses gig only to find Mani’s been replaced by one of the pipsqueaks out of McFly, you feel a bit cheated. Not to mention a little confused.

So sir. You mean to say, on the whim of your too-clever-by-half Blumenthally bonkers master baker or your too-mean-by-half profit chasing boss, you’ve gone easy on the meat and wild with the corn?

What nonsense. This will not do.

A steak and cheese pie is exactly that. A steak and cheese pie. A pie comprising steak and cheese.

I reconsidered any future plans I may have had of taking up Muffin Break’s coffee offer on the spot. Whatever next, bits of Kiwi fruit in your cappuccino? I perish the very thought.

Bollocks. An hour’s cricket commitments work up in smoke thanks to this hopeless cod-Word app I’ve recently downloaded being utterly, utterly hopeless. The portentous cloud cover is telling me something.

Four days bright sunshine replaced by a fire blanket of grey. My now daily Brew With A View trip to Alfrescoes has not been particularly successful today.

Bon Jovi, Simply Red and all manner of ropey Rat Pack covers make for a miserable musical experience. The gorgeous Pom waitress steadfastly keeps deputing her six-pints-and-you-might colleague to look after me. Red balloons and half-wicked candles spoil an otherwise fine view. I hate Valenines Day, hate it. Still, as thoughts turn to Waikato and the start of five weeks or so of cricket, I will definitely miss this.

The view of Russell from Alfrescoes, Paihia. Car not author’s.

Remember Lucky Paul? Course you do. Affable Yorkshireman, great taste in ale, pies and literature. Appreciates the value of an extravagant leave outside the off-stump and sports a beard Brian Blessed would covet.
Does the pre-match Test Match handshake superstition thing with me.

Yeah you do.

Anyway, while I’ve been gadding about in the Antipodes bleaching my hair, getting punched by girls, drinking effete beer, doodling crappy of pictures of wonderful landscapes and the like much befitting a stereotypical middle class, southern softie fop, Paul’s been doing some reet tough, real Yorkshire man stuff, tha knows. Proper travelling.

Trekking in Nepal. Up some bloody big hills. For four weeks.

It even got cold once he said.

Then he went to a jungle with real animals with just a stick of bamboo for protection. He saw some big dangerous buggers too; rhinos, elephants and crocodiles.
I saw a small brown bird with a Morrissey quiff on my nature walk yesterday.

Allowing himself a day off, our man in Kathmandu headed for an afternoon’s international football at the Dasarath Rangasala Stadium for the match between Nepal and Pakistan.

The atmosphere was good. Borrowing heavily from the Indian Cricket Supporters’ How To Be A Real Fan Book, chants never got above the two-syllabled, high-decibel ‘Nep-al, Nep-al’, Mexican Waves cascaded around the two thirds full ground as the locals vociferously got behind their team.
The pitch resembled the Sir Viv Richards Stadium eight balls in, circa February 2009 (Hello Ben! Hello Dan!) which didn’t do a lot for the football, which needed all the help it could get. A lot of rolling around and play acting went on and sometimes a game of football threatened to break out. It seldom did.

As a man who’s spent a lot of time watching Sheffield Wednesday (Hello HT Nige!) and York City, Paul knows rubbish football when he sees it. Nepal v Pakistan was a pertinent example of this.

My beloved Luton, the Mighty Hatters, would hammer both teams according to our correspondent. Which as a barometer of quality says quite a lot.
And the result of the match?

Football lost.

I meet up with Lucky Paul for a Ferg Burger and a pint in Queenstown for the pre-Test Match Series England friendly before heading on to Dunedin, Wellington and Auckland for three weeks among the Barmy and the Beige.
Looking forward to it fella. Go well.

Today’s Happy Hour brew-with-a-view followed a six kilometre coastal trek to the blissfully under appreciated Opua, a mountain-framed port town among the Bay of Islands known for its car ferry to Russell but worth a lot more in terms of unforgettable tranquility. Pleased with myself after discovering this gem of a place, I stalked briskly back along the winding paths and drought ridden forestry for, I reckoned (probably wrongly) a well-deserved beer.

The irksome Nova-Scotian preparing my Monteith’s gave me short shrift. “Walked to Opua? Yeah I ran that this morning.”

“Yeah, while you laboured comically like a noxious human melange of Ray Mears, Neil Oliver and (as always) Alan Partridge, I pissed it like a mountain-munching Chris Brasher. Have that, weakling.”

He didn’t say that. But his deportment did. And he’s clearly knocking off that lush bird from yesterday.

****.

As the seething resentment boiled within my blood, Enjoy The Silence by Depeche Mode kicked in.

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

Thank goodness for great British music.

And great Kiwi views. Paihia and The Bay of Islands will take some beating.

In Monday’s blog in need of an empty adjective and in deference to a Jarvis Cocker lyric referred to the ‘useless trees’. A flippant aside for which I apologise for.

I love a good tree. Let’s face it, who doesn’t?

My pal Martin, the Toto of Perth, known to these pages as China, is a big fan. Woody, taker of the greatest catch I’ve ever seen on a cricket field, saw fit to name one after him.

One of the highlights of my visit to Russell (Kororareka) on Monday was my chance encounter with this big fella.

This is a Morton Bay Fig Tree (ficus mactophillia) and he’s been keeping watch outside the local lawman’s quayside cottage since 1875. What a beauty, eh?

Enjoy!

Another day, another bay scene and another unexpectedly brilliantly random music-to-situation travelling experience. Sat behind the warming plastic windows of Cafe Alfrescoes’, erm, al fresco dining area on the corner of Marsden Street, Paihia, facing the opposite direction to yesterday’s Shaft influenced day-defining vista at the early conclusion of a beach splayed afternoon wrestling Dickens, didgeridoos and drums, it’s the start of Happy Hour. Early finishers and reclining retirees sup on their brews and drink in the scenery. Like an Ashley Giles delivery that actually turns, there’s not the pizzazz associated with a Warnie ripper, but the result, somehow, stays in the memory.

El Salvador by Athlete*.

Why? And why here? Why now?

As far removed from the last time I saw this middling but marvellous English Indie band in climate, situation and venue, but as evocatively enjoyable. An understated beer to go with an understated band. My appreciation for great things Blighty based goes up a notch with the cooing attention of the cafe’s charming waitress.
A figure to betray secrets for accompanied by a voice, in a land of hacked-to-bits vowels and imported Teutonic twangs to savour equally. Cut glass, gentle authoritative perfect articulation. Wow. You’ll always find time and money for another beer.
Then a shit Reality TV show winner’s version of a mediocre song spoils everything. I drink up and get the hell out of there. Perfection ruined by that arse Simon Cowell and his odious ilk.

Is this what hell will look like? Except there will be no escape.

Then, later on, and a shop-bought sun-downer in the less salubrious surrounds of the hostel. Buying supper earlier, I couldn’t not purchase this.

As a vaguely cricket leaning travel blog my readership asks, nay, demands I do these things.

Ok, it doesn’t but in Henry-World (dangerous place, that) it does.

So taster notes then. Well, firstly don’t get sucked in by the label as though you’re a once-a-year, habit breaking teetotaller buying table wine for the alkie next-door neighbours’ dinner party. The boldly lettered label denotes a bygone age of bill stickers and Bill O’Reilly. A cream-on-gold silhouette swatting spazilly across his stumps above a beloved, timeless cricket phrase. Sticky Wicket indeed. The moment it goes in your basket, you’re on exactly that.

“Manuka Honey Lager”. What on earth was I thinking of?

Advice. Chill the hell out of it like an Aussie Caaaaaallldd One. This is not a good beer, it is far too ambitious in its aims. The first sip is the meekest. Honey Sugar Puff flavours reach out to every un-conquered pore of your taste buds. Something mildly resembling hops follows up with apologies of dog-walker insincerity. “Sorry about the honey and all that, the brewery are really good normally, they don’t mean it.”

Unlike the owners whose canine charges have shredded your best Farahs, or submerged your new loafers in burnt toffee coloured faeces, I genuinely believe this. Like the current management structure of New Zealand cricket, they’ve tried something based on badly judged folly and have got it completely wrong.
They will get better though, both NZ beers and NZ cricket, and I look forward to sharing examples of that here over the next few weeks. Both in terms of beers and, for the sake of Kiwi sport, on the pitch too.

*Hello to the gentleman plumbers, Cousin Tom and good lad John.

Appendix. To strengthen my statement earlier, witness the Black Caps’ gubbing of England in the second T20. Friday’s deciding third fixture should be a cracker.

A lazy long-black coffee in the morning sun overseeing an archetypal small time harbour scene. Motorboats and small crafts loll listlessly in the surf from the overworking passenger ferries, the useless trees on the banks of Kororareka Bay nod in noncommittal unison. The New Zealand standard and the Fern-on-Black-less-Union Jack flag flutter their welcomes at the smiling visitors making their way excitedly down the gangplanks.

Stick on cymbals. Surely not? A familiar but welcome sound in unfamiliar territory.

The pockets of cumulostratus and the formation flying sea birds add to the tranquil vista. Across the water the ranges of hills try and out-green each other.

The wah-wah guitar kicks in… Hmmm. The keyboard follows soon after.

Dinghies bob determinedly along the soft mill pool turquoise as those gulls not scrapping for bread perch goofily one-legged on the jetty awaiting the nonexistent applause.

Horns. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-daaaaaaaaaa!

Lemming-like punters peruse the quayside boutiques oblivious to the scene stealing score emanating from the cafe’s kitchen. As profoundly surreal travel moments go, this will take some beating….

“Who’s the black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks?”

I splutter in delight of the beauty of it all….

SHAFT!!!!!

Brilliant.

Meanwhile, round the corner from the moment and from Isaac Hayes to Otis Redding. The view from the rocks of the bay

*Hello Rob! Hello Chris!

Paihia, Bay of Islands, North Island, New Zealand.

It’ll do….

Saturday afternoon at the rugby with a couple of beers. My home life writ large across my vacation, a busman’s holiday. Yet my attendance at the Toll Stadium earlier for the Auckland Blues vs Sydney Waratahs pre-season friendly marked a seminal moment in my travelling life.

I’ve always wanted to watch rugby in New Zealand, one of the heartlands of one of my favourite sports. This mission has now been accomplished.

So what if it was only a friendly (an oxymoron if ever there was one considering the nature of this great sport)? I’ve now seen live rugby in New Zealand. One of the highlights of my last world trip was the Super 15 Semi-Final at Newlands (Cape Town, not Luton, sorry Keith….) between Cape Stormers and the Waratahs, and although today’s match was nowhere near as dramatic or significant as the one I saw in South Africa, it was a great experience nonetheless.

Part of said experience was the company. I inadvertently ended up leading a field trip of rugby virgins from the hostel to their first experience of the proper oval ball game. Two Canadian brothers, an American, an Austrian and a German made up the party, so I was grateful to a Kiwi also lodging there for his assistance in explaining the permutations of the break down and other such complications.

The game itself fizzled into life in the second half after a staid opening period. Inevitably the liberal use of substitutes, as is the norm with friendlies, helped the flow as the Waratahs took the game to the home team in the second half. Trailing 12-7 at the break, three early second half tries all instigated by the arrival of Israel Folau gave the Australian side the advantage with twenty minutes remaining. Both sides scored six tries apiece with Tah’s Tom Kingston running in a hatrick, though following some sustained late pressure it was Peter Saili’s second try that proved to be the difference. The Blues No 8 crashed over in stoppage time to wrap up this confidence booster for his team, 40-36.

So another one ticked off the To-Do List. Still plenty more to achieve not least brewing my own beer, making my own cheese, sleeping with harems of French women, headlining Wembley and watching football in Brazil to name but a few. Today was enjoyable, there is only one rugby team in blue for me though….. Be sure to have one for me at Goldington Road* later, eh chaps?

Come On You Blues indeed.

*Hello Ben, Mark, Nash, Matt M, Dan, Steve, Chris, Matt S, Marcus to name but a few. Sing your hearts out later and here’s to another great weekend’s Six Nations.
Swing low.

Avid readers (Ha!) of DWC will remember my trip, along with Pete and Toni (Hello folks!) when back in Ahmedabad and the National Utensil Museum of India. I saw this beauty on arrival at Fun-Gary (Hello our kid’s childhood hero, Mr Lineker!) and have been counting the days until my visit.

Promising the largest collection of clocks in the Southern Hemisphere it certainly doesn’t disappoint on that level, although the keenness behind my visit seems ill-founded. Vishalla it ain’t.

There are hundreds of timepieces of all descriptions but mainly cuckoo clocks. The friendly fraus behind the welcome desk, whether through design are not, are German or Swiss in keeping with the kuckucksuhr theme and are very happy in their work. The museum is in tribute to a one of the city’s most famous residents, a Mr Archibald Clapham who, as a Mr Cholmondley-Warner film tells you was an avid clock collector. Though one with a mischievous sense of humour. The Jeremy Beadle of the horophile world, this joker had the post-war Kiwis in stitches with his quirky clocks and witty watches…. Oh, the fun they must have had.
Following the short film and an an insight into what the hell I’ve let myself in for, sorry, an appreciation of my immediate surroundings, I tentatively take a walk along the misty jade painted corridor, its walls chock full of timepieces of all descriptions.

I was expecting famous Kiwi moments from history via the medium of horology. You know the sort of thing; the actual pocket watch James Cook wore when he first landed here, Sir Edmund Hillary’s pocket sundial, Richard Hadlee’s Casio, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa’s diamond encrusted wristwatch.
Instead it’s the Coldplay song brought all to realistically to life as the ticking, tocking, whirring, bonging and clanging seem to close the room seems to narrow in the growing and bordering on incessant din.

Like some kind of Antiques Roadshow Torture Chamber, my chest tightens, my throat dries, my ears ring. Make it stop.

Please? No, really. I beg and plead.

Seeing a glimpse of light between the pasty, deadening Midlands couple here on holiday, the sinister looking Disney alarm clocks and beneath the sentry-like grandfather clocks I make a dash for it, avoiding the glare of the watchful (literally) receptionist, clearly bewildered by my blatant under enthusiasm for Fun-Gary’s second most visited attraction. The Northland fresh air tastes even better than usual.
Home, where I wanted to go.

*Hello Will! Hello Ed! Hello Eats!