Geoff & Chris in the UK     Letters & Photos: Previous Next

UK News February 2004
(and part 1 of our trip to NZ)

Having been away from NZ for 12 months, we looked forward to seeing family and friends again. Aidan & Racheal's wedding on Valentines Day was to be the highlight. 

Plus, we've had enough winter to last us for a while, it will be nice to be sitting in the sunshine, taking it easy in NZ and Rarotonga. (The photo at left was snow on the Thursday after we'd returned to the UK).

Four weeks off work took a fair bit of arranging - I had accepted my position at Shoosmiths solicitors on the condition that I could have the time off. It was easier for Chris, in that she had a full year of annual leave accrual at her disposal. Packing for the trip was difficult - Chris had bought four different wedding outfits, packed 8 pairs of shoes and a huge hat box. I felt that my wanting to bring my laptop wasn't so bad compared to that!

Birmingham to Heathrow
Our first journey was the most tedious… lugging 90 Kg (6 bags!) of luggage via taxi to Birmingham international rail station, a slow journey on a Virgin train to Watford Gap and then a bus trip to Heathrow. It was a grotty virgin train, unlike the sleek new ones that we've been on before. We had half an hour waiting in the freezing cold for the bus, then it went 'round the wrekin' for over an hour before we got to the terminal. The roads to Heathrow were very busy, not helped by the random stops by machinegun toting police. Security has increased massively since our first visit in 1996.

Angus & Anne were waiting at Heathrow, to bid us a fond farewell and to further discuss which of the four wedding outfits Chris might wear on the day. Angus, Anne and Chris reminisced about the early days of raising Aidan & Jevon, and the various fun & games they got up to.

Chris's new dresses are all beautiful, so I understand her difficulty in choosing!
1) My favourite is a Fenn Wright Manson dress from Selfridges, with pink & red cardinal birds (flying and swirling around the dress) on a very dark maroon satin fabric (this is the one she wore to the wedding).
2) Very elegant white crocheted silk, incredibly detailed, bought from Beatties. This graced the hallways of Raffles.
3) Pale lilac with diamante flowers, from Beatties
4) Vivid orange and pink velvet, from East. She wore this at our anniversary party in Hamilton.

Singapore
To break the journey to New Zealand, we chose to stay one night in Singapore. I'd not been there before, and was keen to sample the island - even if only for one day. Arriving at the airport, we had to walk in front of thermal cameras - to pick out people arriving with an elevated body temperature/fever = possibility of SARS.

Accommodation seemed relatively cheap to us, so we chose to stay at the luxurious Pan Pacific hotel. When we arrived there, they convinced us to pay a little more for an upgrade to a better room. This put us into a 30th floor room with it's own balcony overlooking the city and harbour. Fantastic! The inside of the 37 floor hotel is a triangular atrium, which narrows towards the top - like a hollow pyramid. Gliding up the atrium, and clinging to the outside of the building, were fast glass elevators (which frightened the bejesus out of Chris).

When checking out hotels, using the internet, we selected the Pan Pacific mostly on the picture of the swimming pool! We figured that we'd be spending a lot of time swimming, warming up after the snow and ice of Birmingham. Indeed, it was a lovely place to lay in the sun and try to get some colour onto our pallid skin, and to cool off when the sun was too hot. Feeling refreshed, we got our glad rags on and walked to the famous Raffles Hotel. We had glimpsed Raffles when our shuttle bus was taking us to the Pan Pacific. The walk was rather further than we thought, undertaken in our best (ie uncomfortable) shoes…

Raffles is a wonderful wooden colonial style building, with balconies and grand staircases, very elegant. Our Singapore Stopover discount voucher book offered a half price 'Singapore Sling' cocktail, so we ordered two and sat in the very elegant foyer - listening to our own little piano concert. Phew, those Singapore Slings sure do hit the spot (somewhere in the middle of your brain!) so we figured we'd better have another one just to verify the effect. The second one was indeed dizzyingly pleasant… Somewhere in our luggage we have the recipe, which has an amazingly potent mix of spirits and liqueurs. Chatted for a while with a couple from Ledbury, she had trained with some Kiwi doctors during the 2nd world war.

Staggering to our feet, we paid the bill (and discovered that the ½ price deal didn't apply at this bar). So it was an expensive but delightful evening at Raffles of Singapore.

For the journey back, we decided against walking. Trying to hail a taxi, we were approached by a very enthusiastic 'trishaw' rider. These are three wheeled pushbikes, a modern version of the rickshaw. He offered us a ride for S$30, to which we countered that we could get a taxi for S$8 and would pay no more than S$10. He dropped to S$20 and we walked away… He cried OK! calling over a younger cyclist to take us back to the hotel. A battery operated sound system was turned on, and we weaved across busy roads, feeling unsafe but exhilarated!

Often we've been told of the fantastic shopping in Singapore, especially Orchard Road. Out of character for us, we didn't spend much time in the shops, though we did take a taxi to the Holland Village shopping area - where Chris bought a beautiful pashmina. After more time at the pool, we thought we really should do some shopping, so walked out of the hotel and right around the block, to a huge shop that was closing down. Everything was 70% off, and Chris looked at even more shoes, though only buying a stunning red satin dress. We were faced with walking all the way around the block again, then saw a door going directly from the shop into the atrium of the Pan Pacific!

Our flight to Auckland was on Air NZ, which was sadly a less impressive service than Singapore Airlines. We had been spoilt on Singapore, with individual TV screens for each seat and a choice of 30 movies. Air NZ offered one movie on a fuzzy shaky screen.

Auckland
It was a thrill to be met at Auckland airport by Mum & Dad, and bride-to-be Racheal. We retreated to our favourite quiet café in the corner of the departures hall, surrounded by potted bamboo. It's a much better place to be, than the noisy food hall. After an hour of catching up on news, we retreated to Mum & Dad's house at Birkenhead. It's a lovely feeling, returning to one's original home, after a long absence. They kindly loaned us their 'Kia' 4 wheel drive car, for our use while in NZ - in which we were soon whizzing down state highway one to Papakura, to see Aidan. A wonderful first day.

The next day was a gruesome letdown, I was hit by food poisoning, and spent most of the day horizontal. That meant missing out on a special dinner with Aidan and Racheal at a cafe overlooking Karitahi beach, on the southern side of the Manukau Heads. A day later, and I was feeling a little better, though still not wanting to eat anything. Aidan provided some good advice about taking electrolyte replacement drink after vomiting, which certainly did make me feel better - something he learnt from his young man partying days…

Hamilton
Thursday was a very quick trip to Hamilton, to retrieve some items from Olympia Place. Oh dear, the gardens are all overgrown, and the place does not look as loved as we left it. But that's one of the inevitable consequences of renting your home. We'll arrange a gardener to bring it back to standard, and ask the tenant to do more.

We did both have a look at our Frost Place rental property, and were dismayed at the poor condition of it. Filthy, unkempt, two car wrecks on the lawn, overgrown and some 'herbs' growing in the garden. Our rental manager is going to read them the riot act, giving them 10 days to bring it up to scratch and possibly have them evicted (which takes 90 days…).

With the help of a builder, I broke into the downstairs storage room of Olympia Place (with the tenant's permission!) to retrieve our Iranian rug - a Balouchi wedding rug, which we have long planned would be a part of our boys' weddings. Also retrieved was our much missed CD music collection, which we'll take back to the UK.

Ten minutes later the room was sealed up again, and I headed down to the Hammond Bush for a check of the native plants I had helped plant a couple of years ago. They're growing well, although there's no progress on anything else there. Chris stayed in town, catching up briefly with Beverley.

Aidan & Racheal had located a great venue for their wedding - at the top of the Bombay Hills (south of Auckland) is 'FootBridge'. A long 'Queensland style' function room was accompanied by a wooden chapel close by. It was great to be at a wedding venue with everything on the same site. No driving from church to hall required! Also, it was great that all the photos were taken at the same venue. Ngaire - the owner of footbridge - was wonderful. Not only did she perform the wedding ceremony, she also supervised the banquet, worked the bar, and did lots of other things to make the day a great success.

Our wedding rug looked great in the chapel, a colourful centrepiece for the ceremony. We're so glad that we were able to use it.

The bride was fashionably late, I'd worried that her limo might not have been able to get over the bumps on the rough road down to the chapel. Aidan was suitably nervous, and when Racheal arrived in the chapel there was discernable tear in his eyes. Racheal had a great big grin all day, thrilled with how well the day went. Chris was beaming with pride, so impressed by how Aidan and Jevon have grown up to be so handsome and mature.

Instead of confetti, we were given little cake-shaped bottles of bubbles to blow. These made a lovely effect, the swirl of colours captured on the wedding photos.

Taking the wedding photos were two professional photographers, 'hunting as a pack' - one setting up shots & the other being off to one side, catching unguarded and un-posed shots. The end result was an album full of fantastic photos. For fun, the photographers brought along some old guns, and had the wedding party do lots of silly poses with them. We heard of a recent incident, in which the armed defenders squad (police) were called out when a member of the public saw people running around with guns in an industrial area - another wedding photo shoot!

To view more of the wedding photos, go to Aidan & Racheal's website.

The caterers did a great job with the food, lovely grub that was much nicer than traditional wedding breakfast. For utter decadence, the wedding cake had an amazing 5 tiers, decorated in hand made (icing) gerberas. We're taking one tier of the cake back to UK, to enjoy with our UK family & friends (perhaps with a blessing ceremony for the kids if they manage to come and visit us in September).

On the tables of the dining room were giant martini glasses, with olive oil & floating candles. The owner of the venue asked me to announce that they mustn't be drunk, unless you want a powerful laxative effect!

I was honoured to be asked to be master of ceremonies for the reception. Chris broke with tradition, as she really wanted to make a mother of the groom speech. She did this wonderfully well, including a reading from the book Anam Cara (Irish philosopher John O'Donohue) .

After the meal and speeches, we enjoyed some dancing, and we saw how well Jevon can wiggle! Aidan's long term friend Jeremy said some lovely things to us, about the depth of their friendship.