Midge bytes

Over Easter I went for a three day tramp with the Alpine club, around Cass Hill near Arthur’s Pass.  It rained the first day and was foggy throughout the six hour hike, so it was a lovely surprise when the second day dawned sunny and blue skies.  It turned out that we were staying in a beautiful twenty person hut surrounded by mountains (Hamilton Hut).  We took it fairly easy the second day, only hiked for about an hour, then spent the afternoon swimming in a river (snow fed, brrr) and relaxing.  The second nights hut was hand built in 1975 and quite shack like, but it was fun for a night!  I do like the huts, it’s really nice to know you can find shelter for a night.  However we were a long way from the pub lunches I take for granted in England, being in a beautiful, unspoilt, remote mountain region has its’ downsides! 

The scenery was really lovely <http://flickr.com/photos/smidgley> and the company was fun, the Alpine club are a nice bunch.  My hiking muscles were surprised to be used again after about a year off from serious walking, but I think a few more long walks and they’ll be back up to full speed…I hope so anyway! 

I have been given several bottles of wine for helping out in wineries   I’m storing it under my bed, for a little while at least! 

I spent ten hours helping press Chardonnay for sparkling wine at the uni winery on Friday afternoon and evening.  It was a fun, messy job!   Very sticky.  My new gum boots (people laugh when I call them wellies) have been well and truly christened.

Apart from that…I went to a farmers market in Lincoln this morning, and bought lots of mushrooms, which I straganoffed for dinner.  It was yummy, I used some red wine vinegar and veggie stock in addition to lots of mushrooms, onions and garlic and paprika.  I also bought strawberries and a pineapple, which are lovely, despite the absence of clotted cream.

This cooking is prevarication from essay writing, which is a slow and painful process.  I’m very glad I had fun in the winery, because it renewed my sense of why I’m here, the academic part will hopefully slot into place, but at least I’m gaining a good understanding of the job I want to do! 

My first couple of weeks have gone well and amazingly fast!  I have my own row of Pinot Gris to tend, with a partner…who happens to come from Somerset, which I found quite amusing.  So far we have leaf plucked (to expose the grapes to sunshine to aid ripening) and calculated possible yield (about half a tonne or 500kg if you prefer).  This is a huge crop for a single row of 72 vines, so we weren’t too irritated by a wax-eye (small hungry bird) which we had to chase out from under our bird net yesterday.  We only need about 85kg for our micro-vin project (making wine out of same grapes).  I’m really enjoying having lectures and popping up to the vineyard for some viticulture in between (or herbology as I’m thinking of it!)  I definitely feel like I’m at Hogwarts!

Winemaking and viticulture aside, the course is pretty fast paced science so my brain is definitely getting a work out, they are making me study economics and engineering, neither of which actually work very well in my head…I may have to pay someone to do those bits in future!  Hopefully I will be able to get the hang of them though!

We’ve been on three field trips to five different wineries so far, which have been informative and fun (we did get to try some wine).  I’ve also had a play up in the university winery today helping two former students bottle some 2006 Chardonnay.  I got to do the screw capping, quite a satisfying machine!  They kindly gave me a bottle, which I shall comment on in a month or so, as they suggested I left it in bottle for at least a month.

I actually left Canterbury for the first time last weekend and traversed the country all the way to the West coast, to Hokitika, where there was a Wildfoods festival.  Wild is definitely the right word as they were serving grubs and grasshoppers and mountain oysters amongst many other scary things.  I tried the mountain oysters, which is a euphemism for something not very nice at all, definitely involving tubes!  Luckily it was barbequed and surrounded by bread and onions so mostly disguised!  The festival was only a small part of the weekend, the main focus for Kiwis being drinking, which they do abundently and messily.  I enjoyed the scenery and tried to avoid being vomited on.  We made friends with lots of people, mostly from the Christchurch area, it seems that there was a mass exodus to the other side of the country!  The drive over was gorgeous, we crossed the Southern Alps at Arthurs Pass, going past all the closest skiing areas…very pretty!  It took about five hours to get to the other coast.
 
We camped in the garden of a backpackers hostel…was quite glad not to be inside as the owner had taken out all the beds for the weekend and just laid wall to wall mattresses down…which looked a trifle too cosy with strangers for my liking!  However the tent did get washed away by rain so not much sleep happened in any case.  We spent Saturday night by a bonfire on the beach, there were fires right the way along the beach, which was very pretty, despite the occasional rain shower.

I got a job today, in the university bar ‘Mrs O’s’, which I start tomorrow!  I’m very pleased about that, they seem like nice people to work for, at the ‘interview’ this evening I was fed and they will pay me for it   Which was a nice surprise! 

I think that about sums it up for the moment, we’re having a party on Friday, to which we invited some of the people we met at the festival and I have a huge and slightly alarming amount of reading and writing to do…all about wine though, which seems to help!

More photos are on Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/smidgley

I’ve arrived in New Zealand!  Got here on Monday night, to find by bedroom already occupied by two French backpackers, which alarmed me a little…they were friends of my new flatmate Amandas’ though so all was fine.  Have settled into my flat, it’s a nice little log cabin affair, just like a ski chalet, although a trifle mouldier and more beaten up than any chalet I’ve stayed in.  There is a visiting cat and a possum, who I haven’t seen yet but have heard clog dancing on the roof.  I have three flatmates, two Kiwis and one Californian, all girls.

My time so far has mostly been occupied with registering and going to on campus orientation talks and parties, quite fun but rather full of drunk freshers.  I have taken the bus into Christchurch, which is about thirty minutes drive away and seems a lot like Exeter so far…more on that when I’ve explored further.  Lincoln is a nice little township, there is one very scary pub, which is fun but I’ve decided not to work at as the blood and alcohol were mixing in the wrong place.  It is definitely a "bring your own wellies" place!

The Uni is on the Canterbury Plains, which are very flat (big surprise!)  The Southern Alps are beautiful in the distance and I’m really looking forward to playing in them!  I’m going to borrow a bike from a very kind person who has given up cycling, so I should be able to whizz around campus and into Christchurch on days off.  Campus is very nice, with lots of good lawns for sitting on and looking contemplative and some nice eat and drinkeries.  They are very proud of the library (which I shall take a photo of soon) it’s a pretty building with arches and twiddly bits, not many like that round here, they are mostly very functional with corrigated iron roofs (that word looks wrong somehow).

Australia was a good break, Louisa and Mikes’ house is lovely, the veranda around the house is up in the tree canopy so I spent a lot of time birdwatching on their swing seats.  The pool was fun too!  Did a lot of beach and rainforest walks and revisited Corrumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, which was worth a second look.  High points were seeing a Tawny Frogmouth night jar sitting on my bedroom windowsill in the afternoon, watching a strange gig by a performer called ‘That one guy’ who played a synthesizer made out of a bent drainpipe and also a saw and a boot!  Sitting in the pool watching rainbow lorikeets fly overhead was really nice too and going riding with Louisa was good fun.  She nearly bought the horse she rode as he was a nice baby (three year old).  I made myself a bit useful by lining some curtains for Lou and Mikes bedroom, which actually look rather good

More soon when the real term begins, brain coming out of mothballs!

I seem to have rather got out of the habit of blogging, but want it to be alive for my travels next month.  So, a round up of the recent past.

In December I left my job at the Nobody, drove to Manchester for the weekend for MUGSS doing Bugsy Malone, which I really enjoyed.  I then drove to Winchester to stay with Louisa’s friends Will and Felicity and work for Mike’s (my brother in law) cousin Simon at Stone, Vine and Sun wine merchants.  Then I moved to stay with my sisters in-laws in Surrey for the rest of the month while I worked in Winchester.  I went back up to Manchester to the MUGSS Christmas ball in the Museum of Science and Industry, before returning to Surrey to complete my months work in Winchester, then I drove home for Christmas.

All that leaves absolutely no impression of what the month was like apart from busy and travel heavy, here’s a snippet of an email I sent a friend after getting home, it might be more descriptive:

"I drove home last night after work, which was grotty [freezing fog and ice], but it’s nice to
be here.  The past month has been exhausting, but I have learnt a bit
and made lots more contacts, so mission accomplished.  They also asked
me back for a week in January, which I’m mulling over…home has an
even stronger pull on me when I’m about to leave it for nine months!

I went to see Robin’s panto in Englefield Green, which is pretty close
to Frimley, where I was staying.  Was just sitting in the audience
before it started, quietly reading Wyrd Sisters because I had no one
to talk to, when I suddenly realised that John and Cathy had turned up
and were sitting next to me!  It was really lovely finding myself able
to actually bump into friends in an entirely new place!  The MUGSS net
is a nice fuzzy village type thing!  The panto was exactly as I’d
expected, Robin was very good as the dame and there were toffees."

All this travel was only possible because my lovely parents had bought a Tom-Tom which they lent me, otherwise with my joyous lack of sense of direction I’d probably still be driving around the Manchester ring road, trying to work out where they keep Winchester!  It gave me the confidence I needed to just drive off into the unknown to go and watch the panto for instance.  I’d love to say that my New Years resolution is to improve my direction finding, but I don’t think that is going to happen somehow!  I’m fine when I have a map and am not driving, but the second I try and map read and drive it all goes horribly wrong.  Hurrah for sat nav! 

I have been intermittently sad about the recent news about Mr Pratchett and rediscovering the joy of his books.  Before I heard I went to Will’s Gods and Goddesses party dressed as the Goddess Annoia (see ‘Making Money’ and ‘Going Postal’), with a whisk as a necklace and a spatula in my belt, which was fun.  He is wonderful.

I owe a lot of people room in my future vineyard / house / tent (depending on circumstances) after all the help and hospitality I’ve received recently.  I’m looking forward to the first party in my own vineyard, hopefully this will turn into reality one day!

Christmas was a pleasant day, we had both of my Grandmas and two Aunts for lunch, Beef Wellington cooked by me, which was fun and very tasty!  Louisa and Mike were missed, but the mood was determinedly upbeat.  [No actual relatives were eaten in the writing of this blog.]   

I went up to Manchester again for New Years eve at Will’s house.  It was absolutely lovely having all the girls together!  We toasted the New Year in with some Serge Matthieu 2002 which I was given whilst in Winchester (good perks!) it was a good end to the year for me.

I now have three weeks before I go to Australia, I’m really looking forward to seeing Louisa and Mike’s new house!  Also looking forward to many other things, I’m planning on having a very good year!

Does that make me stealthy?  That was from an online dictionary.

I’ve booked my plane ticket, I’m leaving on Feb 3rd, flying from Heathrow to Singapore, then on to Brisbane.  I’ll stay with Lou and Mike, who will hopefully have a house by then, until Feb 18th, when I fly to Christchurch.  That’s exciting!

The past few weeks have been fun, I finally seem to have settled down at home again and started to enjoy my time here, just in time to move away again, faintly ironically.  The Crediton operatic and dramatic society (CODS) concert went well.  The theme was ‘ABC’: Songs / shows / composers / composers aunts beginning with A, B or C.  We sang, we jumped off stage to serve dinner (roast Beef, followed by Apple and Blackcurrant Crumble) we took our pinnies off exposing evening dress and sang again, all good fun!  The music was an eclectic mix ranging from ‘Castle on a cloud’ (4 part harmony, very weird!), to ‘catch a falling star’, ‘Blue Moon’, stuff from Cabaret and Carousel, ‘And the Glory’ from The Messiah…lots more, all a little odd but I think we did them well, it was all much better than I anticipated, I did worry it was going to be one of the things you wish you hadn’t done, but it wasn’t. The ‘third half’ (Devon logic) was cabaret acts and a dance floor, I didn’t sing but did dance a bit.

Last week I went up to manchester for Leila and Wills’ birthdays, found out when I got there that Wills was fancy dress so cobbled togethera costume, the theme was Gods and Goddesses, I went as ‘Annoia’ (from the latest P’terry offerings) Goddess of things which get stuck in drawers.  I wore a spatula in my belt and a whisk as a pendant.  It was lots of fun, very relaxing spending time with everyone.

Excuse me, this account may continue later, I have just been offered fresh coffee, a chocolate swizzle stick and dessert wine (Hanepoot Jeripigo from South Africa).  This requires my full attention .

I heard back from Lincoln Uni, originally they sent me a conditional offer, but after I rang up and reasoned with them a little about not all solicitors having official stamps they (I am starting to have interesting thoughts about what constitutes proof of ID nowadays, why do signatures and rubber stamps mean anything?) have offered me a place without me having to resend my certificates.  Yay!  So, all I have to do now is apply for a student visa, buy a plane ticket and pay my tuition fees…argh. 

So,  I’m off to see mount Doom and everything else of interest in NZ…I have four months to raise a little more money and try and figure out just how many pairs of shoes to take.  So far my packing plans go:  Climbing harness and sticky shoes, hiking boots and a bikini for the couple of weeks I’m planning to spend in Oz first…that’ll probably do won’t it!  I expect I’ll take a few study implements too.  It’s going to be quite a contrast to my first year at uni though, when I turned up with everything and the kitchen sink, how am I going to survive as a student without my pressure cooker?

Packing aside, I really am very excited!  Moving with purpose now, which makes me a happy bunny.

In addition to the visa etc. list  I wish to learn to drive a tractor before I get there, I feel I would be letting the Devon side down if I turned up at agricultural college without having driven one.  I expect  I can get a young farmer to teach me, there are several who are regulars at the pub

I had a lovely day at the Sidmouth Folk Festival.  I went there by bus, which was a first for me, probably a good thing to do once!  Met up with Justin on the seafront with very little difficulty and we both admired each others hair, he’s had his all cut off!  He looks very dashing of course, but had a rather sunburnt neck.

Spent the day joining in with the festival as a tourist, the Sidmouth I know and love was replaced with a heaving crowd of morris dancers, street vendors, entertainers and every pub is packed full of fevered musicians strumming and plucking, squeezing and blowing in sessions, only disrupted by the occasional slightly irritating person daring to join in vocally and keep them from making their respective sounds for the length of a folk song (and those babies are LONG!)  People-watching from the middle of a pub session was great fun,  I enjoyed watching the concentration and cameraderie, along with the various eccentric outfits.  I did rather long for an instrument, but don’t feel any of mine are up to scratch…maybe if I go to sessions for the next ten years and sit there quietly some of the tunes will start coming out of my fingers when I play my sax or flute.

We went along to a Gregorian chant workshop, which was actually great as the chap running it (I’ll endeavour to find out his name) taught us to read dot notation.  He also reminded us of the Gregorian modes, which surfaced from the depths of my memory from GCSE music, so I obviously did learn something then!  It was quite hard combining sight reading in two new languages (dot notation and Latin, as I’ve never done any Latin) but I think I did pretty well.  The really tough bit was choosing an octave, as I’m not naturally Gregorian monk pitch, but there were a few sopranos there and I think we made rather a good sound, if not the traditional plainsong pitch.

In the evening we went to the global dance party, with ‘What Weasel’ playing (I can’t find them online, so I may have the name wrong).  They were brilliant, entirely instrumental and very bouncy and fun, definitely appealed to everyone.  I ended up bouncing up and down for the solid two and a half hour set, quite literally dancing until my feet bled (eww, I know)! 

Also spent most of the day putting the world to rights with Justin, which was cathartic, and talking about all our mutual friends, which made me feel less out of things.  I feel much more positive and tied to the moment than I did, I have spent the last few months really living for the next big thing, but I think I need to stop doing that as it’s not a very happy outlook.  So, in the spirit of living for the moment, I’m going to make sure fun is top of my list for the next few months!

I posted my application form to Lincoln University in Canterbury, New Zealand yesterday. Hopefully that will result in me going there next year!  I really do hope it works because I’m excited about it now!  Two hours away from pistes, twenty minutes away from Christchurch and surrounded by fields with mountains in the distance…looks like a Sarah kind of place!  Of course the course looks good too, I’m not just going for the scenery.  The plan is, assuming I get in, to spend a few weeks in Australia with Lou and Mike in January, then pop over to NZ for the start of term (I say ‘pop’, turns out there’s quite a bit of geography going on between the two countries, somewhat like flying from England to Russia).  My parents are contemplating a combined Oz and NZ trip in April to see everyone, which would be lovely.

I am also hoping to come home via Fiji at the end of the year…because there’s no reason not to!  I had a look at round the world tickets and I think one would actually make it more expensive…I’ll do a bit more price comparison before deciding, but I think I like my life a bit too A la carte to fit it to a set menu.  Too long in a gastro pub, obviously.

On the home front, all is going quite well, Lou and Mike are coming home for a bit next week, which is exciting.  I’ve had a really good haircut, so you may call me bob, once. Kate and I went to Timepiece in Exeter last week to see what clubbing without smoke is like…it was easier to breathe and much nicer coming home not stinking but we didn’t last very long as it was absolutely packed, being a Saturday night.  Some dancing happened though and fun was had.  I also went climbing for the first time in a year, James very kindly set up a top rope for me on a nice slabby bit of granite and I pootled up and down getting some confidence back.  It was delightful sitting on a warm bit of rock with the sun on our backs and moorland stretching out as far as the eye could see.  We saw lots of skylarks, and pregnant cows and Dartmoor ponies.  Also saw some cows that looked a lot like giant pandas, which was a bit odd!

I spent the rest of the week at work, joy, and now have two days off.   I’m going along to the Sidmouth folk festival to say hi to Justin, which should be entertaining, he claims he only really enjoys sitting in pub sessions with his mandolin now, but might be up for a ceilidh if pushed.  Yay!  Although if it’s as hot as today I don’t expect I’ll be dancing very seriously!