12th February – Preparation
If feels a very short space of time since we arrived back from Laos and now getting ready for New Zeland. This will be our first cricket tour and neither of us are quite certain what to expect. We fly out from Heathrow to Singapore then on to Sydney and change flights for final leg to Auckland. We only have a short day in Auckland before setting off for Tauranga for the 1st Test Match and then to Wellington for the 2nd.
After the 2nd Test Match we fly to South island to spend a few days touring via coach.
Saturday morning was spent packing and getting the cars cleaned. At one stage we were going to catch a bus to Oxford and then one to Terminal 3 at Heathrow as parking the parking for 4 weeks at the airport required an extension to the mortgage. However after spending a considerable amount of Alice and Jenny’s inheritance on this trip it seemed a little mean to make Gillian carry suitcases across the south of England to save a few pennies. So I relented and as a result this provided the time for a Sunday lunch at Floyd’s Grill.
We had popped into the Bell last night for a drink – a pub that I had been going to since 1980 as an undergraduate at Royal Military College of Science Shrivenham. In its heyday you could hardly get into the doors on a Saturday. But times have changed and after many landlords who failed to revive and invest for the last few years we have had Drew who had transformed the pub and atmosphere – a place we really enjoyed going to on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Sadly he has decided to give it up – change of lifestyle as his wife and daughter lives in Vienna and he has a dacha in Estonia. So last night was our last drink in the Bell as it will have closed by the time we return. A bit of a sad moment as it is likely to go back to a succession of short term tenants.
Purrfect Tale 