If we thought the weather in New Zealand could be changeable, it was only because we’d never visited Melbourne… The day we arrived it was a cool 19 degrees and overcast, by Sunday it was the perfect summer’s day and today it’s due to top 36 degrees before it goes back down to 17 tomorrow…?!
Luckily our apartment has full air con – and heating!
It’s not all fun and games out here in New Zealand. I have been working at a distance on a few things whilst traveling.
One of these has been building a website for a friend in North London who is a photographer. Actually, I have been quite enjoying it. It must be my artistic flair!
Just walking back to our apartment this evening there was a small crowd gathered in a side street we were passing. We stopped for a moment to have a look and someone was making a speech on the pavement outside one of the buildings. We looked again and realised it was Jacinda Ardern, the PM! There were a couple of police officers keeping an eye on things but we saw no sign of bodyguards and people certainly weren’t being kept at a distance.
The PM encouraged the students to make the most of all the educational opportunities offered to them, then there was a bang and streamers flew out over the crowd – a bit more dramatic than just cutting a ribbon -and she declared Te Auaha: NZ Institute of Creativity open!
On a visit to NZ some years ago we went to the Ellerslie Flower Show in Christchurch. We were admiring Chris Beardshaw’s garden exhibit ‘An Englishman’s Retreat’ and five or six people walked past us, interviewing someone. It was the then PM John Key… We certainly couldn’t imagine the same things happening in the UK!