Watford FC Old Boys Club NZ

It has come to my attention that there's a link to this site from Watford Yellow Fever, Watford FC's most amusing fan blog. That's my cue to discuss the NZ footy situation, which I will attempt to do in the style of that site.

Professional pig's rear-end impersonator Ian Dowie may have disappeared from the scene for now, but what about all the other football people we never hear about any more? Like Darren Bazeley for instance. He inexplicably left the Golden Boys for moneybags underacheivers Wolves in 1999, despite Watford's phenomenal rise to the premiership that year. Then he was never heard of again, by me at least, until now. He has turned up as captain of the New Zealand Knights, Auckland's football team. They are clinging to the bottom of the Aussie league (or ladder as they insist on calling it), in much the same way that Watford are stuck to the bottom of the premiership like a bear glued to a skateboard (only worse: Played 14, Won 2, Goal Difference -27).

If that wasn't exciting enough, the team also features none other than Richard Johnson, who is not only in the squad, but apparently fit and making it onto the pitch. He scored two goals last season, presumably from his trademark thunderous strikes. Rumours abound that the knights are trying to recreate the glory days of Graham Taylor's second coming and Michel Ngonge has apparently been spotted around North Shore, along with Neil Cox and a fit again Nick Wright. Bring it on!

Those interested can check out the Knights impressive website.

How we are doing

I've been here four months now. Jo and Lily have been here for three (and Molly and Jake two). So, how are we all doing?

Progress in general is good and we are loving our little house. We have painted two rooms (one apricot and one lilac) and put up some pictures so it feels like a home.

Jo is liking it here and keeping herself busy with a variety of baby related activities. Lily goes swimming on a Monday, to playgroup on Tuesday and Thursday, to Music group on a Friday and I think something happens on Wednesday as well. All good.

Lily's been ill this week. She's had projectile vomiting and stinky nappies. Pretty distressing for us all, but she's better now and back to her happy self. She's nearly nine months old now and desperate to crawl. She goes backwards about 6 inches then gets frustrated and starts crying. She's mostly happy though.

We can tell Molly has settled in because she is getting uppity. She gets jealous if any attention is paid by the pack leader (that's me, in her eyes anyway) to any other member of the household. She likes to stand on the back of the sofa and stare out of the window ready to bark at passers-bay. So she's back to her old self, slightly highly strung and stressed by the weight of responsibility she feels because she thinks she's my number 2. Jake knows his place.

The vege garden has been cleared and fenced off from foraging dogs. We have had lettuces and there are potatoes and cabbagey things on the way. I consider it a success.

Things have been quiet this week. I am currently watching Moon TV, a sketch show featuring Speedo Cops - police officers dressed in swimming trunks (and shirts) for no apparent reason. It's hilarious!

Ferroro Roche is Back. Hooray!

Who could forget the Ferrero Roche advert? The ambassodor's party. The exquisite good taste. And people saying with this Roche you are really spoiling us. Five years on I can still recite it line for line. How we all laughed at the extreme naffness of it all. Jo and I were sad to leave that kind of quality advertising behind.

And things here can be a little different. Take government information adverts which tend to be just a little, well, blunt. If you drink and drive, you're a bloody idiot. If you go in a car with a drunk driver, he's pissed and your screwed. If you drop litter, you're a tosser. There's no telling whether these name-calling adverts actually work but the only way to keep the shock value of them is to continually up the ante, so who knows where it's all going to end.

New Zealand is a small market and it does show. A lot of the adverts are very cheap, with still photos and a commentary, in the style of cinema adverts from the 80's. Worst offender is Mick Quin, owners of Quins garages, who stands by every garage he sells. His advert features him standing by a selection of garages he has sold, pouting and looking fierce. Equally bad is rival Fair Dinkum Sheds, whose advert consists of a selection of still shots of sheds. Outbuildings are, as I have previously mentioned, a huge business here.

Adverts for cleaning products tend to be the same as the ones in England except that the name of the product is different. Vanish is NapiSan Oxyaction Max which doesn't trip off the tongue quite so easily. Cillit Bang! is Easy Off Bam! here. Bam! and the dirt is gone.

And Ferrero Roche are here as well and seem to have come up trumps again with another cracking avert, as the chocolate that fell to earth from the gods of Ancient Greece. We can only marvel at how they've got the front to pass off their tacky chocolate product as the food of gods (or indeed ambassadors), but long may they continue their efforts.

Getting Away

Having been in the country for over three months, we decided that it was time to see a bit of it. It's a bit tricky to get away with two dogs and a baby, but we're determined to do our best and last week, we got ourselves a giant tent. This weekend we loaded it into the back of the Mazda along with Lily, Molly and Jake and headed for Wanganui, 70 miles up the coast.

Like Levin, Wanganui is a bit of a backwater and slightly off the beaten track. But it is a lovely old historic town in the middle of some fantastic, spectacular countryside. All jolly nice and we were glad we had made the effort to go.

We stayed at Castlecliff, where the beaches are even more wild than those of the Horowhenua. The wind was gusting from the sea and the spray hovered over the black sand like a bank of fog. Safely back from the coast, we were protected from the worst of the wind although the tent did flap noisily through the night. And in the day, the sun was shining as if it was summer, which it almost is now.

The only real drama was the escape of Jake from the tent at 2am and our inability to track him down. I wasn't really worried about him running away because he's not the kind of dog to wonder off deliberately. However, he's not the cleverest beast ever and he could easily lose himself in a campsite. He's also black and difficult to see. I spent 10 minutes in an escalating state of panic, searching the grounds and the beach before he popped out at me from behind a cabin.

So, only a minor incident to blemish an otherwise successful weekend.

Slipping Away

The wild beaches here are covered with washed up tree-trunks and logs. It gives them a character unlike any tourist beaches I've seen. But you have to wonder where these trees come from.

The quick answer is that they come from the land. And they do. They are washed out on the rivers. But how they get there is something of an environmental disaster.

This is obvious when taking the lovely scenic drive along the Wanganui River from the town over the steep sided hills. There's a look-out point at the top of the hills along the valley, with views of fields and forest and the gorge along which the river flows. It's a stunning view but you can't help but notice the ugly brown scaring along some of the slopes. That's where the trees used to be, before they found their way along the river to be washed up on the beach. It's quite clear that things here aren't what they once were.

There's no way back from this kind of situation. Once the soil has slipped away, its gone for good. Partly, it's caused by the clear cutting of the pine forest. When the trees are gone, there's nothing to hold the soil in place. But it's also the result of decades of environmental mismanagement. Not much more than a hundred years ago the whole region was thick virgin forest but there's almost nothing left of that now. It was burned to the ground for agriculture and by the time anyone realised that much of the land was no real use, the damage was already done.

Things aren't really improving either. The landslips continue to happen, and there is still a mentality here amongst the farmers that land has no value beyond what can be produced from it. Of course, you can't change the past and the native forest is not going to reappear on the slopes of the Wanganui. But it would be nice if a stop could be put to the erosion while there's still a lovely green valley to admire.

Boring Newspapers

The local paper here, delivered free to 14,203 homes, is the Horowhenua News. Just like all papers, it loves a good crime story. But in a district where there were less than 2,000 crimes last year, it doesn't often get one.

I knew this was a good place to come and live when the front page story was about an old lady whose mailbox had been vandalised. Apparently, she was particularly worried because it happened on a Friday when lots of leaflets get delivered from the local shops. She didn't want to miss out on the special offers in town.

This week, we have the story of a break in at Horowhenua College where a DVD player was stolen, along with the slightly bizarre theft of a heart monitor from the local hospital. And last week, there was a break-in at a beach-house in Hokio, where the thieves made away with six cans of lager and a packet of marsh-mallows.

I feel safe in Levin, but I wish the local press was more interesting.