Good Evening,

'If you're going to be miserable all evening you can go to bed now'

was how Michelle thought it best to jolly me along tonight.

I don't blame her, I have found today very hard work & I am struggling to pretend.

Today I packed up the remainder of my things at the Stud, said good bye to Murray, Watties & everyone else, cleaned & vacuumed Bill's car & went for my first horse-ride in 8 months. Flippin' eck it was scary, aren't horses a long way up ? I was also treated to a growed-up lunch with Michelle in Cambridge.

I leave at 0730 tomorrow morning, headed for Auckland airport, via Auckland nick to drop the car off.

I am on auto-pilot. This is not really happening to me. I will wake up soon.

I ask you to bear with me when I return, I suspect some of you may find me a bit odd & distracted. It feels like leaving someone I love.

I will use an excerpt of a recent e-mail to me, which explains, better than I can, how I feel about the end of my time in NZ. I am pretty sure they won't mind.


... Very few people are going to get it when you come back. Probably. What you've been doing and how important it has been to you. In my experience there is sincere interest for about five minutes, polite interest for another five minutes, and then everyone gets back to talking about Eastenders or Coronation Street. I'm not talking about your close family or best friends here, just 'people you know'.

This is what concerns me. Not from you lot reading this, because you know what I've done, what it means & how I feel. It's just, I can imagine someone saying 'So how was NZ ?' I'll say 'great' & then they'll ask me for a namecheck.

So, if I struggle to fit in properly for a little while, please bear with me.

I thank you.

Cx