Auckland

Thank you so much to everyone for your birthday wishes yesterday. The concert was a brilliant way to celebrate turning 50mumble And a way to focus on a birthday treat without angsting too much about Blaze not celebrating it with me. Thank you millions to Krysta for accompanying your elderly sister and keeping my mind on positive things. Sisters are precious.

You know you're in Auckland when. . .

Every second tree is a pohutukawa and they're all beginning to flower for Christmas.

I walked a few blocks to the airport and was impressed by the trees alongside the 8 lane road. But unimpressed by the traffic. There was nothing wrong with it, I'm just not used to it.

Kudos to Nelson airport this weekend. When I got to the airport yesterday all of the long term parking was full - because of all the mad buggers who'd flown up to the Stones concert. They opened up a grass field to us to park in and charged us nothing for it. When I parked, there were maybe a dozen of us there. There were obviously a number of flights after mine because when I got back this afternoon there were still at least 200 cars there - and there had already been at least half a dozen flights in before mine.

That's great on the part of the airport who could have just turned us all away. That's also a LOT of people from the Nelson region at the concert. Including my brother and sister-in-law who just happened to be on the same flight up add I was - we ran into each other whilst parking so had a catch up as we waited for our delayed plane.