Happy New Year

Hi everyone. Yes, we're ba-aa-ck! We had a fantastic holiday in NZ
and Singapore, made extra special for us by having relatives to
stay with and/or to show us around - they all made us feel
very much at home with them and very welcome.

We missed seeing our family back in the UK, of course, and having
a Xmas Day BBQ on one of the hottest days in NZ didn't feel very
Xmassy. The BBQ was brilliant otherwise. I was glad to miss the
endless commercialism of Xmas that we see in the shops and on the
TV here in the UK, and all the old films the TV companies put on
at Xmas. The only things I missed seeing on TV were the annual
carol service from King's College, Cambridge ... I like listening
to the wonderful singing ... and, of course, and the Queen's
Speech (as if).

Well, with my fabulous camera, the Canon Digital Rebel, I took
hundreds of photos, a few of which I'll show you over the next
week or two. Here are a couple of NZ beach photos for you, the
beach was near Kerakera, a gorgeous place north of AKL. Some of
the beaches we saw were vast expanses of sand with very few
people on them.