cp13

Oooooh two engines...

We have progressed from the single engine phase of the course and shall now be flying this twin engined beast, the Piper Seminole. For suitably cheesy pictures see the photo album entitled 'Cheese'.

Something for the weekend sir!?

CS has had a hair cut.

Hamilton nights 2

Last evening the theme of pink was declared and KB, Mark and Alex went to what now seems to the local - Bank. A young girl shortly approached Mark and before long the trio were engaged in a conversation with the dear bird. It transpired she was a drunk hairdresser, complimenting Alex's hair piece which greatly pleased KB considering it was his handiwork (the second time in as many days that a hitherto unknown hairdresser has passed such a comment!). Continuing the previous evening's theme of cleptomaniacs inhabiting Hamilton, Amber (as we established she was named) finished her drink and immediately crammed the empty glass into her handbag with all of the surreptitiousness of a hyena on happy pills. Apparently she was here with her 'Nana' who was pretending to be her mother...some sort of chaperone it seemed. The grandmother turned up, introduced herself and then took a strategic vantage point keeping an eye on proceedings while resembling Eartha Kitt. There was something not quite right about the entire situation and wallets were checked every couple of minutes in case it was a tag team like the old couple in Dirty Dancing. The grandmother became bolder and Alex engaged in conversation, saying what we were doing in New Zealand,

"Oh really, you're all pilots, oh yes I've read about you in the newspaper, well we're VERY pleased to meet you...you MUST leave your numbers and we'll DEFINITELY meet up in the future..."

That was it, the grandmother was hooked, proceeding to the bar to speak to others of us who had turned up.

It was around this time Mark and KB noticed a perculiar smell, a cross between mothballs and lavender water - a very unconventional scent that turned out to emanate from the grandmother.

Following this, we continued to outback where we met a jolly girl from Denmark who was here 'making better her English' by working on a dairy farm 'covered head to tow in s**t every day' before returning to Denmark to become a midwife next year, not quite sure where the connection is but there must be one somewhere.

And so an interesting night was had by all!

Hamilton nights 1

The evening started off quite sedately with KB, Mark and Alex enjoying a splendid meal in Iguana with cp14 and listening to rampant tales of inefficiencies from the Grifter, who in the future must be kept off the red wine. After a large mad hairdresser accused us of being a stag party, the lure of 'Bank' was too much. Having made it down the road several gin and tonics were consumed while watching CS dancing on the dance floor with the bullet proof sunglasses glinting in the lights. A sight for sore eyes. Princess McInnes was surprisingly sober. Alex discovered new admirers and became increasingly scared of some of cp16, while some of the local 'talent' stalked us all from afar. Almost the entirety of the Peachgrove massive (cps 11-20) were found in the establishment and the Price was seen to be holding court with his harem of friends (or followers...!) from later courses before calling a squadron scramble and instigating a move to Outback ( the local student type bar). Outback wasn't up to its usual standard and there was definitely a lack of atmos, hence in a twenty five ship formation we left and proceeded to Altitude - the place where you go if you're 17 and live in Hamilton, a rather strange place with two female DJs suspended in some sort of balcony effort. It was here the randomness commenced...

Rich of cp19 (website here) fame decided to projectile vomit in the bar, soaking both the back of a kiwi bloke (who was not impressed, but couldn't find the culprit...) and Mark's right leg - yet no staff saw the incident and there were no repercussions, absolutely bizarre. As people dispersed from a night that never really took off in terms of excessive drinking, merriment and debauchery, Mark, half Price and a number of cp19 ended up in Subway with a large woman called Bernice and a small dumpling going by the name of Marie, who were declared to be cleptomaniacs when we discovered they had a few thousand Subway paper napkins stuffed into their handbags...

Water fight at dawn

This morning Mark was woken up by a soaking Alex at 0800hrs to be informed that the latter and a companian from another cp group had just got back from a water fight at the house of a Freedom Air hostie. Intriguing to say the least.

Paraletic Price

Half Price became absolutely paraletic and had to be driven home and given three buckets, Alex was sure he wasn't wearing that T-shirt at the beginning of the evening.

Hamilton

KB, Alex and Mark flew some of the aircraft down to Hamilton, avoiding a wretched car journey and all skidded sideways when landing on a decidedly dodgy freshly cut wet grass runway vector, the tower controllers must have wondered what they had let themselves in for. Understeer in a Katana, Clarkson would have been proud.

The new accommodation is a plethora of 'studio apartments' in a pink coloured building resembling a B&Q warehouse opposite the local boys high school - this is much to cp16's delight, some have been spotted trying to conceal telescope tripods already...

Hamilton itself is yet to give us any splendidly amusing stories (at least of the nature that can be written about on a family site such as this) so watch this space.

Once more into the breach

So we set our watches back 40 years and arrived back to sunny (!) Auckland, only to find we were to be moving in three weeks time to Hamilton, about an hour's drive south of Auckland and NZ'z biggest inland city (well it's a town by UK standards!).

However before leaving there was time to pay visits to all of the old old cp13 haunts and a trip to catch the show, Saturday Night Fever, which had just opened. The first Saturday night performance we mixed with the great and the good and the bold and the beautiful of NZ (everybody who is anybody in Auckland was there darling) while partaking in the odd gin and tonic and putting on extremely overly English accents to accentuate our desirability to the local young ladies. The NZ crowd were a trifle reserved and we had to adjourn to the back row with all speed at the interval to indulge our wanton need to dance in the aisles, or anywhere else for that matter. Covert we were not, clearly the dancers on the stage were taking their moves from the Alex/KB/Mark/Alex (cp12) combo on the back row.

There were loads of new faces on the compound due to new courses having arrived in our absence and Henry the cat had found a friend, an equally black pussy called S***head. cp13 were then invaded by two small brown puppies (standby for pictures) that were some sort of pitbull esque cross things (apparently bred for fighting by the locals). Jamie, cp13's new member, displayed hidden talents and showed us his 'dog voice' when talking to them in some sort of Dr Doolittle baby language - very odd indeed, he should fit in fine... The choice of nomenclature for the dogs - Collossus and Winnefrid - was most unusual. We havent a clue where they came from but after 2 days with us the council were called in to take them away, unfortunately they did not also provide a house cleaning service...

The journey back

25 hours on Singapore Airlines finest 747s loomed once more as we assembled at Heathrow. An uneventful journey bar one amusing incident.

Just after take off from Singapore, as soon as the seat belt sign was turned off in fact, CS was seen to bolt from his place near the front of the cabin towards the rear to find an empty seat, whatever could be the matter...

It turns out one of the indigenous NZ types was sitting next to CS and had decided to relieve himself into 'something resembling a petrol can' while remaining seated...

CS, presumably afraid of splashback, had done a runner.

Extraordinary.

England's (Scotland's for some) green and pleasant lands

The short stay back in Blighty was due mainly to having to complete three weeks of groundschool and exams which were to say the least, intensive. Many thanks to Joyce and Bruno the dog for looking after us (KB, Alex and Mark) so well at the B&B. While there was not exactly much time for recreational activities we did take one Saturday afternoon off and wandered around Bristol before thinking (as it was a nice day) there may be some jolly folk at Weston-Super-Mare so we headed off there for dinner in a British Racing Green Rover 800. Weston-Super-Mare could be a quaint English seaside resort, in fact it is a horrid place and we couldn't even face eating anything due to the multitudes of great unwashed which seem to descend upon the place and shout expletives at each other - there was even a contingent from Wales who 'hated the English something or others' so much so that they had to shout it from the pub balcony, begging the question why come to England? After a random go on the dodgems we got the hell out of there when Alex became scared there may be some sort of Anglowelsh battle on the horizon.