So the rest of the day wasn't quite to plan. David and Matthew accompanied me to the church leaders meeting because Frances wasn't available to look after them, but that's fine: they played in the room next to the office, read books, played games and watched another Veggie Tales video while the leaders continued looking at the future mission and direction of our church.

I was reluctant to inflict this on the boys, but I really did have to attend this. Next was fish and chips - it was hard to get the cats out of the house for long enough to eat it. After that, a game of Risk, a couple of scoops of ice cream, bath, bed...

I spent a while doing things on the computer and time drifted by until it was too late. Meanwhile, Viv's flight started out on the long trip to Auckland, where it has apparently just landed, 131 minutes late. So it's time to eat breakfast, get dressed, shower, go to the airport, again not in that order. The key question is: can Viv and Chris get off the plane, clear immigration and customs, pick up baggage, check baggage, transfer terminals and get on the Wellington flight in 59 minutes? My guess is no, but we'll just have to assume they did unless I hear otherwise.

The weather has turned foul again. The bed is covered with washing which we are about to start sorting. As it turned out, the barber was fully booked this morning so the boys will still look shaggy on Viv's return.

The boys did get to have morning tea at the bakery, however. That's one of the things that normally happens after a haircut. So they got lucky today... Meanwhile, it's sorting the clothes.

My replacement phone is now fully harged, fully customised except for the phone book list (which will be the biggest problem) and you can now send me short text messages once more by email using Telecom's text messaging service.

Another day, one when Viv might have been expected to return but plans have changed..let's see what happens. I ask Matthew to save his game. He does. Then he carries on...I wish he would have quit like I had wanted him too and then i wouldn't be thinking "he's so like his father...". But I'm just like that, so how can I expect my son to be anything other than a literalist?

The earliness or lateness of UA841 is academic: Viv will not be on it. United Airlines have seen fit to bump them off the flight with appropiate compensation and a night at LAX Sheraton Hotel. Before she left, I said that she should take the money if it were offered. Can you blame her? Compared with the currency now called the New Zealand peso, US dollars are an attractive proposition.

Almost forgot...while we were away, another postcard arrived. This one depicts the Mersey ferry. I remember when...One particular day when I was living in Birmingham I heard a Liverpool group play this song live. I'm not often given to homesickness. The song, the picture of the ferry itself...images of another time, another place, half a world and half a lifetime away from where I am now.

A mountain of mail, a mountain of electronic mail, a mountain of washing...after a light lunch the day drifted substantially and I think an early night is in order.

Then what happened? We went into Wellington to visit the Lost Property Office. Once they opened, the lady there was quite surprised to see us: the office we had visited in the morning had all the phones, so we had no need to visit her office...

I went to Cellphone City and one of the great dialogues of our time started. I walked several times between Cellphone City on Featherston Street and AMI Insurance on Lambton Quay, not forgetting one visit to the NZ Police on Victoria Street. They didn't have it either.

Cellphone City roughly explained my options, I went to AMI to find out what it would cost, they suggested abandoning my current contract and getting another one. Cellphone City told me this would entail a new number. This isn't really acceptable. Back to AMI. He'd been told that but didn't pass it on to me because he didn't think it important. Yet my cellphone number is to be found in a variety of places internationally, so changing it isn't something I would do lightly. They agreed to pay for a replacement phone instead of a new contract. I paid the $100 excess to Cellphone City, I now have a phone again, AMI want the charger from the old phone and they'll put it up to tender. Good luck to them.

The boys were pretty fed up by this stage, so we had tea at Burger King, which has no NZ website so no link. After the chicken tenders or hamburgers, we went over the road to check my mail box and picked up the Wairarapa service home, filling up the car's tank and tyres on the way home. Not much happened after that, except this updating of the log, the playing of some games and some music and that sort of thing. E.T. is on television tonight, so we're recording that for the boys.

I deliberately left lots of time to get to the station, because I suspected that even though we had discovered the Link bus (cheaper than a taxi) I wasn't sure of the details. We retrieved our luggage and went to the bus stop outside. It was hard to stop a bus at all, as a Bayes coach was parked in the bus stop, but we did stop a Link bus, who told us that although he was going to the station, he would be taking a long route and we should take another bus. "No problem, we're not in a hurry." "Well, I'm still not taking you" and drove off. I've never known such a thing. Some more buses went by without stopping, probably because they didn't see us but eventually I found one that was going to the station.

No sign of a train once we got there, however, and a call to Tranzrail's free telephone number revealed that our train was to be replaced by a bus between Auckland and National Park. This did not strike me as a particularly auspicious start to the journey.

Eventually we got under way and stopped at Huntly and Hamilton, where we got off to have a drink and stretch our legs while the bus went to refuel. Matthew was asleep when we got off, but awake and not too happy about it by the time got back on. Time passed and people slept and just past 2 o'clock we arrived at National Park. We waited while our luggage was trans-shipped and then it was time to board. There appeared to be more passengers than seats and some full and frank exchanges of views took place before all the passengers were seated reasonably peaceably. (Check spelling.) A rugby team was in coach U and an announcement soon after we departed, requesting them not to consume any more alcohol as this contravened the licence brought smiles to most passengers. My favourite comment of the whole journey was

I can't believe there are so many people in New Zealand who don't know what aeroplanes are for.

The journey continued reasonably until just after Palmerston North (I presume) and we seemed to be making reasonable time through flooded fields. I don't know why we stopped at Shannon. We stopped at every signal between Palmerston North and just south of Otaki, howvere, for the driver to wind the signals by hand. This resulted in us arriving in Wellington tired at just after nine o'clock in the morning, meaning that both trains had been late by just about one hour forty minutes. It is good to see consistency in a company. I admire that.

No sign of cellphones at the station though. They suggested that I call back between 3:30 and 4:30 while the main Lost Property Office is open. One hour? Are you kidding? What New Zealand needs is somebody who can make the trains run on time...perhaps not.

We got back to Taita station with no problem and on returning home everything seemed in reasonable order and the same number of cats were here as had been when we left. (Four.)

I really didn't want to pay for another breakfast at the hotel, so after we got up, dressed, showered but not in that order we checeked out and went to the Golden Arches for breakfast. This is always a popular move. Whitcoulls was the next stop: the Queen Street shop knocks all the others into a cocked hat: it was a good place to visit.

We eventually wound up at the Imax place where I bought tickets for two shows: Experience in the Third Dimension at noon and Mysteries of Egypt at 3. After the first, which we thoroughly enjoyed, we andered off to look up one of my old friends from Countrywide Bank, who was in a meeting at first but very pleased to see me - or, if not, gave that impression! We swapped stories about what our mutual friends and acquaintances were doing, so far as we knew.

Back for the Egypt show, which Matthew enjoyed but said he hadn't learned much new from it. I don't think that's the idea - they are there to enjoy, probably, not for pure education purposes. Still, never mind. Some more wandering, up to the Sky Tower but not up the Tower, if you see what I mean. $15 is too much. Even though our dollar has fallen through the floor, it's still the only currency I have.

Then back up Queen Street. We played a game of Age of Kings across the network at one of the cybercafés. As I don't really know the game, I felt that I was at a disadvantage, but I did start to build a wonder before David destroyed it. We didn't have time to finish the game: we had to go back to the hotel to pick up our bags and go off to the railway station. But that, as they say, is another story.

Onward, ever onward to another day. Today we woke to a cloudy and slightly rainy morning, but with a promise of better things to come. After breakfast we raced down Queen Street to be in time for the Rangitoto Ferry which we caught in fact with time to spare, having bought some food and drink from the Starmart along the road. As before, we had morning tea on the ferry before embarking on the trip to the summit.

It was as I had expected: David and Matthew are indeed fitter than they were last time, while I am less fit, so I kept on crying out "Slow down!" and for the most part, they did. We reached the summit (via the lava caves) at about noon. It was bright and sunny but very windy, offering a spectacular view across the whole of the area. What a view! This time a view across Auckland, similar but contrasting to the view of Wellington from the end of last week.

We set off down the mountain in plenty of time to catch the ferry back. It was getting up quite a storm by then, however. A trip to the Amercian Express cup village was not as pleasant as it might have been. So it was that we braved the rain and went back up Queen Street. A break, then supper at Subway, a healthier choice than the dreaded Golden Arches. After that, a shower, bedtime and another Asimov robot story.

Today was a better day. We got up at a moderately early hour and had a continental breakfast in the restaurant at the Kiwi International on Queen Street. We were just preparing to go to Rainbow's End when there was a sudden downpour. As the rain eased off, we walked some of the way down Queen Street toward the Imax complex. As it turned out, it was only a light shower, so we went to Rainbow's End after all. The taxi fare there is more than I remembered it being, however.

The day had nothing wrong with it - we rode the Goldrush three times, the log flume once and went on everything we could except we missed the Cinema 180. Probably not quite the same as Viv and Chris, who will be at Disneyland anytime now. Still, a fine day, a happy day most of the time. We saw a silent magician called Charlie Chaplin, who dressed and acted like the tramp of the same name, but was performing sleight-of-hand magic of the usual type. I still find seeing such things in real life much more enchanting than the same on the idiot box.

After the trip back to town, the boys both wanted showers (they had missed out last night) so we did that hile I phoned a couple of friends in the Auckland area. After that, we set off down Queen Street again, this time looking in more detail at the Imax Centre and dining at Planet Hollywood, whose pices are evidently much lower than I had been given to believe. The portions were large enough that nobody wanted a dessert. I may come back and say more about these two days another time, but I probably won't, so I won't promise.

We ran to the car through the pouring rain and our car stumbled to Taita station, where we ran through the rain again to catch the local train to Wellington.

Then onto the main line train. This left only a couple of minutes late, but the weather throughout the day continued as dire, as we stared amazed at the flooded fields through most of the North Island.

At Palmerston North, a half hour delay while we changed locomotives, at National Park, a delay while we aited for the southbound train to push a freight train up the Raurimu Spiral, another delay near Mercer as work on the line dropped our speed to near walking pace and then a change of driver near Middlemore.

They weren't having a good day, but a lady I chatted to in the buffet car seemed to assure me that they never do.

When we did arrive, there were no taxis waiting, except for a non-Engish-speaking driver who was waiting for someone called Ken. I called for a taxi on the mobile, and he called for more when he saw the incredible scene.

A late night, no story, just drinks for the boys and straight to bed for all of us.

I haven't been up this early any day since Viv left. With losing the hour and the violent storm outside, it seems earlier still, to say nothing of still black as night. They say the darkest hour is right before the dawn. Still, must get on with the day and not spend time here - we have a train to catch and the boys are still fast asleep.

I don't know how it is that Matthew has woken up at precisely 6:10 each morning but today it was, of course, 7:10. The magic of the circadian rhythm has been spoiled by the onset of Daylight Saving.

Breakfast this morning took its usual form and then it was off to the service, where nothing particularly out of the ordinary occurred. Although he had been back last week in body, Neil's mind was there today. He's had a week to recover from his jet lag. A week from now, that will be Viv and Chris.

Our speaker today was the principal of Maidstone Intermediate, formally launching the Trentham Youth Workers Trust.

After we got home, we went to the supermarket to buy some bits and pieces to keep us going. We had a chocolate steamed pudding and custard for dessert this evening, after two croissants for the main course. Of course, some people might say that this isn't a healthy meal, but what do they know?

We went to the dump at Silverstream in the rain this afternoon, so that all the refuse from the week was where it should bem seeing as both David and I had forgotten to put the rubbish out to be collected on Thursday.

After that, we packed for our great adventure in Auckland and then played another game of Risk which I won.

I'm sure that there was more to today than that, but I think I've covered the main points so far.