Merry Christmas from Ake Ake Vineyard!

Sunday 18th December

My day was spent wrestling with and then plucking the Shiraz vines. It seemed to me that nobody had gone near them in decades, which had caused them to grow in and out of the wires and wrap their tendrils around neighbouring vines. It was frustrating work trying to get them separated and I did end up snapping a fair few of the tops off. When Charlotte got home from the motel, she helped me round the days work off to 7 hours before we called it quits and continued our painful planning exercise. For dinner, we had our first piece of chicken in a considerable amount of time, having it with some chips and salad. Sorry that's such a short day but there only so much plucking I can write about without it getting incredibly boring.

Monday 19th December

Again, I spent the day snapping vines and plucking leaves off the Shiraz. Although the job was starting to become rather tedious, I was buoyed by the fact that we were well over halfway through our time on the vineyard and, more importantly, in the bus. The time had flown by and it didn't really seem as though I'd progressed anywhere with regards to the work. I just ploughed on though, keen to get another big week of hours done, with a 3 day weekend for some religious festival fast approaching. Charlotte was still cramming in the long days at the motel too, which was helping bump up the coffers significantly. She was still painting the decking, despite people's best efforts to sabotage them and walk on them before they had dried. This time, when Charlotte arrived home, she decided against giving me a hand and when I finished, I found her round by the house browsing the Internet. I joined her and in under an hour we finally covered the preparations for the next leg of the trip, which was a huge load of our shoulders. That meant we could prep dinner and have a relaxing evening for once. We had a bit of a mishmash of veg, rice, leftover salad, leftover passata and leftover wraps and boy were we full to the brim when we finished. We predicted that Charlotte wouldn't be required at the restaurant much this week, due to most of the Christmas parties having been and gone, so that would allow us to have dinner at a normal time for most of the week. We also receiver two more cards to add to our collection. These were from Rob and Hannah and Nanna Smith and Francis, so thank you very much for them both.

Tuesday 20th December

Whilst I was out plucking my vines in under the blazing summer sun, I was joined by John, who proceeded to show just how useless I was at plucking the vines. He flew along the row behind me and was half way down his second one by the time I'd reached the end of my first one. It made it worse that I had had a significant head start on him too. When I brought it up whilst we were receiving a delivery of 3 pallets of wine bottles, he put it down to his vast experience. Charlotte arrived home and we got in 25 minutes of plucking to round off the day at 8 hours ( and her 25 minutes) and called it quits so I could get out of the sun. As Charlotte had just covered herself in sun cream, she didn't want to waste it, so whilst I was cooling off in the bus, she was out sunning herself on the lawn. We nuked some jacket potatoes in the oven for dinner and had them with baked beans and veg. As we had no planning to do for he evening, Charlotte was tucked up and snoring by 9, which left me writing the blog sat on the sofa on my own, listening to a mosquito whine past my ear every 5 seconds.

Wednesday 21st December

I spent my day continuing the plucking of the Shiraz and watching the planes take off and land at the adjacent airport. Meanwhile, Charlotte spent her day cleaning the canopys above the room, using a drool and a hose. She also had an appraisal with the owner, to check up with how she was doing. As a thanks for all her hard work, she received a $30 gift card for the supermarket Countdown, which we both agreed was really kind and would be a huge help for us. We ate our dinner outside for the first time but quickly found out that it was a big mistake, as we had lentil meatballs and spaghetti and both succeeded in getting it in our clean clothes that we were going to attend the quiz in. The quiz was to be our last one in Kerikeri. Thanks to Christmas and the new year, they wouldn't be hosting another one until the 18th of January, by which time we would be long gone. All the teams had been asked to “dress up” their tables for the event and be in with a chance to win chocolates but we didn't really do that, instead just wearing a Christmas hat each. This was also supposed to be the opportunity to use our winnings from our victory a couple of weeks beforehand but the person who had taken it home had somehow managed to lose it. We were slightly annoyed but tried our best not to show it. She had asked at the bar if they could redeem it through a photo she had but they refused to do so. With the full team we did okay with the quiz but didn't win, didn't come third from bottom and didn't get the lucky loser prize, so left empty handed. We were just pleased to have won at least once whilst we were there.

Thursday 22nd December

We had a different job lined up for the day, which made a nice change for both Charlotte and me. We donned our new (but old and worn out) Ake Ake Vineyard t-shirts and rendezvoused with John in the winery at half past 7. We were bottling and Charlotte had managed to get out of work at the motel so that she could experience it too. The wine we were bottling was a red called Syrah and John told us that we had around 2300 bottle to do. We all had our own jobs along the production lines. John would fill 4 bottles at a time from a machine, they would get passed to me, I would stick a cap on them stick them in a machine that would secure the cap to the top and then I'd pass it on to Charlotte and she would label it using a hand powered machine. John did claim that it would be boring but we thoroughly enjoyed it as it was different to leaf plucking and cleaning motel rooms. The only problem is that we were subjected to John’s questionable music taste that included Wham! At various points throughout the day we both got to do all the jobs, so we were pretty pleased and by the time we'd finished all the bottle, 7 hours had flown by. Our afternoon was spent doing our Christmas food shop across both large supermarkets in town. We ended up buying a fair amount but who doesn't by an absolute tonne of food at Christmas? Despite all the food we had in though, it was a simple stir fry for dinner.

Friday 23rd December

I spent my day finishing off the Shiraz once and for all. I had hoped it would take me up until lunch but I was still going afterwards and 2 hours had passed by the time I finished the final row. I had planned to start the next job but as the weather had tired and dark clouds were rolling in, I thought I'd call it quits. Charlotte had got back from the motel and when I got back to the bus I found her sleeping on the sofa. We spent our afternoon coming up with a plan for our post New Zealand journey, before cooking up a delicious tuna pasta bake for dinner and getting a fairly early night.

Saturday 24th December

Both Charlotte and I were bottling again today, although John did say that it would be considerably shorter than the first session two days earlier. The wine we were bottling this time round was a blend of Chambourcin, grown on Ake Ake vineyard and Merlot, grown elsewhere in Northland. We only had around 1100 bottle to do and were flying along. In fact, it was all going too well. I left for a 5 minute break and when I got back, Charlotte informed me that the capper had stopped working and that the bottles I had been capping in the past 20 minutes hadn't been capped properly. John had to solve the problem of the broken capper, so I did a bit of picking amongst the vines while Charlotte popped in to work at the motel for a few hours. John got the capper sorted pretty quickly and I was called back in to continue bottling, in the absence of Charlotte, John’s son Jaluka took over labelling. We filled the remaining bottles without a hitch and John rewarded our work with a couple of bottles to take back to the bus and add to our ever growing pile. John had given us 2 bottles from the first bottling too (which I  forgot to write about), so we were starting to amass a bit of a collection of reds. He also told me he would drop of a bottle of white for us to have with our Christmas dinner, which was very nice of him. After lunch I did a little bit of work on the vines but gave up when Charlotte arrived home. That was me done for work until the 28th, because John would have had to pay me time and a half. Charlotte on the other hand didn't have the luxury of any days off but would be earning that extra money while she was. To celebrate Christmas Eve, we tucked in to one of our boxes of Maltesers that we had picked up and somehow managed to control ourselves and not scoff them all in one sitting, when Charlotte popped something to the freezer in the restaurant, she returned with 2 bottles of white wine that John had given her, so we were going to have one hell of a booze up. That made 7 bottles altogether, 4 reds from bottling, 2 whites from John and a white we had leftover from when we first arrived. For the Hosie family, having a curry on Christmas Eve had become somewhat of a tradition, so we stuck to that and cooked ourselves a chicken curry for dinner, having it with some pittas on the side. After dinner there wasn't much else to do but go to bed, so we called it a day, ready to wake on Christmas morning.

Sunday 25th December

For the second year running there was no stocking, no family to greet us and no Christmas tree with presents underneath it. As we had nothing to get up for, we had a lie in before hauling ourselves out of bed and tucking in to our bacon sandwiches, that we had promised to ourselves for Christmas Day brekkie. We had them smothered in (unfortunately not Heinz) tomato sauce and then followed them up with the remaining Maltesers we hadn't eaten the day before. After breakfast, we cracked open a beer and wandered round to the house in order to pick up the wifi and Skype Charlotte's family, who were currently in the middle of their Christmas Eve tradition of a family get together. We spent around 20 minutes chatting to everyone and wishing them all a merry Christmas and were treated to a couple of tunes played on the piano. That was the highlight of our morning by far and afterwards, we spent the time up until midday reading and doing small bits of prep for our Christmas dinner, like cooking the stuffing. At 12, Charlotte had to head in to work but was only due in for around 4 hours, so wouldn't be long. I just carried on with the reading to pass the time. She arrived back earlier than anticipated and had let me know so I could get the salad ready. We made up some garlic potatoes and were then ready to lay the table for the Christmas feast. We had cheeses, crackers, pickled onions, crisps and dip, cooked chicken, stuffing, salami, salad, turkey and cranberry sausage rolls and the garlic potatoes. We washed it down with a local Speight’s ale and a glass of John’s very own Ake Ake wine. By the time we were done we almost had to roll back on to the bus and wash up. Once everything was tidied away we passed some time playing a game of cribbage and tucking in to a bit of Whittaker’s milk chocolate for pudding. Whilst we were still digesting about 3 hours later, John popped down and knocked on our door. He invited us up to the house to join their Christmas dinner. We politely declined as we were still stuffed to the brim from our feast. We said  we would pop up once they were done though. We were really just killing time, waiting to Skype the Hosie family at 10pm.

That will probably be all I write for the day, so at this point we'd like to say Merry Christmas to both our families and to anyone who still reads this babble. We hope you all have a wonderful day and the weather, as usual, isn't too miserable!

James and Charlotte

Ake Ake Vineyard: Christmas is coming, look busy!

Sunday 4th December

We were both up fairly early for another day of work. I picked up from where I left off the previous day, propping up vines of Chambourcin, situated in front of the alfresco dining area of the restaurant. Charlotte spent her day training up a new member of staff, who would eventually replace her at the motel. In fact, the owner had recently hired 2 new members of staff. A Korean couple, who could only ever work the same hours as one another, so they only ever had to use one car to get to work. To me this seemed a bit unfair but then again, it was none of my business. The husband of the lady Charlotte was training, was an experienced gardener who had previously worked down in Auckland for 12 years or so. This meant that he was picking up the odd jobs that Charlotte had been doing over the previous week or so and it was causing her worry that she might see a drop in her hours. The owner was reassuring her that she was still needed, so we just had to wait and see what happened. Charlotte got home with me still wading through swarms of honey bees and propping up the vines. John had let the weeds and grass get so long in the aisles that when you walked through it, you could hardly see past your waist. On top of that, the weeds all had flowers on, so they drew in the honey bees like crazy. Fortunately, I got through without any stings. Had they been wasps, I probably would have left them to it and finished propping another day. With only a short row and a bit left to do when Charlotte pulled up, we had a quick cup of tea and then headed out to get it finished off. It took us just over an hour in the end and it led us in to Charlotte's first evening off the restaurant (pub quiz not permitting) in what seemed an age. We didn't really do much however, just relaxing around the bus but actually having dinner at a normal time for once. Not that that was anything special either, just a boring vegetable stir fry, with “frozen” veg that our onboard freezer had struggled to keep frozen since we had bought it 3 weeks earlier. We were leading in to a much needed day off for both of us but we're both tucked up in bed by 9.

Monday 5th December

We did our best to have a lie in but got pretty bored and were up for 8 with washing done as usual. We had planned to head to any nearby beach for a day of swimming and sunbathing. After a look at the weather, we ended up changing our minds though. The morning was set fair but there were showers due in the afternoon and we could already see clouds looming on the horizon. Instead of the beach, we drove out to the town of Paihia, which was about a 20 minute drive from the vineyard. We'd visited Paihia before when we were working in Kaitaia. It had been pretty miserable weather on our previous visit, so we were hoping for a bit better this time round. When we arrived, we parked up just past the centre of town and walked in for a look around. Nothing had changed (unsurprisingly) from our previous visit, although it seemed much busier than it had done in that day back in May. That was probably down to it being more in season now than back then. Once we'd reacquainted ourselves with the town of Paihia, we felt it was time for a drink, so we found a bar/ restaurant along the wharf and sat down. Despite it being before midday (my mum would say you aren't allowed alcohol before 12), I opted for a beer, while Charlotte went for a coffee. It was a nice spot sitting above the sea, with nice views out across the Bay of Islands. By the time we'd finished and paid for our drinks, we'd successfully negotiated to midday, so felt it was time for some lunch. As we had on our previous visit, we felt it was only right to have fish and chips as we were beside the sea. It wasn't going to win any awards but it was still pretty tasty and filled a hole. With lunch eaten, we washed it down with an ice cream from one of many shops that were serving it. With that, it was time for us to make our exit. There isn't a great deal to do or see in the town of Paihia, so we were happy with our 3 hours or so visit. We drove back to Kerikeri, swinging by a kiwi fruit pack house so Charlotte could enquire about jobs. Unfortunately, she didn't get as far as parking the car, as there was a sign out front on the roadside saying “no job vacancies”. With that, we drove in to town and made a couple of stops at the 2 supermarkets. We've started going to both as its hard to discern which ones cheaper and they both do separate offers. By the time we'd got to the second one, a giant black cloud had edged towards Kerikeri and seemed ready to unleash hell. As we walked through the entrance, the cloud let rip with an almighty clap of thunder. We weren't in the shop for long but when we came out the cloud looked as though it had moved on without much more trouble. It was raining when we got back to the bus though but it didn't last for long. To pass the afternoon, we sat up by the house and got internet things done. We could hear almost constant rumbles of thunder over in the distance but it didn't really seem to enthusiastic about getting any closer. When we left the internet for the bus to get dinner ready, it didn't start to finish but there was no sign of the storm that had been rumbling away to itself. We had one of our left over chillis for dinner, with some sautéed potatoes to go with it.

Tuesday 6th December

As I was up to date with the propping of the Chambourcin, I had a few rows of Chambourcin plucking that John had prepared earlier to be getting on with. It was an easier vine to pluck than the Pinot Gris had been but it still took time, as I had to be more precise about which leaves I took off. I spent 4 and a half hours in the morning doing a single row and had just started the second when I broke for lunch. Just as I was about to head back out at 2, Charlotte trundled up the drive and after a quick catch up, she joined me out amongst the vines. Well she did after she did a bit of work on Aynsley’s vegetable garden. She was asked to compost an area that had just been harvested if all the garlic that had grown there and then she was asked to earth up the potatoes. She came and found me around an hour after we started. With 2 of us on the plucking we got 2 more rows done and dusted in about 2 hours. The only problem was it was incredibly warm and energy sapping despite the relatively easy task. When we got to a convenient stopping point, we headed in to prepare dinner. Beforehand, we cracked open the first Christmas card we'd received, which was from Auntie Wendy, Uncle Glenton and family, so thank you for that! We'd gone for an unusual dinner option, lentil burgers. We were still trying to save money, so we're plumping for the vegan option rather than the meat. We borrowed a blender from John and Aynsley, assuring them that it wouldn't be used in conjunction with a meat dish and got the burgers ready. They looked the part, the proof would be in the eating though. We had the lentil burgers in pittas, with some home made chips and a reduced salad bag we'd picked up. Despite adding onion, garlic, Worcester sauce, salt and pepper to the burgers, they were slightly bland but they were fairly tasty and we'd definitely try them again at some point. Boy did they fill us up though.

Wednesday 7th December

I got out amongst the vines fairly early, as I was desperate to get the Chambourcin plucking done and dusted in the 3-4 days we'd been doing it. I'd wrapped up a row and a half by lunch, so once back, it only took me about an hour. I hunted down John for a job to keep me busy before Charlotte got back, so he asked me to give the swimming pool a scrub, as it had accumulated some algae while the cover had been off it for a while. The scrubbing pretty much involved using a vacuum cleaner to scrub the floor and suck up the algae that was knocked loose. After Charlotte's work on the veggie garden, this seemed like another job that the home owners were slightly too lazy to do themselves. As we were getting paid for it though, we just got on with it and moaned about it when we were out of earshot. Charlotte arrived home while I was on pool duty and took over as she claimed she was an expert on pool cleaning as she had done it at the motel. It all added up to the same amount of work and we clocked off not long after Charlotte got back. We were attending the pub quiz again tonight and were keen for a good result. During the quiz, an old lady came up to me and asked whether or not I was born in New Zealand. She told me that she'd been watching me during the evening and that I had similar mannerisms as her son and that I looked exactly like him. I was annoyed with myself that I hadn't noticed her staring at me and found it a bit weird but stayed genial. She then went on to say that her son had a half brother and she seemed convinced that I was him. I told her I wasn't born in New Zealand and she eventually returned to her table, still seemingly convinced I was her sons half brother. The quiz continued and we maintained a pretty good score through to the end. When it came to the score, we were tied 1st with 2 other teams. Rather than split the prize 3 ways, which would have meant we would have got less money than 3rd from bottom and the random pick, it went to a tie breaker. The question was at what age did director John Hughes die. The winner was who got the closest. One team went for 72, one went for 68 and we plumped for 58. The answer was 59 and we were declared the winners, hooray! We won a $50 tab for our next visit to the bar. It did emerge that we wouldn't be attending the following week though, so we'd be using it in 2 weeks time. We returned home victorious.

Thursday 8th December

We awoke to some drama though. There was a power cut, that hasn't only affected the bus but the main house too. We went along just assuming it was a local thing and that it would return pretty soon. We were slightly concerned about some frozen meat we had in the restaurant freezer but just had to roll with it. When Charlotte got to work, she found out that it wasn't only the local area that was affected. The power was out from the town of Kaikohe, which was about a 10 minute drive from where we were in Kerikeri, all the way up to the tip of the North Island at Cape Reinga. Around 30,000 homes were without power and they didn't reckon they'd get it back for a while. We both got on with work, Charlotte at the motel and myself on the vineyard. It had been a miserable night weather wise and the day hadn't turned out much better but as I'd had a day off earlier in the week, I needed the hours to reach the 40 hour target for the week. Ironically, John had a job that involved laying irrigation pipes on such a rainy day. My first task was to unravel the first 50 metre roll of pipe and place it from where it would join the main water pipe to where it ran out along one of the vine rows. In my head, it seemed simple but I managed to make an absolute pigs ear of unraveling the piping. I should have been more methodical with it but I just reckoned I could pull it and it would be fine. I spent the first half hour or so pulling the knots out but eventually got it to where I needed to. To keep it in place, I stuck canes in next to the vine posts and managed to get it pretty straight. I approached the next roll of piping differently. I kept hold of the roll and walked backwards with it and it unraveled smoothly all the way to the end of the row. Again, I went along and staked the pipe next to the pillars and secured the join in the middle. Unfortunately, the next job involved drilling a hole in the main water pipe and securing my pipe to that. With no power, the drill was incapacitated, so we had to leave that job for now and I started elsewhere, plucking shoots of small vines that they were trying to turn into trunks. At almost 2, I was soaking wet and needed some lunch, so headed to the bus for some respite from the weather. WOur second Christmas card was waiting for me when I got there, this one being from Helen, Toby and family, so thank you! The power still wasn't back when I got in but when Charlotte arrived home around 3, she informed me it had been returned just as she left work. On my break, I'd read that they'd found the fault on some remote pylons and that they had found bullet casings at the base of the pylons. Evidently, some local moron had fancied a bit of target practice using the glass insulators on the pylons. Despite the power being back, we left the irrigation for the day and Charlotte and I just did a few hours of shoot plucking before calling it a day. We'd been planning an easy dinner as the power had been out but since it was back, we went for some mash, veg and spaghetti. Having not had mashed potato in ages, we thoroughly enjoyed it. Despite the miserable weather it turned out to be an incredibly muggy night and was a real struggle to get a good nights sleep.

Friday 9th December

We were both up bright and early to get on with work. With Charlotte off to the motel, I got on with the shoot plucking that we'd started the day before. It had been the plan to only do it for an hour or so but by the time I'd got one row finished in just over an hour, I thought I might as well get the job done and dusted before lunch. It was a pretty miserable day again and having to wade through waist high weeds soaked me to the bone. It was also a bit of a nuisance having to stick my hand in the green slip without knowing what was tucked in there waiting to pounce. I was sure to end up with a wasp sting or two. It took me 4 hours overall, so it was a perfect time to stop for lunch. Afterwards, I continued on with the irrigation pipe that John had managed to connect to the main water supply. With it full with water, it was now my job to poke holes in it next to every vine along the row and then squeeze a dripped into the tiny gap, so that water didn't spray out and give the vines too much water. It seemed at first like it would be a fun job but I quickly realised that it was awful. The implement that I was given to pierce the pipe was just 2 bits of wood nailed together, with a nail sticking out of it. Hardly cutting edge technology. To make matters worse, the hole that the nail made was hardly big enough to squeeze the dripped in to. After the 8 or so, where pretty much every one involved a tantrum, I started to improvise. In the bucket that was holding the hole maker and the dripper,  was a pair of scissors, so I used the nail to make an initial hole and then used the point of the scissors to make the hole bigger, which meant the dripper slipped in like a dream, most of the time. About a third of the way along the row, Charlotte arrived home, so I took a bit of a break to catch up with her before heading back out. When I restarted the hole poking, I quickly got fed up with doing it twice, so I started to just use the scissors. This meant I flew along the rest of the row and got it finished in no time. Rather than call it a day, I got started straight away on the next job, which was propping up a lone row of Chambourcin vines, which would then be plucked. While I was doing that, Charlotte was prepping dinner, which was going to be, after the success of the burgers, lentil balls. She was prepping it because she was working at the restaurant that evening and we wanted to get ahead for when she got back. Just as she was about to head in to start though, she received a text telling her she wasn't needed until 18:45. To keep busy, she came out and helped me with my propping for 45 minutes before she was due to start. This meant that we got ¾ of the aisle propped before she left, so it was a huge help. With Charlotte gone, I propped the rest and even got started on the plucking before I called it a day. With such a late finish, I didn't have long to wait before Charlotte arrived home, although it was still 10pm. She arrived with a pot of leftovers, which we scoffed while our dinner was in the oven. Unfortunately, the lentil balls didn't turn out as nice as our burgers had done. It probably didn't help that we were pretty full from what Charlotte had brought back from the restaurant and that we were eating at nearly 11 o'clock at night. They were slightly dry and a different recipe Charlotte had used had told her to put lemon zest in them and it gave them a bit of a funny taste. We had loads leftover too and we were unsure what we were going to do with them. We went to bed on chockablock stomachs, feeling slightly uncomfortable.

Saturday 10th December

Despite the late and uncomfortable night we were up bright and early. Charlotte made the most of it and got into work nice and sharp but I was put by the miserable weather. I passed some time listening to some football on the radio before heading out for a couple of hours at 11. I ploughed through the rain and took lunch pretty wet. Charlotte arrived back early, so we decided to go for the remaining lentil balls with a few pittas that we had leftover, just to get them out of the fridge. We opened our third Christmas card during lunch, from Mum and Dad Hosie. We spent a few hours doing a bit of planning before Charlotte went to the restaurant for another shift. I ventured back out amongst the vines to tick my hours over the 40 mark for the week. Thankfully, Charlotte wasn't as late back as she had been the night before but she didn't come baring any gifts, so we just had to make do with our stir fry.

Sunday 11th December

For me, Sunday is the start of a new week, so I always like to get off to a good start hours wise for the week. With Charlotte at the motel, I headed out for 9. The weather was still pretty average and the vines I'd propped the days before had been knocked down by the strong winds we'd been having. I did my best to prop them back up as I plucked but they weren't having it. I had managed to get one side of a row of Chambourcin plucked before lunch and afterwards, I waited for Charlotte to get home. On top of the 4 hours I'd done in the morning, we each did 2 in the afternoon, when we finished the plucking of the Chambourcin, reapplied some filters to some young vines and then restarted the plucking on the Pinot Gris, which was the variety we started in when we first arrived. The Pinot Gris vines had gone ballistic since we'd plucked them originally and we could hardly tell they had ever been done. This time round we could be a bit more aggressive with which leaves we removed, so it was a bit easier. With 8 hours for the week already, we were pretty happy, so called it a day and spent some of the evening on planning. We rustled up a pasta bake for dinner which,made spite being pasta, was a nice difference from the usual dinners.

Monday 12th December

It was the same old routine, which was making our time on the vineyard absolutely fly by. We'd just ticked over into week number 5 and were hurtling towards Christmas at an alarming speed. With John having told us that we could do more than the usual 40 hours, we decided that we would aim for 8 hours a day and a total of 56 hours for the weeks. We'd started off well the day before, we'd just have to keep it up. Charlotte wasn't getting long hours at the motel at the moment, so her coming back around lunch time meant we could get the hours done plucking the vines. As we were back on the Pinot Gris, we could get our heads down and pluck away. With the 8 hours for the day done, we knocked off and headed for the bus. I needed to get in contact with Amazon regarding a faulty Kindle and ended up having to buy a new one after being offered a pitiful 10% discount. Charlotte popped round to pay me a visit and while she was there she got asked to work at the restaurant that night. She swiftly changed out of her pyjamas and headed in. As this was becoming habit, she returned with no food offerings, so we quickly cooked up some spaghetti, veg and sauce for dinner.

Tuesday 13th December

After getting 4 hours under my belt in the morning, Charlotte arrived home rather early at about 1 o'clock. As we'd been getting short on landing time recently, we decided to get out to do some plucking and ended up doing 3 hours each, which put us at 10 hours for the day. Again, Charlotte received a text requesting she work at the restaurant and, after turning them down to work on the Wednesday evening, she didn't want to get in the habit of turning them down, so agreed to work. We squeezed in a little bit of browsing before Charlotte left for work but didn't really gain any ground. Charlotte did return with some goodies for once, with a couple of slices of pecan tart that we could have for pudding after our slightly interesting baked beans, carrot and potato wedges (we are thinking of publishing a backpacking recipe book on our return!). The dinner was pretty good but the pecan tart was delicious and not just because it was free. When Charlotte was at work, the owner, Chris, who is also one of the chefs told her that every year they offer the residents of the bus a free meal and free drinks, so one evening when they are quiet, probably in January, we are welcome to take them up on the offer. She thanked him and we would head in for that in a few weeks time.

Wednesday 14th December

As we were slightly ahead on hours for the week, I spent a few hours in the morning doing a bit of research catch up, as I could conveniently combine it with listening to some football commentary on the radio. By the time 11 o'clock came around though, I was out amongst the Pinot Gris, plucking off their leaves. Charlotte finished work mid afternoon as usual and I stopped around 5 to head in and get ready for the pub quiz. It only turned out to be the 3 of us attending, as Hamish was working at the restaurant and Carol, whose name we'd conveniently found out, just wasn't going for whatever reason. John, Charlotte and myself thought we'd go anyway, just for fun. As we were approaching Christmas the rounds were starting to feature Christmas questions, with a couple completely devoted to the festive period. The first was guess the next line of the Christmas carols, only half of them were pop/rock songs. I was pleased with getting 11 missing words from “Do They Know It's Christmas?” but overall we didn't really do well. In fact, without two members, we were pretty poor for the whole quiz and had a couple of rounds that they would have found easy. They would be returning the following week though, so we were confident of regaining our crown.

Thursday 15th December

This was a pretty quiet day all told. After I did a bit more browsing in the morning, I got a few hours under my belt before I was joined by Charlotte when she got home from work at the motel. Our job was to do another lot of irrigation on some small vines. John had already laid the pipe, so we just had to nip along poking the holes and filling them with the drippers. As there was 2 of us, it only took us about 40 minutes and then we went back along the line placing the white cardboard squares around the vines. This put us at 36 and a half hours for the week, so we knocked off and, after dinner of wraps with veg and rice, we headed round to  the house to use their wifi for bit.

Friday 16th December

Despite being forecast to be a lovely day with wall to wall blue skies, it was pretty shabby the whole morning. The wind was gusting and the clouds threatened rain, although it never materialised. After 4 hours work before lunch, I spent a few hours before Charlotte got home doing a bit of planning for the next leg of our trip. Over the previous few days, Charlotte had been painting the decking outside the rooms at the motel. She'd been asked to get all 26 rooms done before Christmas and also get 6 of them double coated. This was causing her to do long days, not that we had a problem with it, although the manager did, as she was trying to send Charlotte home early. Despite the weather having brightened up, I decided to leave the plucking, as we'd reached the magical 40 hours (I know we'd aimed for 56, but that was an extremely optimistic target) and made use of the wifi once again. We'd reached a brick wall with our planning and were growing more and more frustrated at not being able to decide what to do (I'm not sure how much I want to say, as I'd like to keep a secret and it all be readable on the blog when we do it all). With 2 hours before Charlotte was due at the restaurant, we were sure we'd get a few things ironed out but probably ended up with more questions than we went with. We agreed it would be sorted out by Sunday evening though. In keeping with tradition, Charlotte came back empty handed, so we rustled up a delicious (it was, I'm not just saying that) lentil bolognese for dinner.

Saturday 17th December

I'd wrapped up the first 3 aisles of Pinot Gris plucking the previous day, so I moved on to something slightly different for the time being. It was still plucking but on the Chambourcin vines rather than the Pinot Gris. I spent a few hours plucking in the morning and was surprised to be joined by Charlotte so early in the day, as she arrived home at about half past 11. After a quick tea break, we got in another hour before breaking for lunch. Afterwards, we finished off the row we were plucking and moved to yet another job that John had asked us to do. It was still plucking, so don't get excited! We got out first taste of plucking the Shiraz vines. As ever, it was slightly different from plucking Pinot Gris, which was slightly different from plucking Chambourcin. We had to expose the bunches and remove the lower leaves, as the bunches are heavy and hang low but we had to leave as many leaves on top as we could. After we'd done 2 hours each, we called it a day, having reached just over 48 hours for the week and headed off to continue our fruitless research. After 3 stressful hours of banging ours heads against a wall, we did end up with some accommodation booked and a clear idea of what we wanted to do, so we finished pretty happy and pretty hungry. We had a pretty dinner of fish bites, carrots, corn on the cob and rice. I say simple, it was huge but working out in the sun all day certainly builds up an appetite.

James and Charlotte