We spent out last, happy days in New Zealand staying with my old university housemate Sarah and her family.

Sarah and Nathan moved to New Zealand three years ago with their children James (7) and Niamh (5). While I was very sad to lose her, I have to admit it was a pretty good decision by them because New Zealand is awesome.

Nathan is second-in-command chef at a super-posh hotel called the Langham. It means he's on good money for a chefs and brings home some incredible food (best daal ever). The downside is that, at the moment, he leaves the house at 5am and gets back at around 10pm! We saw him briefly for some beers and Si got to ask a professional all the little niggling cooking-related questions he had. It's resulted in him wanting a suis vide machine.

Aside for a brief jaunt into Auckland to buy trinkets and presents, we spent most of our time with Sarah and the kids. Si and I haven't had much contact with children so it was interesting to learn all about how to perform the perfect sit-fall, the rules of double tag and the huge entertainment potential of drawing lines in the sand on beaches (three games and counting). James and Niamh are awesome.

Our main reason for going was for me to catch up with Sarah. It was unbelievably lovely to see her again - it's true that your best friends don't change with time. In between the homework and playing with the kids we managed to squeeze in cooking up a mean Gobi 65 and setting the world fully to rights. If you don't know what Gobi 65 is then it's worth looking up - it's the tastiest way to eat cauliflower ever.

On Saturday morning we said a fond farewell to Sarah, James, Niamh and New Zealand and then flew to Australia.