So what have i learned this week? 'Salu' is Japanese for 'monkey' but 'Chin Chin' is Japanese for 'willy'. You can't get child's urine out of carpets with Fabreeze and a flannel. Don't forget to keep your mouth closed when you're scrubbing toilets in a hurry. Captain BirdsEye lives in Paihia.

Tomo has been teaching me Japanese and telling me about his life in Japan. Tokyo he doesn't like because it's polluted and crowded. Arson is a real problem in his city - his mum and dad are both police people. Whenever you use the motorway you have to pay a fee. Everyone has at least two cars and his Great Grandmother is still driving hers at 90 odd! Smoking is popular and widespread because it's so cheap - a quid a packet. The Government doesn't provide any help to people who want to give up. Divorce is rare and there is still stigma attached to unmarried mothers. All very interesting.

Jake and Nikki had a baby girl at around 11pm on Monday 25th October and named her Pippiana. Nikki was in labour for nearly 24 hours but everything was fine and "Pip" is beautiful. Me and Liz cooked a Banana cake (using bananas from the garden!) to celebrate them coming home and the proud parents are positively glowing - still at the stage of oohing and aahing enthusiastically over her feats of pooing prowess. Photos to follow (of Pip, not of poo).

Steph asked if i could fill in for her with some babysitting last week for her friend. i was duly picked up by the glamorous Posh Spice-a-like Adele and introduced to Trinity, 3 and Boston, 2. Trinity's first words to me were "i love your toenails!". So mum went off to do horsey things at a local stable and left me with the cutesome twosome with vague instructions about some pigs and a trampoline. "The kids'll tell ya what to do" were her parting words.

So somehow clutching a tupperware box of rotting kitchen waste and two sticky mitts, i was led to the neighbouring farm, amid cries of "COME PIG! COME PIG!". i wasn't sure pigs would be able to understand toddler talk but sure enough through the trees hurtled 6 or 7 lumbing porcine silhouettes with some babies in tow. i wasn't sure how to get the rotting matter from the tupperware to the animals for they were now clammering with drool at the fence, leaving me nowhere to chuck it. "What do i do?" i asked, then realising that a 30 year old asking a 3 year how to feed pigs was somewhat shameful and if i couldn't cope with this then there was no hope for me. But, on the coping front, worse was to come.

So i opted to simply empty the container over their heads (the pigs, not the children) and let them sort it out. They were covered in umska anyway so i didn't think it mattered. A lot of fighting and squealing ensued but it really was great fun to watch these mucky creatures doing what they do best. "Here comes the Daddy!" yelled Trinity and a truly immense beast appeared at the fence. He stood quite still and, i swear, eyeballed me in the most frightening unwavering fashion, obviously a little irked that he had missed out on the goodies we had brought. i took a photo.

So on to the trampoline. This was in the next neighbour's garden, set in the middle of a huge perfectly manicured lawn. Being British, i was somewhat reticent about wandering into someone's very peaceful garden without permission and boinging two rather vocal toddlers on their equipment. However, the children seemed to know what they were doing and ran ahead, throwing wellies and socks behind them as they went. Lots of bouncing and taking of photos.

Then a game of tig or catch or whatever it's called and i finally started to relax and enjoy myself, thinking "this is the life! a beautiful sunny day in a beautiful New Zealand garden, playing and laughing with two cuties who seem to like me and seem to be enjoying themselves". Then WHACK! Boston has taken off his Dad's fishing hat that he apparently always insists on wearing and with unnerving force hit me in the face with it. Not sure how to reprimand a child without upsetting them or sounding unconvincing, i simply told him that no, that was very naughty and that you should be nice and not hit people. "f***!" came the reply, from amid the cherubic curls. This was followed by peals of satanic laughter from both of them.

Before this, i had assumed Boston was still learning to talk having not heard him say more than "come pig" and my name "Doolee". So the bubble of my sunny New Zealand childrearing idyll burst and i wanted to abandon the little b******s and go home. But deciding that it would be better to simply get them back to the house for a couple of hours of Disney while i had a fag and a coffee in the garden was much more sensible and would prove that i couldn't be beaten by them! However, Boston, now flush with his victory in the swearing incident decided that he didn't want to go home and lay face down on the gravelly path, undulating his body in an uncanny slug impression. i figured we could wait for him to crawl the 100 yards home like this but thought simple reverse psychology (i.e. cruelty) would be more time-efficient. "Bye then Boston! We're off back for juice and movies! See ya!" Trinity now joining in with my ruse. That soon had him on his feet and running after us. Ha!

So, we got back and while they repaired themselves to the garden to continue their Devil play, i familiarised myself with the house. Having taken but a few moments to do this, i was obviously dismayed to discover the havoc being reeked in the garden. Trinity had scaled and stood atop a very high, very wobbly stack of discarded chairs and was balancing on one foot trying to put on her plastic "dancing shoes". i didn't think a 3 year old should really be wearing two inch heels on the ground, never mind seven foot off it, so i took her down only to turn around and find Boston face down in the totally water-logged sand pit.

Fortunately it was tipped up slightly and so his face was not submerged. The rest of him however was entirely in the rainwater/sand mixture and i don't think he'd have been more soaked if i'd thrown him in the ocean. He was having a lovely time though and had resumed the slug performance, squelching his little hands up and down in the wet sand, gurgling and undulating. Suggesting tentatively that we go get cleaned up and fully expecting a serious battle, i thanked the Lord Himself when this was met with no resistance whatsoever. i think Boston thought to himself that wellies, dungarees and nappy, all full of cold sand and water weren't that much fun after all.

So i tried my best to clean him up but seemed to succeed more in covering the bathroom in sand and water. We managed to find some dry clothes between us and then, juice in hands, we settled under duvets in the lounge to watch some dvds. In between bouts of fighting and climbing and drooling green jelly-sweet slav on my cargo pants and spilling juice and rubbing biscuits into the settee and getting fingerprints on the lens of my digital camera and not telling me they need the loo but pissing on the carpet instead and taking all their clothes off and putting another set on and bringing the cat food in their hands to show me and demanding more juice and bringing all their toys from the bedroom into the kitchen, they were mesmerised by the magic of Disney for, ooh, minutes at a time.

The minutes ticked by and i had no idea when mum would be home or what was going on. Dad 'Captain Bucko' stopped by to deposit some Snapper he had caught, grabbed a beer from the fridge and with a "Go for your life!" over his shoulder, went off again. The fish were huge and red and goggle-eyed on the kitchen sink and i then realised Boston only really learns words that are of particular use to him. Yelps of "SNAPPER! SNAPPER! SNAPPER!" lasted some minutes. The hellishness of it all was only heaped on when the recumbent fish started to gasp and flail and vibrate violently inside the see-through plastic bag. Get me home!!!

Four hours since the trauma began, Adele came back and took me home. "You free any more this week? I might need you a few more afternoons if you're available?". "Sure, i'd love to" i lied, taking the decidedly well-earnt 30 bucks from her. i was sure she heard my teeth grinding, they were so gritted!

The halloween party advertised at a local pub promised to be fantastic - cheap beer if you're in costume, live music, a courtesy ride there and back - rockin'! So we spent the week talking about what we were going wear, made a special trip 30km away to get special spooky make-up and even spent an afternoon making a wand for fairy Becky and a bin liner cape for vampire Simon.

The big night came and we got togged up as evidenced in the photo album section. The bus came for us and set the scarey mood by driving at break neck speed up to the pub through the dark bush. It truly was like the scene in American Werewolf in London as we made our entrance. I swear the band stopped playing and everyone (some rednecks, two drunk old birds and a Captain Birdseye look-a-like) turned to stare. A slow clap and a wolf whistle or two accompanied us to the bar, where we discovered the beer is always cheap and we needn't have got dressed up after all.

The bar woman said, "Jeez, it's great to see you fellas - we struggle to get backpackers out here". No s*** we thought! Never mind - we were in the mood for a good time and made the most of it. A few margaritas and two games of air hockey later, we returned to town and had a right stonker of a night.

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