On Tour..................

Generally what happens on tour stays on tour and the trip to Wellington will be no different apart from these few instances!!!

Firstly by means fair or foul two Christchurch Golf Club members managed to believe they had avoided the excess Air New Zealand baggage charges and had happily moved through security to the departure lounge meanwhile Peter Guthrey (the travel agent) was standing by the self check in counter trying ascertain what had happened to his stickers. With time running out and and pressure being applied by the counter staff an SOS was sent through with the requirement that Steve Ellis and Peter Law return to the check in counter for further examination of their luggage tickets.

For some reason the self check in kiosk seemed to take a dislike to Brian Ronan, after some time delay and intervention of a service assistant it was with great relief that he was one of the last passengers onto the plane! Having completed the self check in system, self delivered my golf clubs to the over sized baggage, self placed everything in trays for security screening and then self scanned my boarding pass I fully expected to be asked to self fly the plane but it appears that even Air New Zealand draws the line somewhere!!

Secondly questions should be asked as to the sleeping arrangements of one Ben Frampton after the dinner on the Saturday such inquiries should be addressed to either Steve Ellis or John Dickson. Particular emphasis should be placed on phone calls, rectification steps taken, the exact sleeping position that Steve was required to occupy, the amount of sleep attained and the reasons therefore, and the eventual resolution and time thereof.

On a golfing note, if you have a hour or two to spare, ask either Peter Guthery or Mr. JD to explain how they defeated the Andrews and Ronan combination on the Friday in the practice round! Rest assured the touring party heard about it for the whole weekend and can probably replay the round shot by shot!!

General accommodation was at Totara Lodge, Trentham accordingly there was no scope for ascertaining the standard of local coffee because there simply wasn't any. Complete disaster was avoided by the fact there was a fully fledged coffee machine at Royal Wellington which more than sufficed to hold the addiction withdrawal at bay!

Apart from this my lips are sealed!!! (Needless to say there were frequent requirements for matters to be entered in the Blog and mostly they have been ignored - on anything else I deny all knowledge).