Auckland in Pictures

I just got back from Auckland. Gosh it's far! Thank goodness for work's business class policy. Love Cathay Pacific business class. Where else do you get a choccie before you roll over onto-your-stomach to go to sleep?

Anyway, it was "spring" in Auckland, which meant the first thing I had to do when I arrived was buy an enormous scarf, which sort of doubled as a blanket. I also had to buy stockings, which in the mall I found myself in, were only available in XXL and called "busy legs". I could write an entire post on buying stockings in new cities. The amount of times I've assumed I could go with bare legs and then found the city to be having "unusually cold weather" is unbelievable. And somehow I never find myself in front of a Wolford or M&S..but always some backwater shop where the nickers only come in nude colours and the stockings give me flashbacks of my grandmother putting-on-her-legs for work.

Busy Legs - couldn't ladder even if you tried. Spent a day with them pulled up to my armpits. Note to self: always keeps stockings in suitcase in case weather gets nasty

Weather aside, Auckland was wonderful. It was rugby week as well (three days before the All Blacks nearly lost to France actually) so there was plenty to do....

Drink my favorite drink on earth ever

Eat fresh fish any way you care to think of. Wash it down with a loaf of piping hot bread and a bottle of Pinot from Central Otago

Drool over super yachts and wonder how many ponzi schemes you'll need to get one

Go to Taste gourmet food show and eat all the free samples. Bring some back for the French contingent to pull their nose up at

Drink some more and decorate your own wine bottle - personalisation at its drunkest

Picking a side

So we watched the rugby today. And we won. We being France. Tomorrow I hope we win again. We being South Africa. Pity Spain isn't playing.

Quintessentially annoying

As I sat on the plane to Tokyo, I was feeling rather chuffed at having pulled my nose up at the thought of reading Vogue and Marie Claire and having decided to exercise my braincells with the FT Weekend. But now I find I'm regretting that decision.

If I read one more article on the wonders of Quintessentially concierge services for the uber rich and uber unimaginative, I just might throw up. Somewhere in the business section was a whole piece on this magnificant business that stores and transports your clothes around the world depending on where you are. They'll also store and organise your Hermes bag collection in chronological order. I mean, seriously, how old do you have to be to have enough Hermes bags and, over enough time, that they need to be chronologised?

So now, as I slap the paper down, exasperated at yet another article where the journalist is "quite exhausted" from so many gallery openings and has "just had to" slip into a spa for four days, (as she's on the "brink of burnout" from "high octane socialising") to get her chakras aligned before continuing, I'm wondering if I should hassle the air hostess for a People magazine.

I must say, that in the midst of all this waffle, I found the interview with the prize-winning novelist, Magnus Mills to be rather refreshing.

FT Question: When do you feel most free?

Magnus Mills: When I'm walking home from the swimming pool

That's better.