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Well, what do you know! It has been over a year since I last reached out through the bit stream and sent you all an update of “Life, a la Vaughan and Mel”. Actually looking back it’s probably more like two years but don’t time fly when you’re having fun? Well as you can imagine a lot can happen in a year or two, and when you’re us, you can take the normal amount of events, current affairs and excitements and multiply them by 53 and that is pretty much a fair indication of how busy we have been. So for those of you who have better things to be doing rather than reading 12 acres of updates from Vaughan, here is a brief run down. Travel, home, start company, build house, engage, another engagement, baby, marriage, pregnant, another wedding, another engagement, and a few Christmases and other bits. There that should cover you guys off. Now for those wondering what the hell am I talking about; let me begin 2 years ago after Mel and I decided we had satisfied our travel hunger (for the time being) and decided to sneak back into the country to surprise our families silly before Christmas.

Well we were in India a month after September 11th and after hanging out with civilian guys with machine guns and feeling generally uneasy about travel at the time, we came home. I can still remember landing at Auckland Airport, holding Mel’s hand and leaning to look out the window as we touched down with a tear in my eye. I knew I was home when as I watched a Maori guy in shorts, a singlet and gumboots with a weed whacker trimming back the grass off to one side of the runway. God it was good to be home. Everything felt so small after living abroad in big cities. The houses seemed so insubstantial compared to all the brick and concrete towers we were used to. And so greeeeeen! Growing up in NZ you are constantly told how green and beautiful the country is by visiting tourists, and they just seem to go on and on about it. But coming home you see the land with new eyes and boy were they right. This sub-tropical paradise we live in is blessed with green nature everywhere. Anyway that was one of my many lasting memories of my travels. I will never forget that millisecond where the planes wheels touched the tarmac and the taxi ride home looking out at the strangely familiar surroundings. It is funny the things you remember isn’t it?

Anyway I’m gonna have to pick the pace up here aren’t I? We settled back into life, thanks to Jenny and Bob for putting up with us. We borrowed a campervan and did a tour of NZ and got as far as Masterton before we blew a head gasket and all the cash we had getting it fixed. So that ended that trip, oh and I can’t forget the flat tire we got coming home on the Desert Road in the middle of the night, or the strange problem the van developed when it came to turning left. We made it back to Auckland and we decided to settle down and moved out to the whops, Brookby and became one with the cows. I was okay with the cows, but Mel had a problem. She thought they were all out to get her. We lived in a cosy cottage on a working cattle farm. It was a nice change to all the places we have been living in before, and a direct contrast to the bricks of London. I had relaxing days watching the world go slowly nowhere while Mel would go for walks and get chased by cows. We grew tired of the country lifestyle and for some strange reason we decided one day we would buy a house. In the country. Well that changed to buy a house, not in the country but closer to some action, in the bush. Then that changed to the north shore, then we though, bugger this lets just build a house. So we did. On the north shore. Now I will leave this momentous decision for a bit because deciding to build a house and getting a house built are two very different things. Let’s just say at this point we started the ball rolling and borrowed some money and bought some dirt and talked to a builder. I will come back to this story some 12 months later in the piece when it is actually being built. So we have decided to build and I have also decided to set up my own company doing “stuff with computers”, an apt description of what I do from Anthony, one of the guys who works with me now. Mel has decided to go back to work in HR and worked for South Auckland Health for a while before leaving screaming and mentally damaged for a more normal routine as the HR manager at White Cross. Business has worked out pretty good and I moved from the spare bedroom to a flash office in the city with my business partner Mike. Now you may remember Mike from an earlier email many moons ago when I was in Thailand. Mike, whom I studied with at AUT, was the guy I bumped into in the middle of freaking nowhere on an island in Thailand. Well we decided to join forces and we merged out two businesses into Blueday Ltd. Funny huh?

So about now is when the house is started to be built. And about now is when Mel decides she has sussed me out enough to ask me to marry her. We had had the most wonderful night together at a tux and gown ball in town and we extremely hung over when Mel rolled over in bed and said “I had a great night last night and I don’t think life could be better. So what do you recon, will you marry me?” and to that I answered “uhhhgh, what ever, just stop yelling” and so it was. We were engaged and threw a big party to let everyone know. It was a dress up as “Famous lovers” and it was a blast. Everyone came dressed up. We had Aphrodite, Romeo and Juliet, Fred and Wilma, the pope and a nun, Batman and cat woman, Elvis and Pricilla. You name it, they were there. Oh and we were Austin Powers and Melicity Shagwell. Oh what fun it was!

Now where am I, lets check my list… Oh yes so we have one of the engagements out of the way. Also engaged were Mel’s sister, Tracey, and my brother Shawn. Oh not to forget, and Chanel and Rob who also got engaged. Then there is the baby. Oh no not us. Mel’s sister Charlene and her partner Scott. They had a bouncing baby Nathan who is just the star of the show when ever he turns up. Umm what else. Oh then our house got finished after much stress and carry on 6 months late. So lets pick up from when we moved into our new house. That is a pretty cool feeling. Moving into your own brand new house that you have designed and watched get built (ever so slowly). Now Mel and I have realised we have no furniture and a big empty house. We are slowly rectifying that point. But it was so nice to spend a whole week in our house before we got married. Yep, that’s all we got in it before the big day as upon us but ohh was that week good. After juggling so many things up in the air for so long it was nice to have one of the things taken away. As you can imagine planning a wedding, running a business and building a house all at the same time can be stressful and in a week those stresses were reduced back to one. Our wedding day was the best day of my life.

20 September. The whole day felt magic. I had stayed in our house the night before by myself, the last night I would spend by myself as a single man. I awoke to the most peaceful day. A fog was over the trees outside and I leisurely got up, had a cup of tea and a shower and prepared myself for the day ahead. You know there is a lot of preparation that goes into a wedding (no really?) and the day it arrived I felt this total calm. Mel had organised the whole shebang and the day was here. No more organising, just doing. After breakfast I went over to my mothers and got ready with my best men, Shawn and Jonathan who had flown in from London specially. You know, I am finding it hard to describe what the day was like for me and how I felt. I just sort of glided in a calm. Well up until I was waiting at the alter when my calm turned into “shit what if she doesn’t turn up”, but it was a nice “shit what if she doesn’t turn up”. I can’t tell you what it was like to see Mel come down the isle. I can’t it is just impossible. I can’t tell you what it was like to be standing at the altar with her saying our vows. I just existed, and it was good. I was happy, pure and simple. That was my defining moment of happiness that I will always refer back to for reference. Nothing could have gone wrong. We kissed and before I knew it we were off in the back of Herber (an old Essex) with a bottle of champagne honking at all the people on the streets in Howick and Bucklands Beach that day. Everyone we passed looked on at us as we passed waving and smiling at us, sharing in the magic of the day. Total strangers stopped and cheered as we passed, as if they could feel the happiness we felt as we held hands and laughed the laughs you used to laugh as kids. Uncontrollable laughs of pure happiness and joy. Well we were having so much fun Mel needed to pee, so a quick stop at Burger King and a few strange looks, we were off again to party the night away with all our good friends and family.

The reception was a blast. We solved the time old problem of which tables should go to the buffet in what order by playing games to decide the winning tables. We made people draw pictures, answer Mel and Vaughan trivia, and even sing for their supper. That was my favourite game of the lot. We were down to the last three tables and they all had to sing for their supper. First up was Tess, singing Italian to us so beautifully but next was my cousin Hayden, who dedicated a song to me and my best man Mark and sang a song I hadn’t heard for a very long time. It was a song Mark and I had taught Hayden some 12 years ago when we were all in Tauranga touring NZ with long hair and no money in the back of a panel van. We had decided we needed some cash and we were going to busk the next day in town. So we sat up all night teaching Hayden this song. Unfortunately we stayed up too late and spent the most of the next day asleep. But 12 years later Hayden had remembered that song and finally sang it to us. That was a moment that only we understood and could share together. But, the next table took the prize, with Hayden’s (a different Hayden) rendition of Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler. Well everyone clapped along and sang, even after Hayden got a verse wrong and paid the price by having a drink thrown over him by Alan, his dad. That table won on popular appeal, but I still think my cousin Hayden was the winner.

We all ate and danced and Mel and I escaped off after a long day full of the best memories of my life. Oh I can’t forget to share the memory of my mum having such a great time she gave everyone bear hugs and head locks. I am so glad you had a blast mum, even if you can’t remember it. Mel and I retired back to our hotel and enjoyed the last event for the day. After everything going to plan we had one surprise left that night that finished the day, just so. We were sitting back in out hotel reflecting on the day and as if on cue the heavens opened and the skies lit up. Nature was putting on a show for us with thunderous booms and crashes. We snuggled up and went to sleep, for the first time as husband and wife.

Wait I haven’t finished yet. We took off to the south island for our honeymoon which is a book in itself to tell you about. Let’s just say we had a really really good honeymoon and covered the whole of the South Island in a camper van and made it all the way this time. The highlights were a night in a storm on the Lewis pass, Snow in Milford, the whole of the West Coast and being able to stop for a cup of tea whenever and wherever you want. Soon after coming back from our 3 week trip we learnt that Mel + Vaughan = 3. Mel is due to have a bouncing baby something in June. So we have been pretty busy since I last wrote. I won’t go into the glee of being a father to be. Some of you will know this feeling yourselves. Mel is well and we are more settled now. We only have one adventure planned now and that’s parenthood. So that is the abridged version of what we have been up to in the last two years. Not much I know, but I will try harder for the next instalment.

V.