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One boy put his fist through our garage wall ( no , not brick , and easy enough to fix ) : interestingly , he is an accomplished violin player who was going through serious depression following the theft of his rare , exquisite , and extremely expensive violin . The following day he played in a band for the ( successful ! We visited Steve Matheson and Phil McCrea , old co-conspirators from Essex university all those years ago , who had n't seen Anna since she was a toddler ! No one had any idea whether NZ would be thrashed-though most predicted that , whichever way it went , the outcome would not be close . During his visit Ian sorted out and rationalized the financial arrangements - - surprisingly complex - - and managed to explain it all to Mum ( who until recently had never written a cheque ) . She has found this year that she gets on better with her peers in the course at Polytechnic than she did with those at school . ( They did some cooking too . Over the years our many visitors have toured New Zealand and returned with wondrous tales : on this trip we checked some of them out ourselves . We decide it 's all because Alex 's hat got caught around Prada 's keel . No-one is getting any younger these days , and it just brings it home whenever you see your parents . We're unsure what the future holds : he 'll probably always live in some kind of sheltered accommodation , and it 's not clear whether he 'll be able to hold down a regular job . Six and a half weeks away , seven separate visits to London airports , fourteen flights , plus trips by train , hired car , long-distance bus - - has to be some kind of a ghastly record . It seems the birds welcome you - - they come to greet you as you walk past - - but the truth is more prosaic : your passage stirs up insects and all you're doing is serving lunch . We were duly awed by the cleaned-up Sistine Chapel - - though she preferred the smoky version she saw in 1968 because of its greater air of mystery . Then we threaded our way through the Broken Islands - - incredibly picturesque hunks of rocky islets that lie scattered along the coast of Great Barrier like seeds broadcast by a giant . It 's like a washing machine out there , steep 6-foot chop generated by wash , coming from any direction . And finally , Auckland and home , where Nikki had done an excellent job of looking after our house and clearing up the remnants of any teenage parties that might possibly have been held here . Claire , another weird out-of-time experience since he used to race regularly with ( also very similar ) Pippa all those years ago . - - we were flying over the waves under small jib alone , Brian and Ian pretending , to reassure the uncertain crew , that this was all pretty normal . No problem sailing alone round the Pacific , he explained : he had US Navy charts that showed where and when the wind would be under 35 knots 99 % of the time , and he stuck to those . We rounded a navigation buoy just ahead of a Kiwi boat and hardened up into the wind , only to find that it was rounding the same buoy ( though not racing ) . For those of you who spent the year outside the solar system , this is where the Goliaths of the sailing world-the US , with four or five separate boats , Australia , France , Italy , Japan , Spain , Switzerland-jousted furiously for the honour of smashing little David , aka New Zealand . Far from simply maintaining the status quo as Pam had anticipated , there was real decision-making to be done , and the Government did n't make things any easier by rescaling the aides ' grading and salaries and also restructuring the children 's financial support , all of which meant long and difficult consultations and discussion , and huge amounts of extra paperwork . It was quite an experience : thirty thousand librarians all in the same place .