John and I have opted for a lazy, stay at home Easter Weekend. We’ve managed to combine being deliciously lazy with being highly organised.

As many of you know, we have opted to go for a partner visa for our move to NZ – ie I apply for residency and John sponsors me in. We decided to dedicate some of the weekend to getting to grips with what we need to do, the timescales asssociated with applying and fishing out all the evidence we need to demonstrate we are in a ‘genuine and stable relationship’. We’ve come up with a list of questions for the NZ immigration dept. The one that has us baffled the most is providing evidence of how we share household duties. Do we take photographs of me cleaning the bathroom and John taking the recycling out? Do we mock up a rota system? Any suggestions out there?

Other than visa stuff, we’ve had brunch in our favourite cafes everyday, played golf twice, watched the F1, watched the NZ v England cricket, watched the NZ Warriors v the Parramatta Eels, and went to the cinema to see ‘Brick Lane’. We also planned on going for a walk in a national park south of Sydney, but so far every day I’ve dismissed the idea along with some rather flimsy excuse – there’s still Easter Monday to go!

No prizes for guessing what I was doing this weekend. 

Wales wins the 6 Nations Grand Slam – Hurrah! I want Welsh cakes and daffodils to celebrate but there are none to be had.

The F1 season was kicked off with Lewis Hamilton winning and McLaren at the top of the table – Hurrah, hurrah and hurrah!

And, according to John, the rugby league season has started and Man U are top of the table with a game in hand.

In terms of my own sporting brilliance, my golf drive has improved (oh so slightly).

Last Sunday John and I were tasked with entertaining a couple of people visting John’s company – Raymond from Hong Kong and Richard from the USA. In order that the task did not eat in to our valuable golf time we offered to take them to play golf. Given we represented four different continents we dubbed it the inter-continental golf tournament.

Raymond had never been on a golf course. In Hong Kong the fees just to be on the waiting list of a golf club are huge, and being a member costs c4 million HK$ a year. So the average Joe, or Raymond, only gets to play at driving ranges. He was totally thrilled to be on an actual golf course and not even slightly daunted. Admittedly he wasn’t great to start with, but towards then end he was hitting some pretty good shots - even if he had an inventive swing.

After golf John took Richard to have his photograph taken with a Koala in Darling Harbour and then they and Raymond went for a few drinks at a bar in the harbour. They were pretty taken with the Australian women walking past apparently.

On Thursday I experienced my first summer birthday … it was as wet and cold, not unlike a UK February day. However the day was still nice - it commenced with a phone call with Carolyn, then Mum and Dad and then Michelle. When I got to work I discovered some lovely presents in my inbox, and then just before lunch some flowers and chocolates arrived from John. One of my colleagues took me out for a birthday lunch and then another colleague went out to buy a cake and we had afternoon tea in the office. Just before I left work for the day another bunch of flowers arrived from John’s Dad and his family.

Fortunately the sun came out on Saturday for my picnic at Bronte beach. My friends Marian, Simon, Nicola and Steve joined John and I and we all left feeling over full from grazing on the food all afternoon.