Tuesday 13th March 2007. Wellington. New Zealand.

I start the day today with brunch at Mr Bun Cafe on Taranaki Street with Michael.

Today I am off to the Colonial Cottage Museum. This is Wellington's oldest identified building and was built as a family home in 1858 by William Wallis. This was at a time when candles were still made of tallow and when the nails used to build the cottage were still imported from the Mother Country. The house was completed just before William's wife gave birth to the first of their ten children and it remained in the family for the next 127 years.

Enroute we stopped off at Cafe Doria for a warming drink...the weather today is filthy!

Sadly, after Michael and I walked all they way up to the Cottage in the pouring rain, the museum was closed...despite the published opening times. That said, we did find a beautiful cottage garden which we explored before moving on for afternoon tea at the James Cook Hotel Grand Chancellor . It was a wonderful tea in Whitby's restaurant.

Our next stop is the Embassy Theatre (1924) designed by Llewellyn Williams for the cinema entrepreneur William Kemball. Opening on October 31st 1924 it was one of New Zealand's biggest and grandest theatres with capacity crowds of 1749 in the de Luxe as it was known. Musical accompaniment was provided by a Wurlitzer organ or even a full orchestra who would occupy the large pit in front of the screen.

Rechristened The Embassy in 1945, a three year restoration programme to remove the modernisation of the 50s and 60s led to Peter Jackson bringing The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King here for its world-wide premiere.

This is again a 1920's cinema paradiso and I returned tonight to climb the sweeping marble staircase to attend a screening of The Last King of Scotland.

For me personally this was a fascinating and thought-provoking film. What was supposed to be an adventure in a far-off country for a naive young Scottish doctor was anything but after he arrived in Uganda in the 1970's. He may have been thinking fun, sun and the fact that he could lend a helping hand in this infant nation re-born after colonisation; but he finds himself in the darkest realm on earth...Idi Amin's Uganda.

The film was a powerful thriller centred round the eternal struggles of the human heart, but its poigency was that it was set amidst the madness of a country and a people in turmoil. Whilst the movie is part fiction, it blends beautifully with fact and is startingly resonant with the world today in South America and Zimbabwe.

For me it made me think...Did I go to South America as a whiteman (thinking that I could do good in bringing the education of the Westerner)where the locals don't want your help? Maybe I had the arrogance of the whiteman and in attacking me the locals were simply teaching me a lesson?

I certainly could identify with the isolation, the fear and the desperation felt by the young doctor. This was just how I felt in what was an alien and frantic environment where the world seemed to be spinning well out of my control.

Tonight I dined at Little India with Steve (my next door neighbour from Cambridgeshire) and the we had drinks at The Establishment.