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What better way to while away a bit of time while we’re waiting for any news then to do a puzzle! What a good idea! Only… we didn’t start it until late in the stay at the current free accommodation providers. Almost too late! You know you’re going to be in for an interesting puzzle-time when you can only work out 4 different piles to sort the pieces into when you drag them out of the box (and one of those is edge bits), and when you’re fighting each other to do the sky! At more than a few times over the last couple of days I’ve thought we’d just have to admit defeat, and go though all the pain again some other time.

But anyway, we managed to get it all done. Just in time to have to pack it all up. Whew! Another one to chuck in a cupboard (when we get one!) and pull out once the memory of this time has subsided enough!

Help in the kitchen is normally appreciated, but in this case…

Well, we have finally arrived home after a long stint in London. Why? Because the grass is always greener….. Isn’t it? (Or should that be ‘Innit’?) I guess time will tell on that one! So here is a little rant, comparison, run down on what I think so far.

We’ve been home for just over a month now and we are still just trying to find our feet and settle in. We definitely didn’t time it right arriving in winter and especially after leaving 30 degree plus heat on our travels home. But we are making the most of the sunny winter days and filling it with walking (OK not so much now we have succumb to the NZ way and own a car – that’s another post). Oh and we’ve been keeping ourselves busy enough with doing those chores that could not be done remotely from London for the new build. Now we are just waiting for building to start!

And then there’s eating all the NZ food you miss, like pies, lolly cake, chocolate bickies and cakes and fish n chips and more pies. And making some of the old favs which I never seemed to bother in the UK (mainly cause they didn’t have some of the ingredients).

One thing we have noticed is just how helpful people are in NZ. Things just seem so much faster when you want to arrange for someone to do something for you and you don’t get passed from person to person, and people actually appear to be happy to help you. And then there is the down side of lack of produce or ingredients of what we were used to being available in the UK. And not to mention the sheer shock of the cost of some of it. But some of that might be easily fixed – we’ll just have to try and grow it ourselves!

After living away for so long and when visiting I had developed a perception that things in NZ are expensive and that your money did not appear to go as far. Perhaps that might still be right. I’m still undecided on some things. But I can say we have found some real bargains, which might have to do with winter sales at the moment. But then there is the cost of dairy and meat which to me is ridiculous as pretty much all of it is made here. So I guess like any country if you shop around you can find some great deals and all in all it always depends on how much you are willing to spend!

But the other greatest thing is just how friendly or trusting people are. The one that amazed both of us the most in the first couple of days when we were taking the odd bus ride, is the bus drivers. On not one but two ocassions the bus driver has left the bus running on the side of the street with passengers in it and said “I’ll be back in a minute”. And off he or she has toddled for probably 3-5 minutes and then back on they have got. What’s that about!! My first thought was no one is bothering to steal the bus. Could definitely see that happening in London! But the other thing bus drivers do here is say “hello” and sometimes, “how are you today”. Now I know that doesn’t happen in London. Oh and pretty much everyone here thanks the bus driver when they get off, whether they exit at the front or just shout when they exit from the rear.

So there you have it, my first thoughts on being back.

Mike went for one year and I went for two, and over 11 and 10 years respectively later we finally made the break and set sail for NZ. It was odd to be leaving and for months up to the leaving day, I kept saying to Mike, “are we sure we want to go? Are we doing the right thing?” I guess once all our flat and stuff was packed and taken away it really sunk in. So then all that was left was to enjoy our last month in the UK and go about saying bye to the city, and all our friends and workmates. Now that was the hard part.

And leaving London when summer is starting made it hard too (but I blame Mike for the timing of that). London is great in the summer. And we made the most of our final month at work by walking through Green Park to and from Victoria on lovely summer mornings and evenings. As a bonus to keep things interesting there were a number elephants displayed in the park too. There were 250 of them around the city, which were to be auctioned for charity to raise money for the elephants in Malaysia. Luckily we had already packed all our stuff otherwise I may have been tempted to go to the auction myself. They really were quite cool!

And our final weekend before we left we managed a trip to Great Dixter with Rach and Ru. It’s always a nice place to visit and this time we saw it with a number of flowers out (last time we went was in the middle of winter). Although that did mean the tourist riff-raff was allowed to share the space with us too!

So we could finally stop saying “I wonder if this is the last time we’ll….” as it finally definitely was, at least for now!

Bye bye London! We’re going to miss you!

A couple of weekends ago we had a night out of London.  Once again we went and stayed with Liz and Dave.  And every time we do they always take us to something that is happening in the local towns/villages.  Last time it was a raft race and this time it was a good ole fair in Stamford. The fair had been set up all over the town, basically wherever they could find space (not like I remember from when I was a kid and they are set up on a local field or something similar).  So the town was taken over by a number or rides, candy floss sellers, and game stalls.

Its been a while since I have been on a ride, but Liz managed to convince me to get on ‘the frog’.  And once on I was thinking “what have I done?!” and “is there no way to get off now until the ride is finished?!”  But once I had been round a couple of times and was used to what was happening I managed to relax and remove the startled look from my face. And for the bargain price of £3 it was eventually quite enjoyable!

The afternoon saw us play many a game of pool at one of the local pubs.  I do love the quaint English country pubs. You just can’t beat them!  Then the evening had us at their local town hall for an Irish night.  A meal, some drinks and a raffle – of which we managed to win a prize.  A quiet night but something different for us which is always really nice.

Then on Sunday we visited another couple of relatively local spots. The first was a grand collection of hills and holes from an old quarry. Really nice to wander around, even if the flowers weren’t quite out yet. The second was the Nene Valley Railway.  It has steam trains which you can go on or even learn to drive (we didn’t do either – yet. We may yet be back…)  We just spent the time wandering around the old trains and then looking at a lot of 3 wheeled cars (like the one Mr Bean had) in the car park.  All in all another nice weekend out of London.

I’ve been meaning to start this post for about a month now. I was going to see if there were 12 things that I could think of during this year that I would implement if I were king that would make my world just a bit nicer. For me at least. For everyone else, tough!

January’s choice –   Chewing gum would be illegal. I pretty much violently hate it. I can see no reason why it is still around. Rubber with a bit of mint in it? What a great product! Sticks to everything, including hair, shoes, seats and trousers etc. It leaves pavements absolutely disgusting too. And it’s just really, really charming watching (and often listening) to someone chew it. If you’re worried about cleaning your teeth, carry a toothbrush. It works for the rest of us.

For February  – All food cans would the the stacking kind. They just make life so much simpler, easier, and I think safer too (at least when the cans are stored at above head height like in our kitchen). Nowadays they can’t be that much harder to produce, or much more expensive by the thousand, so I can’t see any reason why they can’t be the new mandated standard. “Health and Safety” seem to get blamed for all sorts of weird things here, so why don’t they do something useful and sort this out for me?

March – Leggings Permit. I think anyone wishing to wear leggings as their sole bottom half covering should have to be in possession of a permit signed by five of their closest and most honest friends at all times. The permit would state that the friend has seen said wearee in the leggings, and they are not making a fool of themselves, or likely to cause others to feel the need to either vomit or gouge their eyes out. Said friend would also have to state that they would be more than happy to spend a whole day out in public with the wearee (who would be wearing said leggings). Failure to carry this permit would result in compulsory re-clothing into a prisoner type baggy orange jumpsuit. And mandatory attendance at a lesson on how to find more honest friends.

(Note: Just be very, very very happy there is no photograph to accompany the above item to show what made it March’s choice!…)
Now, I wonder what the target for April will be….

You must have seen a movie or read a book or something where a computer or robot or something is brought to its knees by a seemingly simple logic puzzle or something.

Last night that happened to me. Making couscous.

You have to be a bit careful making couscous. It’s all to easy to end up with something that’s just all glug and no  crunch, or all too crunchy and inedible. Or too oily and yucky. For something so simple there are quite a few potential pitfalls. So it really pays to follow the instructions on the packet, as they really should know the exact quantities of stuff to get perfect results.

The packet instructions: “Allow approximately 45g of couscous per 80g cooked serving. Place 250g of couscous in a large bowl with 400ml of boiling and 1tbsp oil”…

Ok, so there were 2 of us, so we needed to have 90g of couscous, so that means we need, um some water, so half what they’re saying is, um, 200ml but that’s for 125g which is still too much for just 2 of us, so we need a bit less, so that’s um, oh I give up!!! My brain’s overheating! Where’s the spreadsheet?!

Why don’t they just give instructions with a nice figure for each serving?! It would stop my head exploding anyway!

But for the record, after a lot of head scratching, the final result was probably some of the best couscous that we’ve ever made, doing us proud for dinner and lunch today.

I ended up using 300ml of water. I’ll leave  it to you to work out how much cous cous that was!

Apparently this could be even better than the fall we had at the start of this year! There’s certainly a bit of chaos outside London already…

BRING IT ON!

The puzzle we mentioned in the Christmas day entry kept us entertained so well for a bit that we thought we’d break out another one. This one had been sitting in its plastic wrap on the shelf in the spare room for some time, sulking. And about 3 minutes after opening it we realised why!

If the blue pieces on the previous ones were the ones to start with on the old puzzle, they were the ones to avoid on this one!  Even the edge took us about 3 hours!! And the whole puzzle took 4 1/2 days to complete. In the end the only way we could seem to make any progress was to try every piece in every place until something looked like it might almost fit.

When you look at this pic you will be saying “it doesn’t look that hard”….. well believe us it was and it almost got the better of us on a number of occasions and was very close to going back in the box without being completed. But we managed to persevere. (In our defence it was a Van Gogh and if you have seen any of his paintings you will know what his brush work is like, which made  for some hard puzzling).

There was a huge sense of relief when it was finished!

In case you wanted to see the previous one completed, here it is too:

A lot easier!

But we might give puzzling a miss for a bit now…