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I don’t think we’ve ever been so excited to see a pile of wood in a field before. Although maybe that’s not a great surprise to anyone! (Excuse the poor photo – memo to self: Make sure the camera hasn’t been flicked to manual in the bag before taking important shots for the record…) By the way there’s still a lot more wood to come.

But after seemingly forever waiting for things to start, it looks like we’re off and running with the construction! Things are finally happening on site. Yeee-ha! All a bit scary really all of a sudden.

As we’d been warned, at this stage with only a few pegs in the ground everything looks really small! Hopefully it will start to grow in size!

Expect updates to come thick and fast from now on in!

Well, things have been a bit stressful over the last few days. We’ve been experiencing the aftermath and aftershocks of the earthquake (really glad we missed the main event!), and also putting our uncling and auntying skills to the test child-minding (they’re not babies any more) for a few days. Not sure which has been the more nerve-racking! But what better way to forget all about that for a while when we got a break than to pick up another couple of folk also at a bit of a loose end and head out for a round of mini-put. Or put-put if you prefer. Whatever.

Initially we were thinking the weather wasn’t the best so we should head to an indoor course, but when we got there we found that although their website said they were open seven days, the seven apparently don’t include Mondays. Hey ho. Outside it was then, at the Ferrymead golf complex. As it turned out it became a fantastic day, just right for mini-put. Sun in the sky, but not too hot. No wind to speak of to compensate for. Pearler! Only problem was that the course had been rained on fairly heavily the night before, so there were a number of water hazards on the course that made life a bit interesting. But the really best part was that for the entire time we had the entire course just to ourselves. Our own private course! Fantastic.

Competition between Bec, Megan, Nate-Dog and myself was intense, and it was only going through the back 9 that a clear winner emerged. And that would be Nate. We’ll keep you guessing about the minor places and the actual scores…

Looks like we might have to have another similar trip out soon, so I guess we should have a record to compare them against. Our assessment of the course is:

Course Difficulty: Easy to moderate. Only a couple of trickier holes.
Course State: Average. A bit of work needed, and the greens could have been swept a bit, but generally well maintained.
Price: Reasonable with a two-for-one voucher, but we’re still getting used to NZ prices.
Playing company: High class.

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!

• May 2006: Jeff and Dad etc. visited a block of land that they thought we might be interested in eventually settling on.
• Jun 2006: I flew to NZ and back to the UK within a week to have look at it a couple of times, and start the process of buying it. I end up with a massive sinus infection for my troubles.
• Apr 2007: Title issues, after all the bits have been done like roads, fences, bores etc. Not that we were in a hurry. We liked getting the interest on the cash. Back in the day when you actually managed to get some decent interest. We start thinking about the house we want to put on it.
• Mar 2009: We start talking to the first building company/designers about the house. Slightly difficult to keep communications clear over email and Skype, but we pretty much manage.
• Sep 2009: We ditch them on the basis we felt they were useless, and the building company appears to go bust.
• Sep 2009 (still): We start talking to a new building company/designer.
• Aug 2010 (we think): The plans are finally submitted to the council for planning permission.

And now we’re just waiting, waiting, waiting, and for the first time in that time we’re feeling like we’ve got nothing we’re really able to do except wait. And we’re suddenly not liking it much. After all this time we’d just like some concrete (if you’ll excuse the pun) action finally! PLEASE!

One of the nice things about a visit to mum’s is all the bird-life in the bush around the place. At least it’s a nice thing at this time of year when the sun doesn’t rise too early, and the dawn chorus still starts at a reasonable hour!

This time for some reason there seemed to be a few more varieties of birds around, or maybe I just had more time to stare out the window or to go out and track them down. I can state definitively that while we were there I managed to spot:

• A huge number of Wax-eye/Silver-eyes
• Many European Greenfinch
• A family or two of Tui, including a couple that were quite happy to come close and display themselves to me
• The usual complement of Blackbirds
• A couple of fantails, including a black fantail that I didn’t even know existed. These were just way to fast in the dim light of the dawn/dusk bush to even get close to a photo of
• House Sparrows, of course
• Noisy Bellbirds
• A few Doves
• Some starlings
• A Chaffinch or two (not as many as last time though)
• A couple of Wood Pigeons (I think it was two different ones, not the same one twice)
• Oh, and 3 chickens!

Apparently I missed out on at least the Brown Creeper, Grey Warbler and the Song Thrush, but that only gives me something to track down next time! And there’s still a large number of other birds to track down elsewhere too. Who needs a job!

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!

(Long overdue catch-up entry no. 3)

For a first step in learning how to relax again since finishing up work and leaving London, we managed to convince Michael and Megan to ditch their kids for a week and come on a week long break in Mexico. It was really hard work to convince them. We kept having to say things like “are you sure you don’t want to go somewhere else where we can take the kids?”, but their replies indicated that that really wasn’t the preferred option! So we booked in for an all-inclusive poolside week in tourist town, and passed through Houston to pick them up on the way to Texas.

It felt weird leaving the heat of Houston to go to a cooler place for a beach holiday. Something about that took just a little bit of getting the head around until the first time that we were slouching around by the pool and it was pretty much the perfect temperature. (Houston didn’t get that comfortable poolside until late afternoon.)

We managed to settle into a routine pretty quickly:

1. Get up.
2. Breakfast.
3. (optional) an after breakfast walk along the beach to work off some of the food we’d just eaten…
4. Back to the room to get prepared for the morning by the pool.
5. Morning lounging by the pool, trying to put off the first drink of the day…
6. Lunch at the buffet.
7. Afternoon by the pool, spending time trying to catch the eye of the drinks waiters…
8. Back to the room to get prepared for the night…
9. Pre-dinner drink at one of the bars.
10. Dinner at one of the restaurants.
11. After-dinner drinks at one of the bars.
12. (optional) Post-after-dinner drink/snack at one of our rooms.
13. Sleep. Repeat.

From memory I think the only days we deviated from that pattern was 1) took up the invite to a wine tasting with one of the managers of the hotel at the rooftop bar, and 2) when we (shock horror!) left the hotel grounds into the local town for a look. The wine tasting was great. Later afternoon on the rooftop, 4 wines, all matched to surprise plates of some really nice food. Yum! Almost didn’t need dinner that night. Almost! We still managed it, of course! The trip into the local town was interesting, but still didn’t feel like it was the real Mexico somehow. But that’s what you get when you get lots and lots and lots of tourists in one area!

One of the highlights of the week was the ability to have chillies on my breakfast. Yum, yum, yum!! While not being the “real” Mexico, we still had access to some Mexican food in the restaurants at all stages of the day. I wouldn’t want to even guess at what some of it was called, but it was all pretty good!

Then just when we were really getting into the swing of the daily routine, it was back to the heat of Houston. Stay tuned!…

(Long overdue catchup entry No. 2)

Hot on the heels of an overseas trip, we thought it only fair that we went somewhere local the following weekend. We’d been told by everyone that York was a great place to visit, and in all our time in the UK we had not managed to quite make it there. So York it was!

After an early start to catch our 7am train we were pleased to see that this time we had well and truly managed to pick a weekend with some decent weather! More than decent really. Almost too hot!

First thing we did was to try to get our bearings in the town. What better way than to look out from the top of the Minster tower. All you have to do to get this view is to climb the 275 very narrow and windy steps to the top (paying for the privilege of giving yourself a heart attack as well, of course!) And let’s face it, it’s not as if you can run up as it is a very narrow spiral staircase. On a fantastic day like we had, well worth the effort though!

Then a visit to the National Railway Museum. This is a great museum with lots of old trains and historical information. It’s amazing to notice that trains haven’t really changed that much, perhaps just the layout of the passenger cars, and OK the technology part. But they are still pretty massive and to me they really do look quite similar, but nowadays just look a lot slicker and don’t have coal to keep them going. Standing at ground level beside some of the engines and carriages gives you a sense of just how large they are. When things just pull up at a platform you never really get to see the real size. Impressive.

After a leisurely brunch on Sunday we had a walk around the city walls. This was a great way to keep up our normal theme of ‘walk, walk and walk some more’ whilst on holiday. You’d think by now all this holiday walking would make us pretty trim. But lets just say those results are yet to be seen. Anyway the walls are quite impressive and the walk was all the more enjoyable in the lovely weather, but at times the sun became a bit unbearable so we would stop for a break out of the sun to try and catch our breath for a bit.

Then late afternoon we jumped back on a train to London, and in true UK style the train was hit by delays on the way. Didn’t bother us too much as we had no where to be.

Another nice weekend away and a great UK place to visit which I would recommend stopping by if you haven’t already.