Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

As I write this on a sunny Sunday afternoon, with a gentle breeze blowing in through the ranch sliders, the temperature in the room is a cosy 25C, in the roof space it's 41C. It is also the last day of our two week holiday. We are off to see the new James Bond film later, and then go out for a meal or get a take-away, depending on what we fancy. We have been away this week - four nights at Katikati Naturist Park in the Bay of Plenty on the east coast of the north island, about 150km south of where we live. While packing food and necessaries on Monday morning, things did not look promising. It was raining, and the forecast for the rest of the week was showers, rain, rain and showers. The rain density varied on our drive down. We stopped in Takanini to have a look at a Lockwood kit-set show house. We liked it, and many of their designs, very much. We hope to build something like it sometime, and Lockwood may get our business, but are only the first company we have looked at. We stopp

We have been on holiday this week, our first actual holiday since arriving in NZ. We have spent the week at home and being tourists in Auckland. Nicky has unpacked and shelved the vast majority of our books during the week. We have put the metal shelving in the garage because it has a concrete floor, is weather proof, easy access from the house, and leaves us more space in the living areas. We have however, done a few other things too. On Tuesday we went to the museum (Claire was on duty there in the afternoon) to see Sue the T-Rex which was interesting. It was a mighty big beast and this skeleton is the most complete one which has been found. Nicky and I then went off to Sylvia Park so that Nicky could have a steroid injection into her shoulder. Sylvia Park is a big shopping centre, with other community facilities such as medical centres so we had a wander round before departing to collect Claire from the museum. On the way we popped into Ubertec to drop in my Mac as it developed a vi

We had another visit from Linda Speight this week, at the end of her stay in NZ. She arrived on Monday evening and Claire and I took her to the airport on Wednesday evening for her flight back to the UK. In the two days she was with us she fitted in a shopping expedition, hair cut and canyoning (which seems to be mainly abseiling down waterfalls. Nicky has had another visit to the doctor about her shoulder. If they do nothing she will probably end up with a frozen shoulder; they could operate but this is probably overkill; so she is having a steroid injection as this looks like the most suitable treatment. Hopefully this will happen this coming week, which would be very convenient with us being on holiday. I combined my two afternoons off this week and took the whole of Friday so that I could do a modeling job for a group of full time artists in Ponsonby which I enjoyed, and have an additional day to our holiday. Claire was at work on Saturday, but we had a good relaxing day on Sunday.

I think the most exiting event this week has been the General Election. These happen every three years here in NZ, and on Saturday we went off to the polling station when Claire got back from work and had our say. NZ uses MMP not first past the post, so we get two votes, one for the party we would like to govern, and one for who we would like to represent us in Parliament. It was all quite low key and informal at the polling station, and we were not the only family having an outing. With not having access to NZ TV yet we started monitoring the results on the web but went off to bed before they were all in. By Sunday morning however we knew we had a change of government, from Labour to National (Tory's). Nicky has been off having medical tests on her shoulder this week, ultra-sound and x-ray. The medication the doctor provided helped but didn't cure, and Nicky sees him again this week. Work has been much the same for all of us, and we are getting much more settled in our new hom

Last Monday was Labour Day - a public holiday here in celebration of May 1st apparently! Claire was at the Museum in the afternoon but Nicky and I got some more boxes unpacked, and Nicky went and tidied up the garden at the old place. Nicky hasn't been at work much this week due to spending two and a half days on training courses. Health and Safety was a two day one, and the other half day was "Thrive at Work", about getting on with people (which Nicky does very well). The rest of the working week as been pretty normal for Claire and I, though I moved office again, back into the building where I started. The building works are still continuing so things are still somewhat disrupted. We really like our new home. We have got more boxes unpacked this weekend and are being a little more ruthless about throwing things out or taking them to the charity shops. Some things we are not prepared to part with but don't have space for, so they are being repacked into boxes for lon