Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

The main features of this week have been getting ready for returning to the UK for 3 weeks, a weekend break on Waiheke Island, and not yet quite having won the America's Cup. My mother is now in residential care, so I am going to England to help my sister clear the house and get it ready for the market. We don't think leaving it empty over the winter will do it any good at all. Much of this week has therefore been taken up with organising the trip and managing the consequences of my absence from NZ. In amongst this I have done one Mac job and grabbed a quick coffee with Claire. Nicky has been had at work in the library, and has had two prayer groups this week. It has only been a four day week as she took Friday off for our long weekend in Waiheke. The weather forecast wasn't good for the weekend, but we were looking forward to the break and having some R&R together before I go away. We drove over to Half Moon Bay on Friday morning to catch the 10.00 ferry. ...

This Saturday, the 14th, was our 6th year anniversary of arriving in New Zealand. We weren't quite sure how to celebrate as it felt a little less significant than the previous five anniversaries. I had bought some brioche on Friday so we had some toasted with scrambled eggs for breakfast, which was a nice treat. The day started off wet, (the weather forecast was predicting a generally wet day) so we decided to go and see a film (Jobs) and meet Claire for coffee at her morning break. Nicky popped up to the doctors to get her regular prescriptions renewed, and by the time we were setting off for St Lukes the sun was out! We enjoyed coffee with Claire and much to my surprise really enjoyed the film. We went straight from St Lukes to Henderson (in the sunshine) for Scrabbling with Stella and Steve. I came home (and did the ironing) while they had a second game and Steve dropped Nicky home on his way back. We whiled the evening away with DCI Banks on DVD. One of the amusing things ...

…is the Waterview Connection TBM (Tunnel Boring Machine) viewing point, at 110 Methuen Road. And its free. Well, the viewing is free, the tunnelling isn't but that is a whole different story. Now this is a really neat Kiwi thing. Here is a major road building project (explanation to follow) so what do they do: put up a viewing platform so the public can stand and watch. Brilliant! If things go true to form with the building of other new roads, the weekend before the tunnels open we will be able to walk through them. All 2.5km's - each way. So why is this so important? Well first of all it explains all the signs we saw outside peoples houses when we first arrived in 2007: NO SH20 TUNNEL. At that time, and still today in fact, there is only one North-South motorway through Auckland - SH1 which goes over the Harbour Bridge (the one with the Nippon ClipOn). There was a bit of motorway, SH20, which ran from Hillsborough down to where it joined the SH20A which runs to the airpor...

The first of September is the official start of spring here, and the weather has marked the occasion with a high pressure system over the weekend. The blue skies and sunshine has been very welcome, but the cold southerly breeze less so. For the first time since winter began we have felt the need for extra bedding and got our American starry quilt out yesterday. The rest of the week has been changeable and unpredictable, making getting the washing dry a very vexing task. Nicky has had a busy week with work, but quieter on the social front, only going out on Thursday evening to a prayer group. Work has been very quiet for me this week, with just one job, an OS and RAM upgrade to a laptop. I went to see the machine on Tuesday to see what it needed, and arranged to collect it on Friday morning so that I could do the upgrades over the weekend. A few minutes before I planned to leave on Friday morning, we had a power cut, so I couldn't open the garage door to get the car out. I ...