Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

We have had quite a week, well 9 days actually. Last Saturday we set off for Whanganui again, to check that we still liked what we saw after visiting Hastings and the South Island. We started the day with scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast, and celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary with a lunch of Whitestone Five Forks goats cheese on oat crackers and home made brioche on the bench outside the station café in Otorohanga. Nicky suggested that we should have had smoked salmon and I agreed because it would have been cheaper than the cheese! Our drive down was in lovely sunshine with crisp winter air and the view of the volcanoes were brilliant: Our Sunday in Whanganui started wet with showers, which turned to rain. Nicky went to church and I assessed the supermarkets looking for those more difficult to get products: light blue top A2 milk and Mainland Smoked Cheese. New World didn’t have them but the Countdown across the road did. We had a drive round, having a sticky beak ...

Recuperation has been a major theme this week, as I started to get over my cold and Nicky succumbed and then also started to improve. We are finishing the week on the mend but not quite back to normal. On-site jobs during the first four days of the week have given my a busy working week, and Friday was just a couple of remote support tasks. A couple of trips to the supermarket have kept the wallet occupied, and in between we have been watching the weather and doing the laundry on the good days. I was in town all day Thursday, working and then at my discussion group. Nicky has done quite a bit of reading about this week, but also went to holy communion on Wednesday morning and then to Titirangi with Doris, and was volunteering in Henderson on Thursday. She had her Corrections Induction (it’s an annual event) on Friday, and has made onion soup, beef casserole and brioche this week. I contributed chicken in bacon and smoked fish pie. Steve popped over on Wednesday for some te...

We have been south this week to complete our tour of possible new home locations. An early start on Monday was required for our 7.30am flight to Dunedin. On arrival we picked up our hire car (a blue Toyota Corolla with some whizzy technology) and drove into town for coffee with Claire. She had changed the colour of her hair again! We got to Oamaru early afternoon, enjoyed a late lunch of jacket spuds and then hit the estate agents. We had a sticky beak at two houses and two sections, popped into the Whitestone Cheese shop, and then raided the supermarket before having a quiet night in our accomodation as we were both quite jaded. The weather had been reasonable with some sun, but Oamaru was chilly. It was cold when our day started on Tuesday. We drove to Gore via Balclutha (which we liked) and had a good chat with a lady in one of the Balclutha pharmacies. She told us that she lives in Kaka Point, about 15 minutes away on the coast. It’s the first time we have been south in the wi...

We started this week with a public holiday, as both the Queen and I had birthdays. I also started the week with a perception of much diary juggling of work appointments as a couple of significant issues had come up while we were in Hastings. One of them took me into town first thing Monday morning and didn’t see me back home until early afternoon. With it being a cool but sunny day, Nicky had set to with changing the bed, doing the washing, mowing the grass, and doing the subsequent ironing. My working week turned out not to be quite as full as I had thought it might be. I had a customer bring me a machine for a drive upgrade late on Tuesday afternoon, so that occupied my Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning. I was on the road on Friday for a couple of jobs up north, and in-between did some short local jobs, lots of admin, and eventually finished watching Apple’s WWDC keynote presentation, with all their lovely new technology. We had a repair done to one of Nicky’s hearing ai...

This week has been dominated by house hunting and socialising. We were occupied on Monday and Tuesday with what we had found in Whanganui. We thought we had made an offer on the house to the agent, but it turned out that we hadn’t done it correctly so therefore we hadn’t actually made an offer. A discussion with the bank scuppered our plan of buying house and land and using the house as collateral to build on the land. Then on Wednesday a visit to a factory in Papakura where they build complete houses and then truck them to site was very interesting, and re-invigorated our house building thoughts. We took Mary, Nicky’s BHB Quilter’s co-organiser, out for lunch on Wednesday to celebrate her birthday. She came back from church with Nicky and we drove over to OTT in Birkenhead, had lovely beef-filled rolls and baguette. The staff lit a candle in a large slice of apple strudel for us, and the entire café of complete strangers joined in with singing Happy Birthday. Mary was suitabl...