Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

One way or another it has been quite a week. John, my nephew, arrived from the UK Monday lunchtime. I had managed to do some shopping and laundry as it was a crisp clear day (very good for arriving visitors), and Nicky went to Seniors Church and made savoury brioche rolls, all before lunchtime! Unfortunately, John’s visit coincided with me having as much work on this week as I did in the whole of July! As a result, it was just Nicky and John walking down to BHB beach in the afternoon, and Nicky cooked steak for dinner. Tuesday was milder and damper. While I was having a busy day with work Nicky and John had a great day ay the zoo. Just as they were leaving (when the zoo was closing) the heavens opened and they got very wet. I was home in time to do lasagne and lemon delight for dinner to help them warm up. I was busy again with work on Wednesday, Nicky was up at church in the morning, baking and ironing in the afternoon, and John had a good long walk round BH...

We have had a tiring week. As you will remember Dear Reader, we concluded last week with a midnight bedtime after my niece’s skating competition. We were up again at 5.30am on Monday morning to take her to the airport for her 8.30 flight to Queenstown. After getting home from the airport and having second breakfast (me), Nicky went off to Seniors Church and I returned a customers decommissioned Mac. The day was wet so we spent the rest of it at home, doing ironing, digitising audio books, and reading. After both of us spent much of Wednesday cooking in preparation for my nephew Johns’ arrival next week, we were just sitting down for some R&R in front of The Chase when I received a text from our estate agent (Felicity) in Wanganui. She was informing us that some new sections were coming onto the market. Nicky found some information on-line and we emailed the agent to say we were interested and would come and have a look as soon as we could. I had work booked for Thursday and Fr...

We have not had the best of weeks, due to problems with our search for a new home. After Nicky came back from Seniors Church on Monday morning we drove down to Whanganui again, encountering some heavy rain, cold wind and light snow on the way. It was around 7pm by the time we arrived so we checked in at the motel and went straight off to Caroline’s Boatshed for dinner. The aim of our visit was to have a look at a couple of sections which our builder Bert had emailed us about. They were ones which we would not normally have considered because of the slope/hillside, but Bert commented that we shouldn’t rule them out because he can excavate and put up retaining walls in order to create a build platform. Bert kindly came to look at the sections with us, and even he thought they presented more of a challenge that he had expected. It wasn’t that he couldn’t build on them, but the cost of excavating and getting the build platform ready could just be too expensive for us. We spent all of ...

For those who use this blog to start their week, I'm sorry but I am too tired to write tonight. Please come back in about 12-18 hours for this weeks instalment! Cheers, Rick

Moving into August has made the weather go all wintery here. The temperatures have dropped, the precipitation has increased, and some of the rain has been almost horizontal. There has still been some sun, but most of the laundry has been dried inside. Our main news is that we have withdrawn from buying the section that we were looking at. We got the estimate for the connection costs that the vendors wanted us to do before settlement, and felt it was just too big a risk to take to potentially loose that amount of money should the sale not complete. We are both saddened and disappointed by this, but it has been a learning experience. We are now looking for another section. I have had a little more work this week but it’s not been exactly busy. July was a poor month. I have finished reading Tombland, the last book in CJ Sansom’s Shardlake series, and thoroughly enjoyed it like all the others in the series. I had a couple of trips into town on Thursday, firstly to do some market r...