Ice and snow.

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 Tuesday looking at a number of other sections, all of which provided different challenges and restrictions with covenants determining the nature of house we could erect (eg: minimum square meterage far bigger then we can afford; not allowed to keep pigs, etc). I think the highlight of the day was morning tea at the Funky Duck Café.

We left Whanganui on Wednesday morning quite down hearted, though a long chat with Felicity (the agent helping us to try and buy our favoured section) was helpful. Since returning home to BHB we have observed that the trip has changed our perspective. The original section we found is the only one we have really liked (given us the warm and fuzzies), is flat and easy to build on, is on a street we like in an area we like, and we feel the house that we might build there would be in keeping with the area. The hurdles we have to jump are the cost and risk of paying for the connection of the services to the boundary. We know we don’t have to leave BHB in short order, but we are also aware that time isn’t on our side, so our perspective of those hurdles has changed.

Thursday and Friday were consumed with managing the laundry while it rained, some work for me, and for Nicky, Seniors Church, Mary for lunch, and starting to make brioche. She finished the brioche on Saturday morning, after which I made some lemon curd tarts to take to Clem and Pats as they had invited us for dinner. This enabled us to catch up on news and our home finding status, and for me to set up Pats new phone. In between, Stella, Steve and Ros came over for Scrabble.

Nicky has read the latest 44 Scotland Street novel, The Peppermint Tea Chronicles, this week, and I started it on Sunday. Nicky was in prison in the afternoon and just a couple of minutes before she returned my niece Rachel arrived. She came up from Wanaka on Friday with her local ice hockey team and for a skating competition which was on Sunday evening. After a chat and a bite to eat I took her to the Avondale ice rink and then later Nicky and I went down to watch her skate. By the time the competition had finished and the presentations had been made it was after 10pm. 

A friend (Steph) of Rachels had come to watch and she came back home with us for a warming pot of tea. By the time we had drunk tea, eaten biscuits, had a good chat, said goodby to Steph, and started for bed, it was approaching midnight and I was in no mood to sit and write the blog (it takes longer than you might think).

So, thank you dear reader for your patience. That was our week.

Take care, Rick.