Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

This pile of interestingly stacked books have been sitting on her desk for a few days now, and have not fallen over: Compare them with this pile of cauldron’s from Diagon Alley: They look very similar to me. I wonder what is keeping them both from falling over? Hmmm… Anyway, apart from gravity defying magic, Aotearoa is finally coming back from its summer holiday, so Nicky has been getting back into her usual routine, and I have had a very busy week with work. Nicky had two Seniors Church sessions and holy communion, and Mary called in for a catch up on Tuesday. Into town for a ukulele concert and a “Welcome back to NZ” visit to Jancis at her cousins. In-between has been mainly sewing and reading, and enjoying the lovely sunny weather until The Rattigan has proved too hot, and playing Scrabble with Stella yesterday. Monday was a bit of a work admin day for me, but then much of the rest of the week has been filled with on-site work and remote support. This all

We have had a couple of significant events this week. The first was a visit to Hawera to see our lovely builder Bert, to discuss some details regarding the house build, particularly with regard to internal elements where we needed to make decisions. In the process of doing this, the nature of the cook top (hob) came up for discussion - gas or electric? We hadn’t realised how things had changed with gas appliances so he suggested that we visit TradeDepot on our return to Auckland. This we did on Friday, and I don’t think he had any idea what he was introducing us to! We well overstayed the 1 hour parking limit, but discovered products which we didn’t even know existed. It was brilliant and we got overexcited, though this wasn’t difficult as the meeting with Bert had gone so well, and then in the afternoon we had been over to New Plymouth to see the stained glass artist. He already had a design idea to suggest to us, which we really liked in outline, so it turned out to be a positive tr

It has been a gentle week overall, with work quiet for me and Nicky’s regular activities not yet up and running again. We took the decorations down on Monday, so Christmas now feels truly over, but with many companies not back at work yet and the schools still on summer holiday, everywhere is largely in holiday mode (little traffic - manic in the supermarket - go figure!). Stella had an overnight stay in hospital this week so I provided her with a Uber service (taxi service seems so last century) there and back. In between the two trips our electric garage door stopped working. One of the springs that helps the motor open the door had broken. Fortunately, with the help of Dawn the landlady and a very helpful man called Neil, it was promptly repaired and so didn’t significantly inconvenience us. Nicky has continued with her current sewing project, which has required a couple of visits to Spotlight in Henderson for “parts and materials”, which also included the purchase of a

As I sit down to write my first post of 2020, and a few thoughts about how 2019 went for us, the light has an eerie glow to it with the dust coming over from Oz. It has been a largely overcast day, clouds mixed with smoke, and a number of times this week we have seen a bright orange sun towards the end of the day, along with this strange light. There was a map on the news last night of where all the fires are burning, and the whole of Australia’s east coast appears to be alight. It must be terrifying for them. After dropping Claire at the airport last Saturday, we headed south on the motorway to join most of the rest of the family at the ski lodge in Ohakune. We stopped to eat our feta-filled savoury brioche rolls in Taumarunui and arrived at the lodge around 8.30pm. The next four days were notable for their low level of activity. Sunday started quite chilly, and after a gentle breakfast and walk through the Carrot Park to ease ourselves into Ohakune Time, the afternoon was

It feels like 2019 has been quite a year for us. We started with Nicky still working and us wondering what shape her retirement would take, and finished land owners with a plan to build. The big challenge with Nicky’s retirement at the end of February was where do we live? To continue renting in Auckland would both slowly diminish our savings, and be lacking in the security of owning our own home. It became quickly apparent as we talked to trusted advisors about what to do that owning our own home and using our savings to purchase it was the best option. The consequence would be that we would have to leave Auckland. So began our World Tour of Aotearoa to visit the places where we could afford to live, to see if we liked any of them. We quickly realised that small rural settlements were not going to work for us. We needed somewhere with a big enough population to require a hospital and good sized supermarkets. We also realised that living on the South Island would be colder (be