Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

When we were at the Home Show the other weekend, the folks on the Civil Defence stand suggested that we download a GeoTech app which reports on all the earthquakes that happen in and around Aotearoa. I took up their suggestion of “winding down” the alert level that generates a text so that I didn’t receive one every few minutes, as there are small quakes all the time. This drying out crusty old mantle isn’t as stable as it appears on first inspection. However, we now have our own home and accidentally made seismometer: I haven’t been able to calibrate it yet, but the angle of perch of the pot suggests to me that a 5 or 6 on the Richter scale will have it tumbling. Alternatively, another good downpour will turn it into a rain gauge! Or, maybe I’ve just spent too much time at home this week. With our Level 4 lockdown being extended to the end of the month, outings haven’t been an option, other than for essential visits to the supermarkets. The weather for much of the week has been gorgeo...

This week has been much quieter than last week, due mainly to the country going into Covid Level 4 Lockdown at midnight on Tuesday. For those of you who don’t live here in Aotearoa, that means stay at home, get to work on those Covid kilos, and wear a mask (now mandatory) when visiting the essential services which are operating (supermarkets, medical facilities, and the like). This all came about because of a case of Delta variant Covid in Auckland on the North Shore who returned a positive test last Tuesday. He had been self isolating since visiting his GP towards the end of last week, but had been infectious prior to then. At the time of writing, we now know of over 8,600 close contacts and the number is rising every hour (a close contact is someone who has come into contact with an infectious carrier, I think). Most of the current cases (72 to date) are in Auckland, but 6 are in Wellington and related. It all seems to have started from a case in managed isolation who arrived from Oz...

By our standards, we have had a busy week. You may remember, Dear Reader, that last Sunday Lyn from over the road came for dinner, along with Frances. She was explaining that she had bought a shipping container. The location in her garden where it was to be sited required the removal of a tree stump and a Portuguese Laurel tree. She was philosophical but sad about the laurel tree, until she came up with the idea of offering it to us. Liking trees, we readily accepted. We had significant rain over night, and woke on Monday morning to discover that the puddles in paddock had turned into ponds, complete with ducks! At 7.45am, while sitting up in bed having our first pot of tea of the day, Lyn telephoned to say that Jono would be arriving at her place at 8.30am to extract the tree, and was strongly recommending that it be replanted asap. We needed a hole, about a metre square, so we quickly changed gear and started our day. Nicky had an appointment at the medical centre at 10.30a.m. so sh...

We have continued enjoying the Olympics this week. With there only being a three hour time difference between here and Japan it has made viewing during the day and the evenings very easy. There has however been competition for our attention this week, as every day has seen the arrival of a number of lambs in the nursery paddock at the end of our back garden. Watching the mini sheep gambolling and jumping has been an absolute delight. Medical matters have also occupied us, with Nicky going for a blood test on Monday. The laboratory hadn’t had the test request from the medical centre so we had to sort that out, but the results did come through in time for Nicky’s GP appointment on Wednesday. With Nicky still not sleeping well I have been chauffeuring and accompanying her. The GP recommended that we purchase a blood presure monitor to make sure that Nicky is on the correct dosage for some of her drugs, so we did this and have both been using it. It’s quite fun really. Tuesday was a busy d...

We have been really enjoying watching the Olympics this week. The TV coverage has been a little Kiwi-competitor biased, but we have still been able to see a good range of sports and not had to pay SkyTV’s extortionate fees. Highlights for us have been the triathlons, rugby sevens and the rowing. Over the weekend we noticed that the dishwasher was not getting things very clean anymore, and the crockery was starting to feel gritty. It was really bad on Monday morning so after some discussion as to what the cause might be we concluded the first thing to investigate was the detergent. The bottle of dishwasher powder we were using had only just been pressed into service, and even though I thought I had purchased the same brand as usual we didn’t have the previous container for comparison. So, I popped into town to do a bit of grocery shopping and buy an alternative product. This seems to have done the trick and our dishes are coming up nice and sparkly again, though at an increased cost. ...