Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

We have to start with the weather this week, as I don’t think we have experienced anything quite like it in Aotearoa before. Records for high temperatures are being broken every day (but some of the records only go back to the 1970’s). I haven’t noticed the temperature in our hall drop below 25ºC all week, even in the middle of the night when I have been up for a quick visit to the loo. Today, driving over to Howick (and again on the way back again), Luna was reporting the outside temperature as 30ºC. It’s hot. We have had a little rain, some at the beginning of the week, and a few showers yesterday afternoon and evening, but other than that it has been fine and dry with many long periods of clear sky. We are having the back door and the ranch sliders open as much as possible to get some airflow, and the fan in the lounge is on most of the day. We have hardly used The Rattigan because it has just been too hot to sit in the sun with the heat reflecting off the concrete. The air...

Life has been getting back to a little more normal this week: Nicky has had a pretty good week at work, I have had a reasonable amount of work, and the weather went all bi-polar for a day and a half. Nicky had morning tea with her old boss on Monday, and it went OK (which I think is a bit of surprise). The library hasn’t been too busy until towards the end of the week, and she had her hair done on Thursday. I have work 4 out of 5 days, and on the other day I spent most of my time at my desk dealing with a couple of issues by email and organising some work for the coming week. I had my first swim of the year at Herne Bay on Tuesday morning and my bite-site scabs are now almost completely gone. On Friday Luna had a bit of pampering by having a new radio fitted. We can now receive NZ radio stations on FM, and connect iPads/iPhones etc. A good D&M meeting on Thursday was followed by a long, long chat with Valera (who also brought me home) afterwards. It was a very late night. ...

It has been a very warm week. Most days have been hot and sunny with official temperatures in the 25-28°C range. It is still in the mid 20’s in the house when we go to bed, and one afternoon the roof space got to 46°. The only rain was a heavy shower this morning. Nicky spent quite a bit of Monday in the kitchen, making shortbread and millionaire shortbread. We had a trip to the museum in the afternoon to see the New Zealand Geographic exhibition which was very good, and being a Monday wasn’t too crowded.  Nicky has had a good week at work, especially when the performance of the air conditioning on the second floor was improved, as apparently at one point in the week it was almost 32°C. She was very tired on Tuesday evening after a session at the pop-up library making badges, the key ingredient of which was brute strength to operate the machine. I have had no work this week so have been focused on my domestic duties. I spent most of Wednesday cooking 20 portions of mea...

We had a very quiet start to 2018. After getting to bed very late (for us) after seeing the New Year in, we didn’t actually get than much sleep. The weather was dull and close and ended up raining, though I did just manage to get some washing dry. Nicky started to feel unwell again and vomited so we had a quiet day at home after I had done a bit of comestibles shopping. I did have a shower - yeah! - first for a week, with the dressing over my bites covered in a plastic bag. This not showering every day thing has been an interesting experience. I haven’t been as smelly as I thought I might be, and my skin is taking longer to look dry, but still needs moisturising. Tuesday was a much better day. Nicky felt she was on the mend but her tummy was still very tender. It was a hot sunny day so I got three loads of washing dry. Blanca and her two girls came over for some quilting advice in the morning, and in the afternoon Nicky delivered birthday gifts to Stella and Valda. In the evening ...

First of all Dear Reader, apologies for this post being late, but yesterday was a very busy day and I just didn’t have time. Second of all, Happy New Year. Our last week of 2017 has been very much a family week. We started off on Monday, Christmas Day, with a lovely clear blue sky, our traditional pot of tea, and opening our presents in bed. We proceeded onto breakfast of croissants stuffed with baked mushrooms (the croissants ended up much bigger than I expected so we had a couple left over) and then had tea and coffee on The Rattigan. We had phone conversations with Gill (in the UK) and Rachel (in Wanaka) while the pudding cooked. Nicky made Strawberry Santa’s for us to take to Kim’s, along with my pudding and Christmas Pie: We picked up Valera, a D&M friend of mine, on the way to Parau and arrived at Kim’s around 12.30.We had a great afternoon of chatting with everybody, glorious food and present opening. Lunch was a little late so we didn’t leave until around 6p...

It would appear that this is the first time that I have done a blog post on a Christmas Eve. What a treat for you Dear Reader. You now have something scintillating and exciting to read on Christmas morning! - is that a good book I see by your elbow? Health has been a major theme for us this week. Though she was not fully recovered Nicky went back to work on Wednesday. Each day since then has been easier and she has been felling better. Antibiotics are now finished and her cough is much improved but still needing some Gee’s Linctus from time to time. My bites have gone toxic according to my GP. All the medics that have seen them feel they are flea bites not mozzie bites, so I suspect I was bitten when collecting a Mac from a cattery last Wednesday. As a result I have had three visits to my GP this week (one to drain them because they had got quite large) and this afternoon have finally been able to leave the dressing off for awhile. I have antibiotics at the ready just in case. The...

As the year starts to draw to an end, it isn’t getting any cooler. We are having mainly sunny days which start off warm and then get hot. There has been the odd cooler few hours, and a short heavy shower one night, but other than that summer seems to be getting into gear. Nicky has been home all week. Initially this was because she had taken Tuesday off for her birthday, and Saturday off for BHB Quilters, but on Tuesday afternoon she started to feel unwell so had to call in sick for the rest of the week. She saw Dr V on Saturday who diagnosed an upper respiratory tract infection, prescribed a range of medicaments, and signed her off until the 20th. On Monday Nicky needed to go into town for an Emergency Response Group meet & greet, and I had had to go and see a customer in Epsom, so I planned to pick Nicky up in town and then for us to head off to Devonport to have a look at the Tony Ogle exhibition in Devonport. However, our plans had to change when I received and email f...