Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

I have been busy with work most of the week, both on-site and remote. October is developing into a much more “normal” pre-Covid month, my first of the financial year which started in April. I had a cooking day on Thursday, making pork pies and lasagne, and finishing off the day at a Deep and Meaningful meeting. Nicky has been able to attend more of her usual events this week, with Seniors Church, Holy Communion and ukulele sing along. Reading and laundry, along with some cooking, has filled most of the rest of her waking hours. The weather has started showing signs of summer, with both Thursday and Saturday being warm sunny days, and today has been quite pleasant too. On the house front we now have a roof, confirmed by Nicky’s life group leaders who called into Wanganui while having few days in the south of the North Island this week.  Nicky and I did a hot water tap reconnaissance to check out one which we had seen advertised and the other suggested by Bert. The last of the...

In case you haven’t heard, we had a General Election here yesterday. Labour won, and for the first time since Aotearoa adopted the MMP system, a party has gained enough of the popular vote to govern alone. Even though Labour governed after the previous election, they had to form a coalition with two minor parties in order to have a majority in parliament. Not this time! Watching the results coverage last night put me in mind of Labour’s victory in the UK in 1997. Not only were Labour gaining long-held National seats, but some of the “big names” in the National Party were loosing their own electorates. Many of them will still be in parliament because of the list system, but it put pay to any notion of their status being enough to get the votes. We have been down to Wanganui again this week. Much detail in the frame and roof structure has been completed, we have the beginnings of a car port, and some of the fascia has been installed. Apparently, the roof iron was installed by the end of ...

I have had an interestingly busy week with remote support, along with three site visits to a customer to resolve their issue. This has resulted in me having my second busiest week of this financial year, in terms of hours. It is a bit of a relief because looking at my half-year figures (the end of September) I am almost 50% down this year on last. Auckland moved to Covid Level 1 at 11.59pm on Wednesday, and already it feels like their are more people around when we are out and about. Mask wearing is being encouraged but is not as prevalent at the end of the week as it was at the beginning. We are also being strongly encouraged to trace our movements, either with the governments’ Covid app or by making our own records. Both Nicky and I feel that complacency is already setting it as we are observing fewer people scanning the QR codes with the Covid tracer app. Nicky has been busy keeping our home clean, inside and out, along with enjoying reading two Minette Walters books, The Last Ho...

I thought I was getting fatter, but apparently I’m not - it’s just Covid Kilos. Presumably when Covid has gone the Kilo’s will too! Here’s hoping. We have had quite a quiet week, but the weather has been ringing the changes. We started with the tail end of a storm, very wet overnight Monday, quite windy, chilly temperatures (snow down south), and have finished the week wearing shorts and warm sunshine, though there is a chill to the breeze today that we didn’t have yesterday. Our highlights for the week have been Heritage Festival tours. On Tuesday we had a breezy walk round some of the Maori public art in the CBD. Some of this we had not seen before so that was a treat, and we enjoyed again the pieces which we have previously encountered. One which I particularly liked had hidden pathways of railway sleepers through lush planting: We had a slow journey home as the train was stationary for 25 minutes due to “electric power cut shortages”. I don’t think English was the train manage...

It has been a bit of a week, one way or another, with a range of notable, though sometimes small events. It began last Sunday with us driving down to Wanganui. We got to the section just as the sun was setting which gave the timber frame a gorgeous orange colour. The work in hand was the roof formers and trusses, so scaffolding surrounded the house. This gave us a “one time only” elevated view of our home so we sized the opportunity and enjoyed walking round the temporary platform. We had an early cup of tea on Monday morning and were greeted with a crisp and clear start to what became a lovely sunny day. On walking down to the section we found Adam the Builder (Bert is actually the Project Manager) getting ready for his day and had a good chat. We drove over to the other Wanganui section where “our team” are working and had a tour of that house now that the frames are up. It is vast, more than 4 times the size of ours. We shopped on the way home for lunch. At some point in the morn...

We started our week with the 13th anniversary of our arrival in New Zealand. In order to celebrate we bought some dessert wine on our way home from getting Nicky’s hearing aid fixed. When chilled it went down very well. It was announced that our Covid level would stay at 2.5 in Auckland until the 23rd, with confirmation being announced on the 21st. We had a quiet afternoon and in the evening watched the first episode of the new series of Grand Designs NZ. It was supposed to be the last episode of the previous series, but didn’t get aired. I was especially interested to see it because it was the conversion (into a New York style apartment) of the old Farmers tea room on the top floor of what is now a hotel. I had visited the old tea room a couple of years ago during the Heritage Festival, and of course Nicky had been as a child. The purchase was discussed during the visit as it is a registered heritage site. The building of the apartment was completed within the requirements of the heri...

I have been quite busy with work this week, catching up on jobs that I wasn’t able to do during Covid Level 3 or while we were down in Wanganui. It has been good to earn a few dollars.  Nicky’s social and church events are still not happening so she has been at home, reading, listening to audio books, cleaning, washing windows and doing the laundry. This has been helped by some spring weather bringing some lovely sunshine, and the Barlow Recliners have had quite a bit of time out on The Rattigan, often with us in them. The clear skies have brought some chilly mornings, and there was a light frost on next doors’ roof on Tuesday. Socialising is still possible, and we were very pleased to have a visit from Ivan and Fay on Thursday while they were in Auckland, visiting from Christchurch where they now live (Nicky used to work with Fay). I also enjoyed a beer up at The Block on Friday evening, but my Deep and Meaningful meeting this week was via Zoom with being limited to groups of 1...