Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

We drove to Bell Block, a little north of New Plymouth, last Sunday. The folks building the kitchen for our new home had hoped to see us the previous week, but due to a communication breakdown we didn’t know. So, we arranged to see them on Monday morning. I booked us into what turned out to be some very good accomodation in Fitzroy, called The Residence. It was new and well equipped, and just a few minutes walk from the beach were we enjoyed an evening stroll and distant views of Mt Taranaki: We had a good and very productive meeting with Lew on Monday morning, as the saga of the kitchen sinks continued, but was resolved with Lew’s help. In short, we are having two sinks in our new kitchen, a conventional or normal one and a small one for a tea and coffee making area. Our first choice for the small sink had become unavailable. Bert had found an alternative, which I discovered on Saturday evening was also now unavailable! I found a third option, this time stainless steel as opposed ...

We have been in Wanganui again this week. Our home is really starting to look like a house from the outside, as much of the cladding is now on. Inside is still a building site as the lovely thick insulation goes in. We had informative conversations with Adam the Actual Builder and his crew before heading into town. Nicky wants to organise a blessing so we called into her currently chosen church, and then we went to The Cooperative Bank to open a savings account. After lunch we did another tour of possible self-storage locations and discovered a shop that does all sorts of “home improvements”, such as fencing and wardrobe fit-outs. We asked them to quote for the fencing. At the end of the day we met our new neighbour, Jacqui, who had contacted us about fencing on our mutual boundary, and we rounded off with a good long chat with our other neighbours, Paul and Naomi, while giving them another tour of the house. Back in Auckland it was mainly laundry in the sunny breezy weather, and s...

On the whole, we have not had the best of weeks, but we have had some lovely sunshine. Nicky has got over the virus (which I kindly gave her) more quickly than I did, but even so only really started to feel more like normal at the end of the week.  We finalised the kitchen design on Monday, but it took until Friday to get all the costs sorted. Hopefully they will be able to get all the materials and parts in time. However, what “in time” means is open to interpretation. Nicky and I have been having stressful discussions about planning the move, and in the end she persuaded me to go with the dates that Bert gave us most recently, and if they don’t pan out we just let the removal company know asap. We were contacted by one of our new neighbours on Monday, Jacqui, with whom we will share a boundary, as she wanted to talk about fencing. She has been very upset by the egress onto her section by our builders, so Nicky spent much of the conversation apologising. Hopefully, when we me...

It has been a quiet week. I have spent it recovering from my virus, which is the worst cold I have had in a long time. I have also wanted to be more cautious about passing on my infection in this Covid “new normal”. Unfortunately my efforts have not been entirely successful, as Nicky started with it on Thursday. All the work I have done, which has not been a great deal, has been remote, until the weekend when Mary needed some help with her iPad. Nicky attended Seniors Church and Holy Communion, and then on Thursday after having her hair cut took Doris out for lunch. The rain was very heavy but the omelettes were very good. She returned home with portions of Beesting and apple strudel which we enjoyed for afternoon tea. We have also had a good FaceTime chat with Jancis. Like much of the rest of the world, we have watched the US Presidential election with disbelief and in the end, relief. I hope Joe can heal the divisions. On the house front, we now have the big windows on the no...

A new TV show started here recently (I guess it has already aired in the UK) called “How to look 10 years younger in 10 days”. I haven’t actually watched it but I have seen the trailers and worked out how to look 10 years younger instantly: just tell people I’m 70! The highlight of our week has been another trip to Wanganui, and seeing our home really starting to look like a house now. The roof is on, most of the windows are “in”, and it has been wrapped in building paper. Interestingly, not only did this give the outside of the house definition, it helped us see that shapes of the rooms from the inside. It also highlighted a very interesting space above our bedroom door, which reaches all the way up to the high ridge of the building. We don’t know how this will turn out in the end. The absence of the scaffolding (which took me a moment or two to notice) means we can now see the size of the house accurately, and how it sits on the land, which we find very pleasing. Nothing happened ...

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 ...