We had a chat with Kez and Soph this morning. Really great to catch up and find out how their Christmas had gone! Congrats to the two of you on your engagement!!

After hearing that Soph had quite a few bits of Galaxy chocolate for Christmas though, Louise was missing a little something – that’ll be Galaxy chocolate!! Cadburys has got a good hold on the market over here, albeit with some really tasty flavours – no just Milk, Whole Nut or Fruit n Nut here!! There is also a lovely tasting Kiwi chocolate from a company called Whittakers. However, there is NO Galaxy. Well, that’s not quite true, there’s a shop in Wellington called Cool Britannia which evidently sells it – we hadn’t been back to Wellington since we’d moved in to the cottage, so we never had found out just what they stocked.

Unfortunately, Bank Holiday had hit the Cool Britannia staff bigtime too – it was closed for the day! However, no worries, we’d gone to Wellington for some window shopping anyway……

After a cup of coffee and some cake at Mr Buns – dead cheap and gorgeous! – we headed off to the shops. We also ended up down the harbour front and bumped into a meeting of world unicyclists, mixed in with some Maori dancing and singing. Brilliant fun!! By the way, the brightly coloured spots on the front of Wellington library are nothing to do with any alcoholic intake, the had all been painted on!!

One of the people we’d met at the Christmas champagne breakfast worked in the Selfridges equivalent in Wellington, Kirkcaldie & Staines, and she’d mentioned that they had a christmas decs sale on. Guess what? Yep, “”we”” spent about an hour looking around there! I’m pretty sure Louise went around the shop at least 5 times. Mind you, I did miss out on a couple as I’d lost the will to live and gone outside for a not-so-quick smoke and window shop around the lower half of Wellington before returning and trying to look interested in the same decs I’d seen before I’d left. I could have sworn she hadn’t moved!!! LOL, they were nice decs though Margaret…………..

After a quick stop in Starbucks – and the feeling that they really do seem the same the world over – we stopped by Wellington Motorcycles to have a look what they had in store (from outside the windows anyway!). Nothing jumped out at us (lots of Harleys mind you), but worth having a look.

Just to prove that the vagaries of the UK weather aren’t just common to all parts of the UK, it was raining (albeit warm rain!) most of the day today. Even the NZ life-form “”Cat”” came in to visit rather than stay outside!

On the bright side, the torn stitches on my chest wound have now healed up pretty well, so we spent the day curled up watching TV and looking for a motorbike for the New Year. Huzzah!

Quiet day in with picky food and oodles of alcohol and watching Disney films……………………

Margaret & John, I can’t believe you let Louise grow up without seeing “”Snow White””, “”Cinderella! and “”Sleeping Beauty””!! It was lovely to see her face brighten up as they unveiled themselves………….

Merry Christmas everybody!

Santa has definitely been here, although I’m fairly sure the scratching noises on the roof last night were possum related……………..So, that means he’s on his way to you now!

We went next door at 9.30am this morning for a champagne breakfast. We were both a little apprehensive, but as it turned out for no reason whatsoever! Lots of people turned up, many of them from the local bowling club! We had a really great time, champagne, BBQ food and fruit and lovely company – Alex, Liz, Amanda, Cam, Marty, Nanna and Gramps (who weren’t actually, but that’s a whole other story), Bob, Mick and Gay to name a few, and all the others for whom the mists of champagne had their names instantly misplaced or forgotten……. We stayed until just after 1pm, when we left so that we didn’t disturb the rest of their family Christmas day. However, we were also fairly blottoed by then!!

The NZ life-form known as “”Cat”” came to see us shortly after we got back home – we had to walk all the way, must have been at least 25m! This time we found out that Cat has got vocal chords too – either it was trying to communicate it’s distaste at us being drunk so early in the day, or, more likely, it might have been upset at not being invited along! Luckily, we had bought in a little treat. Needless to say, the treat (Turkey lumps in gravy) almost disappeared faster off the plate faster than I put it on!

Having said previously that NZ is ahead of the UK in a lot of ways, and in others thankfully 20-30 years in what a lot of people consider to be the past, Christmas Day TV (albeit seen through the bottom of a glass) was great and very similar in feeling to the UK. We watched “”Sound of Music””, “”Mary Poppins”” and then “”Happy Feet”” and “”Phantom of the Opera””- a bit different to the girlie DVD-fest we watched last year like “”Predator””, “”Terminator”” and such (although we did also watch “”Wall-ee”” to be fair).

One thing that a lot of ex-pats over here seem to complain about missing is the BBC and it’s lack of adverts. Personally, we don’t think it’s that bad. However, today we have watched 4 films on two or three channels and apart from the odd break to advertise programmes/films being shown later on, not ONE advert!! TV channels around the world take note!! What a refreshing Christmas Day’s viewing!

We both wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and hope that your day is a wonderful one too!!

Welcome to Christmas Eve!

We had a visitor at breakfast this morning……………… we’ve had a bit of a breakthrough with the NZ life-form called “”Cat””

We thought we’d pop out this morning after feeding the visitor some milk. We hadn’t really got the Christmas food shopping done, so off to PaknSave! We thought we’d take a quick picture to show the mad rush of Kiwis doing their Christmas Eve shopping, all dressed for December.

Food all packed away and it’s out to the deck for an afternoon reading in the sun with a glass or two of wine…………..

It might have been the alcohol, but come about 5pm we decided it would be lovely to have a stroll along the beach. So off we went, armed with a drink and a camera – on Christmas Eve!!

We both hope you have a lovely Christmas Eve, wherever you are!

Louise didn’t sleep very well last night. She was bitten the day before yesterday (we think) on her ankle, and it swelled up quite a bit. She thinks it was a jellyfish, or quite possibly a vampire/werewolf bite – although quite what they were doing out on the deck I don’t know!! Anyway, it was looking very angry and she kept waking up in the night to find herself scratching away at her leg which had gotten all prickly in the night. I think she said she was up at about 5.30am as she couldn’t sleep.

She rushed, well…..hobbled/hopped into the bedroom just gone 8am this morning to tell me that we were having another earthquake, although this one felt bigger. I sort of already knew that, as I was trying to figure out when we’d had the bed converted into a vibrating one when I realised that it was the earthquake too! Although the same size as the last one, this was about 30km southwest of here, off the coast of Porirua and about 50km down again. For those that are interested in that sort of thing, here’s a link to the GeoNet NZ site for that reported quake. Strangely, we’ve become an awful lot more interested of late………….

I was looking forward to a day in the sun again, or rather looking after Louise while she put her foot up to rest it………..but found that the job market had been busy this morning and there were about 10 job possibilities lining up. More work then! The job mails have started coming back too now, unfortunately I didn’t get the girls school one – phew! A couple more have thanked me but turned me down, I suspect that the 6 1/2% unemployment rate still has something to do with it. However, we keep going!!

I decided not to pop out to the shops in case Louise had a relapse and her leg took over her body and forced her to shut down – at least that’s what she thought it was going to do. personally, I think it was just an excuse to lie down and be fed chocolate, crisps and ice cream!

Lots of chats and Skype calls this evening. It’s lovely to catch up, even if its to hear about the snow, ice and wind back in the UK!

PS. Our tabby visitor, got cuddles today from Louise – he’s still not sure about me, unless I have food in my hand! He also came in and had a good nose around this afternoon. I was going to shut the back door and force him into the Stockholm Syndrome so that he’d like me. However, Louise told me that it was cruel and that I couldn’t do it! Ah, well, back to the old tuna in my fingers trick for a while longer…..

I decided to give the job front a miss today as the weather was so lovely! The landlords (Liz and Alex) had popped over yesterday to invite us to a champagne breakfast on Christmas morning, evidently a bit of a tradition for them! Champagne at 9.30 am, haven’t been drinking that time in the morning since I visited a French base many moons ago while I was in the RAF! I’m sure the sun will be over the yardarm somewhere in the world though, so we’ll be fine. We will probably carry on with a bottle of wine down on the beach afterwards for a stroll anyway!

While Liz was here, she mentioned that the Otaki shops were quite good to visit as they’re mostly Factory Outlet style shops on the main street. So, off we went shopping! I wasn’t holding out too much hope, as we’d driven through the town centre when we tried to find Otaki Beach – where the houses were not exactly top notch……….

When we arrived about 20-30 mins later at Otaki, we thought we’d grab a bite to eat and a coffee before having a wander. I did take my camera with us, but I’d forgotten to take the SD card out of the laptop…….DOH! However, good old Google saves the day! I did take a picture of the cafe on the camera, but can I work out how to get it from the camera memory to the SD card – Nope! Some geek I am! Beaten by a camera……………….so far, anyway!

Despite any earlier misgivings, the shops were great and there were quite a few bargains too! We had a wander for a while, as you do, but when Louise went into an underwear shop, I decided to beat a retreat for a sit down by the I-Site (tourist information centres – but usually a lot more friendly than the UK ones!), having picked up a few leaflets. When Louise joined me about 10-15 mins later, we both remarked at how nice everybody in the shops in NZ were. It always feels like a pleasure going shopping here (as long as it doesn’t last too long fro me!), people say hello when you walk in, and mean it. We did find one furniture shop where we were pounced on like you get in the UK, back when we were looking for a bed a couple of weeks ago, but even he backed off and left us alone once he realised we were investigating only – and did it with a smile and a joke!

We’d visited one gift/curio shop on the main street and they were offering out “”truffles”” to customers. They looked and smelled lovely, so Louise and I both had a rum truffle, and VERY Rum it was too. Note to self, don’t drive for a while!

We decided to leave Otaki about 5pm and head back home after a lovely afternoon out. We must come back sometime soon too, but with walking shoes, as we found that the Otaki gorge was a film spot for the hobbits leaving the Shire in the LOTR films. Seems a shame not to go see – even if it does involve a couple of kliks worth of unsealed roads!

We’d both been looking forward to seeing the film Avatar when it was released, and Tuesdays are bargain days – a bit like Orange Wednesdays in the UK………..except there’s no Orange………….and it’s a Tuesday! So, we popped into Coastlands on the way back, picked up some tickets for the 7.45pm show knowing that we now couldn’t change our minds and have a night in. We grabbed some chips from Raumati Beach on the way home (had some bread for chip butties), dropped the shopping off and made our way back out again.

Well, what an awesome film!! We both agreed it would be brill to see it again in the 3D version (I’ve looked it up since, and the nearest 3D showing is in Wellington, so we can go have a look at the Christmas “”tree”” lights at the same time!), it was that good! This time there was almost a full house for the film, each one of the four screens seems to sit about 120 people, and there must have been about 100 there.

When we got back home, we found a police car flashing its lights brightly right next to our drive. By the looks of it, some youngster had been pulled over for speeding – Haha!

Louise put the kettle on while I did the weekly night-before trip down the 75m drive to beat the bin-men at their own game.

So much for things slowing down at Christmas. Quite a few jobs advertised this morning – of which there were three promising ones. I also had a promising reply from an agency about an IT Service Desk job, although I suspect that one won’t come to anything either as it is likely to be a popular one!

I popped out this afternoon to do some Christmas shopping. Obviously, being a couple of days to Christmas, the masses were out. If I passed one person in the mall I must have passed…..at least two !!

It still seems a little weird to be going around the Christmas decorated shops listening to Christmas music and then going out of the shops to the car and having to put on sunglasses and the air conditioning! I’m sure it will wear off after a little while……….

Louise went out shopping late this morning, and got caught up in the window displays!

Graham popped in on his way up to Levin to pick up a load of air cadets from camp (including his daughter Sian). We had coffee out on the deck and had a good chat. He brought along some cakes that Bethan had made – she insisted he did! – and gorgeous they were too.

We’ve had a regular visitor to the house over the last week or so. He generally walks up to the doors to have a peek in, but he was really interested today because we had some tuna rolls for lunch. He’s now willing to sit down within 5 feet of us – but no closer yet!

We’ve decided we’re on holiday now, as the job front seems to have dried up a bit. So, we’ll see if we can get around a bit maybe…….

We did manage to finish off the next puzzle in the series of four that we’ve got. This one was a bit easier than the last one!

It’s a hard life………….

Well, I got an answer from the OU, and surprise surprise a PI! Now all I’ve got to do is send off a form to Shrivenham (Cranfield University) to get the info together so that I can apply for credits – if I can have them! Then maybe I can sort out how fast I can get an IT qualification that would satisfy the NZ Immigration people.

We popped out late afternoon to explore Paraparam a little bit more. In particular, we wanted to see the other side of the railway line which seemed to promise (looking overhead on Google anyway) more housing and the “”Valley Road”” which circles around between the hills we can see from the deck. It looks like the road should reconnect with the SH1 further South………….

Ok, so nice houses and estates leading into farmland, but not as nice a feeling as Raumati South. The road turns in to “”unsealed roads””, but on four wheels thats no issue at all! We travelled down Waterfall Road, where I had seen a lovely house advertised back earlier in the year with 34 acres of land – you remember Chris? Well, the road is not recommended for beginners………..and as for the road up to the house, perhaps one of the outbuildings should be converted to a stable for the horses you’re gonna need! Shame really……………..