When your boat comes in

Dance ti' thy daddy, sing ti' thy mammy,
Dance ti' thy daddy, ti' thy mammy sing;
Thou shall hev a fishy on a little dishy,
Thou shall hev a bloater when the boat comes in.
(trad. Northumbrian folksong)

Our boat's already in, we're just not sure what to expect. For all the old Geordie song pops into me head when I hear the phrase, in both verse and real life there's always a hint that it might not all be good news, as if your fishy might end up slapping you in the face rather than filling your belly. The way I remember it, most of the verses describe the kids of the house farting about with their mam, until the man of the house staggers in from the pub with their supper, stone cold and far from sober.

To be fair to respectable Northumbrian folk, this is quite possibly a bastardised version of a rather more quaint and tasteful seafaring ballad but then again, it's probably not ;) I mean it's not an unfamiliar scene. Not that my dad ever, y'know... well, not regularly. I remember the first & last time he rolled in late a bit worse for wear, clutching two bags of crisps and a Fry's Chocolate Creme. He certainly wasn't allowed to forget in a hurry ;)

The more conventional maritime meaning of your boat coming in evolved around the settling of a debt and the reaping of rewards, cos for centuries merchants have borrowed money to finance shipments from the other side of the world and paid off the loan once the lucrative cargo docked. Of course much depends on the quality of the merchandise and whether it's actually worth the initial investment, ie whether you end up lumbered with stuff no-one wants, worse off than you were before. It's in this sense that the phrase applies to us, as were equally unclear whether our boat coming in is a blessing or a curse, and the heartening fact that we've paid for it all upfront kind of fades when we recall what we've actually paid for.

And it wasn't cheap. (I have to get this down before the stuff clears quarantine and ends up in our garage: by then it'll be too late to think of it in abstract terms, cos we'll be up to our necks in it) If anyone reading this ever considers something as daft as moving their entire home and contents across the globe, please, don't. Just don't do it. Sell the lot.

Don't be fooled into thinking you have to buy Gizmo X cos they won't sell them where you're going: not only is that highly unlikely, when you get where you're going your needs will almost certainly shift enough to make X obsolete before it arrives.

Remember that the clothes you absolutely can't do without will fit into a standard suitcase. Anything and everything that ends up shoved into black bin liners clearly isn't going to be worth removing from them at the other end.

Books: sell them or give them away, you'll never read them any more than you'll miss them.

CDs, DVDs etc: rip them to your hard drive, then sell them.

Ornaments: looked great in your old place, so leave them there, or try eBay.

Electrical, soft furnishings, kitchenware: sell, sell, sell!

There's just no point shipping stuff when it costs $15 per cubic foot (once you've insured it) and your average washing machine is 12 cu ft. If it cost you $600 a year ago, by the time you ship it, battered and bruised, to your destination, it'll have cost you a another $180. Instead, just sell it, put the proceeds and savings – say $350 – towards a nice new one that'll actually work, or at least have a warranty that you could actually claim on, and save another $350 in repairs and prescription valium.

Yes, I'm looking forward to having my bikes, tools and er, well, bikes and tools, that's it. The rest could have been hijacked by Somalian pirates for all I care. In fact we should have paid the buggers to do just that. One forty-five grand insurance claim later, I think I could bear the loss. The two of us are almost indignant that it's all arrived at all, especially since all we're going to do is stack it in the garage and wonder what on earth possessed us to rent a furnished house.

It's due to be delivered on Tuesday, possibly even Christmas eve.

Bah.

On the bright side, the summer holidays started today, the weather's lovely and we have a new gas barbecue. Yes, that really is a barbecue in the pic (the house came with a ceramic hob [curse, spit] which is a complete and utter waste of perfectly good benchtop space. I won't let on how I came to buy a stainless steel six-burner with accessory ring, when all I wanted was an accessory ring... I have no doubt Nik'll relish telling the tale when she gets a minute) And the December iPhone pics are up. All that remains is to wish my reader (sic) a fabulous yule: hope you have a bloater, just like us.

The kids are alright

It's normal to be concerned about kids, I mean they're a worry aren't they? One of the hardest things about being a dad (or a mam) is accepting that your son (or daughter) is actually doing fine at school (or nursery), plays nicely with the other kids and is generally, as far as there can be a definitive standard, behaving "normally". Even leaving aside the fact that you the parent are being progressively relieved of any responsibility for your child's behaviour (it's all down to your child's birth weight, not your being a selfish, lazy, chain-smoking binge drinker, etc etc) there's a feeling of helplessness that stems directly from not being around for best part of your lad's (or lasses) (sorry, I'll stop that now) working day, or even more wishfully, wondering what on earth is going thorough their heads. Ok, now fold that mixture into this whole big disruption thing (cf previous blog posts) and we wouldn't be normal ourselves if we weren't extra concerned, a bit over-watchful and occasionally verging on neurotic about their well-being. Well, after a shaky start and in realising all of the above, I think we can finally rest in the knowledge that both E and O are properly grounded at last, even if we are none the wiser in the child development stakes.

We were just agreeing today that Elly seems happier than we've ever seen her; fabulously five, classically blonde and yet not completely dizzy, full of life and about as self-centered as she'll ever be. I hope. She seems to be charging ahead with schoolwork and friendships and has that brash, me-first, super-critical, cry-at-the-drop-of-a hat first-grader thing off to a fine art. If anything, she's very mature for her age and seems to be well in with the alpha females in her class. She likes swimming (every day in the school pool) scooters, gourmet food (ahem) Pixar movies, trampolines and arguing.

I may have already mentioned that Oscar is two. There isn't really anything more to say.

Oh, alright then.

He can be as infuriating as any kid his age, but he's mostly gorgeous. He spends two days a week at nursery, which has been his biggest challenge by far since we got here. It would have been much easier with even one more day but nurseries are so busy here, regulations (children per tutor) are strict and there's just not been the space for him. This week, at last, he seems to have settled in there and we can actually mention the place by name without him crying... in fact he gets quite chirpy about it. Please may he not learn to speak properly just yet; Oggis-speak is so meltingly cute and totally hilarious. He's moved on, at last, from vocabulary building to sentences, thanks to liberal use of the indefinite article – "a want a go a play a bings a park a pees daddy" (bings = swings) – which has opened up a whole world of communication for him. And occasionally for us.

Oscar likes everything that Elly likes plus soil and raisins.

There's a bunch of other kids that have been the source of some anguish and they're more or less the same as they were when we got here, according to Niki. Her school is still in turmoil, and although the eye of the storm seems to have passed, there's still a lot of negativity among the upper management in the wake of it and the going remains tough. As you'd expect, her class of 10-year-olds have meanwhile learned the hard way that there's Nik's way or the highway, and they're pretty much on-side now. They're clearly going to be a challenge but that's the stuff of teaching as far as she's concerned. You'd have to ask her yourself, but I get the impression that they've got under her skin a bit and she under theirs, which is all they need to start turning themselves around. They're just kids, after all, young enough that every day can be a fresh start if they really want it to be.

I'm hoping you're never too old for that to hold true :) finding work was always going to be slow but I'm forging ahead with plans A B and C as & when the kids permit. All will be revealed shortly. Meanwhile, the last of the November "iPhone moments" are up on picassa, hope you're enjoying them as much as I am.

Facebook scam warning

I've never liked the idea of Facebook purely from a security point of view. If you have a FB page or are thinking about getting one, there have always been several things you should be aware of and they've always seemed to me to be very good reasons not to sign up. Now all that paranoia is coming home to roost. If you do FB, I sincerely hope you've not been bitten by this yet. Whether you have or not, I hope you can see the writing is now plainly, er, on the wall.

Like a lot of people, I signed up with its spiritual forerunner, FriendsReunited.co.uk, way back when this kind of networking was a novel idea and despite niggling privacy concerns, because I simply had to know what became of all the nutters I went to school with (they're all either accountants or dropouts now, predictably enough) and signing up was the only way to find out. It actually felt quite "safe", with its double-blind email and school-register-type format. Still, I avoided giving away any real information about myself and I'm glad I did, as it's since been sold to ITV.com and (ab)used for other purposes. Unlike classmates.com, the US site that inspired it, FR never really followed up on its early success. Classmates.com now gives us all a clear indication of what would have happened if it those Other Purposes had been allowed to flourish. Not pretty at all.

Anyway I'll not harp on about it any more. Just be careful what you post up on these sites and be even more careful what you respond to there. Facebook in particular is now so huge it's just begging to be targeted by spammers and scammers who will look to exploit the friendly bonhomie there, first and foremost. When it happens, as with all these things, the more you give away, the more you stand to lose.

[/rant]

Weekend recipes & stuff

Cucumber Raitha by François-Xavier at fxcuisine.com. I tip my hat and dip my naan :)

Just a quickie again: had to share these blogs and their fab recipes. To be honest, I've not tried the Spanish one yet but it all looks dreamily familiar... just looking at the index has me lusting after butifarra, arroz a la cubana and lashings of pimienton picante. The title, Las Recetas de Mama, says what it is: a homesick Cordobese is progressively posting all his mother's recipes for us all to enjoy. Check it out before she cottons on why he's on the phone so much these days and clips his ear for him.

The other one is a bit different, in fact it really is something else... I made this guy's cucumber raitha for a curry night last week and it was sublime. His photographs are very nice too. If you've ever tried to make raitha and come up with something you thought was pretty good, you'll hate him. If you've ever wished you had a ready way of photographing your better culinary creations, you'll want to track him down and kill him. His amazing blog is here. His utterly infuriating About page is here. I'm still trying to find his home address... ;) He merits a permanent place among the Canny Good Links, I think.

Finally, there are some more iPhone moments on the November Picasa page.

Bon profit!

Things not being what they seem

We're both missing the autumn like a weird form of late-onset jetlag. It's getting hotter, not cooler, and the trees are sprouting green rather than glowing red and orange. Christmas decs everywhere look waay out of place. This time next month, when you're all roasting chestnuts on an open fire, we'll be roasting our chestnuts on the open beach. A lovely thought, if not a particularly pleasant image :) It does have a disorienting effect, a sort of dream-like unreality where you're double-taking a lot more than usual.

Kids are good for making you look twice at the best of times but this week's been mad. Imagine your typical house husband's mid-week afternoon: you've done the washing-up and there's a nice half-hour window before you pick up the big one from school. Just enough to leaf through the news with a nice cuppa tea. By the time the kettle's boiled and you slowly become aware of the eery silence it's too late... it's not like you forgot about the little one, he just slipped under your radar long enough to wreak his revenge for not paying him attention. Even before you even raise your head, somehow you just know it's gonna be bad. Well, on this occasion it's the dreaded Felt Pens, today's favourite clearly being a nice big red one. "A tiger," he says, and for once I don't need the hint; I'm actually quite impressed. It's not a bad tiger at all, the stripes up the arms and legs are neatly spaced and his paws are coloured in black, just like a real big cat. As toddlers are naturally ambidextrous, the work is more-or-less symmetrical from a whole-body perspective and stops only where the clothes start. This is impressive toddling, and it's not even the end of the ruse.

I put off washing him cos it's time to get Elly, so I just shove him in the pushcair and leave. We return to afternoon snacks and he's sitting at the breakfast bar with a glass (I know, I know..) of milk when he leans over to reach something and the glass shatters under his hand. It must have been cracked or something. Milk and glass fly everywhere and I instinctively grab his arms above the elbow to staunch the blood from all the cuts... which... aren't... cuts... they're red marker pen! Unconvinced and still shocked, I yell to Elly to get some paper towels while I check again and again each of the hundreds of red stripes all over him, for way longer than it would take for real blood to flow, but due to some kind of miracle he's completely unharmed. The panic over, he finally takes a deep breath, looks up at me and lisps, "ooh, a thcary tiger!"

Once I fully realised his incredible good luck I did the sensible thing and got straight down the shops to get him to pick some Lotto numbers. Which was hopeless of course, as he can't hold a pen properly, and Elly picked them for him. She was pretty good and only spoiled one card, so I didn't have the heart to lecture her on the statistical probability of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 being drawn from the pot, largely because I wasn't sure it was any less likely than a random pick. Nevertheless I checked the results as soon as I got up this morning and guess what? We didn't win, of course, but I got another shock because at first glance I thought we had. The first five numbers, I kid you not, were 12, 23, 34 and 45.

Ok, it's not quite the Twilight Zone but it's enough to make your head spin, it really is.

News at Tin

Actually, it's jast gone siven-thirdy, but what the hick...

Top story: we're in our new place. It feels very, very good. It feels like we finally landed, albeit more like the way a ball lands than a plane... more a sort of bouncing to a halt. If you're a regular Ryanair flyer the analogy might be lost on you, but anyway.. our cases are unpacked, at last, into the wardrobes of our sixth home in as many months, so we can relax at least, even if we can't get too comfy just yet. As the vast majority of our junk is on a cargo ship somewhere off the coast of Somalia (with any luck) it feels airy and spacious in here, even minimalistic, with vast amounts of empty storage space and clean, open work surfaces. It feels good, more than anything, to have our feet on slightly more solid ground; a 12-month lease seems like ages in the light of recent exploits. The fact is though, it's a finite contract; the owners are only renting it out while they take a sabbatical in Adelaide. This time next year we'll be pulling the last of the strawberries and upping sticks once more, and despite what you might think, we both agree it already feels like the right thing to do. Howick is charming and convenient and all the rest of it but it's way too crowded and suburban for our liking. Their house, though, is wonderful.

I think it was built something like 20 years ago, in the garden of a very sweet, flower-bound cottage, a two-storey Dutch-style place with a kind of granny flat off the other side of two garages, leased to a guy who apparently spends around 3 months of the year in it. As this sits between the street-front cottage and our place it's very quiet and the joint garage driveway provides a big, safe courtyard for the kids to adorn with pavement chalk artworks. A narrow but beautifully manicured garden, fragrant with roses, jasmine, orange and honeysuckle, borders the living room at the front and the kitchen down the side. We have a cat that hates kids & hence we never see, but are contractually bound to feed. The interior is very tastefully modern and quite open-plan, making it devilishly hard for the cat to sneak in and eat. Our room looks out over neighbouring gardens, while the kids' has a sea view. It's no grand vista, just a triangular patch of sparkly water between the pitched roofs of the neighbouring holiday chalets, big enough to see if the the tide's in and watch the Auckland ferry cruise past Mount Wellington in the distance. As I quipped to the wife the other day, we should think of it as a downpayment on the proper view we'll have ourselves one day. Anyway, rather than try to describe the layout and whatnot, I made a slightly hamfisted video of it all & posted it on my iDisk. Apologies in advance for the quality, or lack of; like a lot of things in our current pre-shipment, chattels-free state, we're obliged to make use of some slightly unorthodox tools...

Other news: in a report out today scientists claimed the process of migrating from one side of the world to the other might prove quite unsettling to the under-fives... whereas we always assumed it would be hardest on Elly, as she's so much more aware of what's going on I'm beginning to think the last six months has been more upsetting for little Oscar. Daft things like becoming very home-oriented and placing a lot of value on what's "ours" – our house, our car, etc. – even though they've been changed as often as his teeshirts. Possibly because of it, and despite it, he has this amazing ability to pick out "owa car" in a crowded mall carpark, even differentiate between ours and nearby identical cars, which got me wondering if he was actually reading the license plates.

They're all really subtle "symptoms" and it's quite possible that we're looking for a syndrome that doesn't exist, but you have to wonder. He's sitting next to me now with a pencil in his fist, scribbling and singing away to himself, happy as the proverbial pig, not a care in the world. This morning he was a wreck. There are always a few tears starting kindie, plus I guess it's natural to be a little over-protective of your youngest, but leaving him with the lovely nursery teachers seems much tougher than it was with Elly and he's always quite positive he doesn't want to go, crying before we even get there. He wasn't so bad at Play Centre once he realised I wasn't leaving; stuck to me like glue for the first half-hour and then gradually got into it on his own. Groups of little kids don't faze him so much as perhaps represent the loss of his comfort zone.

I dunno. He's two. They're always a bit doolally at that age. Both he and Elly are amazing kids and all this will likely just make them stronger and more resilient. Elly got an award from the principal of her new school last week. I was there for the assembly; it was lovely. Along with a number of other kids she was called to the front, and then stood up on the stage holding a small certificate that commended a "kind and caring student", which, given the lecture I'd given her that very morning about sharing and not being selfish, goes to show exactly how little I know about my own offspring...

Sport and weather: mostly dull and very sunny, respectively. I really can not wait til my bikes arrive.

This just in: I got an iPhone for me birthday, a marvellous toy that happens to have a half-decent camera built in and makes it much easier to spontaneously snap the kids and their zany antics.. a new album on Picassa will catalogue this low-resolution malarky as it unfolds. It was lovely to receive the cards and birthday greetings by the way, it's always nice to know I'm remembered as I embark on this, my forty-ninth year. A big "thankyou" and virtual hug to you both ;)

it's been one hell of a trip so far...

If you had asked me, about a month before we left, how I felt about leaving our European lives behind, I'd have said, 'easy, no problem', and those that know me well might even have suggested I was being a bit blasé about it all. The reality of saying good bye began to sink in when we popped over to Spain and I had to say adios to some really good friends. Even though we'd left Spain six months previously, it was (is) still home and i had to keep reminding myself that I actually would be seeing everyone again, one day. There's nonetheless a weird permanence about saying good bye that was heart wrenching, and remains so. If I try hard (and I generally try really hard not to, I'm not that masochistic...) i can still feel that same wrench. I went through a phase for the first couple of weeks here of having "saying good bye" dreams every night, really vivid and sad. They seem to have stopped now, thankfully, although it was really nice to see some of you again :-)

Well then, down to the real nitty gritty and the reason i finally got round to writing - school. I know Ive had a couple of years off and despite a couple of months doing supply in the UK will admit to being a touch rusty. However, I'm generally confident that i'm an ok teacher, I do love it and it's all I ever really wanted (and want) to do. I've come in to this school in term 4, at the end of the year, at the end of one hell of a year for the kids I'm with and the school itself. Myself and a fab girl from Wigan called Antonia have been lifted up and dropped into a school in crisis, quite frankly.

An incident occurred in term 3 involving one of the Deputy Principals (who had been sharing my class with the other DP, who is an angel!) resigning for some reason – an argument? misunderstanding? – with the Head who recruited us. The Ministry of Education have instigated an enquiry and staff morale is in the minus numbers. And the kids are something else. Both my class and Antonia's have been messed around a lot; I am my class' 4th teacher, Antonia is the 7th for hers... in one year! My main impression after 2 weeks is that they are incredibly rude, respond more to negative attention than positive and can give it out but are unable to take it. I only have 23 kids but they are such a handful. I'm not teaching, I am trying to control behaviour but so far nothing has worked.

Usually, a couple of weeks into a job, even if you have come in late in the year or as a supply teacher you've "got" the kids and you know how to handle them. In 10 days of being with this class I've had about one hour of it being OK. I usually alternate between waiting for them to settle down, asking them nicely to be quiet and yelling like a blummin' lunatic. It isn't fun. They swear, although not (yet) directly at me, if I ask them to be quiet or to do something I get the blackest looks I have had in my entire life and am generally tutted at at least 20 times a day. Of course, I am a white Pommie female who has dared to enter a patriarchal culture in a position which in most cultures demands at least a modicum of respect, so really, what do I expect?!

Somewhat reassuring, but at the same time entirely depressing, is the fact that I'm not the only teacher there in this position. Staff who have been there for years are sworn at, have scissors thrown at them and are disrespected in other ways. I have been told that not all of the schools in the cluster mine belongs to are the same but find it hard to believe... if anyone has any ideas of strategies I can use I'd be eternally grateful! The remaining DP is wonderful, he has been at the school for about 20 years and is totally respected by everyone. He helps a lot but has a heavy load and also I really don't want (and normally wouldn't need) to be "carried". We don't know the curriculum, have to do all these tests with the kids and, and have to write reports in a couple of weeks?! I've got 9 hours of release time coming up over the next few weeks, can't wait! Aaaaagh!!! Needless to say, the CV is in circulation!

It's a shame, as nothing else I've experienced here is anywhere near as negatively-charged, but it's hard to deny it has seriously coloured my first impressions of the country we're hoping to call home one day. Work is a big part of your life and when it's crap the rest of your life is bound to be tainted by that. I mean, there are some brilliant schools here (Elly's is just one example) and whereas Howick might not be our first choice of town to live in, we've barely scratched the surface of what NZ has to offer. We both know we have a lot to offer, and it's probably just a matter of time before we get the chance to prove it.

Just a quickie...

I forgot to add a couple of links to the last post, most importantly to the latest pics (I get complaints if there's not lots of pics) and also to some odd terminology... "tramping" is NZ-speak for hiking or fellwalking. Walking, especially of the odd exaggerated-arm-swinging variety with optional wiggly hips and sticky-out bums, appears to be mega-popular, quite possibly as an antidote to driving absolutely everywhere. Like round the corner to drop the kids off, as a couple of Elly's schoolmates seem to do. There appears to be no activity in between, unless it involves water. Or gambling.

I dunno, it's really too easy to generalise and I'm probably way off the mark as far as actual facts go... I'm getting this blogging done during my daily caffeine fix at Esquires, who have free wireless access which actually works on occasion. Quite often it cuts out just as I'm posting something up, like yesterday... links are obviously the product of surfing, which is (obviously) at a premium these days. No matter, I just signed up today with NZ Telecom for a big fat broadband deal which will (they say) magically activate itself the day we move into our new place. Until then, you should probably take all my pontificating with the cruet set at hand.

Right. I've fixed the links, added more here and made feeble excuses. Hasta luego! x

Comparative nonsense

Notice anything different about this No Entry sign?

Before we came, we'd chatted with a fair few people who'd already been and there were a fair few more who, despite being very impressed, thought it eerily reminiscent of the UK, especially in & around Wellington and Christchurch. Some even use "Little England" as a synonym for Christchurch. We've not been there yet (not for that reason, but it's probably reason enough..) but I'd kind of expected to find the suburbs here in Auckland's to be a lot more familiar than they are. They're actually more reminiscent of Barcelona's urbanizaciones if anywhere, just definitively down-under, with a lot of things distinctly Kiwi rather than Ozzie in character.

For example, one thing we've done a lot of is grocery shopping. Supermarkets are pretty much the same the world over, although their trundlers are front-wheel-steer only and there are a lot more dairies to compete with. They're everywhere, super-convenient for shoppers and robbers alike, although convenience shopping doesn't stop with them: like Australia, you can get most basics at the servo and there's usually a "superette" (love it) on the main roads in & out of town. It's all about as English as Watties tomato ketchup.

Ignoring some inconvenient facts for a moment, New Zealand is also way bigger than the UK. It took a little over 3 hours driving to get from our old place in Durham to Heathrow airport, a journey which, on the map, seems to traverse a good chunk of the country. Drive from Auckland to the south coast and it will take you nine hours, and that's just the reasonably flat north island... add another nine and you might get somewhere near the southern highlands. For the averagely laid-back traveller, that's at least a three-day journey, and doesn't even account for the ferry between the two landmasses. It's no wonder it took those poor Hobbits so long to get to Mordor.

The thing is, it's so goddam hilly, the roads you see on the map are no indication of distance at all. If you flattened the buggers out they'd be twice as long. Seriously! It's big in a quiet way, like mountains or oceans which seem relatively small from a distance and vast when you get right up to them. We went tramping on Sunday, drove up into the Hunua mountains beyond the Napa Valley vineyards to a locked gate, at which point you have to get out and er, tramp. Looking for a picnic site and sporting totally inappropriate footwear, we followed a mud-laden trail through dense forest, overgrown with monster ferns and sinister creepers, which according to a large-scale map we found would be a kilometer maximum before we reached a viewpoint with fabulous views. It took about an hour. I swear it was nearer 5km... the view was indeed fabuolous (see pics) and the kids were amazing, but we had a classic bus-load of tourists at the top of the mountain moment when we turned to leave and found a perfectly good road round the corner providing an easy 10 minute stroll back to the car...

Anyway, about those inconvenient facts: the Kiwi landmass covers roughly the same area as the UK, give or take a receding shoreline or two (if one of the 48 volcanoes here decided to erupt, that could change quite radically of course) and there are famously more sheep here than people. Like about five times as many, and roughly 15 times fewer people than the UK, but it's really not that obvious until you go to the beach on a perfect sunny day & find there's almost no one there. That same Sunday we drove through Maretai, a really stunning seaside town with beautiful, turquoise crystal seas and spotless beaches fringed with shaded, grassy picnic areas; it was 12 noon and there were maybe 30 people there. The beach, which must be all of 3km long, was practically deserted. Out of the city, you do get this odd feeling of being vastly outnumbered by livestock. Across the road from the beach, a flock of wooly ruminants keep their heads down, hoping no-one will notice.

This is the reason NZ is so high up the chart of "per-capita" statistics; less than a quarter of the population of 4.2 million people live outside of the cities and burbs. The result is that the country has – per capita – more crime, more McDonalds restaurants, more Olympic medals and more dope smokers than almost any other country in the world. Everything you'd expect to find downtown New York is present in Downtown, Auckland City, but it's magnified statistically by the sheer dearth of people living anywhere else in NZ. Having the second-lowest population density in the world really does distort the stats as much as it scares the sheep: the fact is, this is one of the safest countries in the world to visit, it does crap at the Olympics and for the most part you can't find a Big Mac or score a bag of grass to save your life.

Not that we'd want to do either of those things, of course...

Fear and clothing with Los Nemo

We're a week-and-a-bit into the venture and all that jet-lagged, paranoid head-spinning has finally given way to a more relaxed form of bewilderment, as we locate the majority of life's odd necessities & realise that it really is dead nice here and we're not just telling ourselves it is out of a kind of desperate obligation. A lot of things are as you'd expect: there's that typical Australasian blend of colonial and semi-modern building everywhere, although we also have some spanking-new shopping malls round here; it's very green, with a huge variety of flora and some very odd wildlife; the sea is jade green and stunning wherever you catch sight of it; people are super-friendly, mega-helpful, genuine and gregarious. Everything else is like something from another planet, or maybe a parallel universe. I'll get onto that another time, once I've had a chance to check stuff out properly.

The weather is probably the most bizarre thing of all. It can go from UK grey to tropical blue, via monsoon, hurricane and blizzard, all before lunchtime. Ok, maybe not blizzard – it hasn't snowed in Auckland in 70 years – but you get the idea. You can look out the window one minute and it's sunny and calm, look back again 5 minutes later and it's pissing down and blowing a gale. Rumours that it never stops raining in spring are way off the mark: it's stopped raining at least 35 times in the last week alone... I find myself walking along the street, zipping and unzipping my jacket as the temperature goes up and down. It's just weird. And very windy.

On balance, it's too cold for us at the moment, although that's more true of indoors than out, which is basically down to a lack of building insulation. These days it's illegal to build a house without double-glazing, foam-filled walls, etc, but for years they just didn't bother with it here, so if you live in a house over 10 years old the chances are it has none of these things. The little timber-framed, tin-roof cottage we've been staying in is good for keeping the wind and rain out but other than that it basically keeps things the same temperature inside as out. My campaign to wear shorts for 12 months solid, briefly suspended during the UK summer, has lapsed again here in the Kiwi spring – not when I go out but when we stay indoors. What I need here are long pants that retract above the knee when you pull a cord, concertina-style, whenever I go out.

We need to find a car this week, and it's far from obvious what we should be looking for. There's a whole island full of Japanese auto-transmission saloons (or sedans, as they're known here) with an average age of 10 years and a very strong second-hand market supporting them. Or at least, that's what a look at the small ads will tell you. Others tell me it's a collapsing market, due largely to the falling price of new cars; despite the new car market being slowed by the credit crunch (harder to get loans, etc) there's no denying the need for manufacturers to offload their overseas stock, given the state of the US market. Apparently things are so grim for Ford Motor Co. that they've even mortgaged their famous blue oval logo. It's all very confusing. One thing in our favour might be the effect this all has on the exchange rates. The NZ dollar crashed quite suddenly last week and might ever go lower next week... buying NZ$ at the right time could make buying a new car quite a bit more affordable than it was just a few days ago. Not to mention the deposit on our house, and that iPhone I was thinking of getting, and the many other ways of making sure it ends up costing us more than we save.

We ought to be more careful, cos the whole world seems to be in a scary predicament. All those central banks printing wheelbarrow-loads of money, you have to wonder where it will all end. I was just reading that the digital debt meter in Time Square in New York no longer has enough digits to record the ballooning level of US national debt. Although they've moved the dollar sign out to allow it to go from trillions to tens-of-trillions, there's apparently a move afoot to replace the whole thing with one containing three extra digits, allowing for quadrillions and er, even bigger amounts.

And as the poet said, if you think it might happen, it probably will.

Over the rainbow

The kids have been heavily into the Wizard of Oz for a good while now. I've no idea how many times we've watched it since Elly first saw it at school – 50? 100? – nor how long it will take before the "Ding, dong, the witch is dead" earworm will leave our heads. Years, probably. We naturally brought the DVD with us and they're watching it for the second time today as I type. I always loved it but never really scrutinised its "message" before. This morning – very, very early this morning, thanks to the little one's body clock still being on Singapore time – I watched it with them again and it suddenly occurred to me that the pertinence of the film to our current carry-on might run much deeper than its title.

The "Oz" thing lost most of it's relevance when we decided to move here instead (although, as Nik pointed out, it's so very nearly the Wizard of Nz... yeah, ok, it was dead funny at 5 this morning..) and even the no-place-like-home, grass-is-always-greener theme is a bit on the thin side. No, it was the stuff the main characters are seeking that seemed to ring true to my heavily jet-lagged noggin, and the realisation that my head, heart and courage really are all present and correct, despite my faith in them waning at times. Some of the stuff we've seen and done since we got here has tested them all, the last two days.

Nothing serious, just a few incidences of, "o god, what have we done..", starting with the Airport Garden Hotel. What a dump. I mean it was clean and everything, just in the middle of an industrial estate and totally run down, with a sad, derelict ex-water feature at the entrance, weird, dated decor and cheesy cane furniture in the lobby. Big framed posters hang crookedly on every wall, their colours bleached out to an almost monochrome blue. It's all summed up by two big, brass & glass display cabinets in the lounge, both spotlessly clean, one empty, the other neatly laid out with five Mars bars, fifteen packs of Kleenex and a roll of Sellotape. Classy.

Still, that was just a temporary stopover until we got our little holiday let, which is a complete contrast. It's just a timber two-room bungalow set in the owner's grounds but it's gorgeous, like something out of Homes & Gardens. Big, mature plants and trees are set against towering virgin forest, the first blooms of Spring are all around, the long driveway lined with huge wild lillies. At the end, you go over the bridge to the turquoise waters of the bay. This is a stunning country, moreso than we ever imagined, and we've still not even left the suburbs of Auckland. We're actually in the Botany Downs, just on the outskirts of the south-eastern 'burbs, where the landscape goes from flattish to very hilly around the coast. Still very difficult to navigate, never mind describe, so I'll leave it for now...

There's a hell of a lot to take in of course. We had another OMG moment when we visited Niki's new school. It's in Otara, one of the poorest districts, and although it's very low-rise, with broad avenues and gardens, the housing is clearly really basic and there's a real ghetto feel to the place. You can almost see why gang culture is so big there, but I also got a sense of civic pride and community I've not felt since I lived in Sudan. First impressions, nothing more, are a mixture of intimidation and awe. NZ has a famously high crime rate that seems to be heavily concentrated in these urban areas. You get out into the sticks and it's all sheep and seabirds. One more reason we'll be heading out there...

Got to end here and get this posted up – our lovely landlady Lorraine has offered us use of her computer. More news soon from the yellow brick road!

In transit

This was the hilarious state of play on arrival at Heathrow. We hired a nice car and bombed it down the M1 (actually M1 / M42 / M40, should there be any route nerds reading..) arrived bang on time and E & O were just fab the whole way. A good cry seemed to be therapeutic, cos they were just wonderful all through the enormous check-in queue too. We're in Changi airport now, overnighting airside at the Amabassador Transit Hotel. It's... well, it's got two beds, so it's a bloomin' godsend. The flight was no bother, although we're not going to see the best of the place from here.

From my centre aisle seat, straining an envious eye through the window seat headrests, following a 12-hour flight and probably due to having precisely one hours' sleep in the last 24, urban Singapore looks like one of those magic domino exhibitions. Hundreds of apartment blocks become white tiles, a certain distance apart, their dark windows spoiling it slightly by making up too many spots. As we're not going to get out of the airport this time round, that's the way it'll be remembered; a big climate-controlled, bizarrely-carpeted shopping mall surrounded by jumbo jets, with nearby suburbs ready to fall at the flick of a finger. Really must make more of an effort to get out next time ;)

We're all completely fried and need to get some kip, so I'll keep this short. Actually the kids slept quite well – flight took in their normal bedtime hours – and since they've had a bath and spoken to the grandparents on the Skype they're bouncing round the room like newborn lambs. It's one of those places, Changi airport, where a passing glance into the hollow eyes of fellow travellers sparks a vague recognition of yourself: everyone's six timezones the wrong side of zomboid. It's nine at night now, we've got this hotel room til 6am then an 8.30am, second-leg, 10 hour flight to Auckland. Excited beyond belief of course, but it won't be that keeping us awake, it'll be the kiddy bodyclock refusing to budge from UK time...

Next post from New Zealand!

So long, farewell...

What a great trip to Spain that was. From the moment we landed there was a strong feeling of being home at last, probably because we were there en famille, mixed with an awareness of it being the last time for a long time. It was a bit harder for Elly, as she's old enough to remember but too young to make sense of it, so she was a bit freaked out at first. The little 'un just dived on in, chatted away in Oggis-speak and cavorted about with his toy cars. They both ended up having a lovely time, staying up dead late, running wild and terrorising the high seas.

Whenever we've popped over during the last six months it's been without them, a solo mission for one thing or another so it felt very temporary; this time there was a curious permanence about everything, almost as if we were staying, alongside the fact that we're about to leave for NZ, as if it was for ever. Getting together with friends felt like we'd never been away, it was like putting on a favourite pair of jeans that fit so snug and comfortable, you quickly forget you're wearing them. It made the farewells more bearable, as I just told myself and anyone who'd listen that we'd be back again soon, but to finally leave is to step into a pair of cold, unworn, starched pants of our own design.

The mission this time was to ship our stuff from Maria's garage; to cut a long story short, it was accomplished with unnerving ease. We returned to the UK on Tuesday at almost the exact same time as my dad was allowed to go home (yay!), shipped the contents of the flat on the Wednesday, spent Thursday having medical checks and other wallet-slimming activities, we left the kids with Nik's mam & dad and spent a lovely, relaxed couple of nights in a nice sea-front hotel (Anne's treat, a real godsend..) and even found time today to get Nik a new passport. It's finally all organised, just the journey itself remains. Ok, we still need to sell the car (a very nice 8-year-old Megane Scenic Monaco 2.0 16v... anyone..?) and make a few things (a couple of phone calls, some sandwiches, the last of the goodbyes..) but for days we've been cases packed ready for the off, apart from a few pairs of shoes and the odd Disney-related pantomime outfit.

The truth is, we're both way more overwhelmed with the goodbyes than the packing and sorting. Logistics can be worked out beforehand and help drafted in easily enough, but you simply can't factor in the emotional energy you need to meet almost every one of your friends and family over the course a a few days, and bid them farewell. On the face of it, it's a great chance to catch up and we're so lucky to have had the time and opportunity to do it; really sad to have missed out a few buddies both here and in Spain, but really blown away by the realisation that so many people mean so much to us. Thanks, everyone, for all your support and love and encouragement; armed with that, we really are prepared for anything.

"We're not buying chutney..."

I suppose it must be about time to panic now. Everyone else is. We're just about to shoot off to Spain for a few days, then we're back for a few days, then we'll be on a few planes for a few days and then we'll be in New Zealand. On paper, we're ready, which is to say everything's booked, we have (or can be fairly confident of soon having) all the certificates, med checks, shipping, insurance, flight, immigration, hotel and hire car documentation in order. Writing this instead of doing something more constructive is typical of me in these circumstances, ie in times of high stress, I invariably find something utterly frivolous to do. I've been pointlessly surfing things to do on a stopover in Los Angeles, for example (even though we're going via Singapore) seeing as the area's been in the news so much. An opportune time to visit, I'd say, spend some pocket money, maybe buy a couple of investment banks ;)

Mostly though, I've found it expedient to swot up on stuff worth checking out in NZ. A number of other visitors there seem to use the same stress-aversion technique I do, either that or they're incurable nerds. It's a very outdoorsy place and there's plenty of sport goes on beyond the obvious rugby-and-cricket. This is after all the home of falling off bridges for fun, having the world's first permanent bungee jumping site, and continues to innovate in the more bizarre thrill-seeking sports, including ball games. Cycling is very popular and seemingly infected with the "extreme sport" ethos; where I'd maybe have expected to see a decent turnout for a nice organised ride round a lake, they have 5,000 riders registered for a 160km mountainous course, with some of them putting their names down for the four-lap 640km "maxi-enduro"... there'll probably be someone doing it in a large inflatable ball, just to go one better.

Otherwise, the drawbacks are still sinking in. I mentioned the Ikea thing a few posts ago, and it seems we may have to re-think our TV strategy as well as home decor choices, as it turns out the BBC iPlayer feeds aren't (legally) available there. Nor are NZ offerings likely to provide much incentive to buy a TV, having as it does the worst TV programmes ever. Oz TV wasn't that much better when we were there, although ABC1's Gruen Transfer show recently came up with some pretty interesting ideas for alternative forms of entertainment for both countries. The spot was based on the news that NZ basically has no fully-funtional armed forces. I'm not sure if that's good news or bad, frankly. It should probably be filed under "drawbacks: inconsequential".

Of course we're almost deliriously excited about living there & Nik in particular is prone to sudden explosive bouts of uncontrollable frenzy at the thought. But we're already missing some things, mostly food-related, due to the double whammy of running down the pantry and the absolute ban on bringing food through NZ customs. They have highly-trained dogs at the airport, sniffing out not drugs or guns, but ham sandwiches. There's no shortage of poorly-trained dogs that could do the same job, but you have to admire their zeal. We certainly won't be risking it, even though the temptation to bring a year's supply of chorizo picante over from Spain is nigh-on overwhelming. There is hope for all things South East Asian of course and I don't mind leaving behind all my spices and stuff, but it really is almost impossible to force down a ploughman's without some Branston or something to help it on its way. Low-turnover condiments that won't get used up have been stricken from the shopping list until we get there. On the bright side, chutney looks big in NZ, so there's that at least to look forward to, and there's bound to be something resembling a cheese and pickle sarnie at the airport to ease the craving.

Right, I really must get on with the panicking... er, packing... next blog from Spain!

A blessing

As mentioned last post, my dad's not been at all well recently. He fell victim to an extremely nasty NHS superbug which no-one seemed to have heard of until it finally hit the news last week.

Clostridium dificile (aka C.diff) has been approaching epidemic proportions here for some time, largely because it wasn't getting properly reported or even diagnosed. The recorded survival rate among people Sid's age is frighteningly low, mostly as a result of secondary and tertiary complications. In his case, it destroyed the wall of his bowel; the resulting peritonitis caused respiratory and renal failure, which was bad enough, but it also meant 90% of his large intestine had to be removed. Colectomy is a seriously risky procedure but, like the C.diff, thanks to timely intervention and an amazing resilience he's shown in the past, he's survived it.

He spent five days out cold in the Critical Care Unit and took a further week to re-orient himself and recover to the point of being able to communicate normally, and although he's still too weak to stand on his own two feet he's just about able to feed himself and slowly understand what's happened to him. This week, as the tubes and drips have been gradually withdrawn, he's started to show definite progress. A major turning point was Wednesday's request for a sausage... a sure sign the old Sid is re-emerging at last :)

It's hard to believe this all started with a completely unrelated bladder complaint, which now seems utterly trivial in comparison, just over six weeks ago. That was yet another complication of an earlier surgery, the whole saga going back to his cancer treatment of several years ago. Just before the C.diff took him off the radar he told me some stuff about all this trauma which has changed my perception of medical intervention for ever. I'm still digesting it, maybe I'll write it down one day but I'm already way too far down the page today to start elaborating it now. Suffice to say, life's too short.

Sometimes things coincide in a very pertinent way, and it was during the darkest hours of this whole nightmare that our inchoate relocation efforts (finding shippers and insurers and airlines and accommodation and god knows what else) all started to deliver results. One after the other, things have just fallen into place with barely any effort at all. We're now all booked up onto a flight to Singapore on the 30th – just over 3 weeks time –arriving in Auckland around midnight on the 2nd October. We have a trip to Barcelona organised in the meantime, the shipping company have been very reassuring, we have a lovely place to stay when we get to NZ, it's all, suddenly, sorted.

A few weeks ago, Dad got to his feet as I made to leave the cubicle, grabbed my arm and said, "for god's sake, don't let all this crap get in the way". At the time, I didn't know what to say. As I traversed the warren of corridors back to the car park, I started to realise how lucky we were to be here for all this crap; we could so easily have still been stuck in Spain. I'm just thankful we were around for him and me Mam, who has been amazingly strong through even the most desperate times. We're not out of the woods yet and life is clearly going to be a bit of a struggle for a while after he gets home, but it's important that life goes on with the same determination as before, for everyone concerned. The resilience I've seen this last few weeks will always be an inspiration.

Get well soon, mate.

Poohsticks

That formal job offer was the one thing standing in the way of actually getting started on the NZ part of the adventure, and a couple of weeks ago I actually received one. I start work in Mayfield Primary School, East Tamaki, on 13th October – hurrah! That's not far away when you think about it... especially in the light of what we've done in terms of actual things...

Right then. Things we have done:

• Submitted application for NZQA assessment of my qualifications and Teacher Registration
• Submitted an Expression Of Interest (EOI) for the purpose of applying for a permanent residence visa
• Almost contracted a removal firm for bringing our stuff over from Spain and uniting it with our stuff here to all go together to NZ

Things we haven't done:

• Booked flights
• Actually contracted a removal firm for bringing our stuff over from Spain and uniting it with our stuff here to all go together to NZ
• Booked flights to go to Spain to oversee removal of stuff from Spain and see everyone
• Anything else

er.... for so long we've been itching to get going with the process and now that we can, the inactivity is quite frightening really. I have found out some about the class I will be teaching (y4/5, 23 mixed Maori and Pacific Islands kids, can't wait really) and keep talking to the kids, (well, Elly) about what will happen. I'm sure she thinks we're going to get off the plane and fall into a ready made home complete with hamsters, guinea pigs, cats, dogs, goats, chooks and a vegetable patch! I'm trying to let her down gently :-)

The main reason we haven't done much about the fact that we are leaving the country in 5/6 weeks is that Mik's dad, Sid has been very ill in hospital and we are all quite worried about him. Anne, Mik's mum is incredible, I admire her strength; in the light of what he has been through over these past few weeks, our plans seem rather less urgent than they did. We're kind of organised, I keep thinking we ought to be doing something but can think of nothing immediate that needs to be done; I guess I need the pressure of dates and deadlines to get motivated!

Also, we are in full swing of the summer holidays and we're mostly having a wonderful time, despite the weather! The end of July was lovely, nice and sunny, nice bit fluffy cloud to entertain the eye and warm. Let me tell you, it didn't last and it's been a very wet August. Why am I surprised? Shame it didn't last, it really was nice to plan and have a picnic/bbq/trip to the park etc. I'm beginning to run out of wet weather activities!! Fortunately, Oscar is falling in love with his train set and Elly is right into The Wizard of Oz, and the library and the Baltic are free and the swimming baths are sick of the sight of us! It's not being the drag I thought it would be which is lovely. The flat is only now starting to feel claustrophobic and a bit too cosy - we can all hear every word spoken and are feeling a bit squashed. We had a really nice few days away in Surrey at my aunt and uncle's house, Mum came down on the train with Benji and the weather was good! We went to a farm and up a hill, to the park and to see my cousin's new house. It was great to see them all and we had a really good time.

Elly goes back to school on 4th September, and even though it's only for a few weeks and includes a wee trip to Spain she will go back, I think it's important to keep some continuity in her life, if only until we turn her world upside down, but she is also craving kiddie company. She and Oscar are beginning to play together properly in bits and it's dead lovely to watch. My dream has us living in a house with a garden and some kids nearby for E&O to play with. Not much to ask?! As we hurtle almost motionless towards September, the best we can do is go with the flow.

Up in the air and all at sea; it's (almost) decision time

Poor old blog, all neglected cos of those durned kids... not true, actually: they're full on of course but the real spare-time sponge is this NZ thing: the trivial formalities of finding work, applying for visas, sussing out flights, negotiating shipping rates and looking for somewhere to live. In that order. Kind of transcending this list is the vexing question of what things to buy before we go vs how much we want to pay to ship it over there. Basically, there's no Ikea in NZ. No really, I'm not kidding, apparently they've been banned for fear of them becoming too popular. Although there are conflicting rumours that they may have acquired a site somewhere near Auckland, we're not prepared to leave a house full of cheap plastic novelties and matchstick furniture to chance.

Then there's the flight thing. Price aside, it should be a simple case of choosing your stop-over destination, right? Wrong. If you Go West with Air New Zealand, they allow you a staggering 46kg per person baggage allowance, making it a no-brainer for us clutter-magnet migrants. Except your stop over is in the United States of Antipathy, who are so close to disappearing up their own collective arses it's possibly the scariest place in the world to be right now. We've heard some real horror stories about US immigration, including the right of customs officials to confiscate your laptop/iPod/cellphone without warning or pretext. Sod that, then, we'll go east and travel light. Ha. If we max out hand luggage and hold allowance we can still take around 140 kilos. That's almost an entire Ikea trip :) It's a shame, I was looking forward to visiting San Francisco for some pioneering-spirit inspiration, but if it means a compulsory visit to the bottom inspectors they can stick it.

Shipping's another thing that could be a nightmare if we don't work it right. One plan would be to move all our stuff from here back to Spain, reunite it with all the other stuff in Maria's garage and ship everything, ourselves included, from there (we go on the plane, of course, not in the container...) (leastways, that's the plan...) – if not, we have to ship from here as well, which we could do by combining our stuff with Anne's, except she probably won't be out until next year and all our UK stuff constitutes our "everyday" chattels we really can't do without for that long. More than 4 weeks without me big wok and I start to go a bit funny. The long shot is to go with the nice firm who shipped our stuff here from Spain, who are mad keen to quote us for shipping everything else in Spain out here first before dispatching the whole lot to Kiwiland. They're more nuts than we are.

We've only seen the tip of the iceberg as far as finding a place to rent is concerned. It's not too expensive and there's plenty to see online, but no way do we want to pick something before we get there and see it in person. Methinks the trailerpark beckons! A bit of camping could be fun and make up for the cancelled summer trip round Europe; it's just a pity we probably won't be able to move early enough to ride the school holidays out & straight into the wild blue yonder. Even though it sometimes feels like we need months to prepare everything, we would go tomorrow if we could. The fact that we don't have a formal job offer yet is neither here nor there...

back to the future

Amazing, the summer holidays are upon us already. Scary how quickly it goes by, seems like an age ago that we moved over here and February and Spain are distant memories, even though we've both managed to get back for a brief visit. Or two! I was lucky enough to get to Mallorca for Kerry and André's wedding, with Elly and Mum, spending a very nice (if hot!) weekend in Palma. It's incredible how quickly you get unaccustomed to the heat. It was actually quite nice to get back to the cool British summer and be comfortable again! The wedding was lovely, very intimate and I felt privileged to be there. Kerry looked really pretty, all natural and relaxed, André, despite having suffered with a stomach bug for a couple of days prior to the wedding, scrubbed up well too! It was great to see the girls, they are so grown up. It's always quite shocking to see just how much everyone's kids change. But lovely at the same time:-)

More headspinners: I thought Elly finished school tomorrow, but it turns out she's there until Wednesday. I'm really disappointed, as I had loads of things planned but now they'll have to wait for a few more days. One of our big pieces of news this blog is that we've taken the difficult decision to not come to Spain this summer, or at least not this coming week as planned. We intended to drive over and catch the end of the Tour de France, then down to see everyone in Barcelona, finally back through Santander/ Bilbao and the west of France. When we did the sums, any way we looked at it, it all worked out waay too expensive. Especially in the light of another piece of important news; I had an interview this week with a recruitment agent for New Zealand and their feedback was very positive. They can get me work definitely for January and possibly for October, so Kiwi-land, here we come! We're very excited and have begun paperwork and reading up on the place in earnest. It looks very nice although there is a high crime rate and Auckland (where the jobs are) is more expensive than other main cities on the 2 islands. We're so happy to give it a go; if we decide it isn't for us, the automatic right of entry to Oz might be there sooner rather than later: the guy who interviewed me reckons you can get NZ citizenship really quickly; he's heard of people doing it in just two months. Fab!

So, tightening of belts it is, and a whole 6 week's hols in the UK to tighten them in. We really are terribly sad not to be coming over to see everyone, but there'll be another chance to can catch up with people when they come here, and we will be coming over at some point soon - there's still a garage full of our stuff to sort out in Spain and we need to get it to a shipping company, ready to send on when we have a permanent address. Meanwhile we plan to spend some time in Scotland, and visit relatives in Surrey, but there's loads of things to do around here to stop the kids (and us) getting bored: my list includes strawberry picking and visiting some stately homes to try to give the kids a bit of culture before they become total surf dudes!

The way things are going, that'll be sometime in the unfeasibly near future. I was just reading about driving in Kiwi land. Apart from driving on the left (like here) a six-monthly MOT test and giving way to oncoming vehicles turning right, you can take your test as soon as you turn 15. So in about the same time Mik and I have been together, Elly could be driving her own car. Now that's scary!

Oscar 2, Australia 0

How time flies. Seems like no time since Oscar's first birthday and now he's a big old 2-year-old, complete with hair and everything. This time I think he had some idea what it was all about; wrapping paper to tear up, candles to blow out, making sure he infuriatingly played all day with the world's cheapest plastic piano while pointedly ignoring his expensive new bike... we all had a fab time, far too many sweets and a happy-hour pizza at Valentinos. Which he refused to eat. He's gorgeous and infuriating and stubborn and hilarious and wonderfully, terribly TWO. I've posted some more pics on the Picasa page which explain it better, somehow. [edit: you might not need to click the Picasa link if you can see the slideshow to the right]>>

No explanation for the absence of blogs this last month. We're both busy as hell with work but that's not really it. I think it's the realisation that Australia is going to stay out of our reach, at least for now. It kind of took the wind out of our sails for a bit & got us scheming a scheme. The revised plan of inaction is to look at maybe getting to Oz a few years hence, maybe 2011 (which is so far off it sounds like something out of the Science Fantasy bargain bin at WHSmiths (hey, whaddyaknow?!) – but it's no biggie, really. We've been throwing around the idea of a slightly longer stay here as a worst-case thing but really, there had to be a better solution than just sitting here, waiting, hoping and getting rained on. So what we doing between now and then? Well, with a bit of luck we gonna be living in New Zealand!

It was all initiated over a bottle of reasonably-priced wine and a late-night perusal of the TES; it somewhere we always thought we might end up, maybe to retire or something equally mundane, but apparently they're crying out for primary teachers there now. There were a few keen-sounding ads from schools around Aukland, so we scraped the mould off Nik's CV and three weeks later and she has two UK interviews in the autumn, one direct with a school and another via an employment agency which more or less guaranteed her a place. Well, not in so many words, but the Big Deal is that the main barrier to getting into Oz was the work situation and with NZ this seems to be the easy bit. The hard part is trying to keep a lid on the excitement. Ok, thus far it's not much more than an idea, something (else) to aim for, but it really feels very different this time, much less pie-in-the-sky than Oz, and only 2 0r 3 hours flight from the place. You get Permanent Residency status after three years and (this is my favourite bit) NZ PR entitles you to Australian residency as well! Except NZ sounds so completely fab that we might just as easily end up staying...

I'm going to say no more for now except to promise more blogs than there have been of late, by virtue of keeping them short and therefore a sight more likely to get written. That might be a more sound basis for making plans, as well.

the long road home

Pic © Nik

It was so lovely to see everyone when the kids and I popped over for our overdue quick-fix visit. I'm sorry I missed some of you, though it makes me smile when I think of those I did manage to catch up with. We all had a great time staying at Virginia's. The kids were a little shy at first, and Elly refused to speak, which I found quite refreshing really :-) but by the Sunday she had got over that and was making up for lost time! Delights of the trip were (apart from seeing everyone, naturally) cafe con leche at the Casal, playing in the park, walking up to school, scoffing churros and smelling some of the familiar smells. It was great to be back 'home' and to see that although all the kids have grown up even more in the 4 months we've been away, most things are the same as ever. Lovely.

Getting back was a scream, and thank you so much Annabel for the lift to the airport. We checked in fine and got through security with Oscar screeching just the once (but quite forcefully) as I tried to put him back in the pushchair... "Pobre," said the Guardia, "esta enfadado consigo mismo. Tiene una lucha interna". I think he was being funny, but you never can tell... anyway, the little bugger's lucha interna tried to externalise itself when we were having lunch, as he picked that moment to begin in earnest the 'running away' phase. Thought it was great, didn't he, to run away out of my sight, in a busy airport, and make me go after him. I know the trick is to not give in to the invitation to play etc but in this vast public space, when one is already receiving looks for travelling alone with 2 small children, one has to show some measure of good parenting and not simply let one's offspring run wild. Fortunately, Elly was a model of decorum and restraint. Thank goodness for 1 good child! as she took great pleasure in reminding me :-)

Boarding was a riot. Almost literally. At Newcastle, the boarding procedure was all Very Well Explained and people did as they were asked and sat and waited their turn. Those of us with children, we were informed, would board after the 'speedy boarders', then all the rest of the passengers would be invited to queue. We dutifully took up our place behind the prickly speedy boarders (well we have paid extra you know) as they showed their passports and were directed... on to the bus. The poor prickly speedy boarders, standing pointedly (or should that be spikily?) at the front of the bus. I almost felt sorry for them, until I had to carry Oscar and the pushchair and a bag as well as shepherd Elly to the plane stairs. And then I didn't.

Barcelona, OTOH, was a total free-for-all! Easyjet woul' like t'nounce de depature... and there was an instant scrum! Thank god for dummies, it is Oscar's 'off' button and meant I could carry him and the pushchair etc etc without him screaming and struggling to be down and away, and we just sort of hovered next to the nervously heaving scrum waiting for the nice lady to let us in. Which she dutifully did.

On the plane, as you do, I sat Oscar on a seat and gave him an ensaimada to keep him quiet. On the journey there, I'd done something similar (as you do...) and we ended up with the whole row of three to ourselves – bliss – so I figured it might work on the return trip. Only it didn't, and when the poor man who came up to the back ended up with Oggis' crumby seat, I did feel bad. But then the air hostess found him a place next to his son and we ended up with all 3 seats after all, hurrah!

Getting back was good too, I had work straight away and we got bunk beds off Uncle eBay for the kids – yay! – bedtime is now peaceful and sleep-oriented, rather than shouty and filled with bed-sharing games. Elly is more than excited, and keeps going up there to play. Fab. But all the exertion of that week seems to have energised me, and I've decided to finally take some positive action as regards Getting Fit. The lovely Ian has loaned me the use of is daughter's bike (thanks Chessie!) It's fab and today Mik and I made use of another Sunday morning sans kids and went out to play. He, of course, is delighted, even though in the 2 hours we were out, whilst I panted and heaved and sweated and sneezed hayfever sneezes he didn't get out of breath nor so much as break into a sweat... ho hum. I have a long way to go both metaphorically and literally, but the weather is so nice, and despite the strain involved, it was really good fun. I really don't feel too bad at pulling over to let some people on foot overtake me, or about the 65- year old gentleman cyclist who beat me going downhill, especially when we totted up we'd done some 20km. I only had to get off once, up a rather steep incline and sort of managed to almost gracefully fall off the bike when I changed gear too quickly, making the chain come off. Compared to the last time I was on a bike – 6 years ago when Mik thought it would be a good idea to take me mountain biking round the St Pere riera and I fell off but didn't let go and landed on my face, putting my tooth through my lip and friction-burning the entire right side of my face off – it was reletively incident-free. I remember my face swelled up so badly I looked deformed :-( I'm sure that was a factor in our being unable to get a mortgage for a tiny little flat we had seen in Vilanova! It was certainly haunting me today.

But it was great. I'm not looking forward to the pains in my legs tomorrow or the continuing saddle soreness, but I will go out on the bike again. Only, that is, on condition Mik promises not to take me across any loose surfaces and stops trying to invent ever-more-challenging rides. Last suggestion was to tow a week's shopping behind him in a supermarket trolley. Any more suggestions - you can keep them to yourself thanks!

The world according to Oggis

I'm guessing a bit of light relief from all the pontificating would be welcome, and it just so happens I have here a compilation of 26 selected words currently in the Oscarian vocabulary. As he's on his way over to visit distant friends and family, it's quite likely that someone reading this might be subject to a barrage of undecipherable gibberish in the none-too-distant future, so this will hopefully be useful both as a guide and a warning*.

Phonetic key: vowels mainly as per Spanish pronunciation, but allowance should be made for the occasional Northern twang.

Conversational tips: none. Just say "yes" a lot, assuming you can stop laughing long enough to actually speak.

• oggis (Oscar)
• ey-ee (Elly)
• me oggis (this belongs to Oscar)
• hursh (it hurts)
• ducks / dux (I'm stuck, also ducks)
• mine (flawess pronunciation)
• dus (juice)
  
• peees (please)
• ah-gew (thankyou)
• dow (I want to get down)
• ab (I want to get up)
• adiding (I'm hiding)
  
• oh-ka (there's a car)
• oh-ka (there's another car)
• oh-ka (there's yet another car, etc, etc)
• towsis (trousers)
• shus (shoes)
• tox (socks)
• docdit (chocolate)
• bigis (fingers)
• bidis (sweeties)
• horsh (horse)
• mooo (what the horse says - an Oggis joke)
• dak-dak (tractor)
• beebeesh (cbeebies)
• herberdy (happy birthday)
• pish (fish)
• beewee (wee-wee, on the rare occasion of it landing in his potty)

*Disclaimer: due to a rapidly accelerating rate of uptake, the author disclaims all responsibility for the completeness and accuracy of the above lexicon. You engage in conversation with the Oggis entirely at your own risk. Thank you.

Cake and eat it, with extra waffle

Keeping a blog updated is turning out to be a bit like keeping a hardy houseplant. Let's face it, there's always a whole raft of better things to do, so you neglect it, keep it low on the to-do list, aware that it needs regular attention but feeding it just enough to stop it expiring completely. Then there's the inspiration factor: you need something to write about. Our problem here is that we're now thoroughly over the golly gosh, isn't England different to Spain? shock horror surprise, so it's more a case of thinking what's new – and not very much is, generally speaking. This is England after all, nothing's new, it's all worn out, clichéd and held together with little more than blind faith and a large box of zip ties. The only thing that changes regularly is the price on the display board of the petrol station on the corner of our street. Which, in turn, is slowly changing the way we get about, or at least it is for me. I'm gradually re-establishing an affinity with the bicycle which has been dormant for quite a bit longer than the blog has. Whether I use it enough to make a dent in our fuel bills is another matter, but it definitely helps that I have a friend "on the inside" and he's been giving me some bike-related work.

Normally, this would be a problem – that's to say, unless you're really lucky, work and play are mutually exclusive. I always considered myself lucky to be able to take photos for a living, but the reality is the divide between the photos you'd like to take and the ones you're paid to take is as big as any work vs play dilemma. Putting an even finer point on it, just because you're really into cycling doesn't mean you'll enjoy working for a bike shop as much as you enjoy riding a bike, no matter how wacky and wonderful the place might be. I spent a week in the shop itself, which as I mentioned a blog or two ago is in Sunderland, a small town near Newcastle (sorry guys, couldn't resist ;)) – basically cos they were short-staffed, but also to get a handle on the EPOS system which also drives the shop website. There are a good number of pics needed too, once the refurb is complete, but there's plenty to be getting on with for now getting their web presence up to the standard of their service. So far, it looks like this (which may be the finished article if you're reading this in 2009...) with the homepage more-or-less finished, barring clearance of some bugs helpfully built in to the EPOS software.

The best thing about all this is the shop cycling club, which is a big incentive to get out once a week, and the generosity of Ian the Boss, who keeps offering me the use of some very nice bikes, which in turn inspires yet more riding. I was out on Saturday and I'm out again tomorrow on one of these lovely machines. A bit of a climbdown from the hand-built race bike I'd been hoping to ride but this one just fits so much better... I'll spare you the tech spec and review. I'm hoping to do a 35 mile loop down to Durham, up to Tow Law and along the moors via Lanchester back to Chester-le-Street, and praying that the muscles which (I noted yesterday) appear to be specific to road-riding (...) have been rejuvenated sufficiently such that I don't double up in agony on the first serious climb of the day.

Anyway, enough about bikes, this was supposed to be about blogs. There's something ironic about trying to find time amongst all your Real Life activities to write a post, when Real Life ends up being no more Real than the blog is. I was on about the time I spend on the computer, how everything seems to have a digital heart these days, or at least the way so many RL activities involve at least some physical inactivity, parked in front of this screen. If/when you get to this state, as I seemed to be heading, I reckon it's a good idea to set yourself a corresponding physical activity for every prolonged period of inactive computing. So the many days of web design for the bike shop are complemented by regular days out cycling; hours and hours processing images for one project or another are (thoeretically) balanced up with time out to get out with the camera and take some more. On paper, so to speak, it works. While taking pictures feeds the digital machine, emailing, blogging and the like are fed by RL interaction with Real People. Hmm.

This could mitigate one of the big hazards: ending up a Billy No-Mates or worse, lapsing into mild sociophobia. I was just reading about Alan Turing, the founder of modern computers (it says here), how he bizarrely envisaged the advent of a machine that would think and interact just like a real human. Not, I reckon, to give the machine a place in the human world, more to develop a digital brain for humans, a virtual mind, a comforting and familiar retreat when RL gets too much to handle. In a recent book he's been characterised as being socially inept, among other things, and given his ideals it all seems eerily prescient re the problems his machine seems to be generating. Using the machine has become a new form of interaction in itself, in both human and digital realms, and the big machine – that interweb – has an insatiable appetite, devouring RLs at an astonishing rate. Predictions abound of collaborative working taking over the world (or at least a big human part of it) with web-based life potentially changing "every aspect of our [real] lives". I could live with that, I'd even be happy to be part of it, but I'd want my cake and eat it. I realise blogs were conceived as a way of keeping track of online "events" (from "web log", innit?) and even though these days a blog can be everything from online diary to photoblog to a kind of social medium (and ours is a bit of all of these) it all takes up valuable time. With a bit of effort and a bit more awareness, it's got to be possible to feed the machine just enough that it feeds you in return, and even if it does become the source of your bread and butter, it has to be possible to restrict it to being a life tool, rather than your whole life itself.

Hasn't it?