Last night in Auckland

Elly's pre-birthday goodbye party last week

This is a long, long overdue update but I do have a whole month of good excuses to explain it. At very least, leaving the blogging til now means I've spared you a handful of very lame Easter-related puns, quite apart from the usual eggs-related ones, like rising from the dead, having our Last Supper, eggs-citing happenings (see?) and so on. Then there's the fact that we didn't really know what was happening until Easter weekend anyway. Right up until last Thursday it felt like anything could happen, even though nothing was happening at all, until eventually (as so often happens) everything happened at once. Allow me to explain.

Going back exactly one week today, I was on the phone to a borderline hysterical landlord doing her nut because we had no-one to take over our lease. Five weeks of advertising had brought exactly zero responses. In case I wasn't fully aware of the consequences, I was repeatedly reminded of the massive sacrifices she was making, having to think about maybe storing her furniture (furnished places being very hard to let here) and possibly having her cat shipped out to her holiday home in Australia (as it was quite clear that no-one was interested in a house complete with a sociopathic feline) and oh, the stress and worry etc etc. Never mind the comforting knowledge that, should we leave without finding a new tenant, under Kiwi law we were liable to pay the $16,500 rent for the remainder of the original term. Or that, should the rent be reduced to attract a new tenant, we were obliged to make up the difference.

Which is precisely what happened, although we ended up no worse off. We worked out that if we paid (as already promised) until the end of April, it would cost us around $1100, as we were moving out two weeks earlier on the 15th. If, on the other hand, we found a tenant by the time we moved out, we would save that $1100 and be off the hook. Brains now fully engaged for once, we then worked out that we advertised the place for $40 a week less we'd stand a better chance of finding someone and not be any more out of pocket, even if we did have to pay that amount to the landlord for the remaining 26 weeks of our contract. That's what I was on the phone to negotiate, as well as to suggest removing the furniture and the cat. Suffice to say she went with the rent reduction.

For some reason, before the revised ads were posted up, the phone never stopped ringing. By pure fluke, we found our new tenants within 3 days, and by sheer coincidence they are in need of a furnished place and positively love cats, especially ones with personality disorders. It really couldn't have come any later in the eleventh hour without it all turning into a pumpkin. We move out tomorrow and the new tenant's deposit, which seals the deal, is due to hit the landlord's account at more or less the exact same time our keys hit the doormat.

We Are Relieved.

We're also packed, ready for the removal guys arriving in the morning. It's been a fraught day of tearful goodbyes and frantic last-minute repairs. I'm not quite sure why, but it's at these exact times that you elect to fix the broken hi-fi, choose to reverse the car into the garage wall, change bank accounts, do a week's shopping, take the dented car to a mechanic and have all the tyres swapped around, write blogs, and so on. Moving house isn't stressful enough, clearly. Or maybe it's a bit like riding the Wall of Death: no-one really understands why you do it, but it does make for heart-stopping entertainment.

Somehow in all of this I've flown down to Christchurch to meet up with our lovely new landlords, who, it turns out, are minor celebrities in their lovely little town of Lyttelton. A working port south of the city, once (before international flights) the main landing point for European immigrants and still a popular cruise ship stop, this is the place we fell in love with on our summer holidays. The house is wonderful, full of character, on a steep hill overlooking the port, old but modernised, a garden bursting with huge trees, overgrown herbs, berries and all manner of fascinating plants. There's even a ready-made run for Sally rabbit. It's not vacant til May, but our hosts found us a great B&B just down the street for the same rent and offered to store our stuff in their garage until they leave on their European adventures. It all just fell into place over the space of a week.

Tomorrow we drive to Taupo and stay the night at Rainbow Cottage. Then on to Wellington on Thursday, the Picton ferry on Friday morning and Lyttelton by teatime. It's hard to express, especially after all these tales of woe and havoc, exactly how exciting and positive this move feels. I'll try and keep you updated as we go, along with more details of the new place. Right now I need to get to bed before I think of anything else to do...