Happy New Era

Our new view

No-one in their right mind does New Year's resolutions anymore. They generally don't work out anyway, or the opposite thing happens, or worst of all, you realise it was a stupid idea in the first place, a wild promise made under duress at 11pm on the 31st, leaving you looking and feeling a right donkey by January 14th. I gave NYRs up ages ago (Clause B, Resolution #3, New Year's Eve 2005) and never looked back. Instead I do Old Year's resolutions. You make an OYR in November and get straight on with it, the idea being that if it's still going strong by the New Year you're off to a flying start; if it isn't, well, no-one in their right mind, etc. - dignity saved.

Normally I wouldn't confess the failed resolutions but just this once, by way of illustration, I'll list them all out.

1. Stop editing Wikipedia: this one had been looming for a while and was partly aimed at reclaiming the countless hours spent not actually writing and editing (that pretty much stopped last year) but squabbling about policy with self-righteous, self-serving, absurdly pompous dickheads like me. Our house move provided the opportunity, following which a fourtunate instance of having the last word allowed me to fully disengage over the xmas break. Result: Success

2. Stop being snappy with the kids: one of the hazards of working from home is the constant interruptions which, in the main, I've learned to deal with in a calm and rational way. Broken concentration can be mended, and with practice it can be limited to fractures, but the key is patience. Right, that's the theory... in practice you just end up being Grumpy Dad, harbouring a permanent low-level antipathy for all other lifeforms. Nonetheless I was doing well with this resolution until the house move swapped my upstairs sanctuary for a downstairs hallway annexe. This was prong one of a three-pronged assault on my resolve: the imposition of a 30-minute TV curfew was another and the killer blow came with the school holidays. After a rocky start with lots of fighting over toys and lashings of Daddy, Oscar looked at me like this! (pulling a ridiculous face) during which I completely lost the plot on several occasions, I've managed to claw back some semblance of patience. However this isn't down to some superhuman effort on my part, it's the fact that the kids are just fab now, play nicely 90% of the time and genuinely seem to have turned over a major good leaf. The full marks go to them, and I have to concede at least partial Failure on this one.

3. Get some bloody work in: as mentioned in blogs past, Niki's finally found a job she loves, working with SEN kids in a well-respected and successful Christchurch school, but it pays so badly it makes peanuts look like a banker's bonus. On the back of me getting a contract to do photographic work from a big real estate agency, I persuaded her to stay rather than find better-paid mainstream school work. When the contract turned out to be more of a vague promise of something in the new year it was a bit of a worry, to say the least. Kind of a combination of good timing and wild panic led to other work being found to fill the gap, including an editorial shoot for the Mail on Sunday's magazine, You. A nice lady I was doing some other work for turned out to be a published author whose new book has just been released, needed a local photographer for the article, one thing led to another and I got the job. It'll be in the Mail on 31st January, so dash out and grab a copy! Along with a bunch of other good local projects (I've even scored some work on our own place) I think it's fairly safe to call this one a tentative Success.

4. Get fit for the Festival of Cycling: We moved house, I caught a chesty cold, the dog ate my shoe, etc.. Failure. Next!

5. Get fit anyway: partial Success. More my mate Matt's resolution this, as he'd vowed to lose his I-work-in-IT belly, decided on cycling as the best way to do it, and I offered to take him out. He's possessed with a yearning to ride the toughest hills in the area (and they're pretty tough round here) but is – how shall I put this? – a little short of the fitness levels required... so we're out once a week on our old mountain bikes on the scary road climbs and offroad mountaintop trails of the Port Hills. As we live on opposite sides of the mountain, he rides up one side and I ride up the other, we meet at the top and ride the roads and some of the best single-track MTB trails in the country, or more accurately, I ride them and Matt pushes his bike along them... it could be a slightly faster pace for me but at least the rides are 3-4 hours long and owld lard-arse is not only getting better every week, he's talking about getting a road bike. And – AND – Niki's been out on the bike too, not just pootling along the quay either, up the Evans Pass no less. I'm incredibly proud of her. In fact we'll all do the Festival this year... how's that for an early resolution?

6. Do some gardening: we knew this would be an issue due to the move and were determined to get down & dirty like committed gardeners. The veggies are doing alright, thanks to a flurry of activity when we first moved in: Niki got posh new garden handtools for her birthday and does regular weeding, we have salad leaves, sort of, the herbs and strawberries we liberated from Voelas have taken root and seem ok, but everything else has pretty much failed to happen. I blame that Pete and Lois, uprooting everything in late spring means no potatoes, weedy lettuce and dead chillies and tomatoes. The lawn is a bed of dried clover and despite some enthusiastic shrub pruning and weeding the other weekend, the garden looks like it would if a bunch of students had moved in. We are in shame :( and mark this one a clear failure.

6. Do some basic dog training: Louie's been doing really well all on his own. He's really bright in that way dogs are, where they give you that empty-headed stare that makes you think they're sweet and innocent dullards, while all the time they're hatching a cunning plan to relieve the kids of their breakfast. Which he's done more than once. He can sit and stay and knows exactly what you mean when you tell him to fetch or come, he just decides not to do it. Not only does he know how to escape from the garden, he knows that if he sits in the middle of the road – the main road to Governor's Bay, not just some side-street – cars will stop and queue up and make that funny honking noise until we come out and get him. I've been meaning to spend a set time every day doing obedience training but work and stuff have got in the way, resulting in a resounding Failure. Proper classes are booked for next week; I'll report back on how that goes.

7. Write the blog more regularly: that's more reliably, not just 'more', I mean 'regular' doesn't necessarily have to mean 'frequent'; if you were trying to cure constipation you'd be aiming for the former, not the latter. And given that I seem to be averaging a blog a month of late I'm claiming Success on this one. As life settles down into some kind of routine it might be more of a note to say there are some pics up on the losNemo gallery than my customary monthly review. We're just not that interesting ;) but there are some new pics, two new albums which have, admittedly, been stuck in the old digital bowels a while, so click here and enjoy! There are a bunch more in the offing, including an update on Louie who'll be getting his own album soon.

So there they are, confessions of an inveterate procrastinator. Let's see how long the new leaf lasts.

Meet Louie

So much has happened in the last couple of weeks it's taken for ever just working out where to start. This blog was supposed to happen about a month ago, as promised in the last blog, as a welcome note to our newest family member. He kind of got in the way, as puppies often do, accompanied by a bunch of other events that conspired to prevent any and all blogging until around about now. There's still so much to do that I'll have to blog it in bits or it'll never get blogged at all.

Here's the thing: we've moved house. This isn't something we secretly planned or even contemplated, apart from the time back in September when our landlords decided they were coming home early, we baulked and they agreed to find somewhere else until our lease ended. For now, let's just say we took a broader view on things and decided to get out. More about the house, the move and all that, later.

First, the dog.

He's very naughty, has mad floppy ears and a metronome tail. After literally weeks of indecision, we decided to call him Louie, or Louis I suppose, considering he's named after King Louis XIV and his daft haircut. Recently we've been wondering if Bluey might be better since it sounds very similar and we discovered during a preening session that he has skin the colour of a faded tattoo, like he just had his roots done and they put too much dye on.

He was Big Black Boy for ages but he's actually blacker than black, a kind of ultra-black that blends into every shadow and renders him invisible even in broad daylight. This, combined with that thing puppies do where they lapse into deep sleep as soon as the food runs out, means he can be a complete nightmare to find. A couple of times this week I've searched high and low inside and out and eventually got back to my desk only to find him unconcho under my chair.

So he could easily have been Shadow or Shady or something equally lame, but he seems to like Louie. Another short-lived but popular proposition was based on him spending all his outdoor time in the impenetrable undergrowth of the jungle that was Voelas Road: Russell. It very nearly stuck, except for the fact that when you shout it out it sounds like you're trying to get him to chase a cat. And he doesn't really do that.

No, louie's hobby is chewing stuff. I forgot about that bit; my recollection of puppy training (apart from the entire house becoming a doggy toilet) was being woken up far too early for no apparent reason and lots of random, hilarious antics. Thing is, we keep forgetting to put things out of reach so his tally has been quite impressive; he's had a go at just about every shoe we possess and completely destroyed four pairs, including Nik's fave pink sandals. Yesterday he decided to eat the living room carpet. It's really old and threadbare but that's not the point! He really is very naughty like that. I also forgot they lose their teeth just like kids do. If he doesn't buck his ideas up it could happen sooner rather than later...

Right, that's all for now. I've missed out loads of stuff but it'll have to wait. There's some pics in a doggy album on the LosNemo site and I'll follow up with others as I get the chance, along with details of the new place. Anyone who gets missed off the "new address" email (that I still haven't sent...) for whatever reason speak up (leave a comment) and I'll include you in.

Remains to say we're all good, no worries, sweet as, etc. Both of us enjoying our work (a first?) kids handling the disruption reasonably well, weather really lovely and bloody awful, usually at the same time.

Back soon with more.

x

Lyttelton at last

Wow, it feels great to finally be here! A bit weird not being in our new house yet, and we completely buggered up the packing logistics, and Sally's still cooped up in her cage, and it's absolutely bloody freezing... but we're all high as kites.

The remainder of our journey down was pretty easy. A very pleasant drive down to Wellington left us time enough to visit the Te Papa museum, if not enough to see everything in it. It's a superb, ultra-modern, multi-storey space stuffed with far too many amazing things for one visit, the current Monet exhibition included :( Still, we did manage to sneak the rabbit in past the motel concierge and the takeway from Masala was almost as brilliant as last time.

Although we had a pretty smooth crossing, Elly hadn't been too bright on the Wellington leg of the journey, had a bit of a temperature that night and looked decidedly peaky on the ferry. She waited until we hit the windy road up into the hills beyond Blenheim before regurgitating her breakfast of doughnut and chips. Oscar slept, watched vids, did colouring-in, got very annoyed when we didn't stop every 10 minutes for a wee, and was generally very funny and entertaining. Sally and Elly slept and looked sick as chips, but all in all we had a nice, relaxed, fun-filled journey south.

We've been here four days and it already feels like home. It's actually Nicky & Joseph's home that they run as a B&B, just down the street from our new place. Apart from their beautiful house they have two top tomcats, Angus and Gordon, two cute girly chickens who answer to Vivien and Sally and I guess one more lop-eared bunny is neither here nor there. N & J are lovely people, very tolerant of our boistrous troupe and very generously offering to put us up for the same rent that we'll be paying when we finally move up the street. E & O have really taken to them, especially Elly, who refers to them as "our family".. bless 'er :)

It was just getting to be a problem, having stuff strewn about several corners of New Zealand, when the phone rang this afternoon to say our lorry-load was to be delivered tomorrow at eight. Pete and Lois (our new landlords) own Lyttelton's longest-running bar/restaurant, the Volcano Cafe and Lava Bar on London Street, and were delighted to be informed they'd be dragged from their beds at the crack of dawn to receive us, our two jacks-in-the-box, one large removals van and several burly mister shiftas. Thank god they have a sense of humour. They're doing a kind of business swap with a French pal of theirs who has a B&B just north of Provence near the famous Alpe D'Huez, for the coming year-to-eighteen months, and are in the process of packing all their worldly goods in readiness, so it should be a right laugh...

At least I'll get my missing camera gear, the plug adaptors and whatnot that we forgot to pack, along with the wooly jumpers and long pants we were quite certain we'd easily manage without til the lorry-load arrived. One pair of long pants between us and it's been utterly brass monkeys since we landed; thick cloud and leaden skies at first, followed by a stiff sou'westerly for the last 48 hours blowing so hard out of Antarctica you could actually smell the penguin farts, as if preserved in little frozen gas bubbles. The truth is, of course, we're all soft as shite due to 12 months of non-stop summer, so anything remotely close to single figures Celsius has us back under the duvet faster than you can say "thermal underpants".

The pic at the top gives you some idea of the lie of the land. It's a bit hilly. We're going to be living halfway up the crater edge (did I mention the whole harbour is an extinct volcano? Well it is..) a leisurely 30 minute stroll from the top. You can just see our place between the legs of the second pylon. That township out on the other side of the harbour, beyond the reclaimed flatlands of white storage tanks, is Diamond Harbour; beyond that, the Banks Peninsula. We've yet to see either of them but they're supposed to be stunning. It certianly looks very pretty from up here. It's like a whole new world laid out in front of you, something we've been hoping to feel since we left Spain and something that finally, hopefully, feels like it's happening.

There's a load of new pics on the accursed Picassa. If it's as jerky for you as it is for me, try the slideshow but pause it and use the arrows to manually move from pic to pic. I promise to get a better viewer sorted for next time.

Hasta la proxima!

Time flies

It's the last weekend of the summer holidays for our two ruffians. Work and school will recommence in earnest this week, giving all of us a much-needed break from the relentless routine (beach, lunch, play, sleep) and endless, task-oriented time management ("what are we going to do now?", "are we nearly there yet?", etc) – it'll be great to get back to the 9 to 3 for five days of the week. They've had a spectacularly good holiday, the evidence of which shines out of them both. Amazing how much they've changed in such a short time.

New things during January:

Elly now tells the time (just about), reads really fluently, rides a bike without stabilisers (again, just about), constructs and delivers an a priori argument from a distinctly Kantian perspective, still has a near-pathological inclination to spill any drink within arm's reach and hence learned to shower herself clean of Ribena. Repeats everything Oscar says.

Oscar can really "talk" now, having discovered sentences if not quite up to speed with punctuation, has accidentally learned forward rolls while practicing his handstands, can draw proper faces, complete with eyes, nose and mouth, and has generally become a fully-fledged Little Boy, right in front of our eyes: he's even out of nappies. Repeats everything Elly says.

They both love to watch movies. Lots of movies. Current faves are High School Musical 2, Toy Story, Mary Poppins and Bee Movie. We just got back from seeing Bolt at the cinema. Brilliantly done but a bit disappointing, I thought, it was Oscar's first ever big-screen experience, unfortunately coinciding with his afternoon nap time so he was unconcho for the second half of it. This love of movies was the only reason we even dared think of taking a vocally exuberant two-year-old to the flicks, and he did us proud right up to the point where he realised Elly had eaten all the popcorn.

Elly's unspoken excuse was that she was completely absorbed from start to finish. It's a lovely thing, despite the odd Hollywood-inspired side-effects: Elly (and therefore Oscar) is prone to saying "Awww, meaaaann!" at the drop of a hat and Oscar likes to insult people by calling them "hockey puck", after Mr Potato Head in Toy Story. He also likes to wear his underpants on his head, though I'm not quite sure which movie that's from...

I'm sure I'll find the time to post some more pics up this week. This one of Oscar sofa diving kind of sums up the mood of the holls, they've had such good fun, at times you're not sure if they're jumping for joy or levitating with excitement. Roll on the next ones.

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.

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.