Oscar's Third

"Look, a number 3! Have a really good look... a little closer... head down a bit..."

As promised, the pics from Oscar's party are up as a new album on the LosNemo gallery. Not as many as there might have been; for some reason I completely forgot to pick up the camera until it was nearly cake time. Too much jelly and crisps, too early in the day, I suppose. Actually, there were just too many things going on at once for this bear of very little brain. I put it all down to a combination of a mis-spent youth and having kids late in life. I realise that would appear to amount to the same thing; the fact is, they're very different things indeed...

Too much going on seems to have become a permanent state of affairs. You might expect, what with two posts appearing in a single week, that there's not a lot to write about: far from it. On the day of the birthday party, Matt and Antonia arrived from Auckland around the time it all kicked off, just as I was fully committed to woking up a venison vindaloo and tarka dhal, round about the time the lady from the Department of Statistics knocked on the door hoping to conduct a 2-hour interview. It's been non-stop ever since. School holidays don't help either. It boils down to a basic parental fact: when term ends, very little of a serious nature gets done unless you get serious about multi-tasking. Saturday was an inspiration: you basically need to do everything at once to get anything done at all.

Yesterday, for example, it was the Music Fairy that did the job. The brainchild of Nicky and Joseph down the street (the people we stayed with when we first got here) and an extension of her music school, once a year they get the troupe together and do some stage shows. Not only is it great fun for the kids, it was also the perfect opportunity to snap the photographs I've been promising to do them and a good chance to arrange a bike ride with Joseph for later in the week... plus it gave me a chance to drop everyone off in town afterwards while I scooted back to Lyttelton to sort out solicitors, planning officers and elusive landowners.

That side of things is putting up very little resistance. People at the council continue to be really helpful and it's looking like our wacky ideas about building mud huts might have a sympathetic reception there. Plus I finally spoke with the vendor today and he seems right into the idea, even going so far as to "wish everyone buying there had the sort of approach" that we do. Which was nice. We sign for the land on Friday, following an overnighter in Christchurch and a late night torchlit search of the Museum, just before we go to see The New Adventures of Auntie McDuff's Magical Trunk at the Arts Centre.

Roll on the weekend? Aye, those were the days :)

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...

Packing it all in

The kids are quite keen to leave...

Wow, three weeks since my last post. Notice I say my last post; Niki hasn't blogged for so long I've pretty much taken over sole responsibility for the thing, so it's maybe not surprising that it never gets done. A bit like the housework I should be doing instead of typing this, it's a question of priorities and there's a definite pecking order, ie, if the housework needs doing, there's always something more important to be getting on with.

We haven't been ridiculously busy, really. There's been more to do than usual – I've been working (or attempting to, during the 5-hour slot I get, four days a week) and for some reason Niki's job seems to be taking up loads more of her time this term – but that's not why I've not been blogging. Ironically, there's been loads to blog about, just for one reason or another it hasn't been worth saying until now.

It all started out with a pain in the arse. To be more precise, it was several pains in the arse at once, both figurative and real, which turned out to be loosely interconnected and centering on our Niki. She came home from school one day with a shooting pain down one leg. If you've ever had a shooting pain but never actually been shot, you'll know exactly what I mean. If you've been unfortunate enough to have been shot but never so unlucky to have had sciatica at the time, maybe you won't. Anyway, that was one pain, the other was more of an intense suffering, brought on by being obliged to teach in what we now know to be (unofficially, but fairly unanimously) the worst Primary school* in the country.

The third is the figurative pain in the arse that runs the place. Actually she only figuratively runs the place nowadays, having been usurped by a Ministry lackey with functional people skills and a brief to pull the place into shape. The reality is, she's been sent to treat a decapitation with a Band-Aid. A rubbish school and disrespectful Principal not only feed off each other, they produce rubbish, disrespectful kids. Leaving aside the entire generation of failed pre-teens the place is turning out, it turns over teachers at a shocking rate. Niki was her class' fourth teacher last year and she won't be their last one this year: the fact is, she's leaving at the end of the term and we're all heading south to Christchurch.

There's only so much abuse you can take, I guess, a limit to the number of times you can come home in tears of sheer frustration and anger at the hopelessness of teaching at a broken school. The time comes when you wake up one morning and realise the pain in your arse isn't down to your crap bed, and the nauseous feeling in your guts has nowt to do with the prawns you had for supper. If your occupation is making you feel physically ill, you're probably in the wrong job. Wor lass has nothing to be ashamed of, having made great strides with the kids and managing to set up a whole-school behavioural reward system in the short time she's been there. My work has been painfully slow in taking off and it's largely down to the fact it all seems so temporary here. The long and short is, Auckland's just not working for either of us and it's time to move on.

I've left a few threads hanging there... I'll come back to them later cos this is turning into one of those epics I promised I'd stop turning out. The first, most immediate thing is Niki's back. It got much, much worse than shooting pains when she came in from yoga the other night bent double, having tackled the Warrior and come off worst. She's currently getting physiotherapy, including acupuncture, and is banned from yoga for the foreseeable. The physio is taking about a herniated disk. She should really be resting, not feeling obliged to go into work, but aside from a few days off where she's just been unable to move, she's been in every day. More about that as it develops. Hasn't stopped her going out on the razz tonight, so there's definitely hope :)

The other one is the casual announcement that we're moving on, again. In order to get to our chosen destination in time for next term, we need to be out of here within 5 weeks, hopefully straight into a new home on the South Island, and even more hopefully, having found someone suitable to take on the remainder of our 12-month lease... we'd hoped that some friends might be interested but it's a lot of upheaval if you're not blessed with itchy feet and incredibly compliant kids. E &O are just awesome, shooting away under the sun of a second consecutive summer (Oscar's grown over 7cm in under five months...) and absolutely full-on up for another move. E has a big pre-birthday party planned for the week before we leave. O has no idea what's going on, really. Daft as a brush, just like his dad.

So you can see there are plenty of things to be getting on with. Besides work, we have boxes to pack, barely six weeks since we unpacked them. Actively looking for new work in the Christchurch area. We need to find tenants. And a new house.. our broadband connection is shredded... oh, almost forgot to mention: our residency has come through too! Good news for registering with doctors etc. It's all go, and out of adversity and despair, a whole new horizon, full of hope and almost unbearable excitement and anticipation, is rising out of the gloom.

We shall keep you posted. Or at least I will...

This week I have been mostly listening to: Jim White's Transnormal Skiperoo, so now we all want to live in a turquoise house :)

*I'm mentioning no names, but if you're a teacher thinking of moving here, happen to read this and would like to know the name of the school, leave a comment with your contact details. Suffice to say, be wary of agencies recruiting in the UK for NZ schools ...

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]

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.

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.