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.

Home on the range

View over the Wanaka © Me, Oct 2009

Hey there campers, it's that time of year where we in the southern hemisphere break out of winter hibernation and openly gloat to you in the northern half about longer days and lighter nights, the sun streaming into our bedrooms first thing in the morning, mister bluebird on my shoulder, all that springtime stuff. We just finished celebrating this fact (purely by accident) with a trip south to the barely-out-of -thermal-underwear Central Otago region. While it's been buds and blossoms for several weeks here in Canterbury, 6 hours south of here the seasons are only just turning over. It snowed as we arrived on the first night and half way through the first day, dressing up the low-lying hills in brilliant white coats but also clearing the air so much that you could just about reach across the lakes and make snowballs. Right on cue the clouds drifted away, still really cold but bringing out a powerful sun to melt the snow and make bike rides and beach barbies happen just like they do in summer, albeit with an extra layer of defiance.

We'll be back before winter returns, for sure, but the spring there was a magical, rarified experience. Anyone out there who was ever tempted to visit the greener grass, now's the time and south of here is definitely the place. It's astonishingly beautiful; no matter if you're primed to be impressed, it completely takes your breath away. Even the kids tore their eyes from the DVD player long enough to gaze out the car window aghast at the scenery. Of course nothing's more interesting than DVDs. Oscar drew a picture, after we finally arrived and everyone got ready for bed, of a lovely dramatic scene, all neatly framed in a big black rectangle...

On the way back, thanks in part to genuine interest and partly utter boredom with the same film over and over, they both got a bit of a kick out of looking out the window instead at the sheep and cows and deer, and even the awesome beauty of an unspoiled wilderness – although to be fair nothingness is something you have to really point out to your pre-tweenines. In my experience, on any given day, they only really fully absorb the essential reality of playgrounds, movies and fish 'n' chips, in that order. Which, when all's said and done, is a pretty enviable state of mind.

Two weeks later, I've finally got round to posting the pics up on the losnemo gallery and quaffed enough vino to sit down and recount the last few weeks for the blog. Despite not wanting to leave, it was surprisingly good to get home, and some stuff has come good since. Niki's volunteering a couple of afternoons at Ellie's school next door, which she's really enjoying apart from the desire to be there permanently tainting her appreciation of her real job in town. It really is an utterly brilliant school, relaxed and approachable, totally devoid of the airs and graces you often get with other schools. It's a special place even before you meet the staff and kids, quite apart from the stunning setting on the steep sides of an extinct volcano, without appreciating the unique ethos they seem to inspire in the kids. It's a small school with a big heart, the true center of the community; we feel privileged enough to have Ellie there, never mind Niki. Ok, it might not end up working out for teacher, but it'll always be a great asset.

While we were away Jessie rabbit moved in with Dianne for the duration (she's the lovely neighbour over the valley from us) and apart from having a lovely time, developed a strange condition: two large swellings between her hind legs. That's right, Jessie turned out to be a boy rabbit after all. Explains a lot, as he's extra feisty and looks at you with such a determined, fixed stare, you'd think he'd caught you looking at his pint. Maybe he objects to being called Jessie... anyway he's very bright; I've already trained him to go back in his hutch at night, more through necessity than a cute trick, as he was becoming impossible to catch. He's a lot calmer and more affectionate now too, hardly surprising when the sight of me approaching now means carrots and celery tops, rather than carrots, celery tops and persecution by a big blonde bloke with a torch in his mouth.

I'm struggling a bit in all departments, to tell the truth. Work is patchy at best and the new build is taking a lot more to get started than I thought. Aiming for a late-summer 2010 completion is looking more and more ambitious and less likely with every new discovery. According to Dave the Designer our best option at the moment is to aim to build in two stages, initially no more than we need to get a roof over our heads, then sit out the wet and cold seasons until a second phase can be realistically finished, sometime after this time next year. The only real consolation there is that I probably got all my sums right, I just failed to appreciate the way things get done here, and what you need to do to get things done fast.

My timings have been based on one stage moving seamlessly on to the next, with contractors and materials turning up right on cue, and you only really get that sort of assurance if you're an established builder with plenty of clout. As Dave pointed out, if my electrician is booked in for Monday morning and a big builder client of his wants him in Timaru instead, who's he going to let down? Right. So instead of being ready for the concrete pour on Friday that's been booked for weeks, I have to rebook them, costing me another load of weeks. Better to work it all out, add a month, tag on 20% for the weather, then double it. It's not the end of the world, just a bit of a cloud over a big project that's got the silver lining of freeing me up to get some paying work in.

The kids are splendid. Ellie seems to grow an inch a day, reads everything in sight, wants her ears pierced and doesn't care if it hurts, bites her toast with her back teeth and likes to stick her tongue out at you through the gap in her front ones. Did I mention she decided to change the spelling? I never liked "Elly" that much anyway and when we named her Elizabeth it was largely to give her the option of changing to another variation in later life. I wasn't expecting it to happen on a monthly basis but at least it seems to be working...

Oskie's just brilliant, getting on very well at kindie but wants to go to the big school. We've been to see Andrew, the principal, more than once and each time had to convince him that he needs to grow as high as the school gatepost before he's allowed in. He started a Saturday morning music class this weekend which he loves, basically because Brooklyn, his bessie mate from kindie, is there as well. They're amazing together, run riot all day long and have to be separated for meals as they're fond of swapping lunch boxes, and Brooklyn's a vegetarian...

It's an another amazing place, that nursery. Tagged on the side of Ellie's school, owned by a lovely local couple and run by the nicest bunch of people you could ever want to meet. Like the school, it's refreshingly devoid of any dogma or obvious, in-your-face regime, just dead open, relaxed and loads of fun. Did someone mention dogs..? Oh yes, the owners also have a Spoodle, a Cocker Spaniel / Poodle cross so-named (I'd imagine) to provide a better alternative to the ever-tasteful American breeders calling them Cockapoos, for crying out loud. "Spoodle" isn't that much better, I'll grant you, but at least it doesn't put you in mind of the erm, Greek olympics. She's a lovely dog too, and so are her puppies... one in particular, the Big Black Boy we're calling – as a working title – ThreeBee (geddit?) is coming to live with us next weekend.

We're very excited, if a little unprepared. Our back garden might be the perfect run for him except that a couple of weeks ago, a Very Big Black dog that we called VeeBee (only kidding) suddenly appeared there while we were having a barbee... I realise the wafting smell of sausages is the reason why, but exactly how has us slightly worried. I cant see a single gap in the undergrowth around the border (I'm not sure if there's a fence there or not...) but if Veebee could get in, Threebee will definitely get out, probably the first time next door have a fry up. So I'm off now to have a good rummage about up where the bamboo grows thickest, and no, that's not another euphemism for alternative bedtime practices, it's high time we got ready for whatever the Threebee might throw at us.

Look out for a special bulletin dog blog next week!


Once again, two new albums of photos are up on the losnemo gallery. Enjoy :-)

Southern exposure

Tell you what, Canterbury might not be the most progressive county in New Zealand but they know how to deal with school holidays. The council organised something called KidsFest that lasted the entire fortnight, full of shows and events and stuff, some of it a bit old for our two but all top entertainment, much of it free. Everyone's favourite was the Dog's Day Out, a (free) just-for-fun Crufts type show in a proper arena with judges and prizes and a surprisingly good live bluegrass ensemble going by the name of the Johnny Possum Band. Whether they're any relation to the famous Johnny Armadillo Band, I leave to you to decide ;) We've never been so spoilt for choice and the two weeks just flew by, all topped off by a trip up to the snow.

Ever since our first view of the Southern Alps, showing white peaks even in the middle of summer, we promised the kids we'd go there and catch some real snow in the winter. It's even more stunning up there now, the sky's crystal-clear, gemstone blue, the snowfields just stunning.. I've never seen such a completely pristine landscape, it's just breathtaking. We barely brushed the outskirts (one hour's really, really straight drive out of Christchurch) and yet the roads were only just passable. Teams of maintenance guys are stationed at key points to keep the way clear, through Arthur's Pass to the west coast, and serve as informal information centres. Depending on conditions they might advise needing four-wheel-drive, or chains, or both, just to pass the point where the terrain starts to rise. We picked a good day, sunny with no snowfall for 24 hours, so only the shady roads were ice-bound and it was relatively easy. Chains-only up to the ski slopes though & we left it a bit late to catch the shuttle bus, so we just had a bit play about. It was crap snow actually, probably great for skiing but hopeless for snowball fights. Snowmen were just out of the question and Oscar's first real sight of decent quantities of white stuff had him a bit freaked out because not only was it freezing cold, it stuck to his hands... bless 'im. We ended up have a good laugh, at least.

Osk's talking is really coming on, really quite scary how good his enunciation is nowadays. Still says some hilarious toddler things, like the other day when he sheepishly sidled into the living room and told me, "Papa, a normous dragon did make a tebbiral mess in my bedroom!" These days, whatever he says, it's mostly in very clear, very broad Kiwi. He loves riding his boik and scooder, although we're relieved to know, when it comes to taost, that he still prefers mahmoit to vigimoit. Elly seems to be very aware of the local twang and seems to be resisting more than I thought, in fact seems acutely tuned-in to the healthy self-consciousness New Zealanders have about their accent; in a classic pot-calling-kettle situation, Aussies have historically teased the Kiwis at every opportunity over their "fush and chups" delivery. The Kiwis apparently turned the other cheek until they could bear it no longer, finally hitting back with Flight of the Conchords and, er, lets just say the ball is firmly back in the Oz side of the court. It's maybe because of this old feud I often hear people here say they rein in their accent because they think it makes them sound a bit thuck. Maybe Elly's picking up on that. If you're interested and would like to study this further, Kiwi-ese is frequently the subject of more adademic analysis. Naahyeh, awesome, y'know?

Anyway, the holidays were good for a few other things, particularly sorting out work and house strategies. I think I mentioned us wanting to have a clear plan of action by the start of this term and thankfully one of the bubbling-under work prospects has come good: Niki's got a job! She started today in a two-room school just outside of Christchurch specialising in kids with special educational needs – Aspergers, ADD, that sort of thing – working closely with other teachers in a really small class. Apparently the principal is lovely and the kids are lovely and... it's basically the exact spectral opposite of that godforsaken place up in Auckland. While the pay's quite a bit lower, the hours are miles better and we're hoping there won't be too much in the way of paperwork, the bane of the Kiwi teacher. She just got back home, beaming all over her face, which is such a lovely thing to behold after enduring all that grief. It's hard to be sure so early on, but it looks like this could be The One. Let's hope so!

I've been getting some photographic work and these days I seem to get positive interest from practically everyone I meet. With any luck we'll get back onto the same footing we had in Spain, but I think I'll need to mix up the camerawork with building work a lot more than I used to . It was always one or the other in Spain and in hindsight I think I steered it that way; basically, it's much easier to dedicate to one or the other, from a "chip-changing" point of view. The difference here, at least in the short term, is the house we're about to build for ourselves. I need to dedicate every spare minute to it while making sure I get as much paying work as possible, if we are to stay solvent through the build. There are lots of things in our favour here: the plot is just up the street, we already have great support for childcare etc when we need it, I can effectively draw a nominal wage from the project and – crucially – the networking effect of project-managing it should spin me some useful photographic leads.

Well, it's a plan, at least. As we all know, a plan is the thing you have in place for when the random series of events that is Real Life lands you somewhere you don't want to be. At the minute the house building plans seem to be a hedge against anything better coming along, rather than what it surely is: the biggest thing we've ever set out to achieve. Once I get some stable drawings in place it'll feel more real I'm sure, and events will start to take over from aspirations. We're dead excited about the whole thing, moreso every time something essential falls into place, even though it's dragging on . It'll all be upon us before we know what's happening. As we've seen lately, time flies when you're having fun :)

The new album up on the losNemo.net gallery – Early July 2009 – should be quickly joined by Late July 2009, as it's suddenly almost August, for crying out loud. I'll post another blog up when they're ready.

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 :)

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.