A tale of three houses

At last, crimbo over with and the new year looming, I've found some time to fire off the last blog of 2009. It's ending well, everyone fit and well with work picking up for me and our housing situation finally sorted out for the foreseeable future. How we got here, the lovely old wooden bungalow we're now calling home, is a bit of a saga going back to last October.

A wet Saturday morning it was, when Pete, our ex-landlord, rang from the little old Ardèche B&B he & Lois were running. He sounded unusually businesslike and a little nervous, but quickly got to the point: while things in France were verging on idyllic, their restaurant in here in Lyttelton was hemorrhaging cash and, long story short, they were coming home early. Something like a whole year early, in fact. Just days before that phone call we were congratulating ourselves on having properly landed at last, how happy the kids were, how good it was to have all the boxes unpacked, feet under the table, all that sort of dangerous talk.

Tempting fate, me Mam calls it.

I was shocked, Nik was really devastated and neither of us knew how to break it to the kids. That afternoon we received 3 months formal notice by email and all was doom, gloom and long faces, wandering round letting it slowly sink in, but kind of panicked too, as if we had to be out the following day or something. In the day or so that followed we started mentally packing again, began searching the small ads for a new place, had friends offering us a place, still said nothing to the kids, just in case. At times it felt like the best thing was to accept Diane's offer of her garage, which is decked out ready to use as a self-contained flat, and storing our stuff somewhere. For all it would be fun, we would surely miss living up on Voelas. I found myself taking shots of the place – those views from the windows I posted on the losNemo site were part of that – like you do when you're about to return home from holiday and realise you have nothing to remember it by.

And then it all changed again. On the Tuesday we got another email saying he and Lois had had a chat and decided it was a bit unfair to boot us out so soon after we'd moved in, and – sorry for the messing around, but – how about they found somewhere to stay until we got our new place sorted out? They had a friend with a place in town that they rent out, the lease was up for renewal, they'd know by the end of the week for sure. Of course we were hugely relieved and when they confirmed it at the weekend, verging on the euphoric, but something wasn't right. When Lois emailed a list of stuff she wanted to retrieve from the house when they got back, it started to sink in: this was their home, not ours. It would never feel like home to us while they were camped out round the corner. It felt more like squatting. Nik had an urge to start packing again, even though we were probably 6 months away from eviction time. I was completely fine with the squatting thing and carried on taking pictures.

In hindsight I can see I was in flat denial about how comfortable we could be in that situation. Hell, we'd just suffered a bitterly cold, uninsulated winter in a house so summer-oriented, it barely had functional doors and windows. There we were in late spring, the garden bursting with flowers and ripening berries, our little veggie patch just about to yield up its beans and potatoes... there was no way I was giving up all that pained investment so easily. Worse, I'd just spent better part of a month trying to find a rental place for Matt & Antonia who were trying to move here from Auckland and there was nothing even remotely like Voelas Rd on the market. This wasn't deterring Nik, who was finding potential new homes on a daily basis; one was a subdivision of the house next door, but not available til the new year; another just down the street turned out to be little more than a prefab with a driveway. So when she spotted a "to let" sign on the little cottage at the end of the quay one morning, I wasn't holding out hope.

We arranged a viewing that evening and met Sally, the agent, on the doorstep. What a place. It had a familiar smell of old wood and carpet that I couldn't quite place, but belonged somewhere between taxi booking office and school stationary cupboard. The wood-panelled hallway and institutional paintwork gave it a stuffy, unfriendly atmosphere, but the rooms were all full of light and the high ceilings made it feel airy and spacious. Everywhere were the sort of odd little details and quirky anachronisms you only get in houses that haven't been touched in decades; a larder hung on the outside of the kitchen that you access through a little hatch next to the sink; an open fireplace with brass-edged tile hearth and thick wooden sill that was only missing a bakelite clock to be my grandma Huntley's, gawd bless her soul. The new owners, who'd bought it to rent, had added a load of MDF wardrobes and cupboards everywhere, apart from which it was pure untouched Kiwi-ana. It was also quite a bit less expensive than our current place. I really didn't know what to make of it. Deep inside, I knew I would have no say in the matter anyway. Before we even left, Niki was shooting me looks that gave me little doubt. As we said goodbye to Sally I found myself telling her, "We really like it. Can you hold it for us until the morning?"

By suppertime we'd pretty much realised what it would mean to move out of Voelas and into the cottage on the quay. We would definitely miss the garden, and... er... well, that was about it. For all it was a lovely house, it was a pain to live in. More than that, here we had the chance not only to have a place that really felt like home, we'd also be solving a really prickly and complex problem. As chance would have it (or more likely, as is often the case in a small town) Sally was also the agent for Pete & Lois' temporary let. When we explained why we were interested in the cottage, she immediately put two and two together. The owners of that temporary let had decided not to renew the sitting tenants' lease in order to let P & L move in, and she was having trouble fixing up the people who were getting booted out with a new place. That coming Saturday they were due to move out and into a friend's back room, putting their stuff into storage, with P & L to move in on the Monday. A very familiar situation... and for all this craziness was not our doing, it felt like it was in our power to let not only ourselves find a home, we could let two other families have their homes back too. I guess sometimes it's not about desires, it's about wider needs, doing the right thing and all that stuff.

I rang Pete on the Friday, as soon as we'd been and paid the deposit. He was a bit stunned, I think, to hear they were moving back into their own place after all. It was also very much the 11th hour by then. In a minor twist to the saga, the owners of P & L's temporary place had asked Pete to take over from the agent (logically, as he would have been living there) so if the sitting tenants were no longer moving out, he was to be their de facto landlord. Pete therefore asked me to sidestep Sally and contact these guys directly with Pete's details. Not having their phone number, it was a case of trial and error, catching them at home. No-one there Friday lunchtime, I drew a blank in the evening too. Saturday morning I finally caught up with them in their garden, along with all their furniture, piles of boxes, bags, bikes and houseplants and two big blokes with gloves on who clearly owned the van I had to squeeze past in the driveway. I wasn't sure whether to expect hugs & kisses or a good hiding... but they were lovely people, completely gobsmacked at the news that they didn't have to move out after all, which apparently had been breaking their hearts. I saw them in the market a couple of hours later, all chuffed to bits. Apparently the weirdest thing of all was unpacking their boxes into the same house they'd just moved out of. Result!

So here we are in our new place, and feels great. We've grown to love it way more than we thought, much quicker than I imagined. Barely a month on, it feels like we've been here a year, which is always a good sign. The nieghbours are lovely, have two kids slightly older than ours and couldn't be more helpful, introduced us to June, the lady who lived here for almost 50 years before selling up to go and live with her son, at a barbie they threw for the whole street when we moved in. Our first crop of rocket is filling out the veggie patch and the boxes are all unpacked again. Christmas was lovely, relaxed and cosy, largely because it's summer here (duh..) but also cos when that sou'westerly blows, the doors and windows actually keep it out. The view across the harbour are amazing, the port that never sleeps is the source of endless fascination, town is a short walk away and somehow, in all the excitement, we seem to have lost sight of the section up the hill. This is now the challenge, to keep pressing on with those plans without the pressure to move that we always had before. Next year might well prove to be a test of our commitment and determination but at least it'll be free from disruption and cardboard boxes. Touch wood!

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

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 :-)

Rabbits and responsibilities

Wow, over a month since my last post. Why does that always sound like a confessional? Have I failed in my vows to the blogosphere? I really didn't want this to become a once-a-month chore performed out of a guilty sense of responsibility; that's the death-knell of many a blog (and innumerable marriages, heheh) and I can't let it happen. It is on my mind though, because I really want to set up another one to catalogue the progress of our housebuilding larks, but, as I keep reminding Elly, if we can't look after one pet there's no way we're going to be able to look after two...

This month's excuses are quite good, as it happens. We did get another rabbit. Not that we were looking for one: she found us, or rather the people looking after her did. She was discovered wandering the streets of St Martins late one night by a guy chasing a car thief. I know it sounds completely unlikely, but apparently this bloke was in his mate's living room when he spotted some guy breaking into his car, ran outside & chased him only to see the thief jump into another car and speed off. He turned back to check the damage and there in the middle of the road (I'm not making this up, honest) was a little black rabbit.

How he managed to get hold of her I don't know, but she's was quite obviously not wild so he knocked on a few nearby doors; no-one had any idea who she might belong to. And no, she didn't get a good look at the car thief ;) His neighbour back in Lyttleton is our good friend Diane, who heard they were looking for a home for the bunny, suggested we offer her our recently vacated hutch and thus the deal was done. She's a feisty little thing with a real twinkle in her eye, impossible to catch when it's time for bed (er, I'm talking about the rabbit here...) I really don't understand how she failed to make her escape in the middle of a suburban street. Diane suggested we call her Jessie, just in case she turned out to be a he. There are a couple of pics of her in the newly-updated losNemo gallery. You no longer need to click on the "next gallery" link to find the most recent albums. (I found a fix that makes it work in reverse order, so new albums appear first in the list, blog-style. Also fixed a problem with the Oscar's Cheese Scones album that basically stopped you seeing the pics).

I've been right back into the photography of late, both work and play, largely because of the unmistakable sniff of spring in the air. We might still be getting some very chilly nights but there are occasional days when butter spreads noticeably easier on the bread, warm sunlight peeks above the crater edge just a little earlier, flowers are bursting out where I didn't even know there were plants and all of a sudden wearing long johns seems like an even more ridiculous thing to be doing... and then the wind will shift to the south, howling up from the Antarctic, cutting through any number of layers like they don't exist. Its not like other places where you don't know what to wear – in Auckland you can remove and replace a jacket three times in the space of a single street – here, if that wind's in the south, there's no escape. Similarly, if it's blowing from the north your bread practically butters itself. But the Lyttelton springtime light is sublime, especially at the extremes of the day, and I've been lucky enough to win a commission shooting panoramas of the harbour. Maybe I'll post up some of the reject ones in a later blog, the place is just looking so good at the moment.

So there are three new albums in the losnemo gallery, one of them unashamedly containing nothing but pictures of flowers. Partly because I don't know what they are (and someone might enlighten me) and partly because they're suddenly everywhere. We never really saw Canterbury in anything but the bare bones of its autumnal nakedness and now the most outrageous things are growing on trees, or at least I think they're trees because a lot of them look like waay overgrown rhododendrons, or magnolias with enormous ice-cream flowers smelling of lemon sherbet... I just can't pass them by. And that's just our back garden!

The breaking of winter inspired a major garden tidy-up during which we managed to restore the greenhouse to nothing like its former glory, using bits & pieces we found lying around and costing us just the one trip to the big DIY shed. It became clear the door was going to need something better than a tatty old sheet of duct-taped fibreglass if it was to be more useful than a sheet of A4 paper, so we invested in a nice new piece of corrugated plastic & siliconed it into the frame. Potting soil came from the compost heap at the bottom of the garden in which we sowed the indeterminate contents of some old seed packets found in the shed. Amazingly, hundreds of little green leaves appeared almost overnight. Disappointingly, they turned all out to be the offspring of some hideous weed that must have been lurking in the compost heap. But an interesting mix of lettuces and lobelias seems to have sprung up in their place, inspiring us to get more trays and see what else we can create.

That's no royal "we" either, the kids are right into their gardening. The greenhouse remains an endless fascination but most of the rest of the time is divided between cutting the borders of the lawn with kitchen scissors and getting very dirty. Oscar's sandpit is now a mud pit, or as he calls it, a yucky pie. Elly's a bit more dainty but just as much a scruff as her brother. She's also losing her teeth like they were out of fashion, which is hilarious and even more fascinating than the greeenhouse. At the moment she has one missing and one half-grown-in on the bottom deck, one top front missing and another defying gravity as I type*. She enjoys sidling up to people and waggling them at unfeasible angles to her gums to give you the willies. Honestly, she's got a gob like a Terry Gilliam cartoon, even though she is still utterly gorgeous :)

Oscar's growing up very quickly, following what seems like an ice age of transition from nappies to knickers. He was hopeless for ages and then he was fine, then his mamma went back to work and he lapsed into virtual incontinence, before finally, out of the blue last weekend, he was dry all day. We tried everything: sticker charts, massive praise, treats, threats (which are the same as treats but with a vocalised "h") cajoling and coercing, even making him do his own laundry (actually a high point in the whole saga, I won't go into details) and the thing that made him change? It's as if he just turned around one day and said, "nah, I'm just not doing this any more" – and that was it. Nothing to do with us. Now all he has to conquer is getting up through the night on his own, which he has no excuse for not doing, now that it's warm enough to leave ajar the impossible-to-open-unless-over-six-and-sober back passage door.

And so, back to the weather. It's been lovely and sunny again today, as it is for so many days, but that doesn't mean it's always warm. In fact the sun has nothing to do with temperatures in Christchurch. You'd think it was a winter/spring thing: apparently not. As I say, it's all about where the wind comes from. Yesterday – dull, overcast, wind from the north: 24ºC. Today – cloudless sunny day, light breeze from the south: 14ºC. By all accounts, in mid-summer, you can bask in glorious sunshine all day, but it'll go from 32º late morning to 15º in the afternoon, just as soon as the easterlies kick in off the ocean. Such a weird place.

Oh, and us big 'uns are doing ok. Niki loves her work, it pays about the same as a checkout chick and it's two busses away, but she's well into it: teaching Special Needs kids, I think I might have mentioned last time. Heaven forbid the CV might develop a prolonged period of stability to offset the two-jobs-a-year syndrome, she's brushed it up and applied for another one in a very interesting "alternative" school in the city. Fortunately (we discovered) Kiwi Cvs are expected only to list the more relevant positions held, which puts her at a distinct advantage, choice-wise :) We need the cash, more than anything. The husband has the usual trickle of relatively well-paid work but once the build starts it'll be a lot more difficult.

Latest news on that front is the soil looks to be eminently suitable for earth building so that's how we're going to do it. Had a great meeting with a designer/architect chappie at the weekend, friend of the structural engineer I spoke to who works with the geotech guy we met, and he's busy right now with the stats from the surveying company suggested by the same fella. Just like one big happy family... we're getting quite excited now and not a little bit anxious, as the year trundles on relentlessly and our tenancy here looks to be a little shaky... our landlords are coming home early... fortunately (after hearing of that massive bombshell) they think they've found a friend's place to stay in until we can move out, but it's pretty clear that needs to be sooner rather than later! We could find yet another place to tide us over but I'm thinking it's not inconceivable that we might get plans submitted by early November, which (if they're compliant, and they should be) could be approved by early New Year, in which case we might conceivably have a roof on by next autumn, and that would be within our existing rental agreement.

With all the good will in the world, and a favourable, warm, following wind... well, maybe you can see why I'm skeptical about maintaining another blog, although I feel like we should be filming this for Channel 4. That way it gets to be someone else's responsibility. I wonder what the Grand Designs production team are doing for their holidays this year...

*The second of her two front teeth dropped out this afternoon after school. The tooth fairy's gonna want a bulk discount at this rate.

Incidents, accidents and prophylactics

Yuk, I'm full of cold. First one in ages, it really took me by surprise. The first shivers arrived as I was working outdoors on Friday afternoon and by bedtime I was in a right state. Niki had the same thing earlier in the week and just worked through it; both the kids had what I assume was the same thing before that and we suffered no more than a bit of a runny nose and mild to moderate whinging. Seems like the bigger you are the harder you fall, or maybe they're just hard as nails, but it's definitely got me reeling. I've been fighting it with all sorts, Paracetamol-ed up to the eyeballs, lots of vitamin C, big mugs of coffee to keep me going... and something I haven't seen for years: cod liver oil. Whatever the science behind all the hysteria over swine flu, this cold has made us appreciate the need to load up on vitamin D, especially at his time of year, and cod liver oil delivers it in a reliable way. I've just spent all morning reading up on it and the message is: vitamin D will stop you getting flu and cod liver oil is the best way of getting a regular dose of it.

It also gives you a big dose of vitamin A and some recent studies have claimed there's a need to be quite careful with it due to the possibility of vit A overdosing. The web's own GP, Dr Mercola, is one of those to have suddenly stopped recommending daily doses. It's true that you don't need cod liver oil to get enough vit D; just 15 minutes unprotected exposure to the sun per day is enough for the body to synthesize it – assuming you're in a permanently warm-enough climate to sunbathe every day. If not, it's entirely up to your diet to provide it, especially during winter months when more people get flu... and why more people get flu then. I tend to go with the Weston A Price Foundation on dietary matters, who argue that the two vitamins in the natural form of the oil complement each other perfectly. It's the synthetic, lab-produced "fortified" cod liver oils that are the source of the controversy – and that recent study data. As a rule (to save you reading the whole thing) remember cod liver oil is a nutrient dense food, not a medicine, and if you make sure yours is a natural oil it should contain vit A and vit D in roughly 10:1 proportions, which makes the vit A content perfectly safe and actually very beneficial, just as it was when I was a kid.

Yes, I have all sorts of opinions about the whole swine flu thing too, but I won't bore you with them here. What's important is that we protect ourselves and that we absolutely do not include vaccination in that protection. You don't need a vaccine and nor do your kids, you just need a decent diet and a functional immune system. Even Dr Mercola agrees there. Just say no! And get your cod liver oil down you.

Ok, enough of that. Because we're both working things are extra crazy here, complicated slightly by only having one car, exacerbated by Nik also doing a teacher training course and thrown into total disarray by two young children and their frenetic social lives. I've been working on some offices near the city three days a week, fielding the kids morning and night and getting drawings and plans together for the house, while Nik does 30-odd hours at school plus a further 20-odd on her university course, so it's pretty full-on. To be fair, were it not for the kids' play dates we'd be completely stuffed, as they get collected from school and ferried to a neighbour's house where we pick them up after work. It's great to let them have that semi-independence; it builds a sense of responsibility and self-confidence in them but you can't help worrying, largely because you know they're more than capable of running a mile with every inch you give.

So it was with Oscar's burst lip. He's still not very good at all on the skateboard and although his scootering seems to be pretty fluent, he's a bit lost (as I admit I am) on wheels without handlebars. A bit like unicycling, I suppose. You're fine while you're on the move, it's the stopping without serious injury that's the problem. In this case, the inch I gave was not only agreeing to him riding the board on all fours, it was the push he wanted besides. I really should have known he wouldn't make any effort to let go with his hands to stop himself when the board hit the kerbstone and he was thrown forwards onto his face... despite this happening at ludicrously low speed, he managed to land mouth-first with an audible splat, causing a perfect gob-print on the pavement and one extremely large fat & bloody lip that took three days to subside. Poor little bugger.

It also turns out we were even more lax with Sally rabbit. She had the run of the old chicken coop and her hutch in there, serving as canteen and sleeping quarters, was lockable but we never really thought anything could get in there so we never locked her in at night. One devastating morning last week I went to feed her and found her dead, killed by a stoat we think. Sure the kids were a little bit upset (and Elly still misses her) but we were completely distraught. She was such a lively, lovely pet and had only just settled in with us, spending more and more time in the house and growing in confidence all the time. Such a sweetie, everyone loved her and I guess worst of all we feel like we really let her down, even though all we ever really wanted for her was the freedom to do her own thing. Certainly gave us pause for thought, anyway.

How that gets me back to cod liver oil I don't know, but if you didn't click the link in the first paragraph and you're in any doubt about the importance of dietary vitamin D, please do have a read of this article, it's a real eye-opener. Also remains for me to point you to the losNemo gallery again: you need to click on the "next gallery" link to find two new albums. And, as is becoming traditional after a way-too-long post, a promise to make them shorter and more frequent in future. I really don't want to rely on cold-induced house arrest to find the time to write them, at least. Took me so long to grind this one out, I'm starting to feel miles better already :)

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 :)