This is in lieu of the pre-Christmas summary of our year. Needless to say at this time of year you were all in our hearts and we hope you had a great Christmas and New Year, and that 2004 brings you all you wish yourselves. If that should include a trip to NZ then all the better!!!
Well we have had another busy year (does anybody ever NOT have a busy year!!). It started off with Eric working frantically to get the pool finished or at least swim-able in before the summer finished. He succeeded, the pool was finally fenced and now all that is left is to box in the filter unit and build a trunk to accommodate the various pool toys. I must say I always knew Eric was a clever badger but his efforts since we have been here have impressed me so much, putting in pools and building, in wood, and to accommodate earth-quake regulations are not exactly tasks he ever envisaged undertaking when we lived in the UK!
Summer, ie Nov - March, saw us enjoying the company of lots of visitors, Mom and Daddy for 4 months, Mark, Cathy and the girls for February, Stan and Sarah for much of March, Helen and Chris briefly in Dec and then later in the year Eric's nephew Todd and 3 friends for a week and an ex-Dukkie Mike for another week. The later visitors were on world tours, back-packing and seemed to enjoy the comforts of home for their stay (decent food, hot showers at leisure and, as Ben {Todd's mate} said, sitting on proper sofa's!). We also had our holidays, touring the top half of the South Island (how many times can you say 'Wow' in 2 weeks, go to the S. Island and count) and a few days in the Bay if Islands in the north.
Eric pressed on with the pool and a big kitchen extension as well as a new deck through the year. After spending 2002 back at Uni. he was planning to sit exams in Feb and July this year and then do the Professionals course in 2004. With the summer rush he decided not to do exams in Feb but bite the bullet and do 6 in July!! When he then found out that the exams were over 2 days, and saw old papers and realised how hard they were he reverted to plan C, 3 papers in July and 3 in Feb '04 (my retirement slipping further away!!). Unfortunately Eric failed 2 of the 3 July papers (the first time he has ever failed a law exam) and so we are now on plan D, 3 in Feb and any left (hopefully only 2) in July with the Professionals course Oct - Dec '04. He is so resentful of the NZ requirements as if a graduate from here went the other way they would not have to do any of this before applying to do the post-graduate course. I admire his perseverance, Eric started his studies in 1995!!! ONE DAY I will be a lady of leisure, growing veg, making marmalade, going to the gym 5 days a week and married to a wealthy barrister/solicitor. Well a girl can dream can't she!
By mid-year, with the prospect of only 6 exams and 15 weeks at Uni over the coming 18 months, Eric started job hunting. His ideal job would have been part-time, local and something to do with law. Well the first 2 requirements were satisfied and the last very tenuously. Eric works for the local council (much better paid,relatively, than UK council workers) as Matamata's Animal Control Officer. They do all those animal things that the UK police did (stray animals, rampaging bulls, animals causing chaos on the roads etc) as well as maintaining the dog register. The vague law connection is that Eric has been asked if he would conduct his own prosecutions rather than farm them out to solicitors. Eric has agreed but as of yet has failed to find anyone to prosecute! He has his own ute, office etc, is very much left to is own devices and does not find it too stressful so it will do as a stop gap.
In June we received terrible news from the UK that friends of ours had been involved in a house fire. Eddie and Alan had been our first ever visitors here. They had done a month in Auz. and tagged a week in NZ on the end of their stay. They said they should have done it the other way round as there was so much to see in NZ and they planned to come back soon and do it 'properly'. Well sadly Alan at least will not. He died in the fire and Eddie suffered a horrific 64% burns. She arrested several time in the first 24 hours and it was touch and go for several weeks for her. Eddie is amazingly strong and I am sure that it is only that that got her through the following months. She finally came out of hospital a few weeks ago and, although very dependant on carers, is making excellent progress at home. Well done to Mark and Vanessa to all the support and help you have given Eddie, on that fateful day and ever since.
Meantime I was plodding on on 3x12 hour nights a week in ICU. It was OK but I was looking forward to cutting my hours (I had increased them earlier in the year from 5, to 6, shifts/fortnight). However, while looking for jobs for Eric we spied an advert for an Immunisation Co-ordinator. I applied and was offered the job actually during the job interview. I started in October, and although I am now working full-time (something I vowed never to do again!) I am really enjoying it. I am my own boss most of the time, have a car, cell-phone etc and work from home. The pay is awful but the advantages of working from home when one has young children cannot be overestimated. The organisation I work for, IMAC, the Immunisation Advisory Centre, is part of Auckland University, and very 'family friendly'. I have been to Auckland twice, Rotorua 4 times and was flown to Wellington once. They also acknowledge the progress you make and good work you do, something that was very lacking in the hospital. I am really enjoying it. I cover a huge area (imagine Bristol to Great Yarmouth but rotated 90 degrees so it runs N to S) although 80% of my work is based in Hamilton. There is a large teaching component to the job which suits me.
At home I have managed to extend the veg garden significantly though the rampant weed growth that continues through the winter caught me off guard. Mid-year we sold about half our cows and some of our sheep to Alan, a 'retired' farmer over the road (that means he manages 50 instead of hundreds of acres!). In August we had 5 calves born, though one was virtually a still-birth and our first born Gertie dropped dead at about 3 months of age. 2 out of 5 was not good but as the adage goes,'where there's livestock there's deadstock'. Later in the year we added 4 Duroc x sows to our collection (so nice to have pigs again) and then later a saddleback boar. Eric also acquired more chooks so we now have to have a bit of a cull there and get rid of the non-layers. We have planted more trees though I have a brown beetle problem with the fruit trees. I also have too much grass growing in the orchard, the cows are not allowed in there as they reach over the tree guards and eat the trees, and the sheep don't eat the grass quick enough. The orchard is on a steep slope so running the sit-on mower around it is not an option. Maybe we need a goat ('over my dead body' I hear Eric saying!).
The girls are fine. Alice continues to function at 2 speeds, slow and stationery, (God she drives me mad) and Harriette is hormones on 2 legs (and I thought childhood was hard work!). Both got excellent end of year reports this year and Harriette achieved her ambition and got the BOT (Board of Trustee's, ie Board of Governor's) cup for academic achievement at her leavers assembly. She moves up to Intermediate (sort of Middle school) in January, a year early and is also in the E (extension and enrichmant) class, an accelerant class for high achievers. We are very proud of them both. Winter saw them complete theier second netball season here. Alice did a netball skills course last year but played properly this year. She came home with player of the match on one or two occasions and their team got lots of awards at the end of the season, most enthusiastic team, best coach etc. They both love it. They were thrilled when the Silver Ferns bought home the netball world cup from Jamaica (hands up who didn't even know the World Cup was on?!) and school stopped so that the pupils (and teachers!?) could cheer their team on. You will be pleased to know that they supported England in THE OTHER World Cup!!!
Alice is very into horses at the moment and I think has read every library book on the subject. She listens avidly to Carols tales from the stud. We would consider buying them a horse but not for a few years when a) we can afford it and b) I am confident they would do all the work. I have no interest in the creatures and would not be prepared to do any of the graft!! They have progressed well at piano and practice is not so tedious to listen to now, indeed sometimes what they play is quite pleasant. Their teacher holds an end of year concert where we parents all crowd into her living room to suffer, err I mean hear, the children's efforts! Actually listening to the older children was very nice, some of them are incredibly talented.
We have found some very good friends in Richard and Robyn Scott this year. They are dairy farmers and have girls in Harri and Alice's classes at school. The girls always have a wonderful time when they go up there. A few weeks ago I drove up their (1.3 km long) drive to the house to collect them and saw Sarah grooming Millie in her paddock next to the drive. I asked her where Harri was, expecting them to be together and she pointed way across another paddock. There was Harri riding a motorbike looking like she didn't have a care in the world. During her day she had been also been horse riding and helped Richard with milking. This, I remembered, once again, was why we had come to NZ! Earlier this year I had been thinking that we did not seem to have made any of those friendships that we find so important. Kiwi's are very friendly people but getting beyond that everyday friendliness is not easy. A fact that has been re-iterated by other ex-pats here. I think that living in such a tight knit rural community as we do has made this even harder. So Richard and Robyn are extra special. Thank heavens also for Juliet and Kev, our very dear friends who emigrated from Coombe Wood Lane a few months ahead of us. They have been an enormous support over the last 2 years as have long standing and long ago emigrated friends Mandy and David.
In August Carol arrived. Now for those of you who don't know, Carol is Stan's boss (Stan being our best man and long time friend and a copper in the Met's). She has taken a year long career break to work with horses out here. She got a job on the South Island but it did not work out and she was very unhappy. Stan was relaying all this to us and we contacted her to offer her the cottage here to stay in if she really wanted to get away from where she was. She took up the offer and within a week of her arrival had caused a fire requiring the services of the local fire brigade at 10.30 at night!! She had been clearing some of the tree debris on the drive by sweeping into piles and burning it, common practice. However one of the fires did not die properly and at night a spark must have blown across to the unburnt rubbish under the trees. They caught fire and when we first saw it the flames were over 20' high. It was a way away from the house but the shelter belt of trees that caught actually came all the way up to the house. It was very scary. We worked frantically bailing water from a nearby trough to try and get it under control and I can honestly say I have never felt so pleased to see blue and red flashing lights in my life (unlike those that were attached to traffic police cars that stopped me for speeding twice within 3 weeks last month but we don't talk about that!). Carol later got a job on a stud near here and although they had accommodation it was very grotty and she asked if she could rent the cottage. We said Yes but only until the summer visitors started. She is planning to travel in March and April, returning to the UK in May but we she has no desire to go back to the UK and now efforts to find a kiwi husband have taken on a more urgent nature as she cannot get residency any other way!!! Seriously, she thinks she can extend her work permit to 5 years and the Mets can extend her career break for the same period so she is looking to stay, but not with us, and finding a job on another stud.
I started my new job in October. I wanted to take a week off in between jobs but I needed to do the Vaccinator Training Course and it happened to be running in that week so I didn't get the time off. I therefore had no leave between Feb and this Xmas. Luckily my contract states that I have to take Xmas to after NY as A/L else, officially, I would have had to wait until April to have time off!! They have training for nurses doing immunisations very well organised here, and the system is far superior to the UK. Their information systems are a mess though and every surgery submits stats differently, usually after removing various categories of kids from the equation. We therefore have absolutely no idea of what the immunisation rates are in this country so cannot assess if the work we do affects the rates. Luckily this is being addressed and a National Immunisation Register is being introduced this year. We are hosting the National Conference this year in Rotorua which should be hard work, interesting, and hopefully good fun.
November saw us use the TV that our neighbour Claire gave us earlier in the year, for the first time. That World Cup, that NZ ridiculously quibbled over, and therefore lost hosting rights to, was on and we were glued to as many matches as we could watch. They were broadcast around 9pm to 1am for us so watching and getting up for work/school was a bit of a struggle sometimes. Mike (an earlier visitor) was there and got to see England's last 3 matches and relayed to us reports after each one. Amazingly he said the atmosphere was best at the England v France semi-final. But what a final!!!! Could one have asked for more? We could not go to bed until about 4am because of the adrenaline we had coursing round our bodies. We watched it at Richard and Robyn's with another kiwi couple, all of whom were supporting Australia (Turncoats! I clearly remember Richard saying 'I don't care who wins as long as it's not Aus'!!). The match, here, as I'm sure there, was the only topic of conversation for weeks and, although it was good to be in the Southern Hemisphere for the matches, I would have given anything to have been in the UK for the following week or two.
We have had a good Christmas. We spent weeks trying to decide what to do between going to the Scott-Mackies, going to the Stokes, having the Stokes here, staying here but eating out and just staying here. We finally opted for the latter. Stan is back again from the UK and Carol (who works a 58 hour week for a pittance) actually had 3 days off. They spoilt us terribly and so pressie unwrapping seemed to go on for hours. Eric bought me a fabulous digital camera which is something we have wanted for ages. Stan and Carol clubbed together and bought Eric and I a chainsaw (long story around Eric slaughtering and butchering one of our cows in Dec - please refer to Carol's blog on 10/12/03 at www.quest4aragorn.blogspot.com ) and Eric lots of kiwiana tat that had us in stitches. Among other things we bought Stan the dvd of Whale Rider (an absolute must to watch when you can) and he bought Alice the book and video!! I bought Eric a clay pigeon launcher and we had great fun in the front paddock clay pigeon shooting with Eric's shotgun. Yes even I had a go and hit my first clay!!!! We had duck, cooked indoors, for dinner as it was too blowy to BBQ. We had a little sun over Xmas , lots of cloud and wind. But now... well as I type this (sitting in bed around 7.30am) it is warm outside and promises to get hotter. I plan to repeat the last 2 days today, that is, gardening until it is too hot to continue and then crash out under the parasol by the pool, taking the odd dip to cool off, a simple supper then a little more gardening in the cool of the evening. My veg garden is looking like one rather then the enormous weed patch of recent weeks! We have had odd weather for ages. The South Island is suffering drought and we seem to have had all their rain. Nov/Dec are always unsettled months and they certainly have been this (last?) year. Summer certainly seems to have arrived now though. Yesterday the South Island had record temps of 31 - 40 degrees at a time when it averages 22 degrees!!! I don't know what we had but I'd guess 28 - 30 degrees. When did you say you were coming?! Mark and Cheryl are somewhere in the country with their children and Cheryl's mom at the moment. We are expecting them on Eric's birthday, hopefully for a few days. Mom and Daddy arrive in mid-Feb for 6 weeks. All of which we are looking forward to.
Well if you're still with us well done. It is difficult to put a years news into compressed form and I am sure we have missed out heaps. We do still miss our friends and hope to see at least some of you soon. In the meantime have a wonderful year and please write with all your news.
Big hugs from us all.
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