This morning I have been checking out the website for the London Eye and the Tutankhamen exhibition – and next weekend I am going to have a bit of a shopping spree for Kiwi pressies for vast numbers of children! I suspect I will be laden down with Kiwi’s, Pukeko’s, Chocolate Fsh and much other kiwiana t’boot! And no that wasn’t a typo – What do you call a Fish with no eyes? A Fsh!! Which is exactly what Kiwi’s call the stuff that you have with Chps!
Just in case the maths escapes you - it is now only 33 days - or 4 weeks and 4 days until I wave my Kiwi passport at the nice customs man at Heathrow!
So apart from blurbling on about our much hyped trup (kiwi again! Just getting you in the swing for when we arrive…) what can I tell you?
I hesitate to say ‘house’, as I am sure you are all heartily sick of me blathering on about a house that you have never seen! BUT, that has been our life this year! We moved in in January and made a conscious decision to go full tilt on making our new pad what we wanted it to be so that next year we could just enjoy being in it. And so it has been. I have now seen enough ‘brown’ paint for a life time. I could probably become a paint connoisseur actually - I can discern the very subtle differences between Half / Quarter and Full Napa / Tea / Beachcomber and Caraway! I now know that in NZ one does not fly into the nearest DIY shop and look at a million pots of Emulsion on the shelf and choose a pot that looks close to the colour you want – No, no, no! In NZ, Emulsion does not even exist – here we have Ceiling Paint, Wall Paint, High Traffic Paint, Enamel Paint and God knows what else! Here, pretty much everything except white is mixed for you – which is fine except for the fact that it makes paint buying long winded and you have to buy 14 test pots to find the right colour – or resort to judging it from the thumbnail on the colour cards which are approximately 1.5 cm square and have no vague similarity to the thing that will be in the pot that you have just spent $132 on! A couple of weeks ago as I put the second coat of paint in our bedroom, I found myself in the somewhat disconcerting position of wondering if we had over browned it! Burnt decoration, if you will! Currently in NZ mushrooms / teas / subtle hues of brown are very in, and very chic – however, knowing how these things go – you can guarantee that before the last of the paint is dry, brown will be out and blue will be in! or yellow – or anything remotely untealike! Too bad! I am not lifting another paint brush until 2010 at the earliest – this being the point at which we predict that Becca is going to decide that she has outgrown pink!!
Anyway, ‘house’!! We now have carpet down throughout - lovely soft, full carpet - brown - or rather Grenada! We have decorated and curtained our bedroom and study. We have painted and tiled our en-suite. We still have some electrical work to do – but other than that, there is just our wardrobe to paint (I lied about not picking up a paint brush till 2010 – but after the wardrobe!!....) and then Mark gets to play with lots of big power tools and make some fancy shelves and hanging rails and I get to hang up all my new purchases from Gap, M&S, JL and Next?!! Currently the study is being our wardrobe, so there is no major rush and I don’t really mind if I see no progress in the wardrobe till next winter when the rain starts leaking through the laundry roof again! Mark is also in charge of garden renovations, which means I will be chief BBQ queen (a handy skill I learnt post John and Pre Mark!), best tea maker and avid reader of books in my little suntrap!
Anyway, will take some pics and put them on the photo page so you can see my rather swanky new bedroom and the cavernous linen cupboard! http://picasaweb.google.com/LiliinNZ
Cat likes the linen cupboard too. This morning, as I went to put a towel away, I nearly jumped out of my skin as I was suddenly greeted by my mewing friend about 3 inches from my face! She seems to have taken up semi-residence in the cupboard, which is fine – but for the fact that she is still shedding – all over the girls swimming towels! And the pillowcases! Note to self – put the ones that don’t get used at the top!
Weather over here is quite peculiar at the moment. We had a brilliantly sunny day on Saturday, (perfect for drying washing!) rained on Sunday (when we really wanted sun, as we were at a Golden Wedding Anniversary party) and is glorious again today – and this gentle yo-yoing will probably continue until summer proper – when it will rain every day! Actually, probably will be unbroken sunshine from 30 November – and winter will return on 11 January!
Since last blogging, the girls and I have been to see the ballet Cinderella – which was, as usual, a treat. Prefer Tchaikovsky to Prokoviev, but the ballet was beautiful and the girls were absolutely entranced and the music filled the auditorium and my head space – so it was lovely.
Rebecca is now back at netball. Summer netball is known as Twilight over here. Lou is reffing again and was given some very sisterly outraged faces when she blew Becs up twice for being offside! Lou’s actually been given some other regular ‘gigs’ reffing too – she should have quite a few pennies when we get round to the pre-departure piggybank counting! A while back, I decided to try and get the girls to think before spending their money on rubbish, so I told them that I would double whatever was in their piggy bank when we left to go to England! This may have been a bit rash, as I think they both have about $80-100 stashed in there! Becca tried to get a bit clever last week – she spent $20 on some flash felt tips, while Mark and I were in Melbourne (more of that in a sec!) – but wanted to repay Mark’s Mum from money in her bank account not her piggy bank!! Cheeky mare!
Anyway, netball is good. Becca is still enjoying it – I think she still thinks there is a possibility that she could play for the Silver Ferns, but in the meantime, the Chelsea Snowflakes will do fine.
Lou has just started ‘Fabrics’ at school and is already starting to get a bit enthusiastic about a sewing machine! I think I got mine when I was about 13 and paid for half of it by not having pocket money for about 2 years. Mine was about £350 – the one Louisa is talking about is about $3000!! Oh well, guess she’ll never get pocket money again?!!
Oh yes, and Melbourne… it was lovely. Me and Mark went away sans small people for just 2 nights and 2 days. We did a lot of sitting on wide pavements with lunches, read (bad) newspapers and books, snogged an awful lot, wandered around shops and markets and had a very nice stroll around the Botanic Gardens – all very therapeutic! Admittedly tourist strolling in temperatures of 33° (in Spring, for goodness sake!?!) is somewhat draining, but other than that, it was gorgeous. Very European feel to it in that the streets are really wide and there are lots of shady trees – and there are some amazing smells – reminded me of Spain and France.
And I guess I ought to make a comment on the rugby, while I’m thinking about it…. And yes, we watched it – while we were in Melbourne at 5am! - and I was pleasantly surprised that we didn't get completely slaughtered - but was not particularly gobsmacked that we didn't win - although I confess to being quite disappointed. Lou spent half the game texting me – and I realised just how much my daughter is growing up when she sent me one saying ‘Stuff the ref!!’ – I think it was at roughly the same time that Prince William could be seen mouthing less than genteel words of frustration!
I’m not entirely sure who I would have shouted for if England had been playing NZ but I suspect it might have been for the boys in Black – sorry!
And yes, we know the All Blacks are arrogant – but we love them anyway! We are a very small country – with only 4 million people here, and we do get a little bit excited if ANYONE from here does anything nearly as well as the rest of the world – so that The ABs (as they are known) are, by many, revered to near deity status. Predictably, NZ was not happy after being beaten by France but I didn’t see any flags lowered to half mast – and it was only a day or two before e-mail systems were clogged with all the All Black jokes! Although, I have to say, I did feel very sorry for Daniel Carter, who is just a smidgy bit cute and did look just the weenciest bit sad as the final whistle blew!
On the bright side? - The Aussies didn’t get through either – and I have to say, had they been in the final, it would have been really rather embarrassing to be in Melbourne that weekend!
And the English did beat France! Which we loved!! Not quite the Webb Ellis Cup – but almost as good!!
Hmm – onto things that I know more about! Not paint though!
Can’t believe that is almost exactly 6 years ago that we left England. We left on Wednesday 7 November, and arrived at 5.15am on Friday 9 November.
(Mind you, I feel like a Newby! My not quite mother-in-law left Guernsey on 2 November 1957 and arrived here just before Christmas. She met Mark’s Dad on the boat. How romantic is that? And what is it about me and Channel Islanders?!?)
Bearing in mind the fact that I can barely remember what I did last weekend (!) those few weeks before we left are incredibly clear in my memory. I remember having Chinese with the girls from Green Street Green, and leaving my jumper there – although I didn’t realise that until April the following year, when I couldn’t find the damn thing! I remember Jonathan and Louise coming round the week before we went – and I had no voice – so that their last memories of me, at least in person, are of me squeaking and wearing a stripey shirt which had a large hole in the armpit! I assume that everything else had been packed at that stage?! I remember sending John down to Dad’s with Judy and the kids while I finished cleaning the house – only to discover that the Mr Muscle in the oven had hardened to a caked on black poppadom – I know that I accidentally kicked the door step and cut my toe so badly (took the end off it more like!) that I had to stem the blood flow by ramming it, and half a kitchen roll, in my shoe till I had a chance to check out the damage. I remember stopping to say goodbye to Linda leaving her in tears – and then remembering that I hadn’t given her the key and having to go back and do it all again! We finally got back to Dad’s at about 10.30. The girls were in bed and Dad had cooked my last English meal of Sausage Toad and Apple Cake – which we ate at 11pm! And then I remember sitting up until 3am trying to get the packing into some kind of order. I was up the next morning at 5am - and left 6 hours later for my new life in NZ with a bandaged toe that was so big that it was reminiscent of something off Tom and Jerry or Bugs Bunny!
When we left we had 24 bags!! Louisa was only 5 and Becs was just 3. Becca is now 9 - and having spent two thirds of her life here is unashamedly Kiwi. Boo, about half her life, but still she thinks of herself as English. I think she quite likes being English cause it makes her just a little bit different. Me? Lou asked me last week if I was a Kiwi or if I was English – not quite sure I can separate the two – I think I am an English Kiwi.
I suspect my burble may have run it's course for today! I think it extremely unlikely that I will be blogging anytime before Christmas - so please forgive the lack of Christmas Greetings - it is quite possible that I will not send any Christmas cards at all - so again apologies for that.
I feel faintly guilty that I have wished away 2007. Counting down the days is fine except that I love all the days here too and each day nearer coming to England is a day gone here.
2007 will actually go down, for me, as the year that I got my new start. The year that me and my gorgeous girls and my lovely lovely man bought a house and made it ours - from top to bottom. We spent this year making our home and getting used to each others habits and ways. Mark is never going to use Colgate - and I will never eat Watties sauce - but I suspect that he likes the queue for kisses and hugs as he leaves for work in the morning as much as I love that I'm at the front, and the back of the queue!! It has been a good year -despite it being the year that I got divorced and even though there were not quite enough beach walks. Guess it has been a year that I have loved everything that I have here, knowing that at the end of it, I'm going to get just a little bit of all the things and all the people I miss from home.
See you soon - and if not, hope you have a fantastic Christmas - and a wonderful 2008! Next blog date - ???? some time after 11 January 2008!
Have fun! Big snogs!! xxxxxxx
No comments:
Post a Comment