Update 202

A great deal has happened since my last post, way too much fr me to write down here. Suffice it to say that The Man and I are now happily settled in a small rural town in the Bay of Plenty. Our Geriatric OE was lots of fun and this blog is a great way for us to re-visit out happy times as gypsies.
If you enjoyed reading about our travels then the blog has done its job.

Like the song says 'The Times They are a Changing'

One of our daughters asked me the other day if I was going to continue blogging, and after thinking about it for a while  I decided to give it another go
The time has certainly flown from my last post

There was a reason for stopping the blog...
The Man and I had a cunning plan to arrive home in NZ unannounced and surprise everyone.
And boy did we achieve our goal.
The responses were amazing, from opened mouthed goldfish like silence to screams and tears.
Well worth the secrecy on our part.
So here we are The man and I back on home soil and still wandering about, We bought a caravan back with us from the UK. Well not literally...we had it shipped back.
I'm obviously still in Europe mode because the other day as we were wandering down the main street of Napier I was about to say to The Man, 'Look there's a kiwi flag' then I realised where I was.

Yes, that's him and me enjoying the solitude of our beautiful New Zealand scenery

A walk in the park

Boy do we have one excited granddaughter. 

She’s been on a student exchange in Toulouse for several mots and her time there is coming to an end. OK, she is excited about getting back to NZ to be with her Mum and Dad, big brother and younger sisters. But before she gets on the plane back home she’s making a detour to spend time with us here in London. The man and I will have our first trip on the Eurostar to get to Paris, which is where we are all meeting up. The three of us will do some of the touristy things there for a couple of days before coming back in Eurostar and then…well you’ll have to wait until next week to find out what we will be up to.

Did I tell you that we have bought a new camera, well we have. Person in the store asked SLR? My reply do I need one. Well she said if you’ve never used one and you do buy one you really should take lessons or at least have someone who has one show you how to use it.

Well I replied all I want to be able to do is pint and shoot.

In that case, this is on of the best for the job. It’s got all the bells and whistles, great for close us, does movies too and not only the special deal means that you get an extra battery thrown in for the same price.

So that’s the one we bought.

The Man had tried taking pictures of the moon with our other camera and was disappointed with the result. Not so with the new one, it will take a bit of practice with the settings, but already he is more than happy with the result.

We had a day in yesterday doing the domestic stuff and pottering on the computer not so today. Him and me went for a walk in Crystal palace Park this afternoon, yes it was cold, but it was too nice a day to just sit around the flat not doing much. It was a great day to take pictures too.

Read this in the freebee paper this week.  The headline reads ‘Father of 22 is spared jail to care for youngest child’ Well that’s not as nice as you might think. This chappie is described as ‘A drug dealing father of 22 children to 11 different women –He’s a 58 year old who has not worked for 10 years because of a bad back. He said ‘I just love kids’

The article goes on to quote him as claiming that he has ‘never had to chase after women…I’m easy going…they’re always chasing after me… I don’t know what it is about me but I’m never short of offers…It’s just my luck that every time I have a one night stand the girl ends up getting pregnant’  

That’s’ almost as stupid as the next snippet from the same paper.

 A girl returned from nursery with a self-appraisal form to fill in…despite being 11 months old. Her father filled it in on her behalf noting that her interests were ‘gripping dogs hair’ and exploring parents noses with fingers’

Out and about and a memory...

The Man has bought himself a new toy…

No not of the bedroom variety…It’s a metal detector. 

Well he’s been looking for  something apart from me to occupy his time when we do finally get back to new Zealand. So to that end he’s been reading and talking to people about these gadgets before finally making a decision about which one would best do the things he wants. All he needs now is a few fine days to get out in out communal back yard to practice. 

What better thing to do on a very chilly Friday evening than to wander around the London  Ice Sculpting festival. It was a shame that the breezy evening followed a relatively mild day which had the ice melting way too fast and rounding the sharp contours of the creations.

It was a beautiful blue sky day when we, or should I say I got up leaving the Man to snooze a bit longer. So while he snoozed I hit the computer and got on with writing about my grandfather’s war. I don’t have his personal diary, that would be too much to ask for. What I do have is a copy of  the diary of his regiment, and from that I am building a picture of what his time on the western Front might have been like. But you’ll have to wait a bit longer to read about that 

Later we went to Bromley to do a bit of shopping . The bus went past a  pub called The Pawleyne Arms…really it is spelled like that. Doesn’t it look odd.  We also went past a little Chinese takeaway called Auntie Mays…Goodness that brought back a memory. No not the takeaway, the name.

Back in the dark ages when TV was in black and white there was  TV commercial for a brand of cakemixer called a Kenwood. It had a couple of kids in it who were looking over a table full of goodies created using the mixer and the catch phrase was ‘I like going to Auntie Mays.’ Well when my father’s run brought him past our house, he was a driver at that time he would drop in for morning or afternoon tea. If I’d been baking, and I often did back then, that’s what he’d say that to me.

First of my weekly posts

 And a happy new year to you.

I have to admit that it has been a bit of a relief not to have the compulsion to write a post for the blog every single day.

It was a bit odd just going back to work for Tuesday, having Wednesday off and then going back in for two days. Had me thinking Thursday was  Monday.

So what have we been doing this week?

Well work obviously, and despite the fact that is has been a bit chilly there is still no sign of any snow here at Crystal Palace.

Yesterday, Saturday we donned our wet weather gear, hopped on a bus and went to help a friend load up their van because they are moving house. Seeing The Man stowing things in the van took me right back to when him and me were market traders back home in New Zealand. We had a high top Nissan Safari and it would be crammed to the roof with our wares,  sales tables and couple of gazebos. The Man would load up the truck on a Friday night in anticipation of an early start to drive from Fielding where we were living at the time to Wanganui.

 http://therivertraders.co.nz/

We had lots of fun and made a little ready cash into the bargain. One we were set up I’d leave The Man in charge and go have e a bit of a wander around the other stalls, sometimes even buying things to resell. We stocked all sorts of ‘junk’ and shells, hundred and hundreds of shells. It was good time and we often muse about doing it again when we get back home.

This morning I got up just in time to see a beautiful sunrise, a good opportunity to try out the new camera.

Here comes the sun

What do you think of the pic

I’ve spent the afternoon working on the family story concentrating on my paternal grandparents. Trouble is it is so easy for me to get side tracked by an interesting snippet or fact and then go off on a tangent researching and spending even more time on obscure and not directly related facts.

Greetings and felicitations....

Penultimate

The Man and I arrived back in our little flat in Crystal Palace after a lovely week away.
It didn't take long to get thing stowed away.
Come wednesdy I've blogged every day for two years.
I wont say that it hasn't been a huge commitment because it has.
Tomorrow will be my last post of the year and the last of my daily musings.
I will continue to blog, but once a week rather than once a day.