Boxes

The boxes have now been picked up by Pack and Send, Bristol (who were excellent and very friendly!) and will depart for NZ on 5 August... As we can see the port from our house we may even see the ship arrive on 5 September!

More snow pictures...

Here are a few more snowy pictures from Lyttelton, Cristchurch!

SNOW!

Yesterday was Monday but SNOW means an unexpected day off!  Yes, It is July and it is snowing hard... After seeing the snow I was wanting a Christmas present but sadly that isn't a July event and i still have to wait for December ....  It was the second coldest day in ChCh ever with about 4 inches of snow...Nathan was going to try and take Alberta (the car that is) to work rather than the van but we quickly realised Alberta was not designed for snow ploughing down our very steep drive (at least if Alberta and Nathan both wanted to live).... A day off then.  Nathan was obviously disappointed about missing work but managed to console himself by snowboarding down our road...I went to town (literally) with my camera.  It hasn't snowed like this for over 15 years so it was quite an event!  

Snow on the port side

The "dairy" (we would call it corner shop/newsagents in English) - closed due to quake but adverts looked good in the snow

Port authority building - prob will be demolished but nice shapes

 Dawn view from our living room

 Ahh cold beauty

 That's me bottom of the circle mirror

Groovy buildings in the snow - Red Stickered (meaning unfit after earthquakes)

 Port building and more snow on the hills

 Industrial reflection

 Snow on the port side

 More boarded up buildings in the snow

 Liking the contrast of the crane on the snow filled sky

View from home after more snow

Tomato

Ahh the common tomato... in Asda you are £1 for 6.  I would throw you away sometimes.  I treat you as a disposable unimportant item.  Well no more!!!

This is NZ home of the expensive tomato.... Tomatoes are now $16.99 a Kg here (about £9).  4 tomatoes cost about £4  WHaaaaaat!!!  Every time I have got our fair red fruit from the Funky Pumpkin (after checking the price in 3 different places!) I have had a chat with some one about the price of these golden veggies... Last time the man on the checkout had such  a long conversation with me he ended the discussion with "so where are you from then...Bristol?" - I almost fell from my trolley (aka "trundler" in Kiwi speak)... Seriously?!  I have to do something about my accent if I am being identified as a Bristolian from the other side of the world!!

The second conversation was with a delightful old lady who told me about where she had found cheap tomatoes at great length only to not remember where the place was I should be going to.... oh well.  We had tomatoes this weekend as it was Nathan's birthday(!).  Apparently, it is due to Australia not having any due to their recent floods and so they are buying the Kiwi ones.... ahh like edible gold.

Nathan's birthday tomatoes

Quake

I am embracing the local obsession in mapping earthquake tremors which is available online - At 5.30am this morning we had quite a long big one (5.1).  Imagine someone jumping on your bed for 20 seconds - that is what this one was like!  Circled in red is where we live and where the centre of the quake was....

This weekend

This weekend we did a bit of a road trip... best illustrated by a map and pictures (to make you sick of “winter” here in NZ...)

1. Lyttelton – Where we live....
2. Birdlings Flat.... massive span of pebbles and roaring ocean in eerie setting – cold and open
3. Magnet bay – beautiful views on the way down to the beach for lunch – surf spot, turquoise waters, blue sky, green green grass
4. Akaroa – “French” colonial village – arty and in a beautiful harbour

  

Birdlings flat.... 

View on the way to Magnet Bay (turn your head sideways...I can't cope with the technology today!)

Nathan goes downhill mountain biking and I drive down!

The beach

Turn your head again!

Rolling hills.. at Magnet Bay...

Me !

 Akaroa harbour - with evening light

Spring lamb!

Setting sun

New home!

So an update on news since my last post....  We left our temporary place at No 57 just over a week ago - No 57 was a beautiful wooden house in Lyttelton - very stylish with lots of quirks, like a banister made out of a shaped old railway track and a wall full of little black and white pictures.  Fantastic views and arty but all that said it was pretty cold....all the time despite having the fire and heat pump on.... 

I am starting to learn the benefits of something "they" call a "heat pump".  I had heard of this thing before my arrival (Nathan was insisting the house wechose had one) but alas I had visions of some sort of Victorian pump for water with heat (?!) - Of course, a heat pump is not quite so old fashioned and in fact, so I have discovered, it is simply an air conditioning unit attached to the wall that also blows out heat.  Its not that bad - shame they haven't really discovered the joy of gas central heating in NZ.  For some reason the country's founding fathers appear to have forgotten that it gets cold for several months of the year.

Anyway, enough about heating(!) -  Our new place is still in Lyttelton.  Lyttelton is accessed from Christchurch via a long tunnel - as such people from the other side (the city side) find Lyttelton a long way out of town (errr its about 10 minutes) and a rather "curious" or "different" place to live.   The community seems pretty nice though and its quite an arty place too.   Lyttelton has also been the centre of a number of earthquakes but we will quickly gloss over that....The new house has fantastic views over Lyttelton harbour.  From the dining room and living room we have amazing views across the bay and of a small island which is a nature reserve as well as Banks Peninsula. (In case you were wondering it also has a heat pump and .... dahhh dah a gas fire!!)

So with a completely unfurnished flat in place we started unloading Nathan's truck which had arrived from the North Island full of his stuff.  We had a great start with all of that but needed some big ticket items like beds, sofa, dining table.... so off we went via the Internet to Trade Me - which is NZ's version of ebay.    It seems to be a bit of an obsession in Christchurch, probably because the shops no longer exist (almost)  and because things are pretty expensive on the whole here. 

Fair to say that I am embracing this cultural obsession as I have a love of shabby old items blended with new and arty crafty stuff.... The first item to be found was a bed which we managed pretty well and got a good deal on.  A great thing  about earthquakes is that loads of people have had enough so are moving to Australia! This equals bargains and plenty of items for sale....the bed woman was off to Brisbane. Bon Voyage lady we will take your expensive bed for a rock bottom price! 

We also managed to find an unusual sofa and also the best bargain of the century a old style lazy boy chair - Nathan was not impressed with the shabby looking thing when he saw it on line but I could see style and grace in its shape and was thinking PROJECT!   With it advertised at only $10 (£5) how could it be wrong?!  Anyway the chair came from the posh side of town and immediately when we saw it it was identified as a thing of retro beauty.  Nathan has now adopted it as the "Man Chair".,...

A rare moment to share the Man Chair

The man chair in full glory....

Our other Trade Me purchases have included 4 bright orange 1960s vinyl chairs and a 1960s dining table which are looking rather funky in our kitchen/dining area which may get a rather bright retro theme....

Like something out of Good House Keeping...(!)

Our amazingly beautiful picnic set 

Of course, Trade Me does have its down side - As well as triumphing over the Man Chair I accidentally purchased a bright orange piece of sh*t.... by sh*t I actually mean chair and "ottoman".  The plan was to chuck the chair and recover what was advertised as an ottoman and make it into a beautiful piece of furniture. No such luck, the chair was a smelly dog disaster and the ottoman was not an ottoman at all but a ripped up old manky footstool.  Unimpressed.  It now lives in the garage where it will probably stay forever (or until I find where the dump is). 

Other random purchases include about a tonne (or more like about 40kg) of mount board (you know the stuff photos and pictures are framed inside before going into the wood and glass frame) from a garage sale.  A picture framer had sold his business and was selling his huge off cuts - what a bargain it was... we got 2 bags and then went back for 2 bags more.  May mount up and see if I can sell some photos at some point (project!).    Garage sales are like the UK version of the car boot sale with the keen people getting the paper with the classified listings as early as they can on a Saturday and then heading off to houses with garage sales at 7am or earlier(!).  Our garage sale shop was fun.  We got to drive around the city seeing different areas and got to spend money on things we didn't really  need (new hairdryer £2.50, cuddly toy £1.50 and free(!), dishes 50p for a box full...).  The most amazing purchase was the deluxe "bet you wish you had something as vintage" picnic basket.  Basically a 1970s (?) basket with plate, teacups and saucers and bowls for 6 place settings - all in bright vibrant colours.  A delight was also the fact that it came with a massive box of forks, knives and spoons all collected from different airlines back in the day when you still had "silver" service.  Cathay Pacific, Air NZ, Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa, Swiss Air - Very amusing.



Last week Nathan' Mum came to stay which was nice - We raided the shops and now we pretty much have most smaller things we need as well as the big stuff (essentials like wine glasses!).  We also have a more than well stocked pantry with more Tupperware than I thought humanly possible to need but now I have seen the merits of it I have been sorting my dried stuff into plastic containers quite happily!  It was also great to have some company in the new house while Nathan was working away at his new job.   Not only did she help with getting the big orange piece of sh*t (see above) into my tiny car (now named Alberta) she also was a trooper at helping Nathan carry furniture, helping me carry shopping, navigating about town and generally helping me understand the NZ rules of the road!

Me and Nathan's mum

The largest Pav in the whole of NZ - Holy Smoke, Woolston - Cafe/Resturant - wow it is GOOD!

Other activities have included pregnancy yoga.... Lyttelton may be the other side of the tunnel but it does have a sports hall that is still standing and not a heap of rubble - and because of that a few groups have moved here - best of all pregnancy yoga.  The class is run by a yoga teacher who is also a midwife and she is definitely very flexible (!) and from what I understand (having done a whole hour of yoga in my life) knows what she is doing.  I will be going back after the break which is happening at the moment.