After my first experience of Sat-Nav you’ll understand my trepidation when, shortly before our trip last year, Neil announced that the car we were leasing would have Sat-Nav and we won’t need to buy a map. (Does the man not know me at all?) My relationship with Essie (and for the life of me I […]
Mur de Miro
Despite that it might appear otherwise in these pages, I’m not a fan of exercise. Primarily, I’m lazy, and I often have to fight the impulse to merely sit on the sofa and do nothing all day. The reason I don’t – besides that it would make me a very poor example of a human […]
Covid: The Return (Part 2)
At 10.13pm when both phones in the household go off with a note that neither of us recognises or has chosen, we know it’s not good news. That cold hand, the one that’s been around a lot the last few days, hovers over me, the hooded claw from Scooby Doo. I shiver, despite that I […]
Computer Blues
Some years ago I lost possessions in a house burglary. The thieves stole the usual things – TV, hi-fi – but the item that bothered me the most was my jewellery box. Not that I had anything valuable in there (in an ironic twist, my most valuable pieces of jewellery were two rings that I’d […]
Adventures With A Sat-Nav
A couple of years ago we bought a new car. It came with sat-nav and, despite that looking at the map we have in the car was easier (and quicker) Neil loved putting in his destination and following the voice of the friendly lady on the dashboard rather than the voice of the friendly lady […]
Alarming
The fire alarm in our apartment building went off last night. Neil was asleep; I was just beginning to doze off. Safe to say it scared the living daylights out of me. We both shot up in bed with swear words. I couldn’t find the light switch, despite having turned it off only a few […]
Let It Snow!
Snow, like a lot in nature, can be a blessing and a curse. The curse, this morning in Ohakune, is that all roads out of the town are closed. The main road on one side is blocked by a couple of jack-knifed lorries and has been so since early morning; the other side we don’t […]
Waitonga Falls – Revisited
I miss snow. Growing up in Stocksbridge, Yorkshire, there were few winters we didn’t get a couple of good dumps and snowy streets were a regular sight. It was normal that cars would sit unused for part of the season, a thick layer of white frozen onto them. One year it was over three feet […]
New Zealand’s Mountain Town
Ohakune: with a permanent population of 1100 it would be a village in most parts of the world; in NZ it’s a small town. It’s typical of most in this country, the main street on a state highway and smaller streets of homes running off it. There are a few shops, servicing the homes within […]
Covid: The Return
If that sounds like a sad sequel to a bad B movie be assured that that is what it feels like. After 24 days of no new cases, a week of no active cases and an end to restrictions, we were all silently hoping our covid story was over. The words elimination and eradication were […]
