Excavating and organising paper

At the passing of another tax year I thought I’d get ahead of the game and start to work out my GST return (kiwi equivalent of VAT). It didn’t take me long to realise that my neglect of business practices this year is going to make this a painful process. After several hours of excavating [...]

British Summer Time

The clocks changed in the UK on Saturday night which heralds the start of British Summer. Let’s hope it’s better than the last. For bloggers in the UK you’re now 12 hours behind us in New Zealand so when you see the sun rising think of us looking at the moon. The night sky here [...]

A bit of a refresh

I thought it was time to spruce up the blog and since it’s been raining for most of today, here’s the fruits of my labours. Hope you like it. Still lots of tidying up to be done or I may even do a complete revamp but just like the house and land it’s a long [...]

One of the world’s more picturesque eateries

Lauded by the upmarket food and travel magazines Craggy Range has been our regular Easter treat since arriving in New Zealand. So last week it wasn’t cheese batches for lunch but rather a long leisurely stroll through the Craggy Range menu. Somehow the food tastes better when you have a fantastic view to admire at [...]

Pooches on parole

It’s been a risky strategy but Fortnum and Mason have been allowed to try out Domestic Executive HQ this week. This is all part of their growing independence away from their play pen and crates. Whilst you can’t leave them unsupervised they are getting better as just being around the house. They’ve been really good [...]

Ocean beach – will this soon be a memory?

One thing New Zealand isn’t short of is beautiful places. The natural beauty of the country is really what makes this such a special place – they don’t call it God’s own country for no reason! On Monday we finished our break in Hawkes Bay with a stroll on Ocean Beach, an olympic effort throw [...]

Moonstruck

I’ve jabbered on a bit about the nights drawing in and getting darker. The plus side is that you can see the stars earlier and there is more time to be moonstruck. There have been some awesome sunsets recently and full moons to keep us entertained. Here’s one we captured on camera from our cottage [...]

More luck this time

I don’t want to tempt fate as there is still one more day to run at the test match for England and the Black Caps up in Napier but we did enjoy our trip to the match on Sunday. It was a bit of a worry though as we turned on the radio on Saturday [...]

Basset Blogging: back home with family

Since we didn’t think that Fortnum and Mason would be able to stand a day at the cricket we packed them off to their basset family for the Easter break. They were very excited when they arrived to be back in familiar territory happily climbing into their kennels when we arrived. When we went to [...]

Easter break

Ophs, sorry bloggers, forgot to tell you I was taking a break. You guessed it, to Hawkes Bay. We returned to Cape South where we’ve been going every Easter since we came to NZ to live. Once again it didn’t disappoint. We dined at Craggy Range Winery (reported as one of the world’s best dining [...]