Things are looking up in Paradise . . .

. . . we've decided to give them another chance. It wasn't really our choice though, as they came as part of a package with the cable TV and phone that we've had installed in our house. So, vidagraham@paradise.net.nz is now our permanent email address, so please update your contacts list and send your emails to that address in future (not the UK Freeserve one nor the NZ Xtra one).

Sorry, we've not sent anything for some time, but we've been having far too much fun in our new house! Vida made her deadline of opening all our boxes by the end of Easter Monday (our time, not yours!) We've still got to sort out a few things that we don't need that much, putting them in the garage etc but the house is really taking shape. It's great to have all our stuff again (especially the CDs and Hi-fi). I've become an expert plug changer - it's amazing when you tot up how many plugs one household can have! With all my computer/electronic gadgets and all Vida's kitchen gadgets it's been a bit of a nightmare when you want to use anything.

Veed has just finished updating the website so that you can see how our stuff was manhandled into the house (and removing the endless pictures of our new car - which incidentally some nasty person did a "hit-and-run" on the other day!). There are also some other photos re: leaving the UK and our journey to NZ. There were many more photos that Veed put on there (she got a bit carried away!) but she ended up having to remove them because we only had 10MB of webspace available! We hope you enjoy having a look; http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/vidagrah.

As I said, we've spent most of our time sorting the house out but we have been out a few times. As we are so close to the water we've been wondering about learning to sail or windsurf or something. So, Vida found out about a company that does an introduction to sailing around the harbour. We booked a late afternoon session so that we could see the sunset over Wellington as we sailed back.

Don't believe anyone that tells you Wellington is windy, there was hardly a breath of wind as we motored out of the mooring! Once into the bay though, there was enough for us to put the sail up and turn off the motor. (I say "us", what I really mean is Terry, the skipper with 30 years experience, and his wife, Linda, who were doing all the work!) We headed for Somes Island, where we planned to moor for a bit and take in the views over Wellington. That was where things started to go wrong :-) Unfortunately, the fridge that Terry had put on to keep the milk cold for his cup of tea had drained the battery so we couldn't start the motor, necessary to guide us into the island. No major problem, though, we just sailed around the island instead (skilfully navigated by me at the helm!) Meanwhile, Terry was still trying to make his cup of tea, only to find out that he had run out of gas and there was a problem with the valve so he couldn't attach a new tank :-) By this time we had been on the water for nearly two hours so we started to head back to the marina. However, it was at this point that the wind completely died and we were just drifting along going nowhere, not particularly quickly! Being the macho sea dog that he is, Terry was convinced that despite the flat calm we were actually making progress towards the harbour. After about half an hour of gently rocking to and fro he finally admitted defeat (after a bit of nagging from his wife) and called up the coastguard. He sheepishly explained that we were in the middle of the harbour, becalmed and with a flat battery so we couldn't make it home. We couldn't even put on our navigation lights so he had to flash a torch on the sails to warn other vessels. Oh, I forgot to mention that it had turned dark by now (nice sunset over Wellington) and that we were sharing the harbour with huge container ships!! From Terry's demeanour we gathered that his pride was being greatly dented by this whole experience, so we just kept up the cheery "isn't the sunset beautiful" comments.

Eventually, the coastguard came out to meet us and towed us back to the marina (most exciting part of the trip Veed thought!) Certainly an experience, although a bit disconcerting when the coastguard kept shouting nautical terms at us that neither Vida or I understood (probably calling us bloody idiots for getting stuck in the first place!). All in all it was a fun evening, although not quite what we had expected. We're still toying with the idea of learning to sail, although not with Terry :-)

In case you haven't realised yet it is Graham writing this month's instalment, just to prove that I am still here and not working all the time.

Hope all is well with you,

Love Vida & Graham

It has been a moving experience......

Easter greetings to one and all :o)

Sorry to do this, but address books for us need to be updated yet again to;



That should be our last address change now for quite some time (a good few years anyway we hope!)

The house is fab - Gra and I just can't quite believe that, after all our umming, arhhing and frantic moments, it is actually ours and that we've got a proper base in NZ now. Obviously at the minute it is strewn with boxes, which is why this email won't be my usual epic as I must crack on - I'm determined that there will be no unopened boxes by the end of Easter Monday!! As soon as we are a bit more settled, we will update the website and send more detailed news. We've got some great photos of the ingenious methods that the removal men used to get our stuff up and into the house and also - Mmmmm something to look forward to ->>> a couple of the weird, widespread and wonderful creatures that grew inside our poor old fridge/freezer for 2 months (the teabags didn't work Mum - we should never have trusted that removal man's advice in the UK!)

Anyway - must get on with wiffy things.....

Love Vida and Graham

Paradise is not all it's cracked up to be.......

........meaning of course our internet service provider, not New Zealand!! Looks like we are gonna be changing from this email address in the near future because Paradise keeps kicking us off!!.......

Well it is a while since I wrote a note to everybody so I thought that I would tell you how our first couple of weeks in our rental flat have gone. Our weekend is over, it is now Monday morning and G is back at work. It was the first weekend in Autumn here and it was actually very sunny. On Saturday afternoon we wandered down to the harbour to watch the inter-school dragon boat racing which was great fun.

Things are pretty good - we are enjoying ourselves and we have settled into "no.5-21a" well. Talavera Terrace is one of the stops on the cable car which goes up through Wellington's Botanical Gardens so we are in a very good position for Graham's work and for town. This means that we have been able to wander into the city on a couple of nights to go out for a meal or go to the cinema. The Gardens are beautiful and we have the constant sound of cicadas day and night, which makes you feel like you are living somewhere really tropical.

We have still not really made any friends here yet. From what G has said, his work colleagues are friendly enough, but they don't seem to do much socially. In some ways though we don't mind because it makes things less complicated for us. We are happy in each other's company and feel that once we have our own place and we are established in the area, making friends will happen more naturally.

It was quite embarrassing the other day - we had just bought ourselves a cheap NZ video recorder so that when our UK TV arrives we will be able to watch it properly (don't ask me - something to do with the UK using PAL I and NZ using PAL B or something!) and so we decided to join up with "Ezyvideo", our local video store. We filled out the membership form and produced our ID etc... but there was one section that said that we must provide contact details of a friend or relative in New Zealand who could be contacted if we defaulted on our membership agreement with the store. We explained that we did not have any relatives in New Zealand and that we did not know anyone that we could put down. For some reason the guy behind the counter thought this was absolutely incredible. He said "well it can be anyone you know in NZ - just one of your friends", we replied that we didn't have any friends here and he then shouted out in the store "WHAT YOU DON'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS?????!!!!!" Graham and I at this point were laughing but trying desperately to remember a name and address that we could write down - Tim the friendly estate agent? Libby our landlady? ...... oh where are Susy and James Lai when you need them (just for those of you who don't know them - they are friends of ours that lived in Auckland, NZ for the last few years and when they found out that we were emigrating to NZ, James promptly found a job in Sydney and they moved out there the same week that we left the UK!! Mmmmm - we got the message alright :o) We eventually put down Graham's boss at the Met Service - so we'd better make sure we take those videos back on time eh?!

We bought a car too this weekend after much umming and arrhing! A couple of weeks ago we had got our eyes on a brand new freelander because it was a really good deal and much much cheaper than we could have ever bought it in the UK (for a change coz Landrovers are expensive in NZ). We test drove it and it was great all except for the fact that Graham has got such a big head that it touched the roof???? .... well as he's actually not that tall we asked whether other people had complained of lack of head room and apparently Landrover know that there is a problem for some people in freelanders and have still not corrected it! Landrover are obviously going downhill these days since their take over (mentioning no names!) So we couldn't buy it - I was really sad. We have ended up getting a 2nd hand Honda Civic (dark green) which we will be picking up this Thursday. Which is fine and we are pleased that we have finally sorted something out (and that we don't have to drive the Toyota anymore - sorry any Corolla fans out there!), but it will be weird for us as we have been so used to driving landys. Landrovers have their own character in a way whereas we will now be just driving a car that gets you from A to B if you get what I mean. It sounds very pathetic doesn't it?!! ("Yes it does Vida!") Also it seems a tad ironic that we are now in a country where the hills and valleys are crying out to be off-roaded on and we now won't have a vehicle capable of doing it, whereas in London we didn't really get the opportunity to off road apart from a couple of weekends away in the countryside and we had our good old Defender then.

The house hunt continues ..... we don't think we have seen "the one" yet ..... although, saying that, we are now going back to consider a house that we saw very early on (I think I mentioned it in one of my previous emails) - the house with the cable car to take you up to your front door! Actually I have got another viewing now so I'd better get going. A few of you have asked what the houses are like that we have been viewing, if anyone is interested in seeing them, email me and I can send you the weblinks. Our flat sale in London has finally exchanged last week (no thanks to our solicitor who sent the paperwork to our Crouch End address!!) we are now just waiting for completion so that we can get our dosh - then we are in a position to buy here - yeah!

Lots of love to all.....

Vida and Graham

Thunderbirds ARE GO!!

Hi everyone

Well the last 2 weeks have been pretty busy for us. Things have been shifting finally on the home moving front;

(1) Our flat in London eventually completed (after lots of early morning phone calls!)
(2) We put an offer in on the cable car house (up against 2 other offers) last Monday (11th March) - it was accepted
(3) For the last week we have been working through the "conditions" of sale with our solicitor and it went "unconditional" at 5pm yesterday and I've just got back from paying the deposit to the estate agents
(4) The settlement date is the 28th March (day before Good Friday).
(5) Our shipped over stuff has arrived and has got customs clearance although there will still be a MAF (Ministry of Agriculture & Fisheries) inspection
(6) Our removal company confirmed today that they can deliver our container to the new house on the 28th!

..... up to now things are tying in pretty well so here's hoping it continues that way. Gra's working over the Easter Weekend but he's off on the Thursday and Friday so we should be able to get fairly sorted.

Graham started this week on the proper forecasting roster at the MetService. Shifts are quite different to the Met Office in London when he always did 12 hours either a Day 8am - 8pm or a Night 8pm - 8am. His shifts at the moment are 4 on followed by 2 days off and they are only about 8 hours long but get this - they can start at 05:20 in the morning ! Tee Hee! Although I don't know why I'm laughing coz I always wake up too so that we can say goodbye to each other. So for the first time in our lives, the other night, we both went to sleep at 9:30pm! He said that it was rather strange on his first proper shift. For the last 6 weeks he had been practising drawing his isobar graphs etc... these were analysed on a 21 inch monitor and he had several attempts to get it right. Within the first hour on his first ever shift he had to do one - it was typically much harder than all the ones he had done in practice (because there were so many isobars on this particular day) and when he had finished he had to print it on A0 (A zero paper - which is mega huge) and it was then handed round to all his fellow forecasting colleagues - aarrgh! Scary or what?! Still Gra is enjoying the new challenge and is pleased to now be working in the forecast office. As he gets to know his colleagues, we're hoping that our social life may pick up!

Now that we don't have to devote our spare time to looking for houses (and cars) we have been doing a bit of gadding about sightseeing etc.... It is pretty cheap to do this as it only costs us about $30NZD to fill our petrol tank up (that's about GBP10 equivalent!) A couple of weekends ago we drove up Route 1 (there are only 2 main motorways in New Zealand :o) and visited places like Porirua (good for shopping as far as we could make out) Paraparaumu (very pretty, by the sea, reminded us a bit of Eastbourne though as there were lots of Saga type holiday makers - sorry Nan!) and on the drive we found a shop that we will definitely be visiting again - "The Chilli Patch" - this was our idea of heaven - you could pick your own chillis at only $5.95NZD (works out just under GBP2 per kilo - wow!) and you could buy pretty much every variety going or you could buy huge chilli plants - this is what we plan to do very soon.

I'm now concentrating more than ever on my infant massage stuff. I am doing my training with IAIM - International Association of Infant Massage. I have arranged to meet with the Head of the New Zealand Chapter (aka branch - Graham says that "Chapter" sounds like we're part of the Hells' Angels!) this weekend in Paremata. This lady lives in Auckland but is down (not far from Wellington) doing a training course so I am going to meet up with her for a chat so that hopefully I can gain a few more contacts in and around Wellington. I also contacted the local womens' prison near Wellington (Tawa) to ask if I could offer my services voluntarily (as I did with Holloway prison in London), so I am hoping that something will come of that too.

So things are gradually starting to pick up and that means that my "lady of leisure" time is nearly over! Oh dear! Still I will be busy for a while getting our house sorted and then I'll be finishing off my IAIM papers so I've perhaps got a month or so's grace!

You know how much I like to create silly websites, well Graham and I collaborated at the weekend and came up with this one if you fancy a peek - http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/vidagrah/ - it is very sad we know but we thought it would give you a good idea of where we have been and are!

I think we mentioned previously that we would possibly be changing ISPs (Internet Service Providers). So far we have tried Paradise and Xtra and we are not that happy with either of them. For this reason the website probably won't be around that long. Also it is best for people to only send us emails to our usual freeserve address (vandg@rye5.freeserve.co.uk) as we will continue to pick those emails up whatever service provider we use to do it.

Will write again when we have any more news.

Love

Vida and Graham

PS. Just for your info, we are now 12 hours ahead not 13 as the clocks went 1 hour back at the weekend. Once the clocks go forward in the UK though (Easter weekend?) we will then be only 11 hours ahead.

New Kiwi address........

Dear all

Just a quickie to let you know our new address for the next few months;



Moved in yesterday (Friday 15th) whilst G was at work (which was fun - not!!) Then realised that I had a flat tyre on our wonderful rental car so did the really girly thing and phoned Gra at work and asked him to come and help me sort it out!

It will take a while to get used to the new place. Very different from the hotel/apartment that we were in. Good to know too that utility companies are as unhelpful as ever the world over! (I've probably just offended someone else now generalising about another industry!) Spent most of yesterday afternoon hanging on a telephone (which is so antiquated that it will only pulse dial) trying to get our electricity, gas etc... connected (properly!) You can imagine how effective it was when all the companies have touch-tone options when you ring them up!

Friends of Helen and Phil (Graham's sis and other arf) are out here at the moment and we are going to meet up with them for a drink tonight so that should be fun.

We have just managed to have 2 fairly successful webcam sessions; one with Vida's sisters, bruv-in-law and nephews and one with Vida's Aunty Lorna and Uncle Terry. We are now off on a shopping expedition and here is roughly what's on our list;

Milk
Bread
Toilet rolls
Fresh coffee (we don't want Gra getting withdrawal symptoms)
Claratin max (my hayfever has really kicked off!)
Tissues (for aforementioned hayfever!)
Car
House
Printer

Mmmmm not your everyday type of shopping trip as you can imagine!

Will write again soon when we are more sorted.

Lots of love

Vida and Graham

NZ News......

Hello to everyone

Well would you believe it, I am sitting here looking out of the apartment window and it is teeming it down with rain!!! We have been assured by several Kiwis that this is extremely unusual weather for their Summer. It has been like this probably 70% of the time we have been here! I just can't believe that, of all the hot and sunny countries that Graham could've picked to get a job in, he's chosen one where the weather appears to be WORSE than the UK!! So if you were at all envious of us being out here in beautiful countryside bathed in glorious sun and heat, there is no need to be after all.....(although the countryside still is amazing!!)

Firstly, a big THANK YOU for all the emails that we have been receiving. You don't know how good it is to get messages! Especially for me (Vida) - it is my lifeline out to the world at the moment because it seems that my face-to-face contact with others currently consists of estate agents, plus I get some telephone contact with personnel at banks and utility companies - Mmmmmmm.

We knew (and had been forewarned) that Wellington was all hills, but you can not imagine what it is like until you get here. The backs of my calves are soon going to be disproportionate to the rest of me (and that is saying something!) I counted the steps in our route down to town the other day and there were 210 - so you can imagine what fun that is on the walk back up!

We are really enjoying ourselves looking at the houses. Our estate agent contact, Tim (the one who originates from Chelmsford!), has been a very useful person to know. Estate agents here are NOTHING like the ones you get in the UK (I'm desperately trying to think now who may get this email that is an estate agent or is related to someone who is before I generalise big time and offend them - can't think, so here I go....) They seem very genuine (or it's a good act), not slimey/sleazy at all and they really seem to put the work in. Tim drove us around for about 2 hours on Saturday afternoon (his supposed day off) and took us to see about 6 houses. He's also popped over to see us quite a few times and kept in contact by phone. Given that there are several estate agents that we are in contact with, the likelihood of us finding the house that we want via him, is quite small, but he has been brilliant. We suppose that he is working on the basis that we will recommend him to other people and that's how they build their businesses up.

The Open Homes that I mentioned in an earlier email have also proved very effective in us trying to get a feel for what's available on the market. They are held every Sunday, so I think I said that we whizzed round 12 on our first weekend and then yesterday we saw another 8 and checked out a couple more areas to live. Some of the harbour views you can get from the houses are fantastic, but wherever you go there is usually something pleasant that you overlook. We have seen quite a few houses that we both like and, a couple that we could see ourselves living in, but we don't want to rush into anything. We obviously also have to wait for our flat sale to go through in London. Things move so quickly here in NZ re: house selling. It is similar to the Scottish system in that as soon as you have signed to agree to buy and the seller signs to agree the sale, that's it - it is a legally binding contract.

One house that we liked had this cable-car-type-thing to take you up to your front door. This is supposedly quite common in Wellington, although it is the first one we have seen. You can imagine what a fun job some of the removal companies based in Wellington have.

I had greatly enjoyed the house auction that I went to last Thursday. A house that I had really liked (but that needed quite a bit of work) was first up and it was one of those itchy times when I did have to make sure my hands were securely planted in my lap so that I didn't give any misleading signals to the auctioneer! Especially as at one point it nearly went for a bargain price. It finally managed to make it up to its reserve price, but we had been advised beforehand that they thought that it may fetch about 20-30,000 NZD over the reserve.

Graham has now been in his job a week today. He is finding it a bit of a challenge he says. At the moment he is going in from 8:30am - 5pmish. Much of his time is taken up with getting used to the differences, quite a bit of background reading and learning place names and NZ geography. On Friday he was doing free-hand curve drawing (isobars and fronts) under time-test conditions, which is something Gra has not had to do for many years so I think that he found that interesting.

Because we have got to vacate this hotel/apartment on Friday, I have had to find us a rental place for a while. Our shipped-over stuff doesn't arrive until mid March, and as we are unsure at what point we will buy we were hoping to get a place with a standard 21 days notice. Unfortunately all the good flats had longer periods of tenancy and as we wanted a furnished place (so that we don't have to go and buy duplicates of stuff we have coming over) it has been a little difficult. However, just before the weekend, I found a place which is a bit more expensive than we had hoped for, but that is very well equipped, closish to town and, even better, right near to where Graham works (although the walk to work is up an extremely steep hill - ha ha!) We have had to take on a 3 month tenancy (until 16th May), so it means that we will definitely have to pay for our stuff to be held in storage for a couple of months which is a shame but then again we don't know what will happen re: buying a place so it is all a bit of a gamble anyway.

I can't really see me getting involved in doula work until we are settled in our bought home, so until then I am going to concentrate on the house buying and finishing off my dissertation-type theory exam for my IAIM qualification (International Association of Infant Massage). I had planned to complete that before I left the UK (by the end of December) but I think that I had been a little unrealistic as to how much time would be spent preparing for the move and seeing family and friends before we left for NZ. I now have until the end of March to submit it and as some of the material that I need is in the shipped over stuff, that will not be an easy deadline.

Well I will finish there for the timebeing. Please do let me know if I have put you on our regular NZ News mailing list and you would prefer not to be...... :-) Perhaps I should do one of those unsubscribe message thingys!!

Will write again soon.

Lots of love

Vida and Graham

Our Kiwi contact details for the next 2 weeks

...... well we've landed in NZ at last!

We've had a really lovely 2 weeks holiday in Singapore and then Australia and, as usually happens, we can't believe that the time flew by so quickly.

Yesterday was very weird. We arrived at the apartments and everything felt a bit odd. However, within about 2 hours, we had been busy bees - we'd unpacked, put some washing on and then changed the lounge around to suit us better (typical Hargreaves trait that one!) and have set up a little office area with our laptop and the phone. We then went to reward ourselves with a cold beer that the MetService kindly provided for us (!!) and unfortunately the fridge and freezer had decided to defrost themselves. So we were then sitting here with warmish beers, me looking up rental car companies in the yellow pages, and Gra flicking through the cable channels!!

Last night we went into town, found an internet cafe and managed to find a really good local internet service provider - called "Paradise" - rather appropriate we thought! We contacted them and within just 12 hours we are now able to log on to the internet and send/receive emails (and use our webcam!!) from our apartment. However, for the timebeing we are still just going to log on and retrieve our rye5.freeserve emails though, because we don't know whether we will be changing provider once we move to more permanent accommodation.

Today we picked up a car from a Scouser who owns his own rental car company in Wellington - he came to NZ 30 years ago for a holiday and stayed. We then cruised the streets in our fabulous brown-interiored toyota corrolla (bit of a change from the landy) looking for areas that we thought we may want to live in! We have also just been visited by a local estate agent who we had contact with whilst we were still in London, and it turns out that he is originally from Chelmsford!! He came to NZ in 1987 to stay for a 3 month visit and has been here ever since! He is also a real ale fan and commiserated with us that they don't do bitter in NZ, but said that our palates would soon change (oh dear!) He has left us loads of bumpf about property available which we are about to trawl through.

Will write again soon.

Lots of love

Vida & Graham