Party On, Wayne

On Thursday we had a surveyor round to value the house. He seemed a little vague about why he was doing it, but pumping him for information revealed that it was a refinance operation, rather than a potential sale which ought to mean that we're OK to stay past the end of March.

Yet another sunny day on Friday, this extended Summer we're having is definitely most agreeable, especially when one considers the UK weather. Ho hum. An early morning phone call from a mightily relieved Wayne, singing all sorts of silly songs as a result of an email notifying permanent residence.

Friday evening V&W cooked us a celebratory dinner and we put away a few(!) beers and generally talked rubbish until an impossibly wee hour of the morning. Party on, Wayne.

Saturday I nursed the prerequisite sore head, although a fairly mild an not debilitating one. That said, I broke the toilet. It was Di's fault. She had bought some of those in-the-cistern toilet fragrance things. The only the snag was that we have a Roca DID Dual Flush Valve which alas defied any obvious means of removal, and my the time I'd figured that out, I'd pulled too hard on the top of the cistern and ripped the valve assembly off its flimsy plastic mountings. Oops. There seems no obvious way to remove the top of the valve from the cistern lid but clearly there must be, since it's obviously not fired in the kiln like the cistern top is. Maybe it was the headache, but I wasn't quite up to figuring out how it all hung together, even with a little Googling. I managed to force it all back together and it seemed to work so I left it at that.

Yesterday I went for a run, but only succeeded in a more severe repeat performance of last week's dodgy leg episode. Trying to run through it was probably not a good move but it's just so damned annoying. I guess I need some new shoes - they feel really flat these days and not at all supportive after 18 months. V&W had rashly agreed to look after the kids while Di and I attended the Tauranga Wine and Food Festival. This was easier to say than get too, because of the Santa Parade taking place in the Mount, which had resulted in some of the roads being closed and hence the buses where not able to get through. Consequently we walked back towards home and picked up the bus an hour later.

Sadly, when we got to the festival, it was rather a waste of time. I'm really glad we did not pay $50 for the tickets, it simply wasn't worth it. After collecting our free wine glasses and bottled water, we noticed that it seemed to be a corporate event, with lots of businesses spoiling their staff, judging by the number of large marquee style tents taking up the centre of the field. There were maybe 30 stalls dotted around the periphery, half a dozen or so of which were wine stalls. Some of these wanted you to pay $2 to just taste their wine! We declined but managed to score a couple of tastes of some of them - they were OK, but nothing special.

Di claimed she was hungry, and so we looked at getting some food from one of the other stalls. She eventually plumped for a venison burger. This is when the realisation that we'd not brought any cash with us - just EFTPOS - big mistake, all the tents weren't taking EFTPOS - quite obvious really. I happened to have a mere $20 to play with which scored he aforementioned veniburger and a couple of Macs lager and limes, which was as claimed, weirdly refreshing although a bit pricey considering the full but small glasses being used. After about 30 minutes, we decided to call it quits and wandered into town to check out what was going on.

Tauranga on a Sunday afternoon is not a lively place. Most shops are shut. We headed down to The Strand, where there are a number of bars and cafes. We stopped in at De Bier Haus, ordered another couple of lager and limes, and a few nibbles. As we had about 30 minutes to kill before the bus departed, we wandered round the shops, such as they were, before finally heading back to the Mount.

Vicky turned up with the kids about half an hour after we got home. They had apparently behaved themselves admirably and not blotted their copybooks, so we may yet be on for a repeat performance.