Going, Going, Gone

Sunday morning was rather nerve racking as we were waiting for the Auction to come around. The house was open for final viewings from 1PM and the auction itself took place at 2PM. We arrived at 1 and found no one except the agents there. As the auction time approached, more and more people started to show up until there were about 20 or so. The agent suggested that we start the bidding at a highish but still less than we'd offered figure. He suggested this might put off the other people. It turned out that we were the only ones actually bidding and that the other people were the friends and neighbours. The auctioneer put in another bid raising the bid to our original offer of $400k. Apparently he is allowed to do this if the figure is below the reserve price. At this point we offered a little more but wouldn't go any further. A period of horse trading then took place with the auctioneer scurrying between parties claiming an astronomical amount of daylight between our offer and the reserve. Eventually we agreed on a figure, but with a revised possession date of 3rd May. This was somewhat odd since we'd been under the impression that a quick sale was required and the original date was 23rd April. After all this mucking about, there was a final appeal for bids and then the hammer came down. It was ours.

At this point we were required to sign the contract for sale, which is unconditional. The final price was still $30k under the "capital value" assigned by the council. By contrast some later research before the auction found two other properties in the same street which were on offer for $60k more than this value, so we think we've got a bargain. Following this we met the vendor, who really didn't look at all well. She seemed keen to pass on some of her furniture, which alas was not quite the sort of thing we'd want so we politely declined. We headed home via New World to pick up a bottle of plonk which we wasted no time on opening and toasting our success.

Monday was rather busy. The first port of call was an insurance broker. As the house is now ours even though we don't have possession until 3rd May, of it falls down it's our problem. Thus we needed to insure it post haste. We had been recommended by a friend to use a local broker. I wandered in as it was just round the corner. The first odd question they asked was the total floor space. I had no idea. I went home and measured the floor plan and came up with a plausible figure of 156 square metres. I thought it prudent to get a correct figure so the agent would be the first port of call for this but as I dare not turn up empty handed, I drove to Bayfair to pick up a cheque for the deposit. The agent was most glad to see me and helpfully suggested that the floor area was actually 170 square metres, if the conservatory which was not on the floor plan was included. My guesstimation of the area wasn't that far out. Suitably pleased with my mathematical prowess I got the place insured for a tad under $600 with immediate effect and without having to part with any money up front. I also rang a solicitor who had been recommended by the same friend, and was quoted $1000 for the legal work. This I accepted and the details were passed to the agent. At this point, it was time for a cup of tea and to catch up on the progress of the test match. Sadly NZ failed to capitalise on the dismal Australian performance.

Today was also the day that Di started her real estate course at the Bay Polytechnic. She returned full of horror stories of deals gone wrong and the news that her lecturers considered that what we did yesterday was a bargain, highly risky and an object lesson in how not to do it. Apparently he likened the auction process to a circus where the client is made to sweat. We could certainly see the analogy, but we did stick pretty much to our limit. She also recanted stories about the leaky home syndrome that a lot of properties in NZ suffer from. We were aware of this, but what we didn't know is that potentially any house built around the time of the dodgy regulations is leaky - it's just a matter of time. Our house was built in 1987, well outside the date range. Scarily, there are 4,000 such houses in the mount area alone. Our house is built of bricks, so there's not problem.

It does seem that being a licensed real estate sales person in NZ requires you to be almost a mini lawyer, since there are a plethora of regulations that must be adhered to or you risk being sued. A lot of them seem to relate to non disclosure of potential problems (such as leaky home syndrome) for which the agent can be sued. Interestingly, the house we went to look at in Papamoa recently was actually a leaky building even though the agent claimed it wasn't when we asked. If we'd bought it, we'd have had a case for suing them to hell and back.

We sent an email to out rental agent asking for a reduction in our rent since we would now be showing people round a lot more. They responded saying they'd ask on our behalf. Sadly, we're probably on a hiding to nothing since we receive a call not long afterwards from the estate agent letting us know that an offer had been received and was likely to be accepted. It looks like we'd be given our marching orders pretty soon. Ho Hum.

A Grand Day Out

Friday morning was spent tidying up the house. The prospective buyers showed up at 2PM and had a good look around. They seemed rather interested and made some positive sounding noises. We got the impression that they would be putting in an offer which would mean that we are likely to get six weeks notice at any moment. Later in the evening I swung past New World to score a 12 pack and wandered over to keep Wayne company. One of the kids had the trots, which threatened to put the kibosh on Saturday's grand plan.

Saturday was a most grand day out. We went over to Seddon Park, Hamilton along with Wayne and Vicky to watch the Black Caps vs Australia on day one of the second test. The kids seemed a bit better in the morning, and as Sam said she was happy to look after them even with the prospect of thermo-nuclear nappies to deal with, we headed off. We were a little late setting off, not making a move until 9:45 despite having tried to get V&W rolling by 9 using the 8:30 start ruse. The journey was uneventful and we managed to make it just after eleven. The $8 car park was full. However, we turned off the main road and parked down a side street which had no parking restrictions. This may be a trick that we shall remember. Australia were batting and were 12 for 0 so we hadn't missed too much of the action. Seddon park doesn't allow you to take booze in, but you can take in soft drinks and food so we went in fully stocked although a quantity of beer and wine was purchased at regular intervals along with a few portions of "hot" as opposed to "cold" chips. In addition, Wayne and I bought ourselves Black Caps shirts and congratulated ourselves on becoming instant Kiwis. We got market researched at one point, the focus being how much money cricket brought into Hamilton. Also, the very fine photo you see opposite was taken by a roving photographer, who was working for National Cricket Club. His camera was equipped with a thermal printer which produced a black and white image and an access code which allowed us to download the image later. Best of all this was free. I guess it must be a way of publicising the web site.

At the close of play, Australia were all out for 231, thus the day was considered a great success despite the Black Caps loosing an early wicket. We headed home getting back around 8:30. The consensus was to pick up a curry from Smart India which turned out to be rather a good plan as the nosh was quite decent. We finished off the evening with a few beers and watching the highlights of the cricket on Sky. Class.

Amusing Title Required

I've not managed to record any of our doings for the last week or so. This is down to a general sense of can't-be-assedness which took up residence temporarily, making me into a seriously grumpy old git. Fortunately a good argument has restored my demeanour to its default level of grumpiness. I'm not really sure that I can remember accurately what we did over the last week in strict chronological order, so I'm not going to try.

We looked at several houses that were up for sale. One was a holiday home on Oceanview road, except that it was the front plot which meant that one could not actually see the sea. It needed a bit of work but the price was a bit too high. The agent had a couple of other "douppers" but they were really quite hideous and the areas they were in were not really what we wanted. Another supposedly four bedroom house for sale privately was really a three bed house with an extra bed in a corridor. It was also on a busy main road. The final house we looked at again needs some work but has potential which wasn't immediately obvious. More on that story later.

Imogen managed to survive three days at camp unscathed, which for her is something of an achievement. It's not without an unnerving degree of accuracy that Freya used to refer to her as Injure-man, a name that has stuck somewhat. The scooter escapade is now a distant memory and the leg seems to he "hoperating" as normal. Phoebe had yet another visit to the dentist this time to remove two teeth which were basically rotting in her mouth. The tooth fairy was most definitely short changed that night. The dental appointment was right after school, so Di had taken the car and was supposed to be back by 3:30 so I could pick up Imogen. This coincided with Wayne wanting me to collect a trailer from the school where he teaches. I had promised to drive to Rotorua on Saturday to pick up a table that Vicky had bought on TradeMe, the Kiwi equivalent of Ebay. Somehow we managed to coordinate all this activity without leaving anybody at the side of the road.

The journey to Rotorua was straight forward, if slow due to the windy road and trailer combination, with a couple of single track narrow bridges chucked in for good measure. We managed to find the place and load the table up even though it was bigger than the trailer at 1.5 metres square. We even managed to get all eight of the chairs in, one in the boot, 3 inverted in the back of the car and the others in the trailer. It's my guess that that table will be with them until their kids leave home.

I dropped the trailer back to the school first thing on Monday. It's rather handy to know that the school has a trailer available to staff. I'm sure we may be able to abuse this knowledge occasionally.

Now I return to the opening story - the house with potential. Although not in the mount and being only three bedroomed, there is potential to partition off and make a fourth bedroom. The house belongs to an old woman who has bought a retirement flat and needs to complete the sale ASAP. The house is going to auction this Sunday but we were told that if we made an appropriate offer in advance that the house could be ours. The potential wasn't immediately apparent but later inspection of the floor plans were something of a revelation. The main bathroom has been converted into a superb ensuite for the master bedroom, but this leaves the rest of the house with only a shower. It needs a second bathroom, and the floor plan reveals that there is enough space to do this. The lack of a bathroom and the general old lady feel (complete with cat pee smell in the garage) is probably why it's not been snapped up.

This morning we attended the auction of our current residence. I had bought $40,000 at a pitiful exchange rate but alas the usual banking latency meant that the dosh did not show up in our account until 9:30 this morning. Talk about cutting it fine. Strangely, it was $8 short which makes me wonder if the bank has had its filthy paws in there. We took our neighbour along to the auction. She wanted to see who was buying the place and to offer some moral support. It turns out that we were pretty much the only people there other than the estate agent staff.

The auction kicked off and there were no bids. Eventually the price dropped to $180,000 and this motivated me to put in a bid. There seemed to be a couple of other bids maybe from the telephone and possibly from one of the staff, we're not sure. Not surprisingly the reserve price, whatever that was, wasn't met and at $220,000 we were the highest bidder. A period of negotiation took place, and we eventually offered $315,000 which wasn't accepted. The next step apparently was to invite sealed bids for submission to the bank. However at this point, we'd kind of decided that we didn't want it, even though we had the nod that $350,000 would most probably have done the deed. Our neighbour was devastated. She's had five sets of neighbours in the last four years, and we are apparently the most amenable she's had. We think she was desperate to have us stay on, but it wasn't going to happen long term.

To get to our place you have to go down the driveway, which passes two other houses. Although our neighbours are fine, this may not always be so and the potential for aggravation with bad parking would be immense. Also, there's no garden, no view and the house has no character and is a bit of a dormitory. We also noted from the sale particulars that the drain in the middle of the shared concreted area is in fact a soak away. As the rain runs down towards us it stands to reason that a prolonged potential downpour might overflow the soak away, flooding us out. We came to the conclusion that owning this house would be something of a mill stone round our necks as it would be difficult to shift later on. One other thing we noticed is that the rates hadn't been paid for over three years!

With this in mind, we made an offer on the other house, $400,000. The woman apparently considered it, but then spoke to her solicitor, who against the advice of the agent, advised her to proceed to auction. As we are the only interested party, this seems rather silly but I guess we'll find out on Sunday. We also had a call from the agent for our current house, wanting to show someone round tomorrow. They were very polite about it, and thus we agreed to this.

The Lights Are On

The kids went rock pooling on Sunday and managed to accumulate 20 shrimps, 4 crabs, 3 different kinds of fish and a lobster. This was probably the best haul to date.

Monday was a rather illuminating day. I ended up at Wayne's place since the kids had wandered down there and as Vicky & Di had gone off to Zumba he was going nuts with them swarming around his feet. He'd fitted new lights to replace the hideous chandeliers but sadly they weren't working. I had a look, and found the subtle misconnection much to the chagrin of Wayne who claimed to have tried every possible way of wiring them up. I declined to make the obvious point and took him up on his offer to watch yesterday's F1 race (rather boringly won by Ferrari) on the shiny new Sky box. When the girls returned we nipped down to the beach to check out the surf. Alas it was virtually non existent so we both went home.

I spent most of Tuesday wrestling with the steaming pile that is Internet Explorer 7, working on a piece of web design. I might have been less annoyed if all versions worked the same way but they don't. It's even more fun testing, since you can't run different versions of IE on the same machine without severe aggravation. Thankfully, http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/ is at hand.

Wayne rack me at around 5 PM and insisted we go surfing since his new board was rattling around in his garage. I took my humble boogie board and we headed to the beach, which had a 1-2 foot surf rolling in. Wayne seems to have got the hang of surfing. I gave it a go but sadly I wasn't even able to lie on the board and paddle it out, let alone stand on the thing. The fact that it was submerged with me on top probably explains quite a bit. Then again I'm probably just useless. I did manage to catch some decent waves on the boogie board though. Joyce and Michael were in residence when I returned. They've invited us to the pub next Tuesday which seems like a splendid idea.

We looked at a few houses on Wednesday. The distinct lack of job opportunities in this neck of the woods for a man of my talents makes me wonder if property development might be the way to go. We looked at a few that were in need of renovation. One was quite interesting, but the others were in rather naff locations which we didn't fancy at all. Maybe it was the rain that made them look worse than they really were.

Imogen went off to camp on Matakana island for three days. She somehow forgot to take the cakes that Di had baked and that she was supposed to share. Also, her favourite teddy got left behind and has since been adopted by Phoebe. All hell will break loose when she returns and wants him back.

Later we went for a meal with some friends of Di's. We went to "A Taste of Asia" in the mount. I'm still not sure if it was a Thai or Chinese restaurant but it was nothing to shout about, cuisine wise. The menu was rather amusing, with several amusingly title dishes. We ordered our "Kang Bang" for four to start with. It seemed only appropriate that we all participate. All the main courses were rather heavy on the vegetables and light on the meat. The wine list was however the most depressing thing. It had a reasonable selection, but the inclusion of phonetic spellings of all the wines was simply very sad. We stuck with beer, rather than order Sham Pain or Shar Doh Nay. I kid you not.

Hot Pork

Imogen fell of Phoebe's scooter yesterday and turned her ankle over. She spent most of Wednesday evening hopping everywhere and consequently she was off school on Thursday and spent most of the day playing on the Playstation. Di went to her first "Women on Water" session at the invitation of one of her friends. This involves hanging out on a fairly large yacht and learning how to sail it. The highlight of the evening was getting stuck on a sand bank and having to change sails in order to get off again. Apparently it was massive fun but sadly this was the last outing of the season but I suspect I will be child minding when the new one comes around.

I took Imogen over to Papamoa on Friday since she was going to a birthday sleepover. Later I was left holding the fort yet again as Di & Vicky went to an underwear party. Well, I was going to hold the fort, but as Sam was available I collected a 12 pack on my way to Wayne's. We uttered the usual slightly less that erudite rhetoric before a degree of drunkenness set in and the girls returned without any underwear. Apparently the cheapest pants were $35, and had quite rightly been deemed too expensive. Much better to spend the money on Sky telly, which is exactly what Wayne has done and the installation was planned for tomorrow, just in time for the final NZ vs Australia ODI.

Saturday morning we went to the Mount Primary's school fayre. This was held on the school field and had the usual assortment of cake stalls, games, tombola, bric-a-brac and second hand tat you usually get. There was also a bouncy castle and the usual sweatburger vans. However, there was also a fully fledged petting zoo, complete with pigs, sheep, goats etc and also horse/pony rides. The centre piece however was the piglet racing. A short obstacle course had been set up with a pen and trough at each end. Approximately every 20 minutes or so the pen would be opened and the pigs would bolt from one end to the other to get their faces in the trough. Each had a little jacket on and it was soon obvious that nos 1 & 9 were the hot pork. Having studied the form, we bought a few tickets at $2 each. Only then did we notice the jackets being switched in the pig box. Needless to say we left empty handed.

Rhiannon's mouse had packed up, due to overuse it seems. Thus I decided to take her down to Bayfair to pick up a new one. Having scoped out Dick Smith and Noel Leeming, I noticed that Warehouse Stationery, sandwiched between the two was selling exactly the same mouse, but for considerably less that the electronics specialist stores. While we were out Imogen texted for a pick up so we both headed over to Papamoa. Typically Imogen wasn't ready and thus I spent quite a while chatting. It emerged the elder sister was into guitar but lacked any formal tuition of any sort. Alas I mentioned that I played a bit and an impromptu recital took place. My phone number was taken and it's entirely possible I might end up giving lessons.

We had the first of the two "open home" sessions today. A couple of sets of people did turn up, one seemed more interested in chatting to his mate, the estate agent and the others were an elderly couple who had one of their kids leading them round looking somewhat harassed. I guess they had looked at quite a few houses.

Later I got a call from Wayne confirming that the Sky was installed, so I wandered over at about 8ish, supped a few more beers and watched the Black Caps win the final ODI. Better to lose the series 3-2 than 4-1.

Robbing Hood And His Merry Men (& Women)

I've become rather conscious that the contents of this 'ere blog are becoming rather mundane. I guess this is because the things we're doing, or rather not doing are far from fascinating. Having said that I received a kick up the 'arris via email today from a regular reader bemoaning the lack of recent activity. So here we go.

Sunday was not particularly noteworthy. I managed a run around the Mount with a reasonable pace. It certainly felt relatively easy, but then the 12K was less than the rather taxing 15K of the previous run.

Monday was Phoebe's first full day in her new class. It seems to have gone quite well. She's not too sure about her new teacher, who can be rather strict when required but at least doesn't throw a hissy fit if the P.E. kit bags are not hung up in the correct manner. I spent most of Monday wading my way through a book on Joomla CMS templates, which turned out to be rather a waste of money. A suitably pithy (pissy? probably both) review was left on Amazon's site but they have yet to publish it.

Di had invited Rhiannon's friend's parents over for a barbecue on Tuesday. Thus old faithful was sparked into life and various bits of dead pig and cow were ritually cremated. There were even some chicken legs which I was only allowed to impart authentic barbecue flavour to since Di insisted on precooking them in the oven. Spoilsport. What's a little salmonella between friends? We must have done something right since they were with us a little over four hours.

The fun part of Tuesday morning was waiting in for the estate agent's merry band of thieves, rogues, bandits and ne'erdowells to attempt to "familiarise" themselves with the property. There's not a huge lot to familiarise yourself with since the layout is rather basic. There must have been about 20 or so of them turn up. It was rather comical. As they approached the front door, they all removed shoes walked into the living/dining area, then down the one and only straight and narrow corridor past each bedroom with a quick peak in the garage before turning about face and retracing their steps and re-shoeing. The whole thing took less than two minutes and I was left wondering what this rather pointless exercise actually achieved. I guess we'll find out on Saturday when the first of the "open home" sessions happens.

Wednesday's excitement was watching Phoebe do her "try-athlon" at school. Two lengths of the pool, leg it to the bike, cycle the length of the field and then run round it. The event was conducted in batches of three to prevent total mayhem. Her swimming has improved a lot, but she was still behind the others exiting the pool although she was catching up rather nicely on the run. She's made a new friend already, and we had the pleasure of her company for a few hours after school. Looks like she's settling in just fine.

One rather annoying thing I discovered today when I checked the bank back in the UK, was that Churchill insurance seem to have collected next year's insurance premium on the house that we were renting back in the UK. It didn't seem worth the effort to cancel the policy when we left the UK as it only had a few months to run and as it was contents only, the premium was about £100. I'd figured that any money we got back would be less any "administration fees" that most companies have a habit of adding on and thus it would be better to leave it alone as there was a danger of owing them more money. In hindsight a phone call might have been a good move. Sorting this out necessitated a call via Skype. It was relatively painless but could have been rather more so. Thankfully Churchill have UK call centres.

We also received some mail today, for a former tenant. We've had quite a lot of mail for former tenants and the landlords but this was a name we'd not seen before. Di opened it, and it turned out to be a letter from a debt collection agency chasing a $700 bill for Sky telly. Ouch! We sent an email saying "not known here" and pushed it back in the post marked "return to sender", but they'll probably still be sending the bailiffs round at some point anyway, claiming that they're not going to fall for the "we've moved" ruse. On the other hand we might well have moved soon anyway depending on what happens at the auction. The pound has tanked in the last few days and is currently sitting at a paltry $2.11 so unless the house sells for about $44.50, we won't be putting in a bid.

Bag of Nails

Wednesday saw the start of the one day cricket series between NZ and Australia. Nothing like a home derby to get the juices flowing. We're lucky enough over here to actually get free-to-air coverage on the Prime channel. I had begun watching at 2PM, and encountered various sounds of dismay as various small and not quite as small persons returned from school. Apparently missing yet another repeated Simpsons episode was more than flesh and blood could bear. I also received moans about various other programs that Di wanted to watch. Fortunately the situation resolved itself since everyone buggered off to Wayne & Vicky's spot. A minute later, Wayne showed up and we spent the rest of the afternoon/evening watching NZ beat Australia, which was just fine and dandy. I support two teams - NZ and anyone playing the Aussies.

It wasn't all continuous viewing though. Phoebe has been riding her scooter to school recently, and is finding it rather hard to keep up with Freya on her bike. This has been made slightly more awkward by the scooter being run over by the Mirth Mobile due to a rather bad piece of parking and some insufficient wifely observation. Despite my best efforts with a selection of large hammers, it's not quite as smooth running as it once was. Phoebe decided today was the day she was going to ride her bike. It's maybe a little on the large size, but we refused to buy a small one with stabilisers that she would be out of in six months. She has finally figured out how to start off and stop without landing in a heap and took great pride in whizzing around and of course demanded an audience of admirers.

The rest of the books turned up on Thursday. I now have another 10 inches of paper to wade through. I noticed that Craig's car seems to have sprouted a for sale sign. Further investigation reveals that the oil light is coming on intermittently. An opinion from the local garage is apparently that the engine is about to die and he should either get a new engine or flog it quick. It's not altogether surprising, it sounds like a bag of nails when it's on tick over and always has.

Di returned from school on Friday morning, with news that the assistant principal would be calling. The phone call indicated that Phoebe has now moved to a year one class. Apparently the AP observed Phoebe failing to get involved in any of the class activities and keeping her head down to keep out of trouble. Clearly a complete breakdown in relationships. Of course we supported the move, and Phoebe seems a little more comfortable about it, although still apprehensive. Poor Phoebe's day ended with a trip to the dentist, who redid one of her fillings on account of it being rotten underneath. Apparently this is what happens when bacteria are left in the tooth before filling. All the girls have now had fillings replaced, which rather makes us question the standard of care we all received back in the UK. Neither Di not I are looking forward to the next dental appointment, what with the number of crowns and root canals we have between us.

We both received letters about registering for the electoral role. It seems that our names and addresses have come from the driving licence details. Although the letters proclaimed $200 fines for not registering, it also states that you need to have been resident for 12 months or more, and thus both were deposited in the bin.

I took Imogen to see Avatar this evening. I must admit to not being as blown away as I expected given all the hype it's had. Sure, it was a neat experience once I'd stopped focusing on the parts that were deliberately out of focus. The plot was a little bit thin and predictable, but it did fulfil its primary function, which was to entertain for a couple of hours. I have it on good authority that a pal of mine who works for Weta Digital has a credit, but there were so many to view, it was impossible to spot it, despite sitting through to the end and annoying the cinema staff. I shall have to take it on faith that it's there and ignore any suspicions of Geordie chest pummelling. ;-)

Back to School

Phoebe wet the bed on Monday morning. Apparently it's something to do with the pressure she's feeling at school. She's in a year 2 class and has effectively missed out on a couple of terms which isn't helping. Not surprisingly Phoebe is also in reading recovery - learning phonics in the UK and now something completely different over here in combination with the two missing terms and all the upheaval. It seems that the reading recovery is at a slightly lower level than the class teacher expects, which smacks of a lack of communication somewhere. Di spoke with her class teacher, an English woman who was rather unhelpful, shrugging her shoulders and declaring she didn't know what to do. Di sought out the assistant principal, who was a lot more helpful and a lot more concerned and promised to observe the class. Apparently lots of shouting takes place in class, according to Phoebe. Hmm.

I received a phone call from the estate agent who was after some dates to arrange viewings. I asked him to email through a number of days so that we could be clear what was available. He wanted to bring his whole team through tomorrow, but I claimed this was too short a time frame. Taking the matter up with the rental agent, we were advised that as no notification of sale had been received, that we were not to let anyone in. Suits us. I responded to the estate agent directing him to duke it out with the rental agent and leave me alone. No sooner had I done this that the rental agent was on the phone advising us that notification had now been received. Thus I again emailed the estate agent, this time with three dates/times that we would be available. He wanted Sundays, but he got Saturdays.

Di decided the job she was looking at wasn't really for her. The bit about being on call 24/7 and potentially unblocking toilets at 4AM was what decided for her in the end. She has now decided that she wants to be a licensed real estate agent! Apparently a mutual friend has already qualified but isn't making a go of it. She lacks the ability to spin a yarn that Di is capable of. To that effect, we drove into Tauranga and signed up at the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic for a 2 week course. This cost $791. What an odd figure. Once qualified, another $500 is required to be issued with an "MREINZ" licence and then Di can start flogging houses. While we were there, I visited the "Rock Shop", which is a music shop and scored a couple of sets of strings for the guitar. $18 each.

I received an email telling me I'd not got short listed for a job in Rotorua. I wasn't really keen on it anyway, but the salary would have been rather large and therefore quite attractive. I was actually quite relieved that my lung function wouldn't be gradually degraded.

Phoebe seemed to have had a better day and did report that the AP had been in class. Time will tell if all is now well. Di went Zumba-ing with Vicky and when they got back I went for a run into the mount and back.

Monday night was dry - thankfully. We received the official notification of sale in the post this morning. A fairly standard sort of letter which basically spelt out that we couldn't unreasonably refuse access. This is loosely interpreted as arranged at least 24 hours in advance and as we've already given some dates, it was pretty much a NO-OP.

Amazon spewed forth the first of the books I ordered - "Ajax - The Definitive Guide". Light reading it is not, at two inches thick. Still, it did make it to NZ in about a week (from Germany, apparently). The other five or so books are still in transit.

Rhiannon's friend's parents descended on us at around 5PM. Apparently they have Tuesdays off and get out on their bike all over the shop. We hadn't really met them other than a few words when picking up their daughter and it was most pleasant to have a good chat to a pair of Poms who had been over here a few years. Apparently Joyce's brother was lecturing at the Poly but has just jumped on a plane back to Scotland. He's in for a rude awakening when he lands, as it's about -10°C over there right now. Tee Hee. He was teaching computer science, and the rather confused message from Rhiannon about all of this turned out to be about Java, which I know not a lot about