Home Sweet Home

After a tangle getting through immigration at Auckland airport with the Smartgate doors refusing to open for Karen, an immensely long wait for our bags to appear and then a final trundle with them to the domestic airport because apparently only some of the domestic checkin machines will work for Nelson (huh, why?), we only had 20 minutes spare before our onwards flight to Nelson. A great welcome by Sandy and Lynette when we appeared, and we've had a fairly quiet few days at their place since we arrived home.

The weather is superb, but has not been up to the normal high Nelson standards until now...

Major success when the MX5 engine turned over at first kick and then off for a WOF and rego update. We now have wheels again and are likely to head out to Suzy and Tim's soon. Nephew Nick, Emma and young Jack arrived from France yesterday afternoon and will be here for about a month. Their wedding is only 1.5 weeks away.

We've had our first catch-up with the Gregoire and Mylene at La Gourmandise, and savoured two excellent coffees. Had dinner last night at Sally's which was very pleasant. It feels very strange being in Nelson, especially with not living in our own home. It looks as though our tenants have looked after our place very well, though the garden is a little scruffy.

It's now time to settle down a bit, sort out John's work and get into some sort of routine for the next few months. Not sure how achievable the latter is. We don't really want to get back into any routine and are already counting the days down until we fly off to France again. 70 days to go!!!!!

Le Fin de 'Le Blog' pour 2013/14

An Aussie Post

Tomorrow we fly home to Nelson. Wow. We can't quite believe it. Our last week in Melbourne has flown by - mainly with a continued concerted effort on the renovations here, but also going out and about. Today we checked out a few Open Homes with Bella and Nic and are astonished at the high prices places are going for. We walked into one old home and immediately felt as though we were back in the 1950s. Blue swirly carpet, kitchen cupboards with little push-button catches, old fabric and lace lampshades ....... the guideline price was around $600,000. The real estate signboard seriously suggested that it was a serious contender for bowling the house completely and starting again, i.e. the land price was $600,000. Not surprisingly, Bella and Nic are contemplating possibly moving north to the Sunshine Coast where prices are a bit more achievable.

On Wednesday John and I walked into town and had lunch with two of our Aussie friends who live on the Sunshine Coast but also have an apartment in Ceret. We had a great time together and have booked our next date - a coffee in Bar Pablo at 5pm on 21st July.

Today we have already reached the predicted high temp of 40 degrees and it's only 4pm. It could well keep rising. The weather forecasters are predicting that Melbourne could break the record for the highest night-time minimum temperature. The record is 30.5 degrees. I definitely don't think we will be getting much sleep tonight. 

P.S. Yes a record high for the overnight low - 32 degrees!

Melbourne

We've been in Melbourne for a week now and are loving the heat (mostly). We left Ceret at 8am with a temperature of 2 degrees and arrived to about 38 degrees in Melbourne. It's all good though. Back to shorts, T-shirt and jandals (oops, "flip-flops" here), salads and early morning walks. Well, we've actually only been on two earlyish walks to be honest.

Our trip to Aussie went went well, with a few minor hiccups. The recently operational TGV train from Perpignan to Barcelona was great, despite stopping for ten minutes inside a long dark tunnel for no good reason (or even a poor one), and then continuing the rest of the journey at sub-par speed. We have no idea what might have gone wrong but we had plenty of time to spare before having to be at the airport so it didn't worry us. The flights were great but we made one major mistake when booking - we forgot to reserve our bed at the free Emirates Hotel for our 9 hour stopover. There was no way we could win over the grumpy Emirates rep when we arrived at Dubai but were lucky enough to score two loungers in the terminal and managed to sleep reasonably well anyway. A mistake we won't repeat.

Bella and Nic were at the airport to meet us and it was a great thrill. It is soooo good seeing them and spending a decent amount of time here. We've been out and about a bit, e.g. St Kilda, gorgeous Asian meal in town last night, local market for a Sat morning coffee, walk into the city, and so on. Richmond is a lovely suburb and they are very well set up here. A large mall, gym and Ikea complex is just over the road only 200m away.

With the huge buzz of buying a new apartment in Ceret as we were about to step on the plane and head homewards, John and I had forgotten about the DIY we had promised to help Bella and Nic with. Hence, most of this week we have been hard at work plastering and sanding. There is still a fair amount left to do but we'll soon be able to start dipping our brushes into the paintbuckets. It feels really good to help them out and it's great seeing the place take on a new look. Bella and Nic have long work days (e.g. Bella walks 50mins each way to and from work), which doesn't leave too much time or energy for DIY. However, as Bella asserts, John and I need all the practice we can get because of what we have recently taken on in Ceret. She is actually doing us a favour?

As to the new apartment, we aren't too sure if we own it yet but guess we do. Our seven day period for opting out without any penalty has been and gone. This is despite not yet receiving the much needed quote from our builder (which would tell us exactly how affordable it is), an updated report on asbestos, lead paint and so on that the vendor has to provide, nor the written agreement we required from the other owner of the building that we will have the right to install two skylights. Repeated emails to our notaire and builder have drawn nil response. However, we are not unduly surprised because this is how the French system works (or not). Our friends in Ceret say not to stress because all will happen in due course, just not promptly, and is absolutely par for the course, as we know ourselves.

In the meantime we are working on the basis that we own the new place. We can't wait to start work on it and are getting more and more delighted ideas of how we'd like to decorate it. We are now thinking along the lines of a modern loft style instead of French style, partly because it has a very different feel to the one in Place de l'Eglise. It is also much more of an open canvas - in fact it is a totally blank canvas!

We've spent quite some time in Ikea planning the new apartment. Kitchens, furniture, fittings, whatever. It's a heap of fun. We can't wait to get it started. We're project people, as you might have guessed by now!

Kitchen in Ikea, Melbourne

One week to go and we will fly back into Nelson. I've no doubt it will feel quite strange. We will have been away for just under 8 months! It will be really weird not going back home to Walters Bluff as well. We are very much looking forward to catching up with family and friends.

We are enjoying the change of food here. The meal at Chinchin in the city was great, and we had kangaroo last night for the second time. Delicious, lean and amazingly bright red meat. Funny, I don't think we've seen it in France.