Chick in distress

Barneys chick, Bubbles, has had a misshap. She has a very swollen leg. At first we suspected it was broken, but she's hoping along on it and the swelling is going a little bit. Here you can see her standing on just the one good leg. She doesn't seem too put off by it all.



They were in the paddock with the horses but with all the rain it was a quagmire and we think she may have got under the horses. Anyway, we have moved them up to Grandads shed out of the prevailing weather and have her under close obsrvation. By the way for the more observant of you she has had a name change to Bubbles after Barney thought abit about it and decided that Night Kiwi was probably not the right name for such a tiny, pretty, chick.

stuff

Yay! Our stuff has arrived at Lyttelton docks in Christchurch. We watched the ship dock online - wont be long now before we get our bikes and camping stuff and knitting needles and books and computer and music and DVDs and all that other useless junk that makes you feel yourself.

The container should be on the road and with us by next week - hopefully - MAF and Customs and Excise depending. The NZers are fanatical about their biosecurity, which is understandable in some ways having over 225 exotic pest species of plants and animals causing mayhem in the environment.

So yay! All we need now is a place of our own to put it in.

rain rain go away

Sunday:

Monday:


Tuesday:


Wednesday:


Thursday: oh you get the picture by now.

Will it ever cease raining?

BOOOORRRED!!!!!

Autumn is here

The weather is changing. We’ve been watching the Norwich forecast (iGoogle rocks!) and see summer has arrived. The converse is true in Ashburton. Autumn is well and truly here, although with the winter solstice just around the corner, should this be early winter? The leaves are falling and the skys are grey.

Jack has gone off on his bike down the road to meet the bus on a couple of lovely frosty mornings. The bus picks him up a mile away, so he goes by bike and chains it up at the end of the road where is waits like a patient rusty steed till his return.

Sean is resolutely sticking to his shorts. Sean has found his sartorial home. And those in the know will be nodding and smiling warmly.

We had alot of rain in the last week. This is a good thing. The whole plains area has been in drought and fires have been a problem. From an upstairs window we watched a fire burn through a large stretch of native bush on Mount Hutt last week, before the rain started. Although, the fire risk didn’t stop the farmers burning their stubble though, more than a few gorse hedges have disappeared in a long scorch mark down the field edges.

Now its rained the mountains are white and covered with snow. So now the boys wait for the winter to take hold properly and for the ski fields to open. That will be a boys only adventure. Jenn hates skiing. Luckily for them Mount Hutt ski field is the first field to open and the last to close each season.

Election fever

We have been following the UK election and the politicking afterwards. All done and dusted now. We watched the Browns do the walk of shame down Downing Street and wondered what the future was for the pound against the NZ dollar (hopefully it will now rise and we can bring our money over and get on with buying a place to call home).

Congrats to the Tories and Lib Dems. We decided not to vote as we have left the country (what a cop out to avoid having to vote no?). Can’t wait to see how that saga unfurls itself. It was an odd experience watching from the sidelines and not taking part.

The Kiwis were just as interested and it was widely reported in great detail. Even though Grandad was most put out that we could be interested as “ we’re Kiwis now” with an indignant huff. Actually, no don’t think we are and don’t think we ever will be. We are English who happen to have chosen to leave our home country to live in New Zealand and that doesn’t make us New Zealanders. It’s a noticeable trait in a few of the expats – just a minority and we suspect it’s a common thing with expats the world over regardless of nationality – which we have termed the phenomena of the Plastic Kiwi.

With this in mind Sean proudly flew his George Cross on St Georges Day and will do every year alongside his New Zealand flag.

We have been keeping ourselves busy with many walks in the foothills and enjoying the native bush. Mostly around Mount Hutt (which is where the skiing is when the snow starts) and Mount Alford. The walking is in two types, one very much like the UK the other very different to the UK. It is either very easy on the flat in industrial farming landscape. A bit like Norfolk or the Fens if the hedges were made from Eucalyptus (aka Gum tree), Laylandii (gone bananas) or Pampas Grass (which makes a lovely rustling sound in the wind). Or its up steep hillsides in the trees. We like the uphill walking in the trees. The walking here is much more tricky than in the UK, and a lot more interesting with many points where you could literally fall of the side. The paths are narrow, steep, often with trees tangling their roots across the way. You don’t meet another soul as you scrabble up slopes. Most start of scrabbling through the woods of cool, dense, almost monochrome Southern Black Beech. Their white tree trunks covered with a felt of black fungus. Occasional damp parts are rich in lush green ferns. All around is the sound of birds calling around you. Jack took this little clip of footage at Mount Alford.



You can hear the birds songs. We have yet to identify them (possibly Riflemen or Tom Tits or both). As you climb up a little higher the trees change, sparser and smaller with thin grasses, the colours become more silvery and pale green and then a little higher when your lungs are thumping and your legs are burning you clear the tree line and you are in the scrub (coasrs grasses and the very spikey New Zealand flax and its suddenly frosty in the parts where the sun has’t yet reached. A little higher still and you can see over the tree tops across the Canterbury Plain, as flat as an ironed out sheet, across to the Pacific Ocean. Awsome.

This week has been mostly about schools and colleges. On Monday we made the call to the local intermediate school for Barney, Longbeach (www.longbeach.school.nz), paid a visit and arranged a start date for wednesday. On Tuesday we took Barney shopping for his uniform. The uniform in NZ is a dream – shorts and long socks until year 11 in college. Another stand out thing was that no shoes in the classroom and at break time most of them run around in bare feet outside too. Sports don’t involve stupid kit changes that get lost. On the down side you are expected to supply all their stationary and books but that was all readily available in most office supply stores. Here’s Barney looking like a native.



And this morning he caught the school bus for the first time.

On first inspection the education system in NZ is so much more relaxed than in the UK. There doesn’t seem to be that intense teaching to the test that has so corrupted the UKs education system. It also seems that only in the UK is there a paedophile hiding under every rock and every fence post...

Barney came home and when asked ‘what was your first day like?’ he flopped into an armchair with this happy exhausted face and said dreamily ‘Brilliant’. That never happened before...