Neighbourhood watching

It would be a spectacular disappointment if I’d allowed myself expectations. I’ve lived through enough UK summers, though, to have formulated none at all. And because I’ve still only been back a year, I haven’t really minded the more or less total failure of summer to appear.

Unfortunately, fortunately

Stability. Settledness. A mostly predictable order to things.

Ahh.

It lasts about four days.

It’s the first week of my new nannied-up routine and I’m just relaxing into the roomy new shape of my week when the email arrives from the letting agent. The landlords won’t be renewing our lease in June.

I know what the fox says

It’s not Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho, not Jacha-chacha-chacha-chow. It’s a soft, shrill, wheezy cough, like a kitten hacking up a furball.

Cows vs tigers

A whole new year, minus a week. Now that it’s here I find myself impatient to begin, to move through this pleasant, lazy, between-the-years hiatus and on to the next stage of relocating, resettling, reacclimatising, and absorbing the reverse culture shock of the big, bad, beautiful city.

Shipping out

Ship of the desert

Poor old Aratere. Stuck in dock with her broken propeller shaft, no dry dock in Godzone big enough to accommodate her for the required delicate rummaging among her ladyparts.

Space cadet

So here it is, our final quarter. The ski season finally over, and a long list of other adventures to try and squeeze into our last term. To bookend the season, we were up the mountain on closing weekend, graunching our way through the thick mashed-potato snow, paying our final respects: goodbye, Cardrona! See you in a few years!

Anniversaries and olfactory absences

Another birthday. A year on already from that humdrum, stressed-out, deadline-ridden day last year – the day itself a non-event, but the milestone, of course, the excuse on which I’ve hung this whole wonderful adventure.

Juicing carrots, tempting fate

Back burner, I told you! The cycle of the last few weeks: Writing (not blogging, obviously). Stalling. Skiing. We ski almost to excess, two or three times a week, my dodgy joints creaking in protest.

On the back burner

So this is what the back burner looks like: not-very-often blog posts. For the last two months, as I’ve worked to a couple of story submission deadlines, I’ve had to make a rule not to spend any ‘prime’ time on this blog.

Solstice, surreality and snow

The shortest day of the year. Sunrise 8.15am, sunset 5.13pm, though that’s academic when you factor in a mountainous horizon and a low blanketing of snow cloud. The boys and I celebrate with a little pagan-style mortification of the flesh: a midwinter dip in Lake Hawea.