News from Nelson - January 2018

Hi everyone!
We kicked off the New Year with our traditional New Year's Eve BBQ... which finished after 3am on the 1st of January 2018. We slept almost until midday after that! Even Boo and Bonnie didn't stir for breakfast at 7am. We had a fairly small turn-out this year, but the neighbours were total stayers, bless them! There wasn't much to clean up as before we hit the hay, I had had run the dishwasher once while I tidied the place up, got the recycling ready to go out, then loaded it again when we went to bed, and had the last load ready to go in when we got up. New Year's day was a lovely day too: we took the dogs for a nice long walk.

Murray and Leigh came around at 4pm on New Year's day for afternoon tea with Lexie and Isaac… they played pool, and we chatted for a couple of hours before they headed back to their rental to get ready for the return to Christchurch tomorrow. Nadine is currently staying at our place, and Nane is now taking the current tour with John.

Then on the 4th, we hopped in the car for our first road trip of the year, along with my Mum: heading off to Dunedin for my cousin Sarah's wedding. My Aunt from Christchurch and my sister both came as well, so it turned into a bit of a minor family reunion, which was really good. Nadine kindly house and dog-sat while we were away. We had a lovely trip down to Christchurch, and had lunch at the Nor’Wester Café in Amberley before going to visit Erik and Jacky and meeting our soon to be new puppy, Finn. After that we cruised in to stay with Jenny, who is in very good form. My Mum stayed with Diana. We caught up with Gary and Karen, and Jan caught up with an ex-DHB colleague in the cafe at Moeraki Beach on the way down. The trip the next day to Dunners was pretty uneventful, and we got to check out Warren's place, which is brilliant! He has done so much to the place already. It is light-years more organised than our place, and we have been here coming up eight years... <sigh>. Erica was staying, so we got to see her as well.

The wedding in Dunedin was great: though the weather was not very co-operative. The ceremony was held out at Wal's Plantland in Mosgiel, with the reception just on the other side of Mosgiel, in a local hall. Sarah and Allan's friends had done a great job of decorating the hall, with everyone doing a little, to share the work around and make the day easy for them.

 

We also got taken up in some wee two seater planes for a scenic flight from Taeiri Areoclub by Geoff and his mate Gerard. We had a blast, with Geoff trusting Jan enough to fly his baby. We went out over Port Otago and Larnach's Castle and it was wonderful.

And below you can see bits of our flight from Taeiri along the Otago Peninsular and back. It is almost ten minutes long as I made this for myself, so I remember it!

All in all a great trip. Except on our first night in Dunedin we got a call from Nadine to say that Bonnie was unable to put any weight on her hind leg, and didn't want to eat, move, or otherwise. John was away with his tour, we were at the other end of the country. We got Nadine to call the vet, and she contacted a good friend of John's who knows Bonnie well to go with her. The vet rang me after she had seen Bonnie, and said that she had broken her knee from the weight of the tumour on her hind leg. It was time. She was in her 13th year: not bad for a dog with a heart murmur and a very malignant tumour. And full of joy for all but the last day of her life. So very sad though. And terrible for all the main people in her life to be away, and to not be able to say a last goodbye.

Aside from that terrible news, Finn is doing well, and settling in with Boo. She began with a face like "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest" (Henry II 1133–89 about Thomas Becket, Ratcliffe, 2006) and has now shifted into resigned mode. Even sometimes now moving into running interference mode: when Finn is getting told off, she pushes in to protect him. She is such a nutter when considering the amount he hangs off her lips, ears and cheeks. She should, by rights, simply abandon him to his just desserts. 

Finn is not that conducive for good PhD writing (which is what I am supposed to be doing!), but he is a joy to have. He has certainly helped to fill in the huge gap left by Bonnie.

Jan is back at work, and I am trying to write. NMIT starts again at the end of February, and I want to get a lot more done before then. All my prep is complete, and my supervisory team is ready to go, so hopefully things won't be too difficult this year.

Our new couch arrived two and a half weeks early (thanks Smith's City) and so now we have it. The really strange thing is that the one we saw in the shop was less... 'bouffant' than this one. I guess from all the bums on seats the couch had packed down a bit, whereas our one is still pretty puffy. We need to apply some serious backsides to this to flatten it out to our expectations! I don't think I have ever said that before about something new...

We had a BBQ down at Miranda's at number 99 on the road, which was a lovely way to spend a glorious summer afternoon. We got a date for Cards Against Humanity out of that session, and found out about a huge eucalypt that had come down on Zig & Lib's place, which Jan could get enough wood out of to make an outdoor seat.

Erica, Tracey and H came around to dinner one night and brought Ollie. They got to eat the scraps of the BBQ, and even Finn got the hang of how to sit politely for Erica.

An ex-workmate of Jan's gave us some tomatoes that weren't quite ripe yet. I lay them out on the rug inside the sliding doors in the lounge to redden up, and once done, I bottled 22 litres of tomato puree. It was a race between me and the puppy, as the tomatoes just fitted nicely in his mouth, so, if not carefully watched, he kept stealing them and taking them outside to chew (obviously much nicer mouth feel than the actual toys we have lying everywhere!).  I need to find some more tomatoes as ours have hardly grown this year, and I do like tomato soup in winter.

Jan won second prize in the Sarau Festival jam competition this year, with another crack at blackcurrant and lime. But it was a bit too firm, and he knew that when he entered, but still got placed pretty well. We caught up with Jan and Renate, Killian and Sarah, spent lots of time with Sue, saw Gary and Nicki, had a brew with a few of the neighbours, and generally had a great time.

The sunsets and sunrises continue to give us much to be grateful for, even out of a zippy wee car on the way home from the fair.

Back to you all next month

Sam (& Jan)

• Ratcliffe, S. (2006). Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (5th ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

News from Nelson - September 2017

Hi everyone,
More sad news for 2017. My Uncle Norman passed away on the first of September at 5.45pm. Both Jan and I were with him at the end. My Mother had gone away for a few days to Auckland at Izzy’s 2nd birthday (Tessa's little boy), and the day she left he started to slip away. My brother came down, and together we saw him off on his last journey. He, like my parents, donated his body to the Otago Medical School, so the undertakers will do a special medical embalming and get him transported to Otago.

We held a memorial at the village he lived at for a decade, for his friends and neighbours to remember him. A lot of them had been visiting them, including a couple of them who can no longer drive, but happily biked the ten kilometre round trip to see him. That's dedication. My sister came up for the memorial, which was nice.

I am now winding up his affairs. His will has to go through probate, and apparently there is quite a queue in the High Court at present, so this is going to take a while. And, in going through this process again, I learned something new: if you are in a long term relationship, you need to have your bank account in joint names, not simply have signing authority. This is because at death, signing authority ceases but having a joint account means that the funds are free straight away for the surviving account holder. I hadn't realised the difference: and that is much easier than waiting for probate.

Jan's birthday was a fairly quiet affair at Poppy Thai, a Thai restaurant in Richmond. The food was good, and we had quite a range of people there - including Karen and Max whom we haven't seen in quite a while, despite them living out in Cotterel Road now.

Jan's boss at the DHB resigned this month, so they asked Jan if he would take on more hours. Of course he said yes! <sigh> He has gone up to 36 hours, but, instead of doing five days, he has packed the extra hour into four days of nine hours. That means he can keep playing in the quartet on Mondays, which is nice. What is really funny though is that Jan's boss was gone for a bit over a week, then was suddenly back as a contractor. It is also really murky about whether she is still the manager or not, and no one really seems to have any oversight of the actual practices going on there. The more I hear about this organisation, the more of a management debacle it appears to be.

Jenny L came to Nelson and we caught up with her for lunch at Karanga and dropped her off at the airport (which was lovely). She had been up for a couple of family birthdays. After that we went around to Glenys and Kevin's for Kev's birthday.

We know it is cold when Bonnie and Boo curl up together... and our spring has been cold and wet this year. Though, in saying that, we think Boo likes Bonnie more than Bonnie likes Boo. When Bonnie went to the vet for the day, Boo was totally at a loose end. Quite surprising.

And, speaking of couches - well, pictures of a couch, anyway - we have finally got around to ordering two new couches for our living area. We had meant to do this the year we moved in, but not only was money tight, but we just didn't quite get around to it. The intervening eight years didn't really get us any closer, either. However, two things came together this month: I was washing the upholstery and realised that it is getting VERY thin in places, and the burgundy has gone grey where the sun has bleached it; and we got invited to a 'cost plus 10%' evening for Farmside account holders at a local furniture shop. We went in, and found a lovely L-shaped leather couch to replace two of our old ones... which then left us with needing another two seater to replace the remaining two seater, and we found that at another store. Both are on order, in chocolate brown. The two seater should be with us in 6 weeks, and the L-shaped one in 16 weeks. No rush - the old ones were 23 years old, after all :-)

The rubbish weather has brought some lovely sunrises with it, which is nice. Always a two way thing!

The NSO had a pretty ambitious programme for the spring concert, including Pictures at an Exhibition, which I managed to find illustrations for, and popped on a PowerPoint for Jan to change as the movements progressed. This concert was in the Nelson College Hall.

I got an interesting surprise at the concert's after-match function: Jan has decided to step back onto the committee as the Chair - in the same month that he has gone back up to almost full time. That will also be interesting. He is also currently in rehearsals for the Cantata Memoria in conjunction with the Nelson Civic Choir, which will be performed at Labour Weekend.
 
Again, to polish my writing I have been undertaking another MOOC over four weeks, the University of Leicester's course, Discovering Your PhD Potential. This is proving very interesting. I have got quite a few tips already. I am still plodding away on getting my academic articles written: up to draft #8 on one of them now. By crikey, I am sick of the sight of it! The other one is languishing in "not enough data collected yet" land. I am trying to get more students to answer the survey, but there is only so much I can do without creating unacceptable amounts of bias <sigh>

I am looking to the study break and spending some time with Lara, who is coming down to stay next month. It should be great fun. 

That will do us for this month: back to you in another four weeks... and hopefully everyone is well next time.


Sam (& Jan)

News from Nelson - August 2017

Hi everyone,
I hope you are all in good health.

As I mentioned last month, my semester started well, and the students are now well underway with their projects. I have a great team of supervisors, and we are all only directly supervising 9 students each. Whew: it is like night and day compared to the beginning of previous semesters. Some students will still struggle, but I hope that we can get them all to 'competent' level. We have good library and mentor support for the international students, and enough of the mentors are coming to our weekly supervisor meetings to share the knowledge around about exactly what the expectations are. 

In addition to the FutureLearn courses I told you about last month, I started another MOOC this month which ran for four weeks through Berkley on Academic and Business Writing. It was an OK course, and I did learn some new things. This is all in support of getting a couple of academic publications submitted toward the end of this year... though I am running out of time, rather!

My family celebrated my brother's birthday at Nahm, a Vietnamese restaurant along the waterfront. They do lovely food - and there are good options for people with all the restrictions I now have in order to avoid migraines (and the migraine avoidance is going very well).

I was at the hairdressers when Katherine and Craig walked in, on a spur of the moment weekend trip to Nelson. We caught up with them for dinner at E-Street (East Street), a local vegetarian restaurant. A serendipidous meeting and a lovely night out.

Jan is starting to need a bit more focus... and is borrowing my magifying glasses! He suits them better than I do though :-(

As usual this month, although the mornings were crisp we had some gorgeous clear days. Lovely. And easy for Bonnie to cope with a good long walk. The cancerous tumour on her leg has been very slow growing (thank goodness) and it is not yet impeding her at all, nor is it causing her any pain. As Jan keeps saying, "She doesn't know she has it, and we aren't telling her"! Boo has been taking herself off for walks during the day. She doesn't seem to have been getting herself into trouble, but it does remind me that there is an element of "Well, if you don't take me for a walk, I will have to take myself" which is spurring me to take them both for a walk morning and evening, regardless of the weather.
 

Jan is going to sell his motorbike and get a BMW later this year. John is in charge of the advertising, sale and new purchase. The BMW should be here early December, but will depend on what John manages to find in Europe between now and then.

It has taken us a while, but we have started to buy Oaklands milk. This is A2 milk (read more on this here), locally produced, and we self-fill our own bottles in a Latreria machine (very cute!). It has cut our plastic recycling down significantly... the best plastic being the plastic you don't buy or use. You get a wee 'token' - like a key fob - which you slide into the machine and the chip holds your balance. You load funds onto it by putting notes into a slot. The milk is very nice: not homogenised, and doesn't go off as quickly as the supermarket milk does.

We had afternoon tea with my Mother a couple of times, and visited Uncle Norman as much as we could in the nursing home - Kensington Court in Stoke. He is continuing to be plagued by ulcers and is steadily growing more frail. My Mother has not managed to visit him very often as she has had a couple of colds, following on from her pneumonia in June. 

While Jan is enjoying only working three days a week, I am sensing quite a bit of edginess in him. He has started to play in a quartet on Monday mornings, but whether that will be enough to structure his week will remain to be seen!

Until next time

Sam (& Jan)

News from Nelson - January 2017

Hi everyone,
We hope all of you are fit and well.

My father has been in hospital for a few days with breathlessness, but has recovered well enough and is now back at home. I think he gave us all a bit of a fright. Strangely enough, in one of those coincidences that seem to happen to Kiwis, he ended up in a bed right next to my sister-in-law's grandfather. 

Jan & I have had a lovely break from work, relaxed, read, watched movies, played pool, got out in the sun, and done quite a few jobs around the house.

We have had visitors: Otto and Lara down from Wellington, Warren from Auckland, and Heidi here from Germany.

It was great to have Otto and Lara here. We baked, set up the train, visited Dawn, had fish and chips at Mapua, ate out at the Moutere Tavern, and watched lots of movies:

 

We went to Golden Bay with Heidi, and, although the weather was pretty overcast, I think we all had a good time. We stopped at Hawkes Lookout; Takaka for morning tea at The Wholemeal Café; The Waikoropupu River and the Springs; Rosy Glow; Langford's Store at Bainham (were I bought a nice new bucket hat); The Naked Possum; The Puponga Café for a picnic outside, then coffee and a view of Farewell Spit from the deck; Wharariki cliffs at Pillar Point; and lastly, Wharariki Beach:

Jan has finally bought chaps for chainsawing, and looks terribly stylish when amongst the trees now!

He has finished all the wood for winter, and is now working on next winter's felling. He also hired a pole saw and had topped all the kanukas outside both sides of our lounge to reclaim some of our view. The kanukas will have bushed out and hedged up by this time next year:

 

When Warren was here, he and Jan worked hard for two entire days to get the string lights up at long last (although there is still some finishing to do). This means there is only ONE more light to go in for the lighting to be complete. Only the patch panel in the office to finish and the supports on the spare bathroom bench to go and the house will be pretty much finished. And it only took seven years, and we aren't thinking of selling any time soon, so we get to enjoy all the completed jobs ourselves.

On Sunday just gone we had the Sarau Fair, which is the annual blackcurrant festival in Upper Moutere, to celebrate the berry harvest. Jan entered two of his blackcurrant jams - made from Tracey's organic blackcurrants and our 'support' fruit. The flavours were blackcurrant and apple, and blackcurrant and lime. The blackcurrant and lime was by far the nicest.

However, Jan entered the Jam under my name, saying it is 'easier' for Kiwis to read and say... and 'I' won first and second prize for the jams. Well done me ;-D

We have also managed to catch up with the Cools's already this year at the Sarau Fair, along with Stu and Anne, and some visitors from Germany, Wolfgang and Renate.

Our weather has been both good and awful over the summer:

 

Boo is settling in well, and, aside from totally lacking traffic sense, is a pleasure. Thank you, Erik!

We have larger holidays planned until December, when we think we are going to head to Germany for a few weeks for a - hopefully - white Christmas. I may be going to the Gold Coast once or twice this year for my PhD - possibly July and November. As these trips will be just a few days, if the timing is right, Jan & I will both go. Also, we are both going to Auckland at the end of October and the beginning of November for four days. I have a conference to attend, and, as Jan is only working three days a week, he thought he would join me. This part-time lark is fantastic.

Happy birthday to Mike S, Eberhard, Steph, Gary R, Linda, Kenn, Kathleen, Pat and Kent.

Ka kite ano

Sam (& Jan)