Ingredients:7 weeks backpacking around Asia1 shipping container, with all personal possessions, delayed for no good reason1 vintage car, ready for import, and assorted bureaucratic requirements4 weeks of staying in someone else's house1 9-day bad head-cold1 sporadic internet connection1 wedding in far-off Wales2 small children, aged three and four years1 flat, damaged in multiple small but

In the red corner, weighing in at 51 million people and 50,352 square miles, we have England! England has been around the world a few times, conquering vulnerable nations and dishing out abusive imperialist diatribes to all challengers. England comes complete with a Northern Hemisphere resume, including efficient internet shopping, and more old shit than you can shake a stick at. To survive a

I shouted at someone in a meeting today. Things are obviously getting to me, in some kind of undefinable way. I need to work it out, and then I'll write it down.

I had been back in New Zealand for less than 24 hours when I received the call every migrant dreads."Hello. How was your holiday?" said my mother, but her voice sounded like it was missing something. Hollow, and exhausted. I launched into stories about what a great time we'd had, but how it had been marred with having to deal with the problems of our tenants. "That's nice." she replied, and it

In July we reported that a pair of non-resident landlords had been having serious problems with their tenants. The tenants had stopped paying rent and the day after notice to quit was served, a large portion of the ceiling in the main bedroom mysteriously collapsed.Following these events, and despite repeated written demands, the tenants failed to pay rent and threatened to counter-claim for

We left Pak n Save and drove to Ruby Bay, to find the place we were to stay in for the remaining two nights on the South Island. The power of google had brought us to possibly the best holiday home in the universe: it promised sea views, a beach frontage, interesting high-quality decor, organic chicken eggs laid fresh every morning by the local flock, and an olive grove.As the sun was beginning

...there were two hours of uninterrupted silence. The birds have flown. I have had insomnia for the last two nights. I physically could not cycle to work this morning, so I stood at the bus-stop. Alarmingly, I didn't even have the energy for anger. I passively stood at the bus-stop and didn't care one whit whether the bus would show up, and if so, when. I stared vacantly into space and when

Regular readers will know that I am a woman who values her mooching-time. I like to spend some time, every few days, with no commitments, and nothing to do. It keeps me sane. Regular readers will also know that Cowboy prefers perpetual motion, and this dependency on activity is the only aspect of his character which has been known to forge in my inner being a white-hot scimitar of fury. We

It's time for Round 2 of Ritual Humiliation! I went to another job interview. This job scores 7/10 on the scale of perfect ways to earn money, so I was reasonably nervous a whole five days before I ever set foot inside the board room and placed myself at the mercy of a man in a blue and white flannel paisley shirt, flanked by two very intellectually astute women. By the time I was plumbing the

There's a gap, and I've set up a new home in it. It's the emotional gap between loving every moment of seeing your long lost friends (and most moments of communing with your family), and needing two days where the only thing you do is lie in bed under a huge duvet with a book and a giant mug of hot chocolate, while Radio 4 plays unobtrusively in the background. The yin hemisphere of my brain

Recently, Cowboy has been suffering strange insomnia which causes him to wake in a froth at 4am. Usually I can sleep through his huffing and puffing, but this morning I woke up as he was getting up to go downstairs at 4am, and then again at 5am, when I realised he hadn't migrated back under the covers.This being unusual, I decided to get up and check he was OK. I found him downstairs reading "

Owing to enthusiastic Veuve Cliquot consumption last night, followed by a bout of insomnia between 2.30am and 5.30am, I am not at my best today. Insomnia is a relatively recent thing for me, so I'm not used to dealing with it. Every time it happens I swear to myself that next time, I will not lie there staring at the ceiling, but go and do something useful with the time. Each time, I think no,

Last night, for the first time, the earth moved for Cowboy and I. Literally, not figuratively.As you can see from the picture below, Aotearoa lies directly on a fault line, which accounts for its spectacular beauty, but also for the 15,000 earthquakes that show up on the boffins' equipment every year. Between 100 and 150 of those can be felt by humans.In the temporary accommodation, we got all

So, today is 'sit at home and study' day. I've had insomnia for the last few nights so I didn't manage to get up til nearly 9am (bad, bad...I have so much to do) and then wasted a further hour ditzing around, going to the post office and eating breakfast. Then I fretted about the noisy neighbours.The noisy neighbours live upstairs. My home is a victorian maisonette (maisonette = living area where