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

It's been 17 days since I returned to the UK, and in that time I've noted that some things have changed, and some have remained the same. After an absence of two and a half years, some adjustment is inevitably required, I suppose. The novelty will wear off, eventually. For the moment, I'm relaxing into the UK in the same way you might flop into a large beanbag and note that somewhere deep in the

Is anyone still out there reading this blog? Apologies for this stream of consciousness, but it's about all I can manage for the moment.I'm back in the UK, at last. There are, of course, ups and downs to any arrival back in one's home country after an absence of significant length. To compound these into enormous troughs and peaks, I've been on the road and are suffering some mild reverse

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

The last couple of weeks could be described as my quattuordecimus horribilus. It seems, however, that things are looking up. Thank you, internets, for the supportive comments. When you're going about your daily business and life trips you up, it helps to know that others empathise and wish you well. It's never easy to try and address an enormous issue with dishonest people who have possession

Disgruntled non-resident landlords served notice on two tenants from a North London flat last Friday. The tenants have repeatedly failed to pay rent on time, and made an unauthorised attempt to sub-let a room in the flat, in breach of the lease.The tenants, who cannot be named for legal reasons, have not made a single rent payment on time since moving in over seven months ago. The May payment

Because we don't like to sit still for too long, we have moved house.The Fort did have spectacular views but unfortunately it suffered from the following practical difficulties:Being built in the 1990s and thus devoid of any character and arguably even ugly;Being built in the 1990s and thus of such poor construction quality that when Welly gets up any kind of a gale, the Fort shakes;Being devoid

Deerpark Heights, Queenstown, February 2005*.It is exactly one year since Cowboy and I landed in NZ, bleary-eyed and ignorant.We always said to each other that we would give the experiment at least a year before coming to any kind of decision about eventual duration. We knew there would be hard times; times we would want to pack up and ship back to the place where more people know our names.

My local furniture restorer's office:This definitely took the edge off the pain of having to go and get a repair-quote for the split wardrobe door so we can claim on insurance for the damage to it.

Cowboy and I have run ourselves into the ground this weekend, but it was worth it. But for a few things that need putting away in an as-yet-undetermined location, we have unpacked. I only had one strop based around the fact that Cowboy was gleefully re-wiring everything in sight and simultaneously ignoring pleas that tuning in the VCR that we never use was not exactly top priority, while I did

I am trying to ignore the fact that I have a sore throat. I tried to ignore it last night too, and enjoy my birthday dinner out. We went to a place called The Last Supper, and it was really excellent: superb food, atmosphere, and some half-way decent live music. Unfortunately both Cowboy and I marked ourselves out from the crowd by yawning our way through dinner. Still, I feel that I have

Worldy goods!A van full of removal men arrived two hours earlier than they said they would, and I welcomed them with a giant sigh of relief. Since I had received no confirming telephone call from the removal subcontractor, a slight doubt that the worldly goods would arrive today had entered into my mind.I had to stand in my kitchen and tick boxes off an inventory list as six burly men carried

Everyone's seen The Breakfast Club. Some, more than others: some, maybe even eight or nine times. Some of us even own the soundtrack on CD.I want you to access the deep recesses of your mind: recall the scene in the library where the kids are an hour or two into the detention and Elizabeth Daily's classic "Waiting" plays over scenes of each character undertaking various activities in a vain

Today I feel like I have regressed. One of the aims of coming to Kiwi-land was to reduce stress, find better living, have more space, and generally chill the fuck out for a while. Until today, I was well on the road achieving this.I was having a decent morning of organising things: speaking to the dude in charge of the excavation of the road to the Urban HillFort and ensuring that the lorry

The Urban Hill Fort is still waiting for wordly goods to arrive. The ship is due in port today, but the moving company tell me that it will take until Friday (at the earliest - it's 'pencilled' into their diary) for the worldly goods to actually arrive at my house.First, they have to be inspected by both The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF), and Customs. MAF are checking to see

I'm pining for my things. I like to tell myself I'm not materialistic and in comparison to some people, I don't think I am particularly product-driven, but over the years I have built up the inevitable collection of things which I now feel I need in order to be comfortable. Yes, I can live without them. No, I don't really want to.At the moment, I could probably stack everything in this house

Last night we moved the remainder of our things (the things that are not currently somewhere between Singapore and New Zealand) into our new house. We have no furniture at all, but we do have Sky TV and a broadband internet connection. Hurrah for the age of technology!It's a rental. Feel the joy. I love cleaning up after years of ingrained lardy behaviour by someone else who doesn't care

We were told by an unreliable authority that the rules on obtaining an NZ driving licence were such that if you are a foreigner, you have to take a paper theory-test within 30 days of landing in NZ. I have my doubts, because I can't find this rule documented anywhere, and as you can imagine, I really didn't feel like doing any more learning for the forseeable future, let alone in the first few

The next task to be completed was Finding Somewhere To Live. It's been eight years since I last looked for a rental property on the open market, so I embarked on the mission with the kind of wrong-headed positivity which comes before a particularly steep slide into the pit of despair. We had various 'requirements' laid out before we started, as those inane house-finding programmes tell you to do.

We're here! Actually, we've been here for a while but this is the first opportunity I have had to post to my blog without Cowboy breathing down my neck in the internet cafe. Apparently, he hates blogs and wants nothing to do with one that I 'might' create. More about that later, but suffice to say I will have to do some amending of previous posts in order to respect his wishes.After a