Installed

Photo on right is of our new house, with Winston and Vera discovered sitting.

Have a wonderful Easter, everyone!

Here, we have daily home Internet access again after several weeks. Yesterday, when it was installed, was also the day that we closed on selling our Te Kuiti house and buying our new cottage 45 minutes further north. Today is a sunny public holiday and so we are typing this blog entry happily and gratefully, in what is now officially our house.

Lemons wait to be gathered from below the tree on our front lawn. Winston is playing cars in his new room. Vera is busy deflating the trusty queen-size air mattress that has been our bed for six months. The lady who lived here before us has left us some single beds, and we also now have our own queen frame and 'proper' mattress that we received -- wrapped and brand new! -from a second-hand store in exchange for a fridge that we had to spare. (That's enough about beds. This isn't a side alley in Siam. Ed.)

The last few months have been a little tiring, although in terms of the house deals things have gone pretty much as smoothly as we could possibly have hoped. We felt so strongly that we wanted to buy this cottage -- it was the first and only property we inspected after it crossed our minds to move nearer to Auckland -- and we are extremely grateful that we found a buyer for Te Kuiti so soon after making the offer on this address.

By the by, having a crunchy stone driveway is working a quiet but powerful effect on Matt. Hearing that resonant sound under his feet as he walks is making him feisty and squire-ish. After snapping the photo you see above he was striding up the drive to download it.
"Get some good shots?" asked Vera sweetly.
"Apparently, as I'm walking back into the house" spat Matt back at her, and probably with a sneer, although Vera couldn't swear to it as the sun was in her eyes.

Well, it's time for that imposing gentleman to go and sit outside with Winston to play. Community opinion is that Matt should take things easy this Easter anyway. He has been Ingenuity personified this week, and it has taken its toll. On Tuesday, embarrassed for an iron to press some clothes for a job interview, Matt glanced around the house for a substitute device. He spied a saucepan and a hob and a tap, heated a splash of water in the pan, and used the hot metal underside on his trousers. After taking them off, of course.
After that piece of swift thinking and swifter action he finds himself needing rest, rest, a modicum of rest. He might even parley up Pant-Pressing Tuesday -- as it becoming known -- into a book, he says, or at least a novella. Either way, airy nothing will be given a local habitation and a name that it won't forget in a hurry.

It'll all depend on how the mood takes him.