Ten thousand pounds poorer. 

Merry Christmas!

Ahem. So, we are in New Zealand,some of us on a big marlin-catching glamorous boat, some of us in the living room at our parent’s place while we try not to get too sad looking out of the window at the oily rain while we wonder if the children will stop wetting the camper-van-seat-mattresses that they are sleeping on every night, and while we wonder how to get the weesy-pyjamas washed and dried in time before the Northland mugginess makes everything smell a little like wet dog. 

More Questions Raging Through My Wind-Swept Jet-Lagged Mind:

1. Will the children like it here better than London?

2. Does London miss me? Has it even noticed I am gone?

3. Why does is the bread in New Zealand (nattily named Breads Of The World in the supermarket over the road where, incidentally, I was an ace checkout girl about 18 YEARS AGO) all spongey and soft and white and samey? Did the French teach us nothing? (Actually, I suppose the French haven’t actually visited all that much, but still.)

4.If the rain continues, what shall we do to entertain the children? They will most certainly turn to furtive scribbling on the walls, that that won’t go down very well with the grandparents.

5. Who wants to play Scrabble?

6. Can I eat more of Dad’s baking without getting really fat?

7. Why does my new Christopher Kane tattoo jumper just look like a floral polyester middle-aged-lady’s top in this country? (I know the answer to that one, actually. CONTEXT.)

8. Why am I lacking so obviously in seratonin? Will my vitamin D deficiency get sorted out with all this rain?

However, the coffee has been routinely good, the first week at the bach mostly a ball of joyous fun.The cousins turned out to be excellent, The Salvation Army filled with people I have grown up with, all lovely and friendly and fun, the magazines excellent, the feijoa-related foodstuffs the thing of dreams.There is a little tiny 1940’s beach house we have our eye on. The is pohutakawa everywhere you look. Oh! And we finally found our wedding album after thinking that it was lost forever, hidden amongst boxes of cracking 30-year-old tupperware and mouldering cushions and dead mice in our Storage Room Of Unbelievable Junk.

And we had TWO bonfires at the beach with marshmallows on sticks, no less.

Here are some photos to make all of you in the Northern hemisphere a tiny big bit jealous:

The flight was as unspeakably horrendous as I knew it would be. It was so much worse than giving birth. Instead of a nice new baby at the end of it all, you got New Zealand Customs. They make you take your shoes off. There were tears. The children thought it was the middle of a very long night, having had about 4 hours sleep over two days. We were bleary and cranky and sweaty and sick with clothes that had bits of unidentifiable curry sauce all over in dribbly patches. Dry skin. Red moisture-less eyes that wouldn’t close very convincingly. Breath of the devil. Flat hair, new spots, burgeoning sinus infections, fat ankles, baggy redundant maternity tights, no tolerance for people, customs, relatives or kind friends.

Merry Christmas!

Anyway. There are ways to feel less like you are at the bottom of the Pacific on a rainy grey day. Bidding on Alex Monroe gold bumblebee pendants and putting DVF ipad cases into my shopping cart at matchesfashion.com are all things that soothe the homesick tender self. Buying stuff from amazon that will be sitting for me waiting under the rickety stairs to my basement flat.

Bayswater, I love you more now than I ever did. I will see you soon, after another 36 hour journey with no baby at the end. 

Fish makes me sad, too.