Guess who's back?

Did you hear it? It was the sound of 2011 whooshing past as I neglected this blog. As each week passed the burden weighed a little heavier, and the only respite was the very few retrospective entries which brought me up to our arrival in Aotearoa. And that only took me to 13 September, which is four months ago! So, new year, new start: I'm casting off any lingering obligations and leaving them in 2011, so aside from a quick, one-entry update, I'm starting afresh, from now.

In some senses, a lot has happened, and in others, life hasn't moved on much at all. The All Blacks (just) won the World Cup, so Matt was very happy and I was relieved not to have to deal with grief on a national scale. We reunited with friends and family in Auckland and Northland. We bought cars and got mobile phones. We went to Gisborne and checked out our house on Hurahura Road, which - far from the vaseline-lense pastel-coloured dream sequence my romantic recollections conjured - sat before us as a derelict money-pit half consumed by our rampant garden, declaring brutally: "What the hell have you done?". We responded by hurling ourselves into beating our weed-choked half acre into submission. We pruned trees, vines and shrubs, dug and planted gardens and cursed our thieving ex-tenants with each new discovery of evidence of their plunder.

Weed-filled vegetable gardens

Overgrown berry patch

Rampant Wisteria

A pretty garden lies beneath

Welcome to the jungle

Where to start?

The driveway is under there somewhere

Secateurs at the ready

After some weeks of staying with friends and family while Matt's aunt house-sat Hurahura and we pondered whether we would live in Gisborne or Auckland, we took decisive action and moved in. My mum, along with my brother Joel, his wife Joey and their baby came to stay and it started to feel like home. We had barbecues and filled the paddling pool for eight-month-old Elsie, enjoying lazy sun-drenched days in the backyard, in town and at the beach.

Elsie in the paddling pool

Else & I hang out while the fence gets painted

When they left we unpacked and started tackling the interior. We pulled out carpet and peeled back wallpaper. We had windows stripped, rotten weatherboards removed, ceilings sanded and painted, the house insulated, and walls plastered and painted. The fishpond has been mucked out, refilled and revived, the gardens and greenhouse have been planted and have produced copious flowers and vegetables. The berry patch was cleaned up and bloomed and fruited. The citrus has been fertilised and sprayed for whitefly and we've consumed litres of tangelo and orange juice.

The house emerges

Driveway post-clean-up

The raspberry bushes can breathe again

The greenhouse revives

Our front veranda

Vege patches reloaded

Weeds gone, flowers planted

My flower patch

Our bedroom stripped and reclad

We hosted Matt's mother's 60th birthday and then Matt's family Christmas - his mother has 11 brothers and sisters so everything is done on a pretty large scale to cater for all of them and their families.

Preparing for Christmas catering

Londoners Vic & Iain were back for Christmas

Matt started work just before Christmas. We're not sure how it will work longer term, but for now he is spending time between Auckland, Wellington and Gisborne. After Christmas we headed to the Far North for my father's 70th birthday, which was combined with my stepbrother's 40th. It was a great weekend, but New Zealand has just had the wettest Christmas on record and it rained relentlessly through the day and night.

Dad at 70 with the clan

We've just said goodbye to Joel, Joey and Elsie, who have finished their nine-month maternity/sabbatical stint in New Zealand and returned to London. It was very hard to say goodbye but we had a good block of QT with them the week before they left, even fitting in Else's first trip to the zoo.

Elsie & Joel at Auckland Zoo

The last days of Elsie's trip to New Zealand

We are still pretty unsettled. In many ways it's great to be home, but... hmmm... we're still pondering the but. Perhaps we'll always carry a sense of restlessness, wherever we are.