Flimsy Houses?

I am going to talk about houses this week. If you have looked on my website you will have read my thoughts on New Zealand houses but this article is more about English attitudes surrounding NZ housing. Early on during our night out last week, when you could still make pleasant conversation without dribbling, a few of us were discussing local house construction methods. Joyce mentioned the "Blue Peter" method, where the houses seemed to built out of cardboard and sticky tape and then sprayed with cement. (Do they still make things out of cardboard and sticky tape on Blue Peter, come to think of it do they still make Blue Peter, perhaps someone will let me know.) A lot of the new houses are made in this fashion. The house we rent at the moment is such an example, if you push really hard on the outside wall you can feel it give. Now Andy has bought his house and has the attitude that, if that is how the houses are built, then what can you do? Vaughn is a builder and his answer was to build his own house made of stone. While listening to this it kind of put me in mind of the story of the "Three Pigs" and if I could have found a barrel chested wolf with the right "Huffing and Puffing" credentials, it would have been interesting to test the various houses.


If you come to NZ with a large bag of money, you may be tempted to buy a house, there are a lot of "lovely looking " ones out there. They do perhaps seem a fair price for the space that you get if you have just converted your Pounds to $NZ. It is just that if you have to buy a house with Kiwi Dollars that you have earned here, and have to take on another life time of debt, that you really do think twice and become critical of the construction methods.


While talking about attitudes, there is a perception amongst some Kiwis that all the Brits that have moved here have sold up in the Surrey "Stockbroker Belt" and have come here with a shed load of money and that is the reason house prices have doubled in the last 4 years. What I can tell you is that the group of Brits that I was with, were all grafters from Durham, Liverpool and Halifax all doing our very best to get by. No large bags of money, just a great attitude.

A quiet drink with friends

With us working every weekend, we don't get out much, but given the right opportunity we make the effort. This Saturday we had an invite to a gathering of expats. We were all to meet in one of the local Papamoa pubs. We managed to get away from the cafe around 9pm, got home, quick shower and off out. We dropped Georgia off at Marilyn's house. She was babysitting for the group. Georgia would have the company of Luke and Rebbecca. As we did not really know what the night would bring, we had a loose arrangement that Georgia might sleep over or we might pick her up as we walked home. This was a good arrangement as it allowed us the freedom to go home, stop at friends or pass out in a ditch.

We all met up in the"Rain Bar", which is the newest bar in Papamoa. It is the kind of bar where you get your Heineken served in a vase and they knock the froth off the top with a wooden spatula. Nice, but no atmosphere. After a couple of vases, a lot of chat and introductions (Am I the only one with the ability to immediately forget the name of the person I have just been introduced to). By the end of the night I had just about remembered every ones names apart from Frank, Liz's husband, his name isn't Frank, but he looks like a Frank I used to know, so he became Frank, if you follow me. After the Rain Bar we went to the Pap Tav which is a friendly locals bar with a real mix of people. More introductions, more instantly forgotten names, more merriment and good conversation. For the entertainment of everyone, they had one of those "Bucking Bronco" machines, where for $5.00 you could sit on it's back for about two seconds, before being jettisoned about 12ft into the air and landing on an inflatable mattress. About 1.30pm a nice young lady asked us if we wouldn't mind moving a long now as the pub closed about half hour ago. There did not seem to be a plan of how we were getting home, so we had a group hug in the car park. Fortunately Jeff had a better plan and rang his daughter. She arrived dressed in her PJ's having been summoned from her bed, her embarrassment was complete when we all started singing rugby songs. When we arrived at Jeff's house it was no surprise that she made a quick exit. Now if you were paying attention earlier you will remember that we dropped Georgia off at Marilyn's house, so it was a bit of a surprise to find her and Luke busy killing aliens at Jeff's house, there was an explanation but it seemed a little complicated (In fact talking was becoming a little complicated by now). Anyway a quick night cap and a bowl of chips later (2 hours later) and it was time to go home.

Now being a responsible father I tried to engage Georgia with sensible and thoughtful conversation to demonstrate that her Dad had not really had one beer too many. Little questions like "how long has no.42 had a giant pineapple in their garden?" were met with the answer "Dad you're a drunken idiot". She reminded me of that fact every 2 or 3 minutes. To avoid too much embarrassment she positioned herself about 20ft behind me and 20ft in front of her mother, who was in the middle of her famous cat impersonations: A cat stuck up a tree, meow, meow, meow. A cat asking for food, MEEEOW! A cat crossing the road, SCREEEECH.........THUMP. When Georgia found me laying on my back on the pavement, I pointed out that it was to get a better view of the beautiful clear night sky and "my goodness Venus is really bright and close at this time of year". "Dad it's a streetlight" and she kindly reminded me of the type of idiot I was. Straight to bed when we got in. I woke up a little later wondering how the owl got into my mouth and whether it was possible to actually die of thirst in your sleep. I took the risk and closed my eyes.

Now to be honest none of us felt that motivated to go to work, but to work we must go. Joyce managed to work a smile on her face with some judiciously applied lipstick, although the customers may have wondered why they were being served by Coco The Clown. (Joyce can juggle though). I was out back juggling ideas, to throw up now or to throw up later. We spent the day like the cast of Night of The Living Dead (whoops there goes my arm). I am definitely too old for this. Got to go now I have just seen my arm crawl under the fridge.

Riding Horses

Georgia has been wanting to have a ride on a horse for a while now, so with it being Easter Holidays, and the Cafe being closed on Tuesday, we booked a lesson for her. The farm was about 15 minutes drive up into the Ohauti Hills followed by a steep drop down into a secluded valley. Now I have to admit I am not a great fan of horses. In fact I am not a great fan of any animal that I don't think I can beat in a fair fight (which pretty much means anything bigger than a chihuahua I suppose. I once gave a good showing against a ferret, but after a titan struggle those razor sharp teeth won the day). It's not that I don't like horses, it just seems that they are not to keen on me, a sly bite here a blatant head butt there and I'm spitting teeth, you get the picture.

Anyway the lesson started with catching the horse, grooming it, putting a saddle on it and then riding it. I have to admit Georgia took to it really well. I sat back in the sunshine swatting killer mosquitoes and watched. I was at one point slightly confused as to why Georgia was riding the horse backwards for a while, but it was a balance thing evidently. Georgia got to walk and trot and was steering the horse around the arena very nicely. After a trot up the farm track and back, the lesson was over. We parted with $30, and as we left the horse, called Blaze, (aren't they all?) gave me a sideways look which I took to mean "get you next time buddy". Georgia did point out that a horse's eyes are on the side of it's head, so the look was probably nothing personal, mm..........

Easter Jazz

It has been a beautiful Easter Weekend, the sun has been shining and that was great news for the 30,000 people who visited Tauranga to watch the Jazz Festival. The most popular day is the Saturday when "the Strand" is filled with people in the bars watching the free performances. Unfortunately I just hear about all the fun because I am stuck in a kitchen making hundreds of Pizzas. Mount Maunganui has it's own mini festival, they close the main street and there are players outside cafes and in the streets. The photos are courtesy of my daughter, Georgia, who reports that it was busy with traditional jazz being played. There was one performance however, which intrigued her. It seemed to be two guys beating each other up in time to the music. (see photos). When people were not watching jazz they were on the beach and then on Sunday night all 30,000 came in for pizza (I might just be exaggerating a bit, but boy we were

busy!).

Parties and Bike runs

A couple of things this weekend, we were invited to a friends daughters 18th birthday party, which was held at a local pub on Saturday night. We don't get out much of a night with the cafe being open till 9pm, but we did manage to get there before 10pm. There was a wedding party going on at the same time with lots of kids around, which was good as we had Georgia and her friend with us. Georgia's friend is called Katrina and she was staying with us for the weekend. She lives on a yacht in the local marina. When we went to pick her up on Saturday morning, there were a lot of people gathered around and a large police presence. Talking to Katrina's mother, we found out that one of the boat owners had fallen into the marina after returning to her boat after a party, she drowned and the body was being fished out of the water. Anyway we stayed at the party for a couple of hours, the kids had fun running around and new friends were made.

On Sunday the yearly Easter Egg Bike run was held. This is where hundreds of Bikers from all over, gather chocolate eggs to take to the children's ward at the local hospital. The run goes right past the cafe and is good to watch. The main problem with this event is that there are only ever about 6 kids in the children's ward.