APOLOGIES

View from Riverhead Inn, New Zealand

Normal blogs will be resumed as soon as possible and as I have access to my own laptop for one evening only, I have posted a few photos from our short time in NZ and more lately.  Sorry if they do not really relate to any of the happenings.

Emmy, Hayden, Cameron - Jan 2013 NZ

Lachlan - Jan 2013

 
Life has been a bit too complicated to keep up the normal service back here in the UK with a computer which will not talk to my Ipod, so the pickings are very thin here in Blighty.

Weather Report:  Absolutely freezing (particularly in summer holiday clothing)

Nice old posters photographed from the Station Noticeboard UK

Activities:  Cooking, food shopping, and watching daytime 'telly' - mostly football or golf, driving backwards and forwards through the New Forest, handling all the incoming and outgoing phone calls, checking Emails, filling in yet more forms for the French Authorities who now think that I live in New Milton.  I have therefore varied their input of Attestion d'Existence paper collection by getting yet another form verified and signed at the nearest Town Hall.  They won't like it - No change there then but it should give them some indication after 18 months that I am alive still.  I have also busied myself writing letters of bitter complaint to my European Members of Parliament because of this contrived delay and annoyance.  Our local MP had to resign after pleading guilty to perverting the course of justice and there will be a By-Election in Eastleigh tomorrow.  We are slightly agog at all the interest Eastleigh is attracting on the national news.  However, we have seen Sainsburys, Domino Pizza and the statue of the Railwayman dozens of times in the background to all the throngs of TV reporters sampling the delights of the town centre.  Next week after the media circus have packed up and gone home, it will be a ghost town with tumbleweed blowing down all the roadways again!

Agapanthus growing wild NZ - hope this isn't a repeat!

K has travelled back from NZ via the UK and stayed for a week, which has cheered things up a bit.

Dad is doing remarkably well and keeping very busy.  I spend a lot of time trying not to step on his toes.  Once K arrived, there were three of us all helpfully trying to do the same thing  in swift succession, which was hilarious, but only if you weren't there.

Mum has improved but not dramatically so and is still stuck in hospital.   We have lots of concerns about the continuity of care in the hospital and whether Mum was actually getting anything to eat or drink in there, and in response to this, my sister-in-law Jan, a trained nurse, has taken to spending a few hours with Mum in the hospital each day to check things out a bit and give hands-on care.  This has at least made Mum much more comfortable and gives her some assurance that there is somebody around who knows what's what!