Last week The Duchess and I booked Penny in with her favourite dogsitter and headed Oop North on a Monday to Friday trip away. Here’s a brief summary

• Monday:
  • Nice steady drive up from Welly to Rotorua via the Desert Road, lots of tunes, stops to take in a Dutch themed village with windmill and a Maccers break, only marred by a wagtail flying into our grill at 100kmph.
  • Lovely steak on Eat Street then decent night’s kip at the Novotel in Rotorua
• Tuesday:
  • Fairly disappointing fry-up at the hotel (chicken sausages and undercooked bacon, no beans or mushroom, poor for a hotel chain).
  • Brief walk around the city center, highlight being a wander round a historic hotel.
  • The Duchess had had enough of the rotten egg smell, so we checked out early and drove over to Hamilton, deciding not to bother with the thermal pools or trip to Hobbiton.
  • Checked into self-contained apartment at the back of a rather posh house in a horsey area of Hamilton called Tamahere. Fecking freezing, wrapped up warm until the heaters finally kicked in. Owner’s boxer dog didn’t like us and kept coming to tell us in no uncertain terms every 30 minutes. Discovered a channel on the TV that plays nothing but Pointless which is pretty much all I watched while there.
  • Drove into Hamilton in the evening to meet up with our South African ex-neighbours, the daughter having had a nasty accident and breaking her foot.
• Wednesday:
  • Back into Hamilton, dropped The Duchess off in East Hamilton to enjoy a long natter with her friend while I nipped into Hamilton CBD to have a wander round and check out the bookshops, though turned out to be just the one.
  • Rested back at the apartment, more abuse from boxer dog drowned out by episodes of Pointless and a heat pump on full power.
  • Drove to North Hamilton to catch up with old friends that had moved away from Upper Hutt before Covid, really enjoyable natter over a Thai meal. The fact the husband is looking more like Shaun Johnson as he ages was welcome news to The Duchess.
• Thursday:
  • Original plan was to drive on to Taupo and stay another night, but by this point we felt like we’d had a break and were longing for our beds, not to mention Fluffy.
  • We checked out of the apartment, much to the relief of the boxer dog, and headed back down South to Wellington.
  • Midway round Lake Taupo had a call of nature that couldn’t be ignored and made a cheeky pitstop at a camping ground to use their toilet, given I wouldn’t have been able to hold it in until the next public loo. Mid-flow interrupted by loud banging on cubicle door and angry woman ranting – thankfully calmed down by The Duchess before I zipped up who explained it was a medical condition. Yeah, it’s called getting old.
• Friday:
  • Took a day trip up the coast to do some birthday present shopping with The Duchess, do a bit of Op Shopping and generally enjoy the last day of freedom.
  • Picked up fluffy from the dog sitters and got back to normal.

I’ve been gifted a little pot of sourdough starter by my boss, from his family culture that is already 16 years old (which is a good age, though we we were told of one in San Francisco that was 150 years old!)

We are now going to feed and care for it until it grows enough to start making our own bread.

The (literally) tiresome ongoing fatigue and brain fog is getting worse, to the point where I am now having to regularly take sick leave and retire to bed for a nap during the day to recharge the batteries.

Trying to stay on top of some major technical projects is difficult enough without having meetings where you can’t take anything in.

It doesn’t help when the GPs just put it down to age and tell you to take a nap. Thanks for that!

Having tried various supplements and treatments with no success I’m now trying something a bit left-field with the Nicotine Patch Protocol.

It has been suggested as a way to help fight some of the symptoms of Long COVID, ME and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome with about half those trying it seeing improved energy and clearing the brain fog, so I am giving it a try.

Felt a bit strange as a non-smoker going to the chemist to get patches on prescription and having to wean myself ON them! I’ve done a couple of days with half a patch to get used to it and despite some sickness the first morning I haven’t felt too bad so far so am now heading into a week of full patch hoping it makes a difference. Fingers crossed!

It’s the time of year when you struggle to locate some of the canine landmines laid in the park thanks to the leaves and mud. Can you spot the poo in this picture?

Couldn’t resist paying to listen back to the final ever Black Sabbath gig that happened yesterday in the UK.

9 hours of who’s who of heavy metal all paying tribute to the band that invented the genre; supergroups, drum-offs and all from the comfort of my desk.

Have turned the volume up to 11 on my headphones and ready for the inevitable tinnitus tomorrow.

For those about to rock on demand we salute  you!

What with all the madness going on in the news right now my prepping instincts ran hot today.

Having seen the panic shopping just before the first Covid lockdown and the physical fights over a pack of toilet paper I thought I’d get in early, then should current events get really out of hand and we find ourselves stuck inside for a few weeks we won’t starve.

I’ve just spent $500 on groceries, stocking up on breakfast cereals, coffee, crisps, toilet paper (natch) and plenty of wine and beer. If the World is going to shit I’m going to meet it rat-arsed. I even bought enough milk powder to keep us going for a couple of works, and for some odd reason 100m of cling film.

The biggest problems if we do have a zombiepocalyse is that the house has too many doors – I would block a couple up but there’ll still be ways the infected could get in if they really wanted to take our stuff.

Also we don’t have solar panels or a petrol generator so if we lose power for a long time most of our food will go off, so it would turn into a big BBQ cookup.

Let’s hope things calm down soon, or the aliens turn up and take over. If it doesn’t at least I’ve got a fully stocked wine cabinet. Actually, made that almost fully stocked.

Are you adding the extra S?

Just realized I have ordered so many Bacon &Egg McMuffins on the self service screens that my finger goes to the exact location of the next button I want to select.

I could pretty much order breakfast in my sleep.

Another online purchase to try and help The Duchess with her COPD is a Steam Tent, which basically a padded box into which you pump steam from a boiler. My word it gets hot in there! Hell of a lot cheaper than a full sauna in the garden!

Whenever The Duchess comes down with a chest infection I get down the pharmacies and try to find something to help. This shows how often that happens …