Where the heck did the last 25 years go?! Today marks 25 years since me and The Duchess being a thing. Can you see much difference?

Us in 1999

Us in 2023

Did the stereotypical presents – flowers (from our friend Rosie’s award-winning florists), some very nice chocs, a bit of silver bling and some slightly less romantic (but still silver) kitchen scales.

We’ve been out to the nicest Italian restaurant in Da Hutt, but boring old farts that we are we couldn’t wait to get back home to Fluffy and get into our jammies in front of the telly.

Even Fluffy got in on the fun, ripping the wrapping to shreds.

It pays you to be healthy in NZ as the health system is on its knees. Just booked a non-emergency appointment with a GP and the next available appointment is on 10th January 2024, over 6 weeks away!

Australia is starting to look like an option for our next move …

I can confirm that our English Springer Spaniel is a total Wuss like her furdad.

Today she found herself in a garden with a cat. She ran up to the cat barking and playing the tough girl. The cat arched its back, hissed then swiped at Penny.

Penny then gave a yelp just like Scooby Doo, jumped away from the cat and ran inside with tail between legs.

Cat 1 Dog 0

A useful lesson not to mess with a cat. Unfortunately the cat’s owner might have been watching so I chose not to put my foot up its arse in retaliation. But then it may have gone for me too and I suspect I would also have yelped and ran away.

The neighbours have been pretty noisy over the past few weeks so last weekend I decided to swap over my bedroom and home office so I’m further away from the noise.

This weekend will be the big test of whether it’s any better, being the time the window lickers start letting off fireworks at all hours.

One thing I noticed during the moves were the interesting choices of book titles. with my fake book

We had a local celebrity visit us during voting today – Betty Watt, the lady our street is named after!

Betty represented New Zealand at both Cricket and Hockey, and her husband was an All Black.

https://www.cricketwellington.co.nz/newsarticle/129326?newsfeedId=1397919

She was lovely too, very interesting and full of life even in the few minutes she chatted with us.

We extended an offer to come in for a cuppa whenever she is in the area and hope she takes us up on that so we can find out more about her life.

It’s election time in Nu Zilland and I won’t have far to go to cast my vote this year – it’s in our garage!

The Duchess signed us up for renting the space out as the local estate’s voting site, one of a couple of dozen around the constituency. It’s taken a couple of weekends of getting rid of crap and sweeping away the cobwebs but we managed to get it into a reasonably clean state for them to set up.

They’ve put up some cardboard walls to (mostly) hide our rubbish, with cardboard desks and voting booths. Thankfully the voting signs are sturdy plastic as it’s blowing a gale and raining sideways today.

The Duchess is also working as meeter and greeter for people as they arrive, which is keeping her busy, though how she’s managing a full day’s work while suffering from vertigo is beyond me. I think FOMO is helping more than the tablets.

The first hour was manic, with a voter every minute and queuing out the door and the street turned into a car park, but it’s now calmed down so I think I’ll get out and do my democratic duty.

The brilliant company I work for gave a bunch of us VIP tickets for World of Wearable Arts (WoW) recently. We had a couple of tables right in front of the runway and treated to a three course meal before the show plus a ridiculous amount of alcohol (I stayed at a hotel round the corner to avoid driving).

I’ve never seen WoW before but had heard great things, but essentially it’s a fashion show for mad costumes people have made for it, a walking art show, so wasn’t sure whether I’d enjoy it that much.

It was fantastic!

The show was split into 7 themes, each with music, dancing and aerial acrobats going on while the models moved around the outskirts of the stage showing off the costumes. Very slick, high quality entertainment (it would be given the eye-watering prices of the tickets!) and the costumes were really impressively creative.

These pictures were just a few past entries they let us photograph before the show started and don’t show a fraction of how spectacular it was. The only downside was not having The Duchess with me to enjoy it, which hopefully next year she will.

My brain today.

It’s that three-yearly fun that is NZ elections. A time of dull politicians trying to look relatable on public outings – hairnets and sausage rolls seem to be popular this time, with even a pirate outfit and fencing photo op amusing the press.

The most intrusive the election gets is the temporary forest of billboards popping up beside the road, regularly defaced by those less enamoured by the smiling candidates.

The crackpot and minority parties mostly get left alone, perhaps out of pity, but more likely since they don’t attract the ire that the main parties attract.

Still, seeing David “Boss Baby” Seymour with a Hitler tache is funny, even if it is infantile.

Three more weeks and we can go back to normal, albeit most likely with a new bunch at the wheel. Just no Winston Peters, please!

We have decided to give Ey Up Fresh a go to give us some new recipe ideas and save some prep time during the week.

The first box arrived this morning and we have just tried out the first meal – pork meatballs in a soy-honey-ginger marinade with apple slaw.

Very easy to assemble and found it tasty. The Duchess enjoyed it too, with the added fun of thinking of what she’ll change next time to improve it.