Once again, there’s been a geographical shift. New Zealand feels forever ago and England has swiftly ensnared us.

Grace is resting quietly in Nelson with a couple of kind friends keeping a watchful eye on her. Her precious possessions are in a lock up where they will await our return in November / December. Sails, running rigging, anchor, canvas, dinghy, outboard etc are all gently stashed, avoiding the southern hemisphere winter.

Dave and I arrived into the UK via JFK airport in NY (still hideous queues, possibility the same one from 1986 so do avoid at all costs). We did a quick whizz to visit family before I started work, 6 days later. I have a 15 week contract working for charity that organises breaks for kids whose lives arn’t as straightforward as perhaps yours and mine.

The money for the sale of our Derbyshire property eventually materialised. So we’ve been looking at land / land with knackered properties. We bid on one at an auction. The auction was in London and it was on a day when we were both unavailable. We wrote our ‘top dollar’ number on a piece of paper and waited to hear. Dave managed to find the auction on line and watched it on his phone, sat in the car on a garage forecourt. They zipped past our number very quickly with the hammer falling £65k beyond our bid. We decided that was a positive. If it’d been £3k we might have felt differently.

June and July are money making months, then after that we will have more time for fun and games. We’ll be ready to catch up and see people. Do please invite us. 😀