Highlights of 2012

Looking back on 2012, it has been a very busy year, with plenty of incident. To avoid this summary growing to the size of a novelette, it has been ruthlessly pruned. Honestly!

Garden

The house is on high ground.  The soil is thin, barely crumbled granite, but Eve has made significant progress.  With the application of hard working green fingers and sacks and sacks of compost the garden is slowly developing good soil.

Last summer was not a great growing season.  Everyone in the valley had their tomatoes attacked by blight.  But we did get good quantities of courgettes (zucchini) and strawberries.  Later in the year, in the Southern Spring, we harvested our first crop of asparagus.  Eve had to restrain Bill from taking too much.  The plants are still relatively immature and have to be allowed to grow their fronds.

In the autumn the orchard was visited by deer. They look cute and delightful but they ate the tops off all our fruit trees. This essentially put the orchard back by a year. Retribution finally overtook them, though. Four deer were spotted on our hillside from across the river. Dion Maclean, whose sheep graze our land and do not jump over the orchard fence, telephoned. May he come and have a shot at them? Of course. He came with a friend and his son, Lawson. We are pleased to report that they got two of the cute vandals and we have venison in the freezer in exchange for our damaged trees.

Work

Most of Bill's work continues to be as a practice reviewer for the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants. Changes at the Institute have made this less enjoyable. Reviewing has always been a mix of practitioner education and policing of sub-standard work. Over time this is becoming more stick (policing) and less carrot (education) and generally less fun. However, it pays the bills and will continue, although steps are being taken to generate more consulting and presenting assignments.

Hockey

Somehow the Federal Hockey Club was prevailed on to give Bill a regular place in the 'Seniors' side, although it would be true to say that he was probably last choice if the club ever worried about fielding a team based on merit. He turned 60 during the season, but was still not the oldest player in the team. After his birthday he actually scored a goal. Indeed it was a good goal, involving trapping the ball, controlling it and guiding it accurately into the chosen corner of the net. The only time he demonstrated so much skill all season.

Richard & Tansy's Wedding

5 February is now an important date in the Heritage calendar. That's when Bill's son, Richard, and his fiancee, Tansy, tied the knot. The ceremony was outdoors in Kaitoke Regional Park, near Wellington. The locality was used in the filming of Lord of the Rings and is now known as Rivendell. Richard and Tansy wrote the entire, secular 'service' except for readings by the two mothers. We thought it was very suitable, and the setting very attractive.

One very happy couple.

NZ Residence

Shortly after the wedding we received the welcome news that Bill's Dad had been granted permission to reside permanently in New Zealand. The application had been about two years in processing and was never a certainty. However, his passport now bears the vital endorsement that means he can forget about the possibility of being chucked out of the country. He persists in telling people that he is a New Zealander now, but citizenship is another round of forms and cheques and anyway won't be available to him for years yet.

Dad's 90^th

Less than a month later, on 3 March, Dad celebrated his 90^th birthday. Luckily his other son, Nigel, was able to fly out from the UK and join us for the occasion. The party was at a cafe in Mapua right on the estuary shore. Dad was surrounded by both his sons, both his grandchildren (Richard and Elizabeth) and a few select friends. He had consistently said that he didn't want any fuss, but he seemed awfully pleased with the fuss we made.

90 today!  "Gramps" with Elizabeth and Richard

Bob died

The land we have built our house on was purchased from Bob Anderson and Kate Burness, who continued to live next door at Golightly Farm. Bob had recovered once from prostate cancer and was a very fit octogenerian, frequently walking up the hill to visit us. Unfortunately the cancer returned and this time could not be overcome. In March we lost a very good neighbour and friend.

Our Wedding

In contrast to the colourful and well attended ceremonial of Richard and Tansy's wedding, we snuck off to the Registry Office in Nelson. In fact it was a room in the Courthouse building, but court business was slow and we did not share the waiting room with drug pushers, arsonists or hooligans who breach the Road Code. There were just the two of us, with our witnesses and immediate neighbours. The witnesses were Bill's dad and Eve's son, Matthew, representing the previous and next generations. The neighbours were Kate and another couple living at Golightly Farm, Maria Hudnutt and Urs Isenring, who wielded a camera.  No-one else was even notified that the wedding was happening.

The marriage was brief, but the words were very tasteful and appropriate. It was exactly right for us. All seven of us lunched at the Boathouse Restaurant in Nelson (do we see a waterside theme coming through here?) and enjoyed ourselves very much.

A slightly more wrinkled couple, but just as happy!

Then we let the rest of the world know about it!

Sailing

Traditionally a newly wedded couple goes straightaway on a romantic honeymoon. We don't pay convention too much heed and modified this. It's all Peter Bould's fault. Peter is a more-or-less retired accountant in Auckland. He invited Bill to crew his yacht from New Zealand to Tonga. Now, an ocean voyage was high on Bill's list of things to do. What would you do? Bill went sailing, of course.

Peter generously invited Eve to accompany us on the first part of the voyage, from Auckland to the Bay of Islands so she got her first proper on-the-sea sail. The wind direction was inconvenient, so we motor-sailed the whole way, but at least Eve had a chance to see Manawa II in action and to be reassured about the sturdiness of the vessel and her master.

A fleet of yachts assembled in Opua. Eve went back home and the crew was completed by the arrival of Jim Murchison from Sydney, a veteran of several ocean races.

We set off on 1 May and for the second time I sailed out of sight of land. The first occasion was the ill fated voyage that ended in mutiny and the loss of Air Apparent. That ghost is firmly laid to rest now. We had some lumpy seas in the first few days but no cyclones, waterspouts, collisions or kraken attacks. And like most of the fleet we paused at North Minerva Reef. The original atoll has sunk and there is nothing now but a ring of coral with safe anchorage for passing boats. The snorkeling was great.

The skipper watching for the entrance to Minerva Reef's lagoon

After 3 nights we sailed on to Tonga. It was about 10 days sailing time and over far too soon. Thank you, Peter.

Does anyone need experienced crew for some more blue water sailing?

Garlic

We have our first commercial crop. It is organic garlic. The deal is Steve Perry knows about growing garlic and we have land on which garlic may be grown. Steve gets some wages for his labour, but also a share of the crop. Further labour has been supplied by Eve's son, Matthew as a casual employee of the company that owns the land, Shnurg Limited.

Getting organic seed garlic proved to be a major problem. We could not find enough and could only plant about an acre. However, at the time of writing it is growing well and we should harvest sufficient seed to plant the entire paddock next year and still have some to sell.

Norfolk Island

Only about 2 months after getting married, we had a honeymoon on Norfolk Island; a popular destination for the newly wed and the nearly dead. No comments, please.

It was a great place to unwind and just be lazy. Our package included a rental car so we could get around all 30-odd km of the island's roads. We did most of the touristy things, like a murder mystery dinner (Eve correctly guessed the villain), a progressive dinner and reading the history of the island in its headstones.

Bill usually makes a list of the birds seen when we go overseas. He is very pleased with this list because we saw all the island's endemic bird species except the two silvereyes, which are in any case very difficult to tell apart from the common one found in Australia and NZ. We did particularly well to see the island's rare 'green parrots'.

Norfolk Island's inhospitable coastline

Bill's 60^th

He spent it working in Invercargill.  No big party.

Irrigation System

Developing farmland is an expensive business. The garlic thrives best with a reliable supply of water. More reliable than the random cascades from the sky. The irrigation system includes two large water tanks. These were delivered from the factory in Christchurch. For a full account of how the truck got stuck and one of the tanks made a bid for freedom see 'Fun and Games on the Farm' posted in July.

The runaway tank at rest.  It was unloaded a little to the left of the shed in the background.  Our house is the slightly higher building to the right.

The ever reliable Dion Maclean brought his big tractor over and sorted out the muddle.

Steve and Matthew made a start on making a 'basin' in the stream from which we could pump water up to the tanks, but that stalled and eventually we did the sensible thing and recruited the experts at Thinkwater to install pump & piping and get the water tanks filled. It's simple. All I had to do was write cheques.

Now I have to remember to go down and switch the pump off when the sun doesn't shine. On a sunny day we have enough power to run the water pump, but not on a cloudy day. In theory, it will rain on cloudy days, the garlic will grow and we won't need the tank water.

Richard's Prize

Bill's son Richard is a geotechnical engineer. That's an engineer who is concerned with foundations, retaining walls and whatever else my be needed where the structure meets the planet.

In July he attended an Australasian Young Geotechnical Professional Conference in Melbourne. For accounting conferences you just decide to go and send a cheque. Engineers who want to confer must submit a paper and, if it is accepted, stand up and present it. Richard estimates that about one paper in five of those submitted was accepted.

Briefly, Richard's paper was judged the most outstanding presented from NZ. His prize is to present a paper at a World Young Geotechnical Professional Conference in Paris next year. Bill couldn't be prouder if he had presented the paper himself.

Holiday

November was devoted to travel. It was India's turn this year, with a stopover in Kuala Lumpur (KL) on the way North. The hotel in KL was the first time we had used the web site Booking.com and it was brilliant. See the posts in November for details of our Malaysia visit.

India was certainly memorable. We were warned that it would be a shock – and it was. We arrived in Delhi at night, but you could still see the smog, it was so thick. And of course you can smell it and even taste it on bad days.

We did not enjoy Delhi, but that may have been simply our introduction to what we later learned was the commonplace in India. Rubbish is everywhere. Unwanted items are simply discarded on the spot. Plastic accumulates in huge drifts in some places. In one town we did see a woman sweeping the street. She tidied the rubbish into a neat pile and set a match to it, plastic and all.

The driving is terrifying to the uninitiated. All drivers use their horn frequently. If there is any right-of-way rule we could not detect it. Every driver just barges ahead to where s/he wants to go. There are occasional traffic lights in the cities, but obeying their signals seems to be optional. Blue-jerseyed traffic police are found on some intersections. They glare and blow their whistle, but we could not detect any attention being paid. All the major cities' roads are packed with trucks, buses, cars, large numbers of motorcycles, bicycles and auto-rickshaws or 'tuk-tuks'. These are 3-wheelers with a motorcycle engine and handlebars that act as cheap taxis.

A lightly laden tuk-tuk.  It is common for extra passengers to squeeze in beside the driver.

In our pathetic, Western way we had thought that a motor bike was for no more than 2 people. Ridiculous. Although helmets are generally worn in the cities, they are expensive, effete extravagances in the villages, where the average load is three people. Several times we saw four adults on one bike and with children we definitely saw six-up and Bill spotted a seven, but it was gone too quickly to double check.

The expression “lane discipline” has no translation in Hindi. The only vehicle that reliably keeps to left in India is an elephant. Camel carts are pretty good, too. Others will use the centre or the right if it suits them. Major roads are 4 or 6 lanes with a median strip. Most traffic does use the left lane, but we also encountered examples of 2-way traffic in both lanes. But we saw no more accident debris than elsewhere in the world. Somehow the system works. Indian drivers must have terrific all-round awareness.

It's just as well, because we had pre-booked a car plus driver for the major part of our tour. The driver, Satish Sharma, was very quiet and an excellent driver.

Our itinerary was Delhi – train to Jaipur – circuit of Rajasthan by car and driver - end up at Agra to see the Taj Mahal – fly home from Delhi.

We could easily write a thousand words per day, but we will spare you that.

The highlights were:

1. The Taj Mahal. Seeing the famous memorial was Bill's 60^th birthday treat. It truly is a beautiful building. We went before breakfast. Some reckon that it is most gorgeous at dawn. The air was too hazy to tell, but we suspect that at least we avoided the worst crowds. If you've never been there and it's not on your life list, then it should be.
   

   

   
   
2. The Diwali lights. We happened to be in India at the time of this major festival, with many buildings festooned in lights, similar to the Western Christmas, and several consecutive nights of firework parties.
   

   

   
   
3. Keoladeo Bird Sanctuary. We must have seen 70 species of bird in one day.
   

   

   A lesser whistling duck has a satisfying scratch.

   
   
4. Ranthambhore National Park. Everyone goes for the chance to see tigers, but we were well satisfied with crocodiles, deer, boar and birds, including the cheeky treepies. And a scene at the ticket window that came straight out of a comedy film. Satish was buying our park entrance permits for us and was surrounded by drivers of the special tour vehicles all shouting and gesticulating excitedly at once, while the clerk behind the desk quietly completed his forms and took no notice at all.
   
   

   

   A spotted deer and her faun.

   
   
5. The people we met. There are Indians who are just friendly and do not try to sell you anything. And we encountered some very agreeable fellow travellers.
6. The food. Although many waiters were careful to make sure our feeble foreign stomachs did not get anything too spicy, Rajasthani food does not use much chili and none of the dishes we tried was very 'hot'. The local cuisine was certainly tasty and outside the hotels a good meal can be remarkably cheap. Most dishes are vegetarian, and many restaurants serve only vegetarian food. If they do serve meat, the menu will have separate lists for “Veg” and “Non-veg”. Best meal – ker sangri (desert beans) at the Hotel Pleasant Haveli in Jaisalmer.
7. Decorated camels at the Pushkar Camel Fair.
   

   

   
   
8. The observatory in Jaipur. Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal, constructed a very fine observatory, long before anyone had invented a telescope, when he was a young man.
   

   

   
   
9. Forts, palaces and temples. Some of these were very fine indeed, but there are a lot of them in Rajasthan and we fear we overdosed a bit.
10. Best hotel: Pleasant Haveli in Jaisalmer, with Vimal Heritage in Jaipur close behind.

The major frustrations were:

1. The “priests” in Pushkar who have a slick scam that starts with a 'friendly' local giving you a flower “for the holy lake” and ends with a demand for a huge, by Indian standards, amount of money. This is not for the temple but goes into the individual's pocket.
2. The commission system, whereby shops pay up to 35% of your purchases to the guide, driver or other individual who brought you to the emporium. The worst example was the tuk-tuk driver who didn't even take us near the place we wanted to go.
3. Incessant attempts to sell us something we did not want.
4. Demands for tips that ranged from annoying to outrageous.
5. A mild attack of 'Delhi belly'. The travel doctor had us prepared with a small pharmacy so it was dealt with before it could get serious.
6. Worst meal: The buffet dinner after our camel ride in the desert was the only disappointing food we encountered. Even the samosas on the train were much better than this.
7. Worst hotel: Taj Heritage in Agra. They denied all knowledge of our booking. They did nothing to find us alternative accommodation and we ended up in a pretty rough hotel with no hot water.

We were in India for 24 days and by the end of it we were both ready to come home. Stepping on the plane seemed to release a good deal of built-up tension. Now that we have had a spell of 'normality' we are both willing, even eager, to see some more of India, particularly Kerala in the South. We think we might limit a future visit to 2 weeks. But if we're in the South we've heard that Pondicherry is nice – and we can't go back and not visit Abhishek and Smitha who live in Mumbai – and ...

Chooks go feral

If you read the October post, 'We Have Livestock', you will know that we have taken to keeping chickens. We put some photos of them on Bill's Facebook page.

While we were holidaying the house sitters, Ted and Susan, carefully cared for them and the chicks grew to be bigger than their foster mum, Beryl the bantam. On our return we decided that they were big enough to be allowed to wander through the orchard. They had been living in the run for 8 weeks and would associate the run and the coop with security and thus would return at dusk and sleep there. Anyone who has kept chickens will confirm that they are creatures of habit.

All except ours. At dusk we went down to top up their food and water. “Chook, chook, chook” we called, “Chook, chook, chook”, but there was no answering cluck. Indeed there was no sign of them. Eventually we spotted the chicks dutifully clustering around Beryl under some pine trees on the neighbour's property.

After a couple of days we found they could be tempted by a scattering of wheat, but actually catching them was much more difficult. They were wary and very quick to jump and dodge. We'd managed to recapture three when we were advised to go after them at night. Once they start roosting they would be dozy and easy to capture.

And they were. The difficulty was finding where they were roosting. When there were only 3 escapees remaining, Eve carefully watched where they were settling in the late evening. When it was fully dark we returned with torches and a sack. We expected to be able to nab the last two chicks, but Beryl had been perching rather high up. In the event, they had moved. Luckily one of the chicks was a white one, and Eve's torch picked her out. She was roosting much higher than we could reach next to ringleader, Beryl.

Bill tried to reach the branch where it grew out of the tree's trunk and shake them down, but all we got was a couple of groggy clucks. He then went back to the shed for a rake, hooked it over the branch and pulled it down. Both birds were clucking, but neither made any attempt to jump or fly away.

That left a single well-grown chick, whom we christened Betty. She was now exceedingly wary of us and since she had black feathers she was impossible to find at night. However, Betty was not finding much wild food and getting very hungry. We did feed her (we didn't want to starve our chook) but we couldn't catch her. Eventually she found her way back to the run, but was still much too leery of us to catch. Eve found the solution. She herded the main flock into the coop, folded back the wire roof of the run and put Betty's food down inside. Betty hopped into the run, Eve folded down the roof and we had the full complement under control.