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| Our new home? |
To say that life was hectic on our immediate return from Tonga was something of an understatement. Possibly our most pressing priority was to find something to live in. Some long suffering friends of ours had agreed to let us use part of their land to live on and were happy for us to build the boat there too. But whilst this land did already have a building on it, it definitely left a lot to be desired in terms of either a dwelling or even a boat shed! In fact realistically, the only kind thing to do for this very sad collection of wood and tin was to put it out of its misery and knock it down. So the digger was brought in and within a couple of days we had a pristine plot where once a chaotic jumble of detritus had reigned supreme. However, we still had nowhere to live and we were running out of time!
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| No! Phew! |
Fortunately, impending homelessness served to focus our minds. Several forays onto Trade Me plus a couple of trips to Palmerston resulted in us being the proud owners of a pre-loved 26 foot caravan. Now admittedly it wasn't going to be as spacious as our current three bedroomed home or even as big as our 36 foot yacht would be, but we were certain it'd be just fine - or at least nearly certain!
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| Our new home? Yes - small but functional |
So our new home arrived and lo and behold it seemed to suffer from the same phenomenon that I experience when I buy clothes. You may even recognise what I am about to describe. I go to the shop, find something I like, check that it's OK for size then happily buy it and bring it home. However, when I get it home and try it for size again it's suddenly much smaller than I remember it being! How does that happen? And do you know what the really scary thing is? Caravans are affected by this phenomenon too!! Ours had seemed such a good size when we saw it in Palmerston but once it arrived at our place and we started to put our things in it, it didn't seem half as big.
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| Smooch time - Kiri and Annie |
Anyway, moving day was on us all too soon and proved to be a day of mixed emotions. It was sad to be leaving our wee farm that we had spent so long making into what we had wanted but on the other hand, we were about to begin an exciting new chapter in our lives that potentially held so much in store for us. All our worldly goods that wouldn't fit in the caravan (which was most of them!) had been packed into a container and moved to our new base a few days earlier. Dwight and Teresa, the people who had bought our farm, had kindly agreed to keep the alpacas until we could get the fencing sorted at the new place, so we didn't have to worry about trying to move them (but I simply had to go and visit them for a wee smooch before we left - the alpacas that is, not Dwight and Teresa!). That left us with just the last few items that we'd needed for our final night at the farm and, of course, the cats.
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| Of course I'm sane! Just because I'm upside down in a box... |
Now our cats are definitely creatures of habit and don't do change very well, so suffering the ignominy of being shoved in the cat carriers, put in the car and whisked off to some strange place that didn't measure up to what they were used to, didn't go down too well. And to make matters even worse, this new place that was supposed to be their home didn't even have that most basic of facilities - a cat flap. So for the next few days Sam spent most of his time hiding in the depths of our bed whilst Rosie sought solace in a cupboard. Once they got over their initial panic and started going out, they almost instantly decided they wanted to come back in. But once they were in they started to fret because they couldn't let themselves out again. There was only one thing for it if we were to preserve both our sanity and theirs. We had to add cat flaps to the caravan. This was duly carried out and the transformation in our feline friends was almost instantaneous. We went from two cats that were close to being basket cases, to two contented, chilled out moggies. Suddenly all was well with the world. We finally knew we were ready to move on to the first phase of our project. Let the boatbuilding begin!
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