Saturday 22nd January

Picking up shipped goods at Auckland Airport can be so frustrating. You get the waybill, then go to MAF (Ministry of Agriculture and Fish?Food?) at one site, to get a clearance certificate, then drive a km or so to Customs to have the next page stamped, all of this costing about $38 each time, then back to Cargo to pay another $38 before you can pick up whatever. Why the hell they can’t put all of this in the same site is beyond me. But anyway, I’m finally reunited with the few belongings I had in Honiara.

The Unit looks like a disaster zone, I’ve got boxes in the lounge, in the garage, sorting and repacking, the clothesline is full of washing from the stuff that arrived, thankfully, Rose is going away for a week from tomorrow, I’ll try to get it all sorted repacked, and ready for the carriers to take it to Golden Bay.

My usual run of bad luck continues

The Pajero has been slowly losing the brakes, so this morning I went and booked it in for Monday to have the brake pads and discs done, driving back home, about 4km, the front left locked up, it’s taken me a while to get it into the driveway, and the wheel off, and I hope I’ve freed the cylinders up enough to get it down to the garage on Monday. Just what I need without any income as yet.

I’ve had Jesse and Kahu to look after the last couple of weeks till School starts again, which has been an interesting time. I missed out on my kids growing up for a long time, working a 10 hour day, 6 days a week job tends to cut you out of family life, and it wasn’t till I got crippled I had the time, but not the energy to be of any use. So having my grand kids is like trying to make up and catch up on everything I missed out.

That isn’t to say that they are darlings to look after, and little angels, far from it.

I’m trying to stay positive about the move to Golden Bay, it’s something I’ve had on my list of 1,000 things to do before I die, but I think I’m just totally burnt out from the last few years, the disastrous Irish expedition, the frustrating Solomon Islands experience, basically the culmination of a long period of frustrations and head butting with no real outcome.

I’ll be down there at the end of February, once the final settlement goes through, just getting out of this environment here will help, although I’ll miss Jesse, Kahu, Damian and Tarsha again.

But, I’ll be back on my own, and able to get things moving to what I want.