Self indulgence. Now and Then: Memoirs of a Sort.

https://www.facebook.com/UndoBrexitHere/photos/a.748129165368788/1708321486016213/ Finally day 13 had come.  It had been a kinda fun time, but in all honesty we were ready to get out of Room 936. I'd forgotten my hat for the daily 35 minute walk. The great wall of food containers. Yup, we had some fun.  Blind fold walk. 'Home' I'd got my test result and I was officially 'negative'.  As I said before, I've been told before that I am too negative, so it is nice to have it proven.  Positivity is so overrated; it's passe. With my negativity New Zealand welcomes me into the big wide world of little New Zealand.  But getting out isn't straightforward.  We'd been given a departure time of 09.30 and the lovely district nurse in uniform would visit between 06.30 and 09.15. Bags were packed 3 days prior, nothing was going to get in our way.  Up at 06.00, and then we waited and waited and waited.  We feared we'd been forgotten but reception simply said ...

The question maybe: Why New Zealand?  Some of that has been previously covered - things like brexit, uncontrolled covid, we've retired, its wet and cold, it gets dark too early.  I was given a book called 'Death, an Inside Story' and I have become even more aware that I have fewer years ahead of me than behind me so let's do what we can to have fun.  We will miss people and aspects of living in UK, but it's time for something different.  We lived in NZ for 13 years and 13 years ago, for a couple of reasons, not least to be with Ali's parents after the catastrophic and devastating suicide of her brother, we left.  Since then Ali's Dad has died, my Dad died 2 years ago, Ali now has minimal family in the UK and any semblance of family that I can be involved in has sadly petered out.   What's not to like?  Leaving Ali's Mum kinda 'alone' but as I said before, amazingly she gave us her encouragement.  At least we left her with memories of her enjo...

 Unclean! Unclean! or so Jacinda assumes.  But I'm cool that to get to see her I have to be in quarantine for 2 weeks.  I certainly don't want to pass on any nasty little virus when I see her. It was sad to say good bye to Ali's dear Mum, and sadder to wave a farewell.  To me it felt kinda selfish.  We were leaving her to fend for her self, at a time of her life when she maybe needs a bit of assistance.  But both Ali and her seem happy with the arrangement.  She tells us "that it is better for me to die knowing that we are where we are happy, than to die not knowing that, and that if we don't go now it could be 10 years before I die, and then it'll be too late for you".  To me that's pretty amazing. The last time we were at Heathrow to go to Armenia planes flew over head every 2 minutes.  This time it was every 20 minutes.  We're hopeful one of the few will be for us in 15 hours time.  By the time we'd walked back from Hounslow to g...