Where have I been?

20 months since my last post, come on Ste what have you been up to. Well I haven’t been completely idle, I’ve been regularly updating my other blog offtclub@blogspot.com which details my ongoing adventures in the world of toy soldiers. However what have I been doing in the real world then. Well the last time I posted on here it was a video or pic or something which has since been deleted, not very topical really or part of my view of the world!

So in the interests of this blog being an ongoing record of how I perceive the comings and goings on this crazy ball of mud and earth spinning through the cosmos I thought I’d start posting again. Since November 2013 not much has happened really, my kids got older, I got greyer, my wife got more tolerant, oh and we moved 12000 miles to the other side of the planet and bought a house in another country.

So it’s been quiet really.

You see both Sarah and I had become disillusioned with our parent country (the UK) and the way that society was becoming more fractured, insular, obsessed with consumption and crowded. Property prices were climbing, wages were static and with the advent of the internet teenagers were (are) becoming more and more obsessed with the online world. The roads are busier, it takes longer and longer to get anywhere and when you get there its usually full of other people who, like you, then get annoyed because it’s really crowded. And everyone appears to be waiting for someone to fix things for them, complaining about the state of the economy, the NHS, town centres dying, the death of common courtesy, neighbourhood spirit and the price of bread!

So we decided to get out, packed up all our stuff, got a job in New Zealand (which is about as far away as you can get without starting to come back) and flew the coop.

20 months, 12000 miles, a 40 hour journey with 2 young kids and two jobs later here we are. We’ve been in NZ for 11 months now and if you ask anyone they’ll say “ooh you’ve got to give it a good year to see if you like it”. Well, er let me see, do we like it. I think the answer would be a resounding YES!

Its about the same amount of land as the UK with about 5.7% of the population. Only one of us is working and yet we have a better standard of living, we know our neighbours and have made good friends very quickly. In Wellington there is a multi-ethnic culture with many nationalities from around the globe represented and a wide variety of cultural events going on year round. We get more sunlight than the UK, the summer is warmer and longer and the country is very, very green! On the downside it’s very windy and the houses have rubbish heating for the winter months (but I’m working on that).Oh and the TV is pants (big deal).

We like it so much we bought our own little patch of NZ in a lovely little village called…….wait for it………Whitby!

Back in the UK I studied a Foundation Degree in Environmental Conservation as a start to changing my career from Procurement to something in the environment sector. This really backfired as it was about the time the global economy took a nose dive and the UK Government decided to flood the employment market with experienced environmental professionals by shutting down most of the environmental agencies that apparently “did nothing!”.

So I finished off my degree and headed out here to continue in Procurement (I know it and it pays well). Now we’re nearly into 12 months in NZ and I’ve managed to wangle my way into the procurement team of an NZ government agency that deals solely with NZ farming, forestry and fishing and can finally start using some of that guff I learnt at college whilst still doing procurement.

The one big change is that Sarah is now a stay at home mum, this is a massive change for her as she never even saw herself as having kids until she was in her mid-thirties, and yet she’s enjoying herself, weird.

So that’s you lot brought up to speed. Now I just need to keep posting about my view of the world!

Ciao

Ste