One last adventure?

In my most recent blog I wrote about the time pre Covid and pre my ill health when I thought about buying land in Ireland and planting a vineyard. Making wine in Ireland from Irish grapes. This idea / scheme came in under the heading of did we have one last adventure left in us? Up to this point in our lives we’d tackled a few, was there one more lurking in the undergrowth. Turned out the answer was no there wasn’t and no, we didn’t.

The decision was largely made by Mrs Summerhouse and it turned out, given the above, that she was right. Apart from being reminded of this non-life changing decision by writing that last blog, further proof, should any be needed, was made available to us by a visit last week from some very old friends. He and I were at art-college together many, many years ago and they largely were responsible for one of our great adventures – going to live in New Zealand for 16 months.

They were ‘responsible’ in the sense that they went to live in that country initially for 3 years and ended up staying for over thirty years. We went to visit them and that led to us moving there lock stock and children for those 16 months. Unlike them we made the decision to come home and think about a permanent move. In the end we decided we wouldn’t. I’m not quite sure why at this distance. All of which is irrelevant to this particular blog other than as a scene-setter.

So here they were on our sofa but not as the usual occasional visitors but as returning British citizens. That’s a picture of them above dressed in padded overcoats and gloved which they never removed for the whole time of their visit. We were somewhat surprised. Sorry tried to blank them out but my technological skills deserted me, I don’t think they read the blog anyway? But hopefully nothing to apologise for.

He did take his gloves off when he played one of my guitars which I lent him until his collection arrived. Given their worldly good hadn’t left New Zealand yet that may be a long time. But that’s fine because I have plenty of guitars. Incidentally they’d been told that it will take them two years before they get acclimatised to the change in climate (warmth that is) between the two countries.

And furthermore, not only was there an issue about shipping being delayed on account of the Houtis and their attacks on shipping in The Gulf but the cost had gone up and the insurance also. And just when you’d think it couldn’t get any worse. The banks won’t let them have their money (from the sale of their New Zealand house and need to buy a house here) but the NZ dollar had lost value against the British pound (and 10% of several hundred thousands is quite a significant amount). And I think they are going to have a shock when they look closely at UK house prices for what they want – down South and by the sea.

And then there’s the paperwork. It seems nobody believes anybody in the right mind would choose to leave New Zealand and come back to the good old UK at this time. So everything is proving very difficult. Just trying to buy a car (also much more expensive) without a fixed address /bank account etc. proved tediously challenging.

And all this as a result of them asking the same question as we did – do we have one last adventure in us? And coming up with the answer, yes, we do.  Despite having tried to understand their decision to return to the UK after 30 plus years, I still can’t say I understand. What I do understand is that trying to move to Ireland post-Brexit, would have probably been the death of us. So fingers crossed for their well-being. We, on the other hand, should be and are thankful for what we have. And that is remarkably positive for me. May be it was nearly dying that makes me so chirpy.