Open Writing

Suddenly, life became a blur. We had a meeting with Murray, who wormed out of us a set of search criteria. We continued to scour the Property Guide, listing every likely-looking prospect. Hazel and Mike vetted our list, summarily excising all those that weren't "suitable". We chased around all over the place gathering first impressions, which further whittled the list. The surviving entries were forwarded to Murray, who incorporated them into the list he was drawing up. Out of this emerged viewing schedules, typically half a dozen or so houses in each half-day session.

We had a small difficulty. Although we had to get on with looking for one, as yet we couldn't actually BUY a house! It was that "money" thing again. Some of it was locked into a forward FX contract, whose value date we'd already had to adjust when our original completion date had been put back until a fortnight after our departure. The rest of it was, as yet, pie in the sky: obviously, we couldn’t be sure exactly how much we'd be getting, and only God (or some equivalent omniscient being) knew what the exchange rate would be when the brass finally happened along. Part of each day seemed to be devoted to anxiety over the progress, or lack of progress, of our house sale, underlaid by utterly useless fretting over the vicissitudes of the exchange rate.

I should add that the house-hunting procedure I’ve described was nowhere near as sensibly systematic as it sounds – those sub-processes all mixed and mingled, both with one another and with all the other concerns we had. Half the time, we hardly knew whether we were coming or going, and the rest of the time we weren’t sure whether we were going or coming. On top of that, life was about to get still more complicated.

We'd never had any intention of staying at Hazel and Mike's for more than about a week. For a start it wasn't fair on Jake, who'd given up his bedroom and was – literally – bunking in with Kian, a risky undertaking at the best of times. For that matter, it wasn't exactly fair on Kian either. Hence, after just over a week, we moved out. Carol and Clive, who had rented us their "flat" when we'd visited for three months at the end of 2004, had offered us the use of their bach (beach house) for a nominal rent, for as long – or short – a time as we needed.

This was something of a God-send, because house rentals are generally subject to a minimum 6-month contract, and we didn’t fancy having to continue paying contracted rent once we had our own house. Otherwise, here was another fine mess of advantages and disadvantages. On the "plus" side, we gained privacy and breathing space when we wanted it, we could enjoy the luxury of unpacking as much as we fancied, the bach was in beautiful Oakura Bay, and the bulk of the drive between Oakura and Whangarei was along the fabulously scenic Old Russell Road.

There were several "minuses". The round trip to town was some 40 miles – on one occasion we had to do it twice in one day – which adds up to a lot of driving and long days. Anyone used to driving in England, even on "B" roads, would find that much of the road is EXTREMELY wiggly, often vertiginous, unnervingly precipitous and consequently, I'll freely admit, much less scenically attractive on a pitch-black night in driving rain.

Also, no matter how romantic it might sound to be dwelling in a "cottage" close to a secluded beach that is lapped by the waters of the South Pacific, we have to remember that this was right at the end of the Northland "winter", and a bach, which is normally occupied only during warm weather, is insulated against neither the cold nor the "March winds", which can – and often do – roar like lions. Thus, as well as enjoying several strolls along the sun-kissed shore, we endured some chilly nights and weathered the fag-ends of a couple of ferocious sub-tropical storms. By 'eck, but when it sets its mind to it, it can't half chuck it down!

Right, so we'd added the joys of commuting to our already hectic schedule. The house-hunting itself proved to be every bit as frustrating in New Zealand as it can be in England. Naturally, the most jaw-droppingly lovely houses were way beyond our means, and most of the ones that were well within our budget were either in “unacceptable” areas, far too small or – shall we say? – required rather too much investment in restoration and renovation.

For example, we found one colonial-style house that looked absolutely enchanting and had a commanding view right across the entire town all the way through to the distant Whangarei Heads. However, it would have cost a small fortune to keep warm in the cold months (or, alternatively, to insulate effectively), and we couldn't see any way of bending its solid, inflexible interior to meet our particular needs.

Another, nestling on a high hillside, had a super raised deck affording a gorgeous, expansive view of wooded hills. The downsides were (a) access was up a near-vertical driveway that challenged even Murray's high-powered "tonka", (b) you'd need mountaineering gear to do the gardening, and (c) you'd need the asking price over again to sort out the structural shortcomings – the place could best be described, with a liberal dose of diplomacy, as "dilapidated".

Yet another was beautiful both inside and out, and came with a panoply of state-of-the-art kitchen and bathroom fixtures, fittings and white goods. But, it had only two rather small bedrooms against our minimum of three biggish ones (one for us, one for guests, and one for the office) and, while one side enjoyed a very pleasing rural aspect, the other was jammed up hard against Western Hills Drive, which is a.k.a. Highway One! There was one whose interior I never saw. Before I could even get my shoes off, Pam was already coming back out. I'll draw a discreet veil over the reasons for her instantaneous exit.

Eventually, as we exhausted the market, the flood of viewings dried up. Reviewing the situation, Murray pointed out that we now had two options. If we continued to search, it would be a much slower job, because we would now be looking only at the relative trickle of new possibilities coming onto the market each week. Otherwise, although none had fired that magic cerebral spark that said, "THIS is the one for us," we could consider re-visiting the ones that had scored 7 or 8 out of 10, and possibly bow in deference to the great god Pragmatism.

We nibbled at our list, and ground it down to just one likely candidate. It had interested us enough to have already been back for a second look. We weighed it in the balance, and found it not wanting for all that much. It was plenty big enough, in fair fettle, a vacant possession and, according to both Hazel and Murray, situated in a "very good area". BUT, there were a few shortcomings that made the asking price (which was phrased as "offers over") clearly too high.

At about this time, we had word from Blighty that the contracts had been exchanged. We were now more or less assured that our money would materialise, and by a certain date, though we still couldn't be sure how many dollars it would amount to. Still, it gave us the encouragement we needed to put in an offer. We decided to try the asking price less a reasonable allowance towards the work that needed doing. When we announced this landmark event to Hazel, she responded with these famous words, which I’ve censored slightly: "And about time, too"!