What a party.

I had the best day ever. Pete looked incredibly hansom, all our favourite people were there, the day was overcast and warm and I felt exhilarated and totally invincible.

It was the single best day of my entire life and lets face it, a picture tells a thousand stories so here’s a few of my favourites.

 

   

 

 

  

 

 

Lets dance Pete. Ok am.

Chickens! and small hoofed animals under the bed.

We’ve got chickens and they are just lovely. Heads up looking about, their two Jurassic looking feet scratch left and right on the soil in search of bugs and then whOOSH quick as can be the head swoops down while they simultaneously shuffle back their butt with a wiggling motion to peck at the soil where their feet just were. Pete does a really good impression.

We built them the Coop De Ville.

And they flew straight over the fence. We saw them in a line wobbling and clucking their way up the neighbours backyard. Pete looked at me in abject horror.

'”FUCK” he said, his eyes were like saucers. “fuckity, fuck”

errrr. After what felt like hours of flappity gurgling panic from us both Pete grabbed a handful of chicken feed and started screeching

‘CHOOK, CHOOK!@ chook chook chook, here chicken!’ and throwing the feed at the back fence to alert them of it’s presence. It didn’t work. I leapt the back fence and Pete followed close behind, Rambo had nothing on us. We mission over two wire fences and through brambles to get to our chicks and one by one we carried them back. Once all three were safely locked in the coop Pete called our resident ‘chicken guru’.

‘Gidday Fletch’ he said.

‘uM SO I built my coop, my fence is a metre high and the damn birds just flew straight over it. What the hell do I  do now?!?!?!’ (there was no time for niceties)

Fletch, being the calm seasoned chook owner that he is explained that we’d need to clip their wings, just one mind you which would supposedly be enough to screw with their aerodynamics so they’d only flap in circles rather than up and over stuff. It didn’t hurt them he assured us, it was only feathers. The prospect was daunting. Actually, it was terrifying.

We left them in the coop overnight and the next morning Pete trudged down to the bottom of the garden armed with my sewing shears. Only two sentences had been spoken up at the house earlier.

‘I don’t think I can help’ I’d said.

‘I know’ said Pete

He was on his own. Bad girlfriend. Oh dear.

He entered the coop and I locked the door behind him. An hour passed. Then another. I went to look.

Out came Pete beaming.

‘GOD, they are just SO interesting to watch!’ he exclaimed and promptly went into a rant complete with head cocking motions and foot scratching. Two hours of observation worthy of an Attenborough doco and no wings had been clipped. bummer.

To cut a long story short, Fletch and Cass happened to be coming for lunch the next day anyway and the two  boys had the wings clipped in under a minute. WHOO hoo.

We all sat back on the lawn toasting success with a glass of homebrew until, flap flap flap, our newly clipped chicken flew up onto the top of the gate. Far out. Prolific cursing and a trip to Mitre 10 later and Coop de Ville now looks like this.

Their fence is now two metres high. Our chooks are safe.

As I readied myself for bed that night, comforted that our chooks could free range without fear of the wandering black Labrador next door, Pete sang out from the bedroom,

‘AMMMMMM, something with HOOFS has been running round under our BED!!!’

What?! I finished brushing my teeth with a the sense of reason that comes from living with Pete (recall the honey comb / hornets nest event?) and wandered casually into the bedroom.

Pete’s immobilised in the middle of the bed, duvet under his chin.

‘I’m serious’. He states. ‘I can tell’ I say and duck my head under the bed. Sure enough there are double sets of indentations in the carpet in random tracks from where the last tenants furniture lay. I smile.

‘Yup, definitely hoofs. Remember the other day when I said I was meeting mum for coffee?’ I ask pulling my head up level with the mattress. He nods, dead serious.

‘Well, actually is was a ruse and I bought a Shetland pony, I’ve been keeping him under the bed’.

‘You’re a shit’ Pete says and rolls over. ‘neigh’ I reply and turn out the light.

din ner ner ner, HAMMOCK TIME

The new pre-requisite for any future abode, two trees close enough to string a hammock.

So we’re finally back in NZ and the new flat is just awesome. The section down the back already has two established vege patches and two great big potting sheds. Yesterday we cleared a section near the back fence for our chicken coop!

Clare and Pete above and Lou and Nova below enjoying some hammock time.

This is where I find Pete at the end of every day. Snoozing or listening to a ‘This American Life’ podcast in the hammock with a pint of homebrew. Life is very good.

The sun shines all the time here.

So we hired a boat.

Pete made a load of vege sushi in the morning and we packed up a bottle of red and some sun block and drove to Tweed heads.

The boat hire geezer was a laugh, real Australian bloke, boardies, no shoes, singlet, big wide brimmed hat, tall and tanned to within an inch of his life, broad shouldered, muscular. There was no mincing of his words in a less is more ozzy bloke way.

He showed us a map of the river, jabbing his finger randomly into it saying,

‘don’t go here, or here or here, can go up here, don’t go here, make a right here or you’ll head into open sea, got it?’. Hahaha.

He was the same way explaining how to run the boat,

‘flick this up, pull this, push this lever, make sure she’s down, off you go’.

then he’s off and walking up the floating gangplank before you can say ‘she’ll be right mate’.

Ships captain and his best mate.

It was a lovely day. Just before lunch I jumped in for a splash but only cause I needed to wee and then had such a tough time getting back into the boat even with Pete yoinking my arm half out of my socket to help. We ate sushi, drank wine, took some pics of massive birds, pootled around and lay in the sun.

Pic after my quick dip, the high rise buildings of the Gold Coast in the background.

Red wine teeth.

On Saturday we’d driven inland to the national park and on into NSW to see a ‘natural bridge’. Turned out to be a hole in a rock with a waterfall running through it. Humph, natural bridge eh. But on the way we stopped at a café surrounded by bush, an old Queenslander house (with the deck running all the way round) opened up at the front and packed full of deck tables.

While we were standing at the counter reading the menu I looked down to see an array of jars of formaldehyde with all manner of insects and what not in them. Spiders big and small, hairy and bald, some kind of Weta looking creature the length of my hand and a pickled snake, the label on the jar said ‘Death Adder’ and it had been pickled so it’s eyes glared menacingly at you and it’s forked tongue protruded from it’s lips in a way that made you felt poisoned just by looking at it.

Pete looked at the lady behind the counter and jokingly said, ‘they all caught from round here then’ and laughed and the lady laughed and then dead panned and said, ‘yeah’. I smiled and said, ‘death adder, wonder if that would kill you’.

It was such a nice weekend that I felt like I’d been on holiday.