Like a Longfin Eel

So I’m going to stay a bit closer to home for a bit - I’ve been here over 6 months now and was a bit embarrassed that I hadn’t been to Dartmoor yet. It’s about an hours drive to the heart of if from Exeter, and although it is still Criss-crossed with roads and covered in farmland, it still has very much a sense of wildness to it. The hills are big but very flat; so all sense of distance is distorted- you can find yourself making quite a lot of elevation without getting all that puffed just because the hill eeks up slowly. The tops of the hills have thumbs of granite poking up- “tors” that remain after the rest has eroded, and with big chunks of rocks scattered around them from where the water has split apart the main rock over thousands of years. Think of perhaps, a Jenga tower, partly collapsed, with the pieces lying around. It wasn’t take-your-breath-away stunning like the highlands, but something different and I think, just as special - a slow realisation of the oldness of the place...

Devon Today population 1.2 million 5 ICU beds per 100 000 2937 new covid cases in the last week (366 per 100 000 people) 8 deaths in the last week 88% vaccinated (one jab) - 82% two jabs... and more starting to get boosters from 24th Sept  New Zealand Today population 5 million (but who actually knows because when exactly did we last have a proper census?) 4.6 ICU beds per 100 000 309 new covid cases in the last week (roughly 5 per 100 000 people) 0 deaths in the last week 80.2% vaccinated (one jab) - 57.5% two jabs  I went on a brilliant holiday in Scotland and walked a lot and loved it. I liked the immensely fresh air, seeing a red squirrel (in the distance, scootling across the road at speed like an eyebrow set free), the heather and the marsh. Picking fresh blueberries and trying new other berries - with a guide to let me know that eating that red one nestled in the marsh is okay . A bit bitter, but okay.  It's past halfway of my time here, and while I was away in Sco...

Without much fanfare, I got an email from work letting me know I can get a booster vaccine for Covid when I am six months post my second vaccine. I’m not quite there yet. There’s a bit of fuss about this approach (is it required?, does it work?, is it just for the UK to be boosting when other countries are trying to get their first?). I think it probably is a good thing and am looking forward to getting mine. The days are closing in, crisp and cool at the edges, with curling yellow leaves dumping on the path after rain and squirrels furiously stamping nuts into the ground. I feel like I’ve been in an adventure/night shift/adventure sandwich… it’s certainly quite a few weeks since I’ve been on a normal roster. I’m all out of sync and time is passing rapidly. I think I’m also feeling a bit, the Auckland lockdown situation: it feels strange getting out and about here knowing my sister is training for a marathon by going round in circles in her suburb. I was super well looked after by frie...

I'm on hold with a telco company. The guy I'm talking to is Irish. Its 8am and he put me on a hold thats silent, "because its a bit early in the day for that music isn't it, love?". I'm so grateful to hear a human voice. Some weird glitch has had the telco accepting money from me but not actually topping up my phone - leaving me data- and connection- less suddenly. Finding the right buttons to mash through to robot system to get a human has taken several hours.   I had tried topping up several times over the last couple of days, essentially firing money off into the ether with no service. The details are boring - but the relevance of it is that I was beginning to run perilously low in my UK account. And back in NZ, my NZ bank is getting attacked digitally, so as a foreigner, I've been cut off from accessing my account.  Unless by phone. You can see the problem here right? ("Hon, I'm going to put you on the music hold - this is going to take a whil...

  “What a lovely day” “It is a lovely day” “I think I’ll sit in the sun forever” “I won’t” “I will” “If I sit in the sun all day I get grumpy” “I don’t, I just feel lovely” =============================== NZ being in lockdown now hasn’t made me feel as far away as one might think. Practically, I’m as close to my mum, dad and step mum as my sisters are now, at least for the next few weeks. I’m getting updates on baking from Auckland and Australia as my sisters share recipes. And meanwhile, I am able to work (yes more Covid mums 😔) and visit friends (sticking to outdoor activities and small groups).  I have a friend who lives in Cornwall; her husband grows Himalayan SeaBerries and when I went to visit her I was slightly brain dead and happily tagged along with her whānau activities, which included a short stint of harvesting of these bright, tart capsules that clutch to spiny branches. We swam a couple of times in the river, slightly downstream from where Prince Charles has a h...

  A week of annual leave and I was able to do a tour from the source of the wye to the heart of Hereford. The Wye is a river that serves as a border of sorts between wales and England. Wales has stuck to more stringent social distancing rules; and England is now pretty loose; so a good way of telling whether we we in wales or not was whether the masks were on or off. Either side of the river; It was very green.  At one point, we did a tour of a small cider farm; a couple from London had settled near the Whitney bridge and started an orchard of rare apple varieties. It was almost like the opposite of gentrification - eccentric young hipsters potentially, yeah, but a palpable desire to understand the earth, the stories, the dialect, the language, the words. They were drawing history into the bones of their business model; but also the future. There was a freshly mown paddock that they envision; if climate change continues at the rate it is; will be good for grapes soon.  Th...