auckland at last!
Things with Marilyn started ok. We were slightly worried that we would find it hard to make friends while living with someone so much older than us but the people here are so friendly that making friends has been no problem at all.
Unfortunately, Marilyn seems to be suffering from some sort of post-menopausal aversion to heat and insists on having all her windows open all the time, taking cold showers and not letting us put a heater on. It is winter here and quite cold especially in the morning and Jayne and I were spending most of our time in bed trying to oust eachother from the small electric blanket we were so generously provided with.
There were so many rules with Marilyn that I would inevitably forget. The sort of rules that old ladies seem to make up out of the blue to annoy people. Here are a selection of Marilyn’s rules:
Wash out all your tin cans before you throw them away.
Don’t unplug the phone charger to put your Ipod speakers in for even a minute because the phone cuts out (no Marilyn this occurs because you don’t put the phone back on the charger and also because you associate losing the call via pressing the wrong button with battery failure).
If you put the heater on open all the windows (???????????)
Make sure the blinds twist upwards not downwards.
Things came to a head with Marilyn after Jayne and I came back from an extremely entertaining Friday night. I left the kitchen door open while I remonstrated with the tirelessly inefficient folks at HSBC Bank. I unfortunately woke Marilyn up and the next day she as good as asked us to leave as “our lifestyles didn’t match”.
Fortunately enough this played into our hands as we managed to find somewhere really quickly with some really nice young people for less rent – so all is well that ends well I suppose.
Jayne and I have both had colds which has affected our hearing. We are occasionally like an old couple who’ve ended up at a rock concert. A typical recent conversation went like this:
Scene: Grungy K Road – home of Adult shops, massage parlours and gay bars.
James: Look that shop sells nipple clamps.
Jayne: What??? Nickle Lamps.
James: NO NIPPLE CLAMPS>
Jayne: Wicker Amps??
James: NIIIIIPPPLLLLE CLAMPS!!
Jayne: Wicked Lamps
To finish this horribly long and poorly written blog entry I must mention the work we have procured. I have been doing spreadsheet stuff for Chubb Security and Vector (an electricity infrastructure company) and have currently become obsessed with budgets. Did you know that when Jayne and I both work full time we will be able to afford either 380.16 beers a month, 16.42 pairs of boots a month or 110.22 CDs a month.
Jayne has been working in a café with a lazy harridan. Fortunately she has now left and is working for a recruitment agency as their hostess. On a much better note than this though Jayne has done extremely well in her job search and has been offered two excellent speech therapy jobs. She chose the one with the company car (beat that NHSers) and will start mid-July. The managing director of the firm she worked for invited us over for Sunday lunch. Pip (for that is the ladies name) lives in a house on an Eastern Peninsula and has the most incredible view of the water and all of Aucklands islands. Her family were really nice and hopefully Jayne will really enjoy working there and maybe learn a lot about setting up her own practice in the future.
Final point I promise, if anyone is still reading. I have been attempting to network my way into a media career (so I can get on my journalism course and become the next A A Gill/Greg Palast (think Michelin starred restaurants populated by the extremely corrupt situated in the Gaza Strip)). This was always a fruitless exercise for me in Blighty, partly because networking isn’t my greatest of skills. In New Zealand though things are a completely different kettle of fish. Two nights ago me and Jayne were having a cocktail and just happened to sit next to the CEO of TV New Zealand and his wife, who is one of NZs leading journalists, I told them what my plans were and they immediately invited me round to their house, tonight, to discuss my career. How cool is that!
Right I am finally buggering off. Hope everyone is well and good.
Lots of love
Jayne and James xxx
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