Manipulation!!!

New Zealand is a very pretty country.  It's also a very cold country and this poor little tropical soul cannot bear being in anything under 24 degrees centigrade. Mid-summer here and we're tooling around temperatures between 13 and 19 and where's the fun in that?

And if there's any other reason needed to dislike Kiwiland is that a large percentage of the population does a line in smug-and-superior-smirking that makes me want to give entire conga-lines of folk a rather sharp and needful slapping.

These things have suddenly become very important because Keith is now insisting that, when we leave HK, we move to NZ.  All I can say to that is NNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!  And trust me, I've been saying it a lot.

He wants to take me to Waihiki Island in the next few days, and, because this island has a tropical micro-climate and a large colony of artists, I feel his reason is Machiavellian and manipulative, and I'm supposed to finally fall in love with the place.

Open my mind, yes?  Get rid of this simple-minded prejudice.

Mind you, he showed me a photograph in a land-sales pamphlet of the most stunning 6 acre property with the most exquisite manor house that was right in the hinterland of the North Island and then revealed the price.  We could do it easily.  I told him "Get me this house and I'll move here.  If not ... honey, it was a long and mostly successful marriage but ... TA-TA!"

I have consented, by the way, to travel around this country in two years time, in a campervan; something Keith has always wanted to do.  But more than that?

But if it weren't for the prospect of the rest of my life spent in this very green and pleasant land, I'd be enjoying it all immensely.  As it is, all I can see is faults and reasons NOT to like it ... which doesn't augur well for the traveling-pleasure-spirit, does it.

But Kia Ora and I hope you are all a lot warmer than I currently am.  Merry Christmas.