Life with a remote....

A momentous occasion took place today. After many years living with very small tvs, remoteless tvs, half tuned tvs, snowstorm tvs, tvs that are not really ours and the occasional lack of colour tvs we decided today enough was enough! No longer were we going to put up with having to walk to the tv to change channels, or in our case forever watch TV One as nobody can be bothered to get off the sofa!

We drove to Moorhouse Ave and our plan of attack was to visit Harvey Norman, Powerstore, Noel Leeming and Bond & Bond to see which shop did the best deal. In the end, the last shop of course, Bond & Bond, did us a very nice deal (it is so easy to 'haggle' in shops here) for the tv and cabinet.

As no British brands were available, Pete relented and agreed that we should not buy Japanese, but get a Philips instead. Just to explain this further; Pete gets petrol at BP, I go to Shell....

The new tv is great. It has a remote, and even teletext. How exciting.......So even though we now have a brand new tv, we are still behind the times, as it is not an LCD or plasma....we do not feel the need to pay three times the amount for a poorer picture quality.

Merry Christmas Everyone

Well folks, Christmas has sneaked up on us again. If anything ‘it’ gets even sneakier down here in New Zealand! I suppose that as Christmas falls during the summer, it is therefore warmer and lighter for longer than what I’m normally used to. It just seems so wrong! Having said that, as the weather has been a lot better than last year’s, I’m now looking forward to a hot, sunny day tomorrow!

I hear that the weather in Britain is pretty cold right now; just like Christmas should be. Here it is rather warm. In fact, today (Christmas Eve), after finishing off my Christmas shopping, I went surfing before coming home to do some gardening and set up the barbecue. Poor Chantal had to go into work but by 11am she had finished for the day and met me in town. She then spent the day sunbathing in our garden before enjoying our barbie. To finish the day off, we even went to a candlelight carols in the park concert.

Tomorrow, after breakfast at our place, we will be having a traditional Christmas dinner with Mark, Lisa and family. Hopefully, the good weather will hold and we can eat outside on his deck. It should be a good day and, as we are taking a good supply of beer with us, we will be spending the night there too. However, poor Tinkerbell will spend most of Christmas Day locked inside our house with a supply of biscuits until we return sometime on Boxing Day.

In case any of you are wondering, Chantal has decorated the house with all her festive candle decorations. However, as we now have a larger house, she reckons we need yet more stuff!

Have a merry Christmas!