2015 - 2021 - Where did these years ago?! How the world has changed. Part 1

 WOW! Yet again I fail on the most simplistic of things, in this case updating a blog.  My written journal is the same, no actually that isn't true - my written journal kind of goes up to 2020 give or take a few weeks or months.😒

So unlike my written journal where I make no attempt to catch up, I will at least try and summarise what has been going on - this is all from memory so excuse if I forget anything quite major, if I suddenly remember anything at a later date I can always discuss it in a separate blog entry.  How is that for forward planning, see you back here in 2025 then! 😂  I'm going to break this up into parts to catch up and gives me a break in between.

2015

Around June/July I returned to Europe to England for the first time since 2011, travelling with my hubby we visited Lagos in Portugal (southern Portugal in the Algarve) as my folks live there and then England to visit some old friends, visiting Birmingham, York and Shropshire.  However, the main reason for the journal was to collect all my items in storage (has been in storage since 2006) and have it shipped out to Auckland, New Zealand, it took all of 3 months door to door (Birmingham, England to Auckland, New Auckland).  In storage I held the usual household furniture - beds, bookcases, table and chairs, clothes, personal items and then, well boxes and boxes of books.  When I say boxes and boxes I mean of the 92 boxes shipped over 80 of them were books.  Yeah, this bookworm has a slight addiction.

As I bookworm, a lifelong one, I generally read about 95% non fiction but do enjoy fiction too.  I struggle to left books go unless they are really bad and there have only been a few and then I have binned them so there is one less copy in the world.  But the books I read love and hate are another blog entry completely.  Needless to say in the time I had been in NZ I had acquired some more books, so new bookshelves were definitely in order.

By August 2015, I had also paid a huge purchase, one that I always said I would make once I was settled somewhere and found a home.  I had also pre-warned hubby that this was a must once we were married.  Yes....you can sense it coming - a dog!  Hubby has never had a pet before let alone a dog, but he had a little experience from friends dogs.  I on the other hand grew up with pets, the usual guinea pigs (Doormat is the only one I remember), rabbits (Bambi and Thumper, parents of Candy & Floss), goldfish ($1 at fairground attentions to win a goldfish - always popular with the kids in the 70s/80s - never named), gerbils (another Candy & Floss and don't remember the other pair.  Candy & Floss one managed to eat the others head and then scratched itself to death before the ear, blood all up the tank!) but I had dogs too. Here is a brief history of my dogs....

Anika, yellow Labrador. 1985 to 1993, overweight, lazy, loved king sized prawns, Walkers crisps & tomatoes and would lick you to death.  Sadly, I don't have a photo of her on computer - she was pre digital cameras and internet. Died of a brain aneurysm. Born & died in England

Zoe

Zoe, Dalmatian. 1994 - 2005, overweight, over protective, highly strung, hated children and men with a deep voices.  Killed by three Dobermans (mother & sons) in Portugal.  Born in England, died in Portugal.  

Hok'ee (back) & Henry (front)

                      Pepper

Henry & Hok'ee (brothers - Hok'ee means abandoned in Navajo).  Born and died in Portugal, abandoned by their owner and found in a plastic bag next to a rubbish bin, 3 of them but the oldest died. Mongrels. Henry 2005 - 2018 and Hok'ee 2005 - 2021.  Henry died of stomach cancer and Hok'ee had to be put down due to ill health. 

And then August 2015, Pepper, black Labrador born in New

Zealand arrived on the scene.  Now admittedly she is the first dog I've owned on my own, the others have all been family dogs, even thoughI was one of only two people who cared for them in the family.   Is that not a face you could love?!

 

So that is about it for 2015, the doing up of the bach in the Coromandel was mentioned in the original 2014/2015 blog so I don't need to start up that again, although I will give an update in a future blog.