THE GOOD LIFE

I visited Tony and Alison at their country home on Saturday.

They've built a huge house on their large property in the Hunua district. This is an area of lush farmland which because of its rainfall is home to large dams that provide a lot of Auckland's water.
The outlook over the valley has been great for Tony to relax and gather strength in after his illness.

They have landscaped nicely and have alpacas in a field by the house, the youngest being just 4 days old.

Each year just before Christmas they host friends and work colleagues to an afternoon of food, wine and conviviality. They've been doing this for many years initially at their home in Point Chevalier and now in the Hunua countryside. It's truly amazing, given the remoteness of their new home at the number of people who come along. I drove down from Whangarei and stayed for a couple of hours before having to head back up to Auckland to pick up The Old Girl from work and head out to my sister's place. While I was there many people turned up and as I was leaving many more were arriving. It's a tribute to their popularity and Alison's hosting. Her Christmas celebrations are famous. They had eleven Christmas trees in different parts of the house and lots of Santas of different sizes.

I last visited their house when it was under construction four years ago just before I left to live in England for a while. I can't remember if it was Richard or Mike that I was with as we visited a few times before and during the construction. They were living in a kind of prefab cottage at the time.

I remember visiting with Richard. I drove and he acted as scout. He had satellite navigation loaded on to his phone so was confident of finding the place. The trouble was that he had downloaded an Italian language version. This was in the earlier days of Richard's Italian language learning and, to be frank (or Luigi) he was crap at it. The female Italian voice rapidly gave directions that Richard either couldn't understand or misinterpreted. It took us many wrong turnings and about four times as long to find Tony and Shelley's farm.

It was fun though.