Well that was 2025, nearly!

We’ve had a productive year getting things done on the house, extra insulation, some inserts in the front doors to stop the drafts which worked brilliantly, and we got solar panels installed with a 14kw battery.

The battery is on the floor there, the other things are the inverters and various controllers.

This 7kw car charger talks to the system and you can tell it to only charge when there’s plenty of sunshine.

Some of the panels. There’s a double gable so there’s another row behind these ones.

We are pleased with the way this has worked out, last month our power bill was $25 and I suspect this month the power company will owe us money 🙂

We figured once we are both retired it will be good to keep control of our power bill as it just keeps going up and in Dunedin in the winter it can be horrific.

We sold the house in France. This was quite a mission but its gone to a nice couple from Texas and they seem to love the house and the village so that’s better than it could have been. One of them is part French so I hope they fit in OK. We are a bit sad to sell the house but also relieved, we had a good run with it but owning a house on the other side of the world is risky.

The leaf has been an excellent vehicle, we’ve had it 8 years and it hasn’t put a foot wrong. We were both rather sorry to see it go, but we want to do a few road trips in NZ next year and we needed more range. I hope the next owner enjoys it as much as we did.

The replacement is this Kia EV3. Its the smallest EV Kia sells in NZ which tells you something about how cars have grown in size. It is a very good car though, and with an 81kw battery the range is between 450 – 600 kms depending on use. It will make a huge difference to our trips up to central Otago and Christchurch. No need to stop basically although we will no doubt stop for lunch anyway.

Pauline has had a busy year as the acting director of the Centre for Pacific Health Va’a o Tautai. Personally I have not had a busy year but there’s been quite a lot of admin around selling the house in France and etc. We did go to Christchurch to hold a remembrance ceremony for Pauline’s mum and we also managed to travel to Hanmer Springs for a wintry break which was very pleasant.

While in Christchurch we visited Ferrymead, I haven’t been there for decades. I particularly enjoyed the Post and Telegraph part since I used to be a Telegraph Technician in the old NZPO in the ’80s.

Sagem telex machine. This was the most modern machine we had when I was in the old NZPO

I really liked the Viscount at Ferrymead

Ten year old Leafs can still get to Christchurch!

I climbed up the hill at the back of our holiday house in Hanmer Springs

The old Hanmer hospital for drying people out.

Elsa has a new friend! Elsa ran over the other side of the road to visit him/her.

This cat Pearl on the other hand lives just down the street from us, she dropped in unannounced. Elsa was not impressed!

On a personal note, it turns out I have stage three arthritis in both of my hips. I knew things weren’t right but it became serious when I couldn’t ride my friend Woody’s motorcycle because I couldn’t sit on it. Since then I’ve been going to a physio, doing pilates and various exercises and while I am more flexible than I was at the start of the year the pain has actually gotten worse so I had an x-ray and the hips are not flash. This is rather annoying! I was reading in the paper the other day that the Mercy hospital down here has just bought a couple of new robots for doing hip operations, this could be me in the not too distant future! If it helps me riding bikes then I’m all for it.

Hoping this finds everyone in good health and all the best for 2026!

2 responses to “Well that was 2025, nearly!”

Marjory (Gibson) McSaveney

November 30, 2025

Hi Paul & Pauline – love this blog – you do such a good visual thing instead of just using words and it’s so interesting! Great to catch up with your doings and thinkings, and it was especially good to have time with you when we were in Dunners a while back.

Happy hips are to be cherished!

Cheers, Marjory & Len

mydigitaldiary

December 3, 2025

such a lovely year ☺️

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