The Library.

Two days after returning from Chatham Islands I started training to become a teacher of Pilates.

The course is run through a studio in Nelson, so I drive my rattly old van over the hilly and winding State Highway 6 through Rai Valley to Nelson (and back) one day a week.

The cost of fuel jumped about 30% this week - not surprising but hard on folks on a tighter budget than mine. Even so we have axed going to Blenheim once a week for supplies and laundry services and I have to fit all that into my day in Nelson.

Mr B is tired of the rattly old van, and our 20km of gravel road is 20km of corrugations at present - which is a rough ride when the front seat is on top of the front wheels - so he has ordered and I've paid the deposit on a new 'Ute'. More on that next month. He wouldn't settle for boxed-standard white so he has to wait for a copper coloured one!

Having said that the rattly old van has a long term reprieve, and will get what I regard as an exorbitant sum spent on renewing its timing belt, because it is ideal for transporting Mr B’s sports motorbike over said gravel road to nice clean smooth tarmac - and back again at the end of his ride-outs.

Our building consent has been granted - plans approved - and building inspector's fees billed in advance. I paid that today and await news from the builder on when he can start.

At a loose end might adequately describe how I have felt since return from Chathams. Heavy and hard work tasks seem to have dried up and been replaced with more genteel pasttimes like tidying the veg beds and shelling nuts. I managed to find an excuse to dig a posthole today and put in a gate post for a garden gate beside our cabin.

The cabin is now formally "The Library". It started as a joke when Council inspectors came out to investigate complaints that a number of properties had people living in unconsented buildings. We are permitted to build storage up to 30 square metres of floor space - but may not use it as living space. The Cabin, as it was formerly known, is now described as storage for books.

We are also permitted to live in a cramped, cold, damp, (I'm laying it on thick here) aluminium box called a caravan, but not sleep in an insulated weather proof building unless or until we have a completed house on site.

Needless to say the Council inspectors don't drive out that road more than once a year if they don't absolutely have to. We should well on the way to a house by the time they next poke their noses around the end of the bay.

I made some blinds by cutting up a big slatted blind purchased at the Reuse Shop

Blood Moon last Tuesday - we kayaked around in the dark, playing in bioluminescence (and getting frostbite in my feet) while the lunar eclipse was progressing, then came back and tried to photograph it through Mr B’s telescope.