The only real time we spent outside of Ngatiawa during the month was to drop into Wellington (which is apparently, officially the windiest city in the world, – and I can believe it) so that Ella and I could make wedding rings for one another. 29 years ago we had no money at all and so all we could afford were really thin, cheap gold rings and mine had got more and more worn over time until at the New Year it decided to end its life as a ring by snapping.

Having been told it would be pointless to fix it given its overall condition, we figured it would be symbolic at the start of part II of our life together, while halfway through our sabbatical year and half way round the world, to make new rings.

We contacted a crafty person in Wellington who had the means and the skills to show us what to do and we spent two wonderful afternoons making new rings for each other. It was a bit like being back at school only without the possibility of being sent out for misbehaving and being allowed cups of tea. We also melted down our two old wedding rings (which resulted in a surprisingly tiny amount of gold – not even enough to make a single new ring – so Ella crafted a shape in a cuttlefish shell for a mould and created a little pendant that the lady soldered on to her bracelet.) (Ella’s, not the lady’s – that would have been cheeky.)

The process of making the rings was fairly straightforward: first off we had to make prototypes out of hard plasticcy wax which would then be sent away to have moulds made of them. This involved sawing and filing and sanding and, quite frankly, lots of pretending to be Gollum – and then when we were sufficiently surprised that we hadn’t made a complete pig’s ear of them they got sent off to the silver people and a week later back came the rings cast and ready for us to finish filing and sanding and trying on and going “ooh” and “it’s stuck” and generally sculpting til we had the finish we wanted.
And they look awesome!

 (The elves at work on the prototypes)

 (Finished!)

It’ll be worth being married another 29 years just so’s I get to wear mine for that long.

I’m secretly waiting for a bunch of dwarves, orcs and Cate Blanchetts to waylay us in order to read the strange markings on the inside of Ella’s ring which look to the untrained eye to be scratches from my shoddy workmanship but might well be ancient rune markings and which sends them off to Hobbiton (like to see them get 75 dollars a head off the orcs when they turn up for the tour) and then grabbing Bilbo and running off up mountains all over New Zealand.

Talking of running, I started again, finally, while at Ngatiawa. Having taken my trainers and running gear away with me and only having got them out three times in Zimbabwe and never since I was determined to make it worthwhile having used up a goodly proportion of my allocated baggage allowance on them by getting back into shape.

The main difficulty was that Ngatiawa is in a valley and there is nothing flat in sight. So every second day my route was, turn right at the end of the drive and run up a steep, steep hill sounding like a wounded hippo til the road ran out. Then turn round and run down hill, back past the driveway, then turn round and run uphill back to home. Ella said, after a few weeks: “It must be beautiful running in such stunning scenery” and I had to confess that when I run I’m oblivious to the scenery because all I can hear is a voice in my head screaming “Kill me! Make it stop.”

This had improved by the end of the 4 weeks. The voices were still shouting the same thing, but the runs were thankfully taking less time.

We left Ngatiawa physically and spiritually fitter – and, as the ferry to take us over to the South Island left from Wellington at 8.30 in the morning we arranged to spend the evening before in the city at the home of a fantastic couple who had been at Ngatiawa the weekend before and whose house overlooks Wellington and who have their own Heath Robinson looking monorail-open-elevator thing running up the cliff face to get from the road to their door. Their own monorail-open-elevator thing! Straight up the cliff! I’d have completed signing the papers for the purchase by the time I was halfway up the monorail-open-elevator track had I been shown around by the estate agent. You ride in a sort of big open crate, straight up the cliff face! To get to the house! Good luck postman and paper boy!