This New Zealand Life

Why should you leave the UK for NZ?

You gather round the log burner, pull on another Skivvy and tuck up under a blanket

PEOPLE leave the UK for a better lifestyle elsewhere. They imagine the petty rules, regulations and obligations will be left far behind in a green-less memory, and that any choices they make in the new country will be easy, successful and illuminated by sunshine.

But of course it's not like that. For a start there are plenty of people who find it difficult to navigate the sometimes obtuse immigration requirements, and there are other expats who find daily costs more expensive than they'd budgeted for. Moving money between the UK and New Zealand can be expensive, particularly at the moment.

Is violence reason to leave Britain?

UK violent attacks reach two a minute

THIS New Zealand Life likes to point out the good and the bad for expats and immigrants in NZ.

Sometimes this might seem gushingly over enthusiastic and at other times readers might wonder why you'd ever want to live on such a remote, unstable collection of rocks. It is all a balance, of course.

But it's useful to be reminded of why so many Brits end up leaving the jolly old UK and heading for a different life overseas.

NZ's postmen live it up on profits of junk markets

Compared to the good-old British postie, their job is like being paid for sunbathing while reading a Dan Brown novel and drinking rum punch

WALKING up the flax-infested goat-track from our front door to the road this morning I was greeted, yet again, by the unwelcome sight of a mail box overflowing with bits of unwanted tat from various supermarkets, piano-tuners, pizza-parlours, and nail-polishers.

I find it hard to believe any of this stuff is worth printing, let alone paying some spotty-faced yoof to stuff it all in my mail box. I mean, how many people actually read it instead of just using it to light their fire boxes. (For which it's very welcome I might add).

The ridiculous school-holiday mismatch

One of the most inconceivably ridiculous inventions of all time is the school holiday. Just when the kids are getting used to the routine of getting up, washed, breakfast, cleaning teeth and such like, the teachers decide to take jolly long time off and close the classrooms.

NZ Christmas: a daft reminder of Europe

Santa wears a red Tee, shades and jandals. For xmas dinner the turkey has been replaced by green-lipped mussels and the roast potatoes, by barbied-yams.

SANTA came to town last weekend in his very own Christmas parade. Even apart from the fact he appeared at a ridiculously early point in the calendar -- but that's simply the way it goes these days -- the entire exercise was the triumph of European-tradition over reality just like England still think they're good at rugby.

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How to have an authentic Kiwi home without breaking the bank

Typical Kiwi House. Photo: TonySt Wikicommons

BRITISH people tend to think of houses as rather stable items, attached to the ground by thick wedges of cement, built to last generations if not hundreds of years, and somewhere that, barring a small child with a box of matches or a Noah-sized flood, will be there when you come home from the shops.

You can leave your windows and doors open, stick up a sign saying "Nobody Home" and the worse that might happen is that the local hood will steal the improved, lighter flat screen TV, and a few wedding-present ornaments that nobody wants in any case.

But one thing he won't do is make off with the house. It's impossible. He'd be seen.

Why Fewer Cold-Bloodied Killers Means More Lettuce

It's not that we don't see snails in NZ, it's just that the only time we do they are being bashed to death by a friendly thrush.

THE other day I came across one of my neighbour's cats, a diminutive black variety, stalking a Keruru. The cat sat beneath a spindly tree forlornly looking skyward while the bird perched nonchalantly at the end of a twig not much wider than a bit of straw.

The long winter ends - we pray

LIVING in New Zealand for nearly two years I am hopeful we the rain has finally dried up for a long summer. It feels like there has been the longest winter since 1973 - which I don't really remember (honest) when discontent went hand in hand with four penny chews to a penny and four pence packets of crisps.

Here in Wellington some 37 years later, I get the feeling Mr Weather has been holding in a belly laugh everytime I go out the front door at 8.30 in the morning to yet another drenching and a knee-high damp trouser experience.

Visiting Taupo with small children - and saving money

BEING on an extended stay in New Zealand with the prospect of applying for residency, we love trips away from our home in buzzing Wellington to see more Lord of the Ring's country. Especially given the claustrophobia a small rental-house with a five year old boy and a three year old girl can fester during a soaking winter's weekend.

Guest writer, Rob Thomson, reports.