So much to do as we ‘reclaim’ our ‘chez nous’, get it all to a standard we are happy with! We have been working hard, our bodies are wrecked, but we are pleased.

It has been an interesting process for the last month as we have slowly progressed through the huge sorting, culling, condensing exercise of moving 2^1/2 houses of possessions into one. It really clarifies what matters to us most, and why.

After big days of back breaking work to sanitise the place, make running repairs, inspect the content of every box we have piled up in the garage, every piece of furniture we have stored, we have carefully selected what we hang onto and use right now, and what we set aside for later in case we move to something bigger. There is still a lot to deliberate on, but we will get to that in time.

As we crash every night and look around us, we can truly say the house is an expression of who we are: we love the ocean, we love timber and glass, we revere craftsmanship. The house in the way it is furnished and decorated now reflects our creative, adventurous spirit, all our idiosyncrasies, passions, family history. And that’s what makes a house a home.

One of the meaningful pieces we unpacked during the past few days was the Normandy grandfather clock Chris inherited from her parents. It is reassembled, ticking and striking as it used to. We thought we might have had to make use of Wade’s clock repair skills but amazingly after being transported around the world and spending many years in storage, it started straight away. It even sounds so much more mellow in a room with cathedral ceilings than at my folks’ place.  We feel contentment and nostalgia, looking at and hearing this antique timepiece from the 1800s.

Another aspect that has made a difference is having music in the house. Call us old fashioned, but we have set up our Hi-Fi system, unboxed our collection of CDs and have being playing them all day long while beavering away. And we make our own music too. Although Chris’s piano is too heavy to move from the garage while we are still debating where we want to live, the Yamaha keyboard from Anui is on duty for a few months while we sort ourselves out. An old suitcase full of sheet music is also unpacked – plenty of practice for those stiff fingers! It is lovely to take breaks from the hard yakka, sit at the keyboard and rediscover tunes I had not played in years. Over time, the finger dexterity will come back.

Meanwhile, we keep working through our long task lists. How much we do on the house is dependent on what happens next. Do we do it up for sale, do we stay and extend? We have a difficult choice to make with the critical double barrel question: do we want to live here, in this house, in this climate?

Initially, especially when we first moved in to Jan Juc and found the mess it was in, we both thought “right, we are out of here”! But as we work at cleaning the house up and making it ready for sale, we also want to make it enjoyable for ourselves to live in for a while. We have started thinking about what we could do to improve it for the long term. We will be meeting with the original architect to see what he can come up with. Maybe, just maybe he can dream up an extension that would allow us to organise the house and our treasures the way we want. Right now however, when we have a couple of 42^oC stinking hot days sandwiched between weeks of 18^oC temperature and it is Summer, we think yes to a renovated house, but no to the Victorian climate!

Now that the inside is kind of organised, we are turning our attention to the outside: tidying up the garden, planting a few bushes and herbs so it is not as stark, and the big jobs: replacing the rotten deck and reinstating the spa – not because it would make the place more appealing to potential buyers as it actually won’t help – but because we’d like it for ourselves. A hot spa at night after all the hard physical work is what we are missing right now although we’ll have to be patient while the pump is getting repaired and the whole system checked. The aroma and aspect of a nice garden would be pleasing too.

Even though we are enjoying ourselves with the busyness and planning, appreciate the coastal position and take advantage of the conveniences of shore life, this period is difficult, keeping at least one of us awake at night thinking and the other passed out from exhaustion. It is not clear cut and it is weighty. The good thing is that no matter what and when we decide, it will be exciting. It might just take longer than six months.

Bengie is happy through all this, a specialist at finding the best sunny, comfy areas to curl up in after her daily patrols around and under the house or her frolics in the grass. She has worked out a circuit and moves with the warm light. She is awfully thin but still alive, still as loud and demanding as ever.

That’s it for the landlubbers’ update for a while. Onto different topics for the next couple of weeks!