Narrowboat AREandARE

From the 2009 & 2010 tantalising tales, traumas and stunning photographs of Barry (photographer) and Sandra (writer) from New Zealand aboard NB 'Northern Pride', to the stories of their 2013 return journey, purchase of 'AREandARE', progress on sustaining their live aboard continuous cruiser lifestyle, and Barry's quest to gain residency and 'Indefinite Leave to Remain' in UK ...

Sunday 27 November 2011

You’re never too old to diversify – the three faces of Barry, looking outside the box - lessons in putting it out there!

For anyone reading wondering what one earth this blog has to do with the waterways of Britain, let me explain.  Barry, my husband, and I, bought Northern Pride, a 45 foot narrowboat in April 2009 and spent the next six months travelling almost 1,000 miles around the canals and rivers of England and Wales.  We returned to New Zealand, as Barry is only ‘allowed’ to stay in UK for a maximum of six months, until May 2010 when we returned to complete another five month journey.  In February this year, we sold our beloved boat to some beautiful people who keep us in touch with what is happening with her, and we’re back in New Zealand, Barry’s home country and my adopted country, while we plan our return to UK by February 2013 to buy another narrowboat and live aboard ‘indefinitely’.  So, in the meantime, we’re continuing with the blog to keep us inspired and focussed on our vision …

In April 2007, a year after Barry and I got together, I dragged him back to England to meet my family.  His proviso was that he would come, and leave his successful photography business and not earn any money for 4 weeks, so long as we could ‘do a canal trip’.  So we had four days and nights aboard a hire boat with my parents and my youngest daughter Kim, and did the Birmingham ring.  Barry was hooked!  When we returned to New Zealand he dreamed of returning, buying a boat, and living aboard.  It took us another two years to get there, but by September 2008, I had sold my house and moved in with Barry, he had sold his house and then sold his business – a professional photographer of 35 years with a very high profile in his local town of Gisborne.

Since that time, Barry has had a few short term contracts in between our trips to UK, but realistically found it an enormous challenge to get a ‘real’ job, despite sending in numerous CV’s, application forms and covering letters.  Feeling that maybe employers were looking at the fact that he’d only really worked as a photographer and not seeing his transferrable skills, as well as possibly believing that at 55 he must be ‘past it’, he was becoming despondent.

But Barry isn’t one to let things get to him, and November 2011 has seen a complete change of his life!  From having no job, he’s had three!  From having much of the past three years off, he’s spent the past month with hardly a day not working.

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Firstly there’s been his photography workshops which we mentioned in a previous blog.  The September dates were a non-starter, probably because it was such short notice, but suddenly a few weeks ago he had people wanting to book and was full for November with bookings now in place for the February workshops too!

 

 

 

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Then of course, he opened his homebrew shop 'ezimade', on Thursday 17 November and has been like a pig in s—t ever since!  Business has been amazing, with huge interest from local people.  He’s open six days a week, 1000hrs to 1800hrs Monday to Friday and 1000hrs to 1600hrs on a Saturday.  So from having him at home for seven days a week I now hardly see him - we’re like ships narrowboats that pass in the night!

 

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Then yesterday, Saturday 26th November, Barry was the manager at one of the local polling stations working from 0800hrs to 2200hrs!  He’d applied for a job with the elections some time ago, and without even asking had been appointed as a manager.  Not that he craved such notoriety, we suspect anyone who knew anything about the elections would have declined – experience is a great thing in retrospect isn’t it?!  A 16 hour day for a pittance – ah well, that’s life.

So the message is that however low you may feel, and even if you think that you’re ‘too old’ to do what you want to do, it’s like anything in life - “What you give energy to grows and expands’ - so put it out there, whatever ‘it’ may be for you, and rest assured it’ll be given to you.

Tuesday 22 November 2011

Embracing technology and ezimade takes off!

Goodness me!  My aim has been to write a blog each week at least, but things have been full on here lately, and I haven’t quite managed to fulfil my good intentions.

On 11th November, unbeknown to me at the time, the new iphone 4s was launched.  On that day, I had some time to visit our local Vodafone shop and invite of the sales assistants to tell me about what phones were available to update the Motorola phone I’d had since early 2007 – without even knowing it I was persuaded to buy the very latest iphone and went away thinking I’d never be able to work it out but incredibly discovered that actually it was (and is) the simplest and most useful phone I’ve ever purchased!  I adore it and have finally begun to embrace all this newfangled technology!  All in the name of working our way towards returning to the waterways of UK by 2013.  But more on that to come …

Last Sunday I had the pleasure of organising and partaking of a cycling winery tour with some of my midwifery colleagues, courtesy of Gisborne Cycle tours, cycling 22kms whilst visiting four local wineries sampling their wine and tasting some delicious food – awesome fun!  I was the lead on a tandem bike which was pretty scary to begin with, but we managed to get the hang of it pretty swiftly and stayed upright throughout the day with no mishaps.

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Nikki and me and our tandem bike

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The cyclists about to leave Stonebridge Wines on a beautiful, sunny Gisborne day

The day after the cycling I’d organised a two day experience courtesy of Walk Gisborne, with a friend from my life coaching course, and we did an awesome walk on Tuesday of last week with them.

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On the walk with my new ‘drink as you walk’ water siphon over my shoulder – what a fantastic invention!

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Looking out onto Makorori Beach, Gisborne

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Not a bad part of the world :-)

Due to changeable weather conditions on the Wednesday, we decided not to do the next walk but return to Gisborne and visit Barry in the about to open shop and help out with his opening evening.

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Barry outside his new shop, with the signs being put up

 

 

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Welcoming his new customers

The shop is going well, it’ll be a week since it opened on Thursday and the interest has been awesome!  Today, Tuesday 22nd November, Barry has a business profile published in the local paper, the Gisborne Herald:

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So anyone who had the pleasure of meeting up with us on Northern Pride in 2009 or 2010, and sampled Barry’s home brew, will appreciate the passion and commitment that has gone into opening this new venture which is part of our plan for returning to the waterways of England early in 2013.

Ezi Made - Barry Teutenberg

Wednesday 2 November 2011

A nail biting final, and Barry’s new venture takes shape

We had a fabulous day at the Gisborne Wine and Food festival on Sunday 23 October.  Sadly the weather changed from a glorious sunny morning to an overcast and rather cool afternoon – and there were some scantily clad people who wished they’d packed some extra clothes around!

Barry (unsurprisingly, as he seems to know a large proportion of the population of Gisborne) bumped into a number of people he knows at the event, and took the opportunity to promote his upcoming ‘home brew and more’ shop that’ll be opening in November.  James Milton of Milton's Winery in Gisborne, listened intently as Barry enthusiastically talked of his plans.  Barry can’t compete with their organic and biodynamic wines - my favourite is 'Muskats at Dawn', which in 2011 has a slight sparkle and is absolutely divine.

DSCF1757 Barry tastes a glass or two of Milton’s wine with James Milton

The day was a sell-out of 5,000 tickets with around 1,500 of them to folks from out of town.  For the third time this year we socialised with our niece Emma, Matt and their friends from Wellington which was cool – especially as they had packed a picnic rug so we could share that when we wanted a rest!

DSCF1759 Barry, Lois, Matt, Emma, Charles, Lana and Charles!

The venue for the day was the Waiohika estate, which has two natural amphitheatres and is also the venue for the huge New Year festival called Rhythm and Vines which accommodates an amazing 25,000 people, and won the 2010 Best Festival/Event NZ Tourism Award.  It seemed just right with 5,000 people, plenty of room for everyone, but it must be buzzing with five times that amount of people – almost the same as the total population of Gisborne!

DSCF1767 The main stage where ‘Fat Freddie’s Drop’ were the headline act – the ‘R & V’ sign can be seen in the background

As dusk fell, the crowds moved to the smaller amphitheatre to watch the big match – and what a tense,  breathtaking final it was!  There was a time when I was thinking I should’ve bet $100 on France, rather than just $20 (just to soften the blow if the worst happened!), but was thankfully ecstatic to lose it.  What a shame there weren’t more tries though as the whole crowd rose to it’s feet and roared at the All Blacks only try - electrifying!

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DSCF1804 Yaay!  We are the champions of the world – Richie’s in the background kissing the Webb Ellis cup, and you can tell we’re delighted and relieved

So it’s all positive for New Zealand and great for our economy.  Hopefully that ‘feel good’ factor will also help Barry’s new business to get off the ground.  We have the keys and Barry has put up most of the shelving now and will be putting his first order in tomorrow – very exciting!  Here’s a few snaps of the up and coming shop …

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The logo we chose after much deliberation

 

 

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The shop is on the end of a line of premises, on Peel Street, Gisborne

P1450724A An abundance of shelves just waiting to be filled with home brew kits, cheese making kits, and who knows what other surprises …