Friday, April 13, 2007

Bargain-hunting and tripping-off

For the time being I’m leaving Trade Me aside. With our attention being greatly devoted on our trip to the UK in two months, it’s hard to keep focused on buying and selling as well, although it’s been fun going to garage sales and secondhand shops and thrift shops and finding bargains to put on the auction site. Sometimes we’ve bought more for non-Trade Me purposes than for onselling, but that’s okay. Some of those finds have been good too, such as the job lot of kitchen cutlery and odds and ends that some woman was so keen to get rid of, she gave to us for a dollar.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned the trip to the UK on this blog. (I have on another blog.) My wife comes from the UK and every so often has a great yearning to go back for a prolonged visit. She regards New Zealand as home, these days, but that doesn’t stop the place she grew up in being very close to her heart. Sometimes I find her on the Net searching for references to it, or checking out the webcam overlooking the carpark there. About three weeks ago, we both came to the conclusion – separately, as it happened – that since I didn’t have the responsibility of a permanent job, and because we had a bit of money left in England from an inheritance, that perhaps it was as good a time to go as any. She could get the time off work as unpaid leave, and we could spend the time in the UK visiting her extensive family, our friends from the past, and perhaps doing a bit of tripping around. We might even work there spasmodically. If we leave it longer, until I retire for instance, we might neither of us have the energy or health to go.
So we’re off in early June, gasping a bit at the cost of getting there and back, and trying to save money where we can before we go.

No comments: