Security - each day, as I drove from Otane, and then Waipukarau, to Havelock North down Stock Road I came to a T intersection and gazed on a sign attached to an orchard drive way. In large letters it read, 'Security'. The details of the firm supplying security were obscured by agapanthus but I saw the sign and I understood it loud and clear!
It's what I needed after all the rambling years - Woodford House did the trick for four years - longer than I'd intended, actually.
After Jacky's health scare in September 2012 delayed our Chinese adventure, stability was even more necessary. We were committed to Wuxi but it was a wretched time for SWMBO after the radiotherapy.
After we both learned about our new jobs at the same time (I tried to ring Jacky with my good news, but couldn't get through - because she was receiving the same news from her job application), we breathed out.
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| Not often all six of us are together - KW is MIA |
After we finally got rid of our house sitter (don't ask) Jacky went back to work at Hastings hospital in the NICU and maternity departments and I trooped off to teach the girls each day. at Woodford House. Fun Fun Fun.
Woodford has an undeserved reputation for snobbishness. In reality it's full of normal, well adjusted girls, many from a farming background.
The staff at Woodford were (and some still are) amazing. Luckily I could practise the 'get out of the way and let great people do their thing' philosophy with my English department.
Fortuitously, I was seated in a section of the staff work room that contained some hilarious and genuinely wonderful characters like Toni Dunstan and Ange Rathbone. We had serious fun! Jackie Barron's leadership suited me to a T (intersection) and friends/coaches like Jane Perry and Dionne Thomas made my stay a constant delight.
The students? Well, they were a different story. Notoriously, they are very slow to accept change - so getting to know me took a while. Curiously, I have not found this to be the case in any of my other schools (including my current one). The first year at Woodford, 2013, wasn't all butterflies and zebras, moonbeams, and fairy tales.
But we kinda got there in the end.
Along the way, love was in the air, every time I looked around. Jacky and I restated our marriage vows in the Woodford House Chapel to seal 30 years of marriage and set up the next thirty; Samantha got married to Jesse in San Francisco; and Adam married Ashleigh in Auckland and moved to Melbourne. Our little chick-a-dees were dispersing and forging their own desire paths away from New Zealand.
As for Keegan, he met Diya and after a few false starts with bad boys, Jade met William. Diya didn't last, but William and Jade did.
Security and stability are great, but, after four years, and one relocation to Waipukurau, the prevailing winds of change started blowing my way again. I needed fresh challenges. It was time to get back to senior management and a return to the UK - so a plan was hatched to apply for positions with recruiters in London.
Except, an innocent little gazette notice, and Jacky's desire that I consider NZ jobs as well, put a spaniel in the works.
Love and peace - Wozza
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