MrsDoyle

Wellington has had a heated property market longer than most places - it's hilly for a start, so can't just sprawl like Auckland, and it's the capital, so a lot of well-heeled bureaucrats who don't want to commute from the hinterlands. I don't live there any more, so I don't know what the rental market is like now.

No worries - life is always a struggle for some, no matter where in the world you are.

Way to make me feel like a bloody dinosaur!! 😂

My flat cost £43k in the early 90s, nearly three times my annual income at the time, and all my savings went on the deposit. I had previously lived in a shared house, the only way I could afford to save anything.

More nostalgia... Looking for a 1br flat to rent in 1980s Wellington (NZ) was a trip. Demand far, far outstripped supply. Among the gems offered to me for top rental (can't remember how much, but it was crazily high), was a place that stank of damp and had rat-holes chewed in the bathroom wall - which was just soggy softboard against a dirt bank. There were three couples viewing at the same time. Another place I was told was fresh to the market, no-one else had seen it yet. The stove had been dismantled and the toilet was piled high with human shit. When I shouted at the agent she said, You don't want it then?" and hung up.

I eventually lucked in with a "granny flat" whose owners, an adorable elderly Polish couple, lived upstairs.

I'm sorry! Truly.

Didn't work for me... in my 1972 bank job interview I was told, "I'd hire you if you were a man, but you're not. If I hired you, you'd just get pregnant and leave." It wasn't against the law for him to say all that.

And for what it's worth I didn't buy a home - a small one-bed flat - until I was in my 40s. Cost me so much I couldn't afford proper furniture. Yes, my current house is worth a lot more than what I paid for it (mainly because I bought a wreck), but so is any other house I could afford if I sold it.

I went with plain gold rings immediately after piercing. The advice was to swab my lobes twice daily with alcohol, turning the rings then and only then. They healed pretty quickly with no fuss. I've pretty much stuck to pure gold rings since - turns out I'm allergic to nickel, very common metal for stud posts and keepers.

I have a few books that came free with PC mags back in the day, full of links to mad crazy websites and interesting/useful stuff. So few pixels back then!!

Chickpea curry is delicious. Americans probably call chickpeas something else.

How about Scotland then? We have wildcats in a zoo.

https://www.highlandwildlifepark.org.uk/animals/animal-inhabitants/wildcat

I discovered that a dehumidifier is really good at drying clothes cheaply. The one I bought has a specific button for laundry.

I've got you.