Rain, rain, go away

After two or three days that were quite pleasant and even featured some sunshine, the rain came back with a vengance last night, and it has been raining steadily all day. This has been the wettest summer for decades, and everyone is completely sick of it at this stage, but what can we do? Outdoor activities planned months or even years in advance are cancelled at the last minute, nobody has had a decent barbecue in ages, and there are 50% Off All Garden Furniture sales in Homebase and B&Q. I did get a couple of chances to use the new bistro set that I got the other day, but I think they won't be used again now until next week at the earliest. I also had to abandon plans to get rid of quite a few things at a car boot sale today, which is really annoying, but I have no cover for the table and I'm sure there weren't many customers at it today anyway. And it has also messed things up for the astronomers who were hoping to get a good look at the meteor showers. I am really getting quite ticked off with the whole thing!

In other news, I think I am going to have to get a new passport. I still have about eight years to run on my current one, but I have got married since then and I do want to use my married name now rather than my maiden one. I thought that it would cause problems with my visa application if I changed my name in the middle of things, but it only takes 10 days (and €82) to get an Irish passport renewed, so now might be a good time to do it, before we go on holiday. I've emailed my NZIS case officer to see what impact this would have on getting the final stickers for my visa, but hopefully it'll just be a case of sending them my new passport and our marriage certificate. I'm sure they'd prefer to issue the visa in the name I'll be using in New Zealand in any case.