ANZAC Day

There are three and a half days each year when it’s illegal for the shops to open in New Zealand (with the exception of what’s considered to be essential public services such as petrol stations, dairies and souvenir shops): Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and up until 1pm on Anzac Day.

If a shop is caught trading on one of these days it can be fined $1000. A few shops flout the law as they forecast the profits will be more than the fines. But the majority stay closed, and on these days the nation focuses on more important things.

Today was Anzac Day, a public holiday marked every year in both Australia and New Zealand in memory of those who fought at Gallipoli in WW1.

Unfortunately when you’re self-employed the number of hours necessary to complete your projects doesn’t reduce when there’s a public holiday, so I spent the morning working today while Jake went running up the mountain and the kids got stuck into a very complicated looking craft project that involved a cardboard box, a massive amount of sticky tape and two toy trains.

In the afternoon though, we focused on more important things and went pottering about on the beach at Plimmerton. Molly and Alfie went hunting for crabs, built a house in the sand, collected dune flowers, did running races and went scootering while I sat on the beach and tried to read my very good book (Marzipan andMagnolias).

But the peace and quiet just wasn't meant to happen for me today. The kids pestered me so much to join in the races that I put the book down after 20 minutes of reading the same sentence over and over again, gave in and ran my socks off with them!