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General Election

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 It was Election Day yesterday. The preliminary results are now in, and they are disappointing. There is no clear winner, so the right wing coalition of the last three years may continue. In my view, both major parties lost. Labour because they won fewer seats in parliament than National, and National because their proportion of the overall vote was 9% lower than at the last election three years ago. The winners are NZ First and ACT, the two more right-wing minority parties that have been in the government coalition. This is not good news in my view, as they have foisted divisive and uncaring policies on the National led coalition, and may have more leverage to continue doing so with the result as it stands. However, 400,000 special votes have yet to be counted, and with the outcome resting on such small margins, things may change. We will get the final official results on November 27th. For those of you reading this outside New Zealand, Special Votes are those cast by people outsi...
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More art

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 Labour Day dawned chilly, windy and cloudy. We continued visiting artists’ studios on the Kapiti Coast Arts Trail after calling in to Ben’s Buns to buy bread, croissants and pies for dinner. The trail took us out to the Nikau Valley: One of our best visits of the weekend was to The Art Barn where we saw the work of Roly Hermans; highly detailed paintings of ships, planes and trains. They were very good and selling like hot cakes. By lunchtime we had visited 29 studios in total over the weekend and were all cultured out. The weather improved with some sunny spells but we didn’t amble on the beach for very long because of the strong wind. We started on the jigsaw that we had taken with us and throughly enjoyed our pies for dinner. A very windy night was followed by a stormy morning so we had had a very slow start to our last full day in Raumati. When the weather started to improve, we drove to a furniture shop in search of a dining table and chairs. We had found one that we liked at...
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Festival of Design

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  Not many people know this, but Whanganui is UNESCO’s only New Zealand City of Design. This is being celebrated with the Design Festival, so on Wednesday evening after the quiz Nicky and I, accompanied by Mike, went to see the City of Design Festival Lights. The photos below don’t do them justice as they were constantly changing. The spirals on the grass were quite intriguing, and yes, that is a carillon, that the eagle-eyed among you have spotted. The lights from the roof of the Sarjeant Gallery played on the buildings in the cultural quarter and into the night sky. It was really quite impressive and we were pleased we had been to see them. The weather has been good to very nice, so laundry has been easily dried, and the garden has had quite a bit of attention. Nicky has done all her usual activities and when we quizzed we came 4th with 93 points. We have enjoyed re-watching the first series of Ludwig in preparation of the second series starting this evening. We had a lovely driv...
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Salad days?

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 The week began with a day reminiscent of summer. I cut the grass while mulling over what to produce for dinner with tuna as the protein. A range of salads seem appropriate by mid afternoon to celebrate the lovely weather. By Thursday it was raining, and very wet. This started to ease off on Friday when a strong southerly wind chilled us and continued into Saturday, though with some abatement. Today started dull, but the afternoon has been sunny. Nicky made lemon and orange muffins for her Home Group on Tuesday to celebrate some birthdays. While out shopping I called into Mitre 10 to buy a drill bit and a replacement outdoor tap. In the afternoon I fitted the tap and used the new drill bit to attach the Council provided nets to the recycling bins. So the nets stop the contents being blown out by the wind. Wednesday was very humid which I really noticed while working in the garden. I tidied the palette by the shed so that we could store the bags of compost on it instead of keeping t...
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Questions, questions

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  It was Mike’s birthday on Monday and he invited us to join him for dinner. We went to The Glasshouse, a recently re-opened restaurant at one of the motels on Victoria Avenue, Whanganui”s CBD main drag. From what we had read, the proprietors are not aiming for fine dinning, but for better than the average than is available in Whanganui. I think they have hit that mark pretty well, but ultimately we were disappointed. We ordered buretta and charred cherry tomato pitas, and miso pork belly bites to share as entrées. The pork belly was quite salty and served with raw shredded garlic which was not well received. Mike enjoyed his main course of Angus steak, and my market fish in a Thai green curry sauce was good. Nicky’s pork chops in honey and mustard sauce was dry and the mustard overpowering. We finished with creme brûlée which was the best dish of the meal. I wasn’t thrilled with the furniture as the central table support didn’t leave me enough room for my legs, a the cutlery was a...
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Lighter evenings

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 Having lighter evenings this week has been good after changing the clocks last weekend. We have noticed it particularly with a couple of our evening regular events; quizzing and the community meal. Nicky had an appointment with the doctor on Monday to discuss the increasing pain in her shoulders. He confirmed her suspicions of the return of polymyalgia and prescribed suitable medication, which is already helping. After her hairdressing appointment on Tuesday morning, she popped into the Indian spice shop to buy some more psyllium husk and also bought me two of their excellent Samoas for my lunch. She was given a third one for free. I thoroughly enjoyed them, but they are too spicy for Nicky’s liking. Shane the Sparky, and his daughter (it’s school holidays) came and fixed the outdoor power socket on Tuesday morning. In the process, he also converted it from a single to a double socket which is helpful. I got the grass cut and did the shopping in the afternoon. I ambled round Lake ...
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Bloomin'

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 I think we had a first this week: the first time we have completed The Listener Quizword as it is called, though we just call it the crossword, without seeking assistance from Mrs. Google or any of our reference tombs. If we have achieved this before, it’s so long ago that we can’t remember. Our quiz evening was a little different this week, due to technology issues. Pete, the Quiz Master, could only get the questions to display on two of the 10 or so monitors, which meant that some teams couldn’t easily see them. After a 15 minute delay and problems with the first two rounds and the Ponderous, Pete decided on a different approach (a bit more fiddling with the laptop) and awarded us all with 50 points (10 for each of the first two rounds, doubled with our jokers, and 10 full marks for the Ponderous). The rest of the evening went reasonably well from a technology perspective, and we ended up 8th with 102 points. The weather has been changeable, with the return of winter temperature...
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