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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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Bribed with flowers

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 I think it was last week, not this week, that Fiona called in to give us a couple of Bird of Paradise flowers, as she knows that I like them. On Thursday Mrs. Egg called in and gave us some lovely orange Lillies which Nicky has arranged with aplomb in the same vase: There were strings attached however: moggie feeding over the weekend. Unusually Frances didn’t stay for a coffee, as she had washing out and suspected rain was on the way. For the same reason I had brought ours in just a few minutes earlier, so because of the weather we missed out on a good chat. We will catch up another time I expect. It has been a different sort of week for Nicky. She was summoned for jury service this week, so headed off to the Court House on Monday morning. She was back home by lunchtime having not been drawn from the ballot and with instructions to check the website in the evening to see if she should attend again on Tuesday. The information on the website was ambiguous, and differed from the Jury...
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Is this a lake I see before me?

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 Monday was wet. Very wet. The rain started on Sunday evening, continued through the night and into the day, and didn’t let up until sometime Monday evening. It was never torrential, but steady and determined. We have been seeing the effects in the river all week - higher levels and brown with silt. The rowers and canoeists are usually only heard (instructors tutoring them via megaphones), but this week the river level has been high enough for us to see them from our bedroom window.   Nicky was the only one to ventured out to do the church cleaning. We had a lovely video chat with Maria in the afternoon, and I started on our map jigsaw of Loughborough, where we used to live in England. In the evening we watched the first two episodes of Vigil season 3. As good as expected, as were the following two episodes which we watched on Tuesday evening. The weather for the rest of the week has been mainly dry and sunny with a cool breeze. I went for an amble round Virgina Lake on Wednes...
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