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The weather is still nice

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 The weather was quite dull on Wednesday, but the rest of the week has been settled and lovely. Crisp beginnings followed by lovely sunshine. As the week has progressed the overnight temperatures have dropped, hitting a low of 3ยบ which gave us a hint of frost. The cosmos by the drive is looking great: Nicky did her usual vestry cleaning and tea towel laundering on Monday. We had a good morning in town together on Tuesday. While I did the supermarket shopping Nicky had her electric blanket tested at the Fire Station. She didn’t find a comfortable fireman to sit on while she was waiting, but there were chairs and the firemen were handsome and helpful. The blanky passed. Nicky had some Whitcoulls gift vouchers to spend which she had earned doing on-line surveys. A jigsaw was our preferred option and we found a lovely Kiwiana one. Next stop was Renata’s for the framing of the lighthouse cards that Nicky bought for me at the Kapiti Coast Arts Festival last year as an early birthday gift...
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After the cyclone

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 With both of us being retired our home activities are often determined by the weather. Neither of us cares for gardening or working outside when it is raining, cold, windy, or any combination of those conditions. This week has been a case in point. The week began with the State of Emergency being lifted, but the passing cyclone left us with wind and rain. A southerly breeze stepped in a reduced the overnight temperatures to 3ยบ or 4ยบ, encouraging us to change to the winter quilt on our bed. When not needing to go out we stayed at inside and started a colourful jigsaw of vintage gardening book covers: Three pieces were missing but we enjoyed it all the same. We finished it in time to return to the Jigsaw Exchange on Saturday. We ran some errands in town on Wednesday as the weather was dryer, investigating replacement mattresses for our bed amongst other things. It isn’t often that we go into town together so it was a bit of a treat. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone read by S...
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State of Emergency

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 We rose this morning a little before 7am and as soon as we looked out of the bedroom window noticed the river was much higher than usual. A few minutes later the river and surrounding hills were shrouded in mist as the sun began to warm the air. After we had emptied the dishwasher and were drinking our first cups of tea I discovered a local State of Emergency had been declared in Ruapehu, the district up-river from us. Heavy rain had caused flash flooding. As the mist cleared we could see the river was also moving very quickly. At around 8am the council announced a local State of Emergency for Whanganui, noting particularly the low lying areas in town, along Anzac Parade, and down to Putiki. Nicky got ready for church and I set off for my amble heading for the railway bridge. The bridge pillars give a good idea of the speed of the river and also carry depth indicators: The morning was bright and sunny so I decided to take advantage of our new Sunday bus service to go into town. I ...
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Cyclonic Irritation

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 For most of the week the April weather has continued where March left off. Cool beginnings and ends, glorious warm sunshine in-between. As a result we have a flower on the camilla and Dragons Gold on the kowhai. It has only changed today as Cyclone Vaianu approaches. We recored the top temperature in the country for the first three days of the week, 27ยบ on Monday. Some of the sunrises have been very colourful. This was Tuesday: It being the Easter school holidays, Nicky’s home group had a social this week. She made date scones for her food contribution, and I was able to sample a few to make sure they passed muster. Wednesday was Nicky’s monthly book club meeting and afternoon hospital visiting. We were quizzing in the evening. Danny and John were unable to make it, but Mike, Margie, Phil, Nicky and I made a reasonable fist of it coming 9th with 80 points. The library was hot and tiring on Thursday so Nicky required a cuppa and a lie down on her return. Yet again she enjoyed the G...
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Bunnies and Bells

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 Thursday was the last day of the working week for Number 1 daughter prior to the five (!) day long Easter weekend. She kindly (?) sent me this photo of the bunny fest that was happening in the office: I could almost smell them. Fortunately we have been working our way through a half dozen ourselves, and we have another packet in the freezer incase of a bunny emergency. We have had a mainly fine and sunny week again, hitting the low 20’s in the shade most days. This has enabled more work in the garden and easy drying of the washing. The jigsaw was finally finished on Monday evening. Nicky’s Home Group was at church on Tuesday afternoon with the Holy Week prayer stations. In the evening she attended a Bible Friends Holy Communion service as her home group supports Bible Friends, which is church for intellectually disabled adults. We both had a fun time on Wednesday watching a video that Claire had sent us about Taylor’s bell foundry in Loughborough, where we used to live. It was bot...
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Cracking thunderstorm Gromit

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 On Tuesday evening I met Jackson at the cinema to see Project Hail Mary, the latest film adaptation of one of Andy Weir’s books. We both enjoyed the film but there was a particular sequence that I was looking for that had been mentioned in the review which I had read. The film was peppered with moments of humour; verbal, visual and musical. The sequence I was looking for was where four probes, called Beatles, were dispatched from a spaceship. The reviewer commented that the event was accompanied by an appropriate Beatles song. I thought it might be Across the Universe from the album Let It Be. I was right about the album but wrong about the song, which was Two of Us. The theme from Two of Us that was appropriate for the sequence was that of going home. The song has some vivid lyrics but I wasn’t sure that I had got the correct ones running through my head, so I Googled them. The line that really resonated with me was “ You and I have memories / Longer than the road that stretches ...
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Settled weather

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 Autumn seems to be trying to compensate for where summer failed. The weather has been lovely this week, so we have been able to spend lots of time in the garden drinking tea. One of us has also been thinking about scones. And chocolate brownies. And pikelets. And the resulting Event Waistline, which is like an Event Horizon but more localised and troublesome. Nicky didn’t do any church cleaning on Monday because before she left Dale had texted to say that she had done the little that there was to do. This enabled her to spend most of the day working in the garden. I washed the windows inside and out. This took me until afternoon tea time and the cuppa and rest were very welcome. After dinner we watched two more episodes of Murder Trial: The Jury. Two juries, unaware of each other, see a real trial re-enacted by actors, and their conversations and deliberations are filmed. We spent quite a bit of time discussing it afterwards and so were late to bed. I did my usual supermarket shop...
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