Trip Photos - Northerners

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Short List

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Our list of things to be done to finish the house build has become much shorter this week, due to visits from various tradies every day except for Wednesday, when we won the America’s Cup again. Coincidence? On Monday Caleb came and did the tiling of the window sill behind the gas hob to make it legal. He also tiled splash backs for us in the downstairs loo, shower room and laundry. This was partially to use up the one whole black tile and three sections of grey tile that we had left over from the original tiling in the shower room. However, due to the way they had to buy the extra tiles, we now have four whole tiles and bit of another left over! Hey-ho. All the tiling looks really good and works well. Tuesday was Bert’s turn. He finished the balustrade and built a retaining wall by the drive to stop the gravel disappearing in the rain. This has produced a nice “boxed” area which Nicky is looking forward to planting. He did a couple of other minor fixes too. Thursday was the “big”...
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Fair enough

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 While we at one of the ceramics studios last Sunday, we were told about the Otaki Pottery Club “Festival of Pots and Garden Art”. This is held every January. After we had packed and cleaned the PSA unit in Raumati on Monday morning, and acquired mini quiches and raspberry and almond tarts from the patisserie for dinner, we started our journey home. On the way we decided we would take a short diversion into Otaki (population slightly under 4000) just to see what was there. Roadworks it turned out, but behind the roadworks a row of shops, one of which was a Bendon Outlet. Neither of the Bendon Outlets we had tried to get to in Auckland in September were operational, a little like the state of some of Nicky’s foundation garments. We parked the car so that Nicky could investigate some new unmentionables, but between us and the Outlet there was a bookshop… On the face of it you wouldn’t think a wee rural town would even have a bookshop, let alone lone a stunningly brilliant one. Along ...
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Tidying

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 As I sit down to write this week’s post, it is just turned half past four in the afternoon and we have finished the bulk of the clearing up after hosting a shared lunch for around 28 people. Just the dishwasher to empty now. We are putting up our feet with a pot of tea in the lounge, where the temperature is 28ยบ, same as in the shade outside. The ranch sliders have been open all day, but the hot sun has been out all day too, accompanied by a warm northerly wind from Oz. The shared Parish lunch went very well. I made pork pies yesterday, and Nicky converted two loaves of bread into sandwiches this morning. We added gluten free muffins from the freezer and thick slices of watermelon. Everybody brought something with them, some quite a lot, and we ended up with masses of food. It felt like a banquet. There was quite a bit left over, but not an excessive amount. We had laid out the food and drinks inside and put most of the seating outside in the shade under the car port. With most pa...
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