Halloween passed us by yet again, thankfully.

The best way to start a week is with a public holiday, so we had a good start to this week. We had a lovely lazy start to a sunny but breezy day, packed up a picnic lunch, and headed for Tamaki Drive to watch the tall ships depart. We had time to stroll along the waterfront for an hour or so before the ships started to leave, and we watched to end of the departure from the car while we had our picnic out of the wind. They were quite a site to see.

For the afternoon we drove up to the museum to see the Moana exhibition about the sea around Auckland and particularly the Kermadec Trench. This is one of (if not the) deepest sea trenches on the planet. The exhibition was divided into four sections, each focusing on the life in the sea at different depths. The life size models of some of the sharks in the area were stunning, especially the 6m Great White. The displays and film shows were very engaging. One of the shows about the deepest part of the trench required us to lie on bean bags on the floor and watch the projected 7 minutes clip on the ceiling of a “tent”. We are not sure how many loops of the clip we saw as we both fell asleep…

I realised later in the week that it had been Labour Weekend five years ago that we moved into Exminster Street. This means that by sometime in January next year, this will be the second longest stay we have had at one address since Nicky and I met in 1983.

I haven’t had any work this week, unless you count spending 2 minutes figuring out the correct structure of somebody’s password for them, but Nicky was back at the coal face on Wednesday. She had some dizzy spells on Tuesday morning while getting ready for work so stayed home for the day. The new library manager started her 4 month posting this week, so it is a time of change again, as well as Diwali. She stayed at the library late on Friday evening and was in again on Saturday morning to help with Diwali events, which all went well. She has also managed a couple of evenings out at church groups.

I have extend one of my medium length walking routes to a full length one by including our local domain (Gittos). This means that about half of this route is now along quiet bush paths and I am really enjoying it, though the better weather helps. I seem to have spent much of the week in the office pottering at various tasks, such as getting used to Apple’s new OS upgrade, fighting with a couple of their application upgrades, submitting an insurance claim for my medical care while in the UK (infected mozzie bites) and FaceTiming with Jancis in Loughborough. We both wanted to have a sail on the Spirit of Adventure (a three masted square rigger; www.spiritofadventure.org.nz) on one of their public days, so had a chat about organising this. She is also in the process of coming over from the dark side having just ordered her first Mac!

The sunny and breezy weather has helped with the laundry this week, and Claire was taking advantage of it on Thursday when I popped over to deliver off-site drives. Stella called in on Friday afternoon to collect her off-site drive and we had a chat for awhile which was good. Very sociable things these off-site backups. If only more people in Christchurch had had them.

Yesterday, after Nicky finished work at New Lynn library she needed to deliver some flowers to a member of staff at Mt Roskill library. This library is situated in a shopping area and has wonderfully decorated public toilets:

After making the delivery we carried on down Mt Albert Road to have a look at Alberton House, a historic property. We enjoyed the grounds for free, but decided against paying $10 each to go inside (they don’t do afternoon tea) on this occasion, but may go back again in the future:

Our final stop was at our local volcano (Mt Roskill) to stretch our legs and blow away the cobwebs. This was as pleasant as ever. We returned home for well-earned soup and ale bread. We watched Dandelion Dead on DVD in the evening, a four hour dramatisation of the true story of a 1920’s poisoner. We enjoyed it and the wine we had to accompany (which might get finished off tonight!).

Today has been very quiet. Stella has been over for Scrabble after Nicky came back from church. I have been reading; mid-afternoon discovering Nicky has the first volume of the Mrs Thatcher biography out of the library. I have started it in 1979 when she has just got into Number 10. If I get on with it I might go back to the parliamentary and earlier years.

That’s it for this week.

Take care, Rick