Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

It has been a quiet, simple, and routine week. The weather has got colder, and wetter, but I have still been able to get the washing dry outside without difficulty. We now have a heater on in the bedroom in the morning so that Nicky can get dressed in the warmth, but when the sun comes out it still warms the open-plan living area nicely. Nicky and the library have been very busy again this week. She was also at prison prayer group on Monday evening and serving desserts at church on Wednesday evening for the Alpha course participants. I have had a reasonable amount of work, which has taken me to Remuera, Devonport, the CBD, Northcote, and just down the road. After struggling through the first 300+ pages I finally finished The Luminaries this week. I can’t work out if it was a simple story told in an overcomplicated manner, or a complex story badly told, but I wasn’t overly impressed. There again, it won the Booker Prize so what did I expect! I have also finally sold three old Ma...

The highlight of this week has to be Saturday at the Writers Festival, so that is where I will start, but there have been other good bits too. The day dawned a little cloudy, but that didn’t dampen our spirits or chill our breakfast boiled eggs and toast. Our first appointment was at an Oxfam morning tea being hosted by Faye who Nicky worked with in New Lynn. Wendy, also of New Lynn library, and Shirley, a friend of Faye’s, also joined us along with Faye’s husband Ivan. We had tea and coffee and a lovely range of home made gluten free goodies, and a good chat. We left for home to pick up Nicky’s hearing aids and have some fruit before heading into town and the Civic car park. Nicky had been given a free ticket from work to see Camilla Lackberg talking about her Scandinavian crime novels at 2.30, so while she went off to that I got into a free session discussing the difference from the writers perspective of books and film. To oversimplify, books are stories told with words by peo...

It has been a week of gradual improvement. It started wet and has finished with a glorious sunny weekend. It also started with Nicky being signed off from work with high blood pressure, but when she went back to see the nurse on Wednesday it had come down so she was back to work on Thursday. She has run out of sick leave so took the time off as annual leave, so on Tuesday we went to one of the Icebreaker outlet stores at the airport. Nicky wanted to buy me an orange top (for my birthday) which I had taken a liking to in the Queens Street store. We left with a slightly different orange top, and a pair of shorts and a top for Nicky (the top is in storage for her birthday). Her two days at work were very busy so she was looking forward to the weekend. Just to add a bit more fun to the week, when she popped into the library on Wednesday to tell them she would be back at work on Thursday, while she was standing talking, someone put a box down behind her which she then fell over, straining a...

Our week has been dominated by sad news close to home. On Wednesday morning, Barrie, our next door neighbour, landlord and husband to Dawn, died. He had been very ill with cancer for the last few months and was admitted to the Mercy Hospice on Monday. He is out of pain but will not be out of our memories. Ros’s mum Jean had a stroke during the week and is giving quite a lot of cause for concern at the moment. In addition, Jancis returned to the UK with the sad knowledge that NZ immigration won’t issue her with a Permanent Resident’s permit. She called in to say good bye on Monday evening. We won’t be seeing her happy smiling face again until she next returns in December. Nicky hasn’t been sleeping well so took Friday off as holiday. We went out to Te Henga and O’Neills for a walk in the afternoon. Then on Saturday we dropped the mower into Stella on our way to Parakai to have a wallow in the hot pools for the afternoon. We fancied a change of scenery and it did us good. Tod...