Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

So at last dear reader, we come to the last posting for 2014. I am going to have to make a new folder called 2015 on my Mac. The weather has been better this week - mainly dry and even some nice sunshine. Monday and Tuesday were work and last bits-and-bobs shopping (because I had forgotten ingredients) for me. I “closed” MacOnSite for Christmas Eve so that I could cook. Nicky had her hair done on Monday evening but other than that was just very busy at work for the first three days of the week. We had dinner on the Ratigan on Tuesday evening, for the first time this season, and were bombarded by flies. Such a contrast to last year - by the time Gill & Dave arrived in mid-November we were already into the routine of eating on the Ratigan. Christmas Eve wasn’t too hot this year, which helped with the making of a 3kg game pie and a dozen mince pies. The game pie required almost 4 hours in the oven, but came out looking mighty, until I tried to get it out of the spring-form tin.

I wasn’t sure that it was ever going to go dark. Now if the significance of that doesn’t get your grey cells working dear reader, you obviously need more coffee or a cold shower. As Christmas approaches, or “the cooking season” as I now think of it, we have both been very busy, especially with work. This has been very good for me as it has been my second busiest week of the year, and some of the money for the work has already started to come in (thank you nice customers). Nicky has also been very busy at the library, especially with the school holiday activities starting. We have only had dinner together twice this week (Wed & Thurs). Monday and Tuesday I was late coming back from work and Nicky is always starving when she gets home from the library so was already eating. Friday night I ate out at a Christmas gathering which I had been invited to as part of the Auckland Life Models Collective. It was a pot luck supper (I took bacon, cheese and onion quiche) in a 14th floor

It’s been THAT week in December again. However, with Claire being in Dunedin it has been the first time we haven’t had a birthday get-together at some point on the 11th/12th. We spoke to her on the phone which was good. Nicky’s birthday was on Friday and she took a half day off, so we met at The Block for lunch and had very nice aged Hereford steaks. Jancis came round for afternoon tea with birthday lemon curd and passionfruit cheesecake (see below) and we were happily joined by Jan and Dawn, which was really good. The weather wasn’t stunning so we opted for an early evening cinema visit to see My Old Lady. This we thoroughly enjoyed, and by encouragement of Jan and Dawn were introduced to the Lido Cinema in Epsom, which is a really nice venue. We had a light toast-based bite when we got home which just rounded the day off for us. We have had two other very enjoyable social engagements this week - both pre-Christmas / end of year gatherings. The first was Nikcy’s church house gro

It has actually started to feel a bit like summer this week, in that it was warm enough to wear shorts in the weekend evenings. But it won’t last, as rain is forecast for everyday in the coming week. Our first week back in harness after our week’s holiday in the Deep South has been good. I spent Monday morning getting up to speed with the work requests which had come in while we were away, and have had a few visits to make during the week. I have also done quite a bit of shopping after running stocks down for while we were away, and also eventually managed to get all the ironing done. Nicky has been as busy as ever at the library, and on Wednesday was part of a team that went into an old people’s home. I think they sang some carols. Hopefully, they collected some overdue fines while they were there too. She also collected her new glasses this week, which look very nice and apparently help her to see even better than she did before. I’m back on my best behaviour again. We have