Christmas

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. Some of the pastry had welded itself to the side of the tin. However, Nicky “bandaged” it with foil and an elastic band before refrigerating it overnight, and this helped a lot. Nicky had some zeds before going off to midnight mass while I had a disappointing evening with the TV. Next time we buy a new one I am going to insist that the shop supply one that shows good programmes.

We were up quite early on Christmas Day because of Nicky’s commitments, or maybe were we just over-excited. We opened cards and presents in bed before having croissants, scrambled egg and bacon for breakfast. Nicky departed at 7.45am to the combined church service down at the beach where she was stewarding (I think that means they didn’t have to queue for the mince pies). NZ is celebrating the 200th anniversary of Samuel Marsden preaching the first sermon in NZ on a beach. So, they had a chap in full costume delivering Marsden’s original sermon, to a gathering of 500-600. Nicky got home about 11 brimming with Christmas spirit. Mary Manton arrived soon afterwards so I took the Christmas pudding out of the steamer and we headed off for Cockle Bay.

We had a really good shared lunch at Paul and Jenny’s. The food, as ever, was excellent and abundant. The game pie of venison, duck, wild boar and kangaroo went down well even with the structural falling-apart issues. We left late afternoon, some time after all the “young folk” had gone, and came home via a stroll along Cockle Bay beach to work off all the lunchtime calories. Our evening was one of tellybox and light snacks.

We both felt pretty jaded on Boxing Day morning, so just pottered round the house and did some laundry. In the afternoon we toddled off to the Michael Joseph Savage memorial at Bastion Point as we had realised when visiting Doner House (same architect) that we had never been there. The gardens are quite formal and we snoozed on the grass for awhile before coming home.

Saturday was another nice day. We spent much of the morning on the phone to rellies in the UK. I made a kangaroo pie with the lobs from Christmas Eve, then in the afternoon we went out to Airport Oaks for Nicky to spend some of her Christmas vouchers on underwear and Icebreaker things. I watched the aeroplanes coming and going for while in the sunshine.

This morning Nicky went off to church and I went off to Karekare for a walk and a swim. In the afternoon we went to se Mr Tuner at the Capitol Cinema in Balmoral. We hadn’t been there before but it is run by the same people as the Lido in Epsom, and is just as nice. The film we found disappointing. It was beautifully made, and very well acted, but at the end I was non the wiser as to why Turner decided to paint the way he did, or just what his impact in the art world was.

Stella was here when we got home and was joined a little later by Steve and Ros for Scrabble. We are going to watch the drama about the Great Fire of London this evening.

That’s it for this year,

Take care, Rick