Visitors eh?

We seem to have a new house guest this week - Clint the cricket, who we think has taken up residence behind the hot water cylinder in the airing cupboard. We haven’t actually seen him, but we have certainly heard him. Or her.

Tropical Cyclone Pam didn’t cause us any problems at the beginning of the week. We had steady rain overnight on Sunday but little wind. The rain eased off by breakfast time and stopped while I was out for my walkies. The rest of the week has been pretty good with lots of sunshine and fewer showers than I was expecting from the forecasts. It has started getting cooler in the mornings and evenings though, especially when the skies are clear overnight.

Nicky has had a mixed week. Things have been better at work, though still as busy as ever. She enjoyed her prison prayer group meeting on Monday evening, but was saddened to hear of the death of Joan Turner on Thursday. The Turners were neighbours and close friends from Epsom days. Neil died a few years ago and Joan has been in care for many years and has suffered with Alzheimers. Stella and Nicky attended Joan’s funeral on Friday morning.

I have had a reasonably busy and satisfying work week. I have been setting up a pair of new servers for a customer and have been very pleased to get them configured the way they needed them, and with remote access so that I can monitor them. All we need to see now is can they keep themselves synchronised over the internet? I have concerns about the data throughput rate.

I gave Nicky a bit of a fright on Thursday morning, by going off for a swim before see was awake. I had been awake since 5am and wanted to catch the 7.02am high tide (which I did) but see unfortunately didn’t find the note that I left with her cup of tea. She was very pleased to see me before going off to work, and I was very pleased to get myself round some porridge. The day ended on a high note with Jancis coming over for a chat in the evening and bringing bottles of wine with her.

We had fun yesterday morning talking to the IRD. We are probably going to have to pay tax on Nicky’s company pensions that we have brought over from the UK because we didn’t do the transfer in the first 4 years of returning to NZ. We didn’t know there was a time limit. In the afternoon Nicky was hosting BHB Quilters again with Mary, and I went over to Paul and Jenny’s for Anna’s leaving do. She is off to the UK (Prestwick) tomorrow to start a new job. The eccles cakes which I made seemed to go down well (I certainly enjoyed them and look forward to making them again). We spent the evening watching The Indian Doctor on DVD, a gentle comedy drama from the BBC.

Today dawned with promising blue skies (and it has been a lovely day). Nicky went off to church and I went off to Karekare. On my way from the car park to the beach I met a couple from America (Mike and Nicky) who are in NZ for the first time and have spent their first 4 days doing the Hilary Trail. They were, to say the least, a little jaded and a day behind schedule. They wanted to know how long it would take them to walk to Piha, or if there was any way they could get a cab either to Piha or back into town. I said it was unlikely (!!) even if they could get a cell phone signal. However, we chatted for a while and they reminded me very much of Bruce and Wendy, so I told them where Luna was and suggested that if they would like me to give them a lift to meet me in the car park in a couple of hours. I had a lovely walk along the beach and a swim (the sea was quite calm by west coast standards). When I got back to Luna they were in the car park looking refreshed, and asked if it wasn’t too much trouble for a lift into town. I explained that we had been given assistance by their fellow countrymen when we were in the US 7 years ago so I would happily return the favour. It took us about an hour to get to the Britomart as I avoided the motorway in order to show them a bit of Auckland (which they enjoyed). I dropped them at the Red Gates and headed home as they went in search of information about accommodation.

Nicky was busy doing the vacuuming when I got home, and then went over to Stella’s for Scrabble. It will be tellybox (possibly with a glass of wine) for us this evening, and we have another packet of hot cross buns to finish off. I have realised it is only a couple of weeks to Easter - so few days and so many buns!!!

Take care, Rick