Festival Part 2

The social elements of our week have again been the most enjoyable, along with some lovely spring sunshine on Tuesday and Wednesday. The temperatures are generally starting to lift. We are not using the heater as much in the evening (it’s still nice in the morning to take the edge off) and we have taken our American starry quilt off the bed.

It has been the second weekend of the Heritage Festival, and we have again been busy. We started yesterday with a good late breakfast of tomatoes and bacon on toast, before heading off to two separate events. I dropped Nicky at the Leys Institute in Ponsonby for a tour of the building and the library. This she found very interesting and enjoyable, helped by it just being a small party of seven. I headed into town to park the car, and then walk round to St Matthew-in-the-city for a bell ringing demonstration. This was fantastic. We had an introduction on how the bells work before climbing the 53 steps to the rope room. We were then able to go up into the bell chamber while the smallest bell was rung, and then have a go on a rope ourselves. It was quite an experience and I am considering going back to investigate campanology further. This is the only church with bells in Auckland, and one of only 8 in the country. England alone (not the UK) had almost 6,000 churches with “active bells”.

After my ears stopped ringing, I collected Nicky and we drove over the bridge to Birkenhead and ate our picnic lunch in the car in the sunshine. We didn’t think taking it with us to the library to munch through while listening to a presentation on waterways in Auckland - prehistoric and historic - would go down to well. The talk was interesting but a little “dry” (pun intended). We returned home for pots of tea, crumpets, and tellyboxing.

We exchanged yesterday’s sunshine for a dull start this morning. Nicky didn’t sleep well due to being regularly woken with a cough. She seems to have picked up a bug from somewhere. At 7.30am we departed for a local pub for a buffet breakfast while watching the England-v-Australia match. Unfortunately, we had got ourselves in a muddle, and they were not showing the match or doing the breakfast. So, we repaired home to poached eggs on toast with the last of the bacon, Nicky went to church, and I listened to the commentary on the web while doing the ironing. The ironing was more fun.

We only had two Heritage events today, our first been one of the best and a repeat from last year - High Tea at Lake House in Takapuna. It was again scrumptious. They changed the selection this year, providing more savoury than sweet items which we thought worked very well. We found the sweet items very sweet, I think partially due the the fact that we have generally reduced the amount of sugar in our diet over the last few months, so we notice it even more than we used to. We also had matching crockery this year; quite a treat.

We then headed back into town for Nicky to have a tour of the Town Hall organ. I have done this before so just had a bit of a wander round the environs, but Nicky really enjoyed seeing inside the organ and all its instruments as much as I did. We returned home to pots of tea but still to stuffed to eat at the moment. Might have a nibble later on while tellyboxing.

The rest of the week has been quite busy. The schools are on holiday so the library has been throbbing. Nicky had prison prayer group on Monday evening, then hair doo with Doris on Tuesday evening and later discovered she was one hearing aid light. It turned up in the bedclothes on Wednesday morning, but not after much searching elsewhere. A knock on the door at 7.10am announced Shani calling in before another drama rehearsal, and she had a second breakfast with us. We started having a new road surface (chips) laid on Thursday, and on Friday evening I went up to The Block for a drink and enjoyed the company of three Canadians who are visiting NZ on business for six weeks. I have also had a reasonable amount of work to punctuate much washing, ironing, shopping and cooking routine. October is underway.

Take care, Rick