Shorts

Shorts have been much in evidence, especially towards the end of the week, as the temperatures rose to the high 20’s. We have hit 45°C in the roof and 29°C in the lounge this weekend. The pale coloured concrete of the drive and Rattigan has even been too hot to walk on in bare feet. We have been having dinner and yesterday’s breakfast outside. At just after 7pm on Friday, the sun and concrete were still hot and the cooling breeze was welcome as we drank our cups of tea. It’s been sunny too, which the fly’s and mozzies seem to think is just brilliant. It must be summer.

The library has calmed down a bit this week which has been a welcome relief, though Friday afternoon was busy with over 100 children attending a party in the library.

I have had quite a stressful week one way and another. On Monday a TradeMe auction of a Mac I was selling for one of my customers closed. After the confirmation emails had been exchanged and I had given the buyer our address for collection, she accused me of rigging the auction to get the price up. When I said this wasn’t the case, she then accused me of being a liar. I had to get TradeMe involved to demonstrate to her that I had not rigged the bidding. The goods exchange was arranged for the following morning and Nicky kindly took the morning off work to be here with me. When the transaction finally happened, she was all smiles and no mention of the accusations. Even so, it was an unpleasant experience and I’m not sure that I will use TradeMe again.

Works has also impacted. I had two very busy days on Wednesday and Thursday which was great, but there are still some lingering issues from Wednesday, and Thursday was very long and I didn’t feel I fully achieved what the customer wanted. I did a couple of other small jobs too, along with the laundry and the shopping, but didn’t get the ironing done until today.

We tried to use a swimming voucher yesterday which I won by providing feedback about the Heritage Festival last year. We went off to the Aquatic Centre in Mt Albert but were told we couldn’t use it there as it was not an Auckland Council run pool. It turns out most of them are on the North Shore, but Point Erin isn’t on the Shore, but was also very busy. No parking available so we assumed the pool would be very crowded so will try again during the week or next weekend. We did however enjoy the “run out” - that makes me feel really old and even more like my father (a development which is of course inevitable).

Denis, one of Nicky’s house group members dropped in unexpectedly early afternoon yesterday, stayed for lunch and quite a while, so we had to gently ease him out as we had Ivan and Faye coming round for dinner. Nicky had already made a wonderful Eaton mess, but had other things to do while I put together a green salad and a spud salad. Nicky added a carrot salad and we served all this with a butterfly joint of leg of lamb. I grilled this and it was absolutely gorgeous - moist, tasty, and not to fatty. It went very well with the Waitrose mint sauce. We had a very good evening which was lubricated by the red wine which Lisa had given us when she came round awhile back.

Today has been hot and quiet. Nicky to church and me to Karekare in the morning. Nicky went over to Stella’s for Scrabble this afternoon and I slowly did the ironing. We finished yesterday’s lobs of with some corn on the cob for tea. Off to bed now. We are sleeping under a sheet and our American starry quilt, as it is too hot for our summer duvet.

Take care, Rick