More Festivity

The beginning of October has been dryer than the end of September, but it has been quite a close competition. The highlight of our week has been the weekend with the second instalment of Heritage Festival activities.

Some re-scheduling of our plans was forced upon us by the cancelation of a couple of events. So, yesterday morning saw us back in Ponsonby for 10am with another tour guided by the wonderful Mr Edward Bennett. The man deserves his salutation for his dress sense alone. Today was a morning coat-type-jacket with a silver patterned waistcoat (last week he was going with a mustard theme). The subject this time was the architecture and history of four of the churches. Three dated from the late 19th century and the fourth, the Anglican, from the 1950’s. All were different and interesting and had special features. In the Baptist church, complete with sloping floor and excellent acoustics, we also enjoyed the sound of a chamber organ, bellows filled by yours truly. 

After our thoroughly enjoyable two hours with Mr B we headed off to lunch at Dizengoff, after liking the look of the menu last week. We chose a mixed plate (a large tasting plate for two to share) which included chicken salad, hummus, labaneh cheese, chopped liver pate, chargrilled veg, onion tart, French bread and a shepardic egg. It was a wonderful range of flavours and textures and colours and odours. Some of the tastes were new to us. We just had space for a pot of tea with toasted fruit bread, and a long black with a cinnamon brioche afterwards, and left feeling well fed and that we had enjoyed a very special treat. We plan to go back for the chopped liver salad sometime.

We drove over to the domain for our next guided tour, this time looking at some of the historical development of the domain, and encountering areas we hadn’t been to before. Again, a very enjoyable pleasure, and then rain didn’t come until we were heading back to the car.

After getting home and recuperating with a pot of tea, Nicky went off to Ascot hospital to visit Kanchan, a fellow BHB library staff member who has had a knee operation. By the time she got back crumpets were in order, swiftly followed by not moving from infront of the tellybox.

We had a large volume of rain over night, and were still getting some showers as we drove into town this morning for a lecture on state housing in New Zealand. This was at the University of Auckland School of Architecture by a chap called Bill McKay and was very good. During the lecture he told us of a time in the 1950’s when in order to meet the urgent need for housing, the government bought 1000 European made kit set houses. They shipped them over to NZ with 300 Austrian workmen to build them. When the job was done, only 2 of the Austrian’s went back home. The rest presumably brought their families over and occupied some of the houses! Much of the thrust of his analysis of how different NZ governments have build state houses is based on the fact that we have been short of housing since 1840, and that we don’t learn from our mistakes.

After a leisurely departure talking with some of the other festival goers we returned home for a light lunch. Next stop was the Community House in Onehunga which is what the old Primary School has become. An entertaining talk on place names in NZ was followed by afternoon tea and musical entertainment. We had a great time, shared a table with an elderly couple, and possibly ate a sandwich too many. The only disappointment was the very weak tea.

It did not seemed to have rained in BHB when we got home, so Nicky did a quick cut of the grass while I started on the blog. I am now back with my nose to the keyboard after some wallowing with the tellybox.

A few other things happened during the week: Nicky had her glaucoma tests at the eye clinic and passed well; the power was off for most of Tuesday afternoon but at least the sun was shinning and warm; I’ve helped Dawn set up a new cordless phone; went to a D&M MeetUp at the Hibiscus Coast RSA; and bought a new hand mixer with our FlyBuys points. I have had little work but the library has been very busy with it being school holidays.

That’s it for now, take care. Rick