Blow wind…

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Three quarters of the year gone, so it’s all downhill now.

We started the week with Nicky taking advantage of the fact that she now doesn’t work Mondays for some health care: the dental hygienists in the morning and the eye clinic in the afternoon. She was quite jaded after the second one and needed a snooze so it was fortunate that she had made her alpha desserts (bread & butter pudding) between those two commitments. We watched, and quite enjoyed, The Curse of the Golden Flower in the evening. Reminiscent of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in its style.

Work has been busy again for Nicky in Henderson, but things are still going OK which is good. She is enjoying having a better manager. She came home with bacon and egg croissants for dinner on Thursday (from the Gloria Jean’s next to the library) and then went up to church in the evening.

I have had a good week for work too. I was in town all day on Tuesday with two jobs and a meeting about my new website. Fortunately I had some time to resolve an issue which occurred on my way into town. I had a bit of trouble tagging onto the bus with my HOP card, but it completely refused to tag off when I got into town. In discussion with the bus driver we discovered that it had cracked. So, being in town I was able to go to the AT Customer Service Centre in the Britomart and buy a new one. I think my auto-top up and balance from the old card have now been transferred to the new card. I will check the website next week as the updates always take awhile to come through. I need to remember not to sit on the new card.

This weekend has seen the start of the Heritage Festival, so yesterday I went into town for a tour of Roy Lippincott buildings. We started off in what was once the Farmers’ Tea Rooms on Hobson street, which has a wonderful ceiling amongst its features. 



Unfortunately it doesn’t have any heritage status and has been sold to a developer who is going to convert it into appartments. His most famous work is the University clock town building, know by locals as the Wedding Cake, but he did other work for the University including this Custodian’s Cottage.


Steve came over for Scrabble, we had more bacon and egg croissants, and watched the concluding episode of Paula in the evening. It left us feeling a little raw, so we moved onto to watching The Monuments Men which was a suitable balm, inspire of it being a war film. It had a good feel-good factor at the end.

Today Nicky and I have braved the very windy and often wet weather for a couple of maritime related events. The first was a two hour cruise round the Upper Waitemate Harbour with guest speakers, so we learned about the worlds’ first successful air-sea rescue at Karekare and the portage routes used by the Maori in the region. We had some sunshine for the second half of the trip (and a free cup of tea) which made it much more pleasant. The cruise departed from the Hobsonville Ferry Terminal and we had arrived with time to peruse and raid the farmers market. We bought jams on our pre-cruise visit and artisan bread and Whitestone cheese (some for our lunch) on our post-cruise visit.


We drove over to Birkenhead and ate our lunch in the car watching the yachts bobbing up and down in quite a swell. The Brie and crusty baguette were lovely. Due to the weather our walk round the area of the Birkenhead Wharf became a talk inside the ferry terminal with photographs but was enjoyable all the same. We returned home to a good pot of tea accompanied by lemon tart and apricot crumble (from the artisan bakery). An enjoyable day.


Nicky has woken at 3am the last two nights and not been able to get back to sleep so is planning an early night. I don’t think I will be too long following her.


Take care, Rick

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