Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

First of all Dear Reader, apologies for this post being late, but yesterday was a very busy day and I just didn’t have time. Second of all, Happy New Year. Our last week of 2017 has been very much a family week. We started off on Monday, Christmas Day, with a lovely clear blue sky, our traditional pot of tea, and opening our presents in bed. We proceeded onto breakfast of croissants stuffed with baked mushrooms (the croissants ended up much bigger than I expected so we had a couple left over) and then had tea and coffee on The Rattigan. We had phone conversations with Gill (in the UK) and Rachel (in Wanaka) while the pudding cooked. Nicky made Strawberry Santa’s for us to take to Kim’s, along with my pudding and Christmas Pie: We picked up Valera, a D&M friend of mine, on the way to Parau and arrived at Kim’s around 12.30.We had a great afternoon of chatting with everybody, glorious food and present opening. Lunch was a little late so we didn’t leave until around 6p...

It would appear that this is the first time that I have done a blog post on a Christmas Eve. What a treat for you Dear Reader. You now have something scintillating and exciting to read on Christmas morning! - is that a good book I see by your elbow? Health has been a major theme for us this week. Though she was not fully recovered Nicky went back to work on Wednesday. Each day since then has been easier and she has been felling better. Antibiotics are now finished and her cough is much improved but still needing some Gee’s Linctus from time to time. My bites have gone toxic according to my GP. All the medics that have seen them feel they are flea bites not mozzie bites, so I suspect I was bitten when collecting a Mac from a cattery last Wednesday. As a result I have had three visits to my GP this week (one to drain them because they had got quite large) and this afternoon have finally been able to leave the dressing off for awhile. I have antibiotics at the ready just in case. The...

As the year starts to draw to an end, it isn’t getting any cooler. We are having mainly sunny days which start off warm and then get hot. There has been the odd cooler few hours, and a short heavy shower one night, but other than that summer seems to be getting into gear. Nicky has been home all week. Initially this was because she had taken Tuesday off for her birthday, and Saturday off for BHB Quilters, but on Tuesday afternoon she started to feel unwell so had to call in sick for the rest of the week. She saw Dr V on Saturday who diagnosed an upper respiratory tract infection, prescribed a range of medicaments, and signed her off until the 20th. On Monday Nicky needed to go into town for an Emergency Response Group meet & greet, and I had had to go and see a customer in Epsom, so I planned to pick Nicky up in town and then for us to head off to Devonport to have a look at the Tony Ogle exhibition in Devonport. However, our plans had to change when I received and email f...

Almost wall-to-wall sunshine, party after party, and the population swells by another eight. Summer really seems to be arriving early, with the majority of the week being bathed in sunshine, and with the air above Aotearoa now warming up the temperatures are rising too. On Tuesday we hit 45°C in roof, the coolest part of the house at the time was 26°C. On Wednesday while walking up Queen Street it felt like it was hitting the mid-30’s in the sunshine. Things have started to change over the weekend with some early heavy showers yesterday (which then developed into another lovely, get the washing dry in an hour or two, day) and today has been a little cooler with a mid-afternoon downpour followed later by some drizzle. Much pre-Christmas partying has enveloped our social world this week: Monday: N over to Henderson for a Maranatha gathering at La Porchetta. Tuesday: N to Greelane for a bring a plate Corrections gathering. Wednesday: Both of us to Lai Thai in New Lynn for h...

There is a TV advertisement at the moment about a fridge that you can talk to and that will speak recipes for you. This implies to me that it has some sort of computer technology, and these sort of things usually require the owner/user to give it a name. This is so that it can be identified on the network and in the case of voice activated devices the name can be used as an “initiator command”. If I was to buy one of these fridges, I would call it Jim, so that I could say “What’s the recipe today Jim?” The relevance of this will only be obvious to those who remember the Jimmy Young show on BBC radio in the 1960’s. Every weekday morning he would read out a recipe (very slowly and with much repetition), and the item was introduced by a very squeaky (think helium) voice shouting “What’s the recipe today Jim?” It is one of my fondest pre-school memories so I would definitely call my fridge Jim. As some of you will have noticed, December has started this week, so Christmas is now loomi...