Back in harness, again.

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It is now still dark when we rise around 6am for our first pot of tea and to get ready for the working day. We are officially into autumn now but the weather can still be very warm and sunny (lovely). It hasn’t been as humid as it was before we had our holiday.

It has been a back to work week for both of us this week, but we didn’t rush into it. We started off with porridge on The Rattigan on Monday before it turned into a hot sunny day. I did lots of work admin and some food shopping, and Nicky did some shopping for ingredients for a dessert she made for Alpha up at church. We had dinner on The Rattigan as it was cool enough by then, and Nicky did some mowing before got stuck into tellyboxing.

Work has been busy for both of us. I spent W/T/F on the road doing site visits, and when Nicky got to work on Tuesday she was invited to a staff dinner that had been organised for the evening. She was also due at the church AGM later so I zipped over to Henderson for 6.40pm and managed to get her to church just on 7pm. She has also had an evening at life group and a hair appointment this week.

Mingled in with my working week more laundry has been done, rain showers have been shouted at, I had to buy some sushi for lunch one day (very nice) and had a beach picnic another day (also very nice - and one of the neat things about living in Aotearoa).

Tuesday was Census Day for us. The aim this year has been for on-line data collection. Code numbers were delivered to every household and paper forms were available if requested. The grey brigade, as you can imagine, were a little annoyed by this, but it seems to have gone pretty smoothly overall. However, we don’t have any figures yet.

Yesterday was another lovely sunny day. I did another load of washing and Nicky went off to work. I made myself another picnic lunch and caught a bus into town. The High Court was celebrating its 150 year anniversary so they put on various tours, talks and displays. It was very interesting. I got to see the original court number 1 (very Victorian wood), the modern court rooms, the cells and a mock trial. On the architecture tour I discovered that the architect who design the building had taken his inspiration from Warwick Castle (in the UK), but as this give it much ornamentation and many twiddly bits, he was asked to tone it down. I had my lunch in the shade in Albert Park and then got a bus out to St Heliers and walked form there to Ladies Bay, for a couple of swims (the water was gorgeous) and a bit of time in the sun.

When I got back home Stella and Steve were Scrabbling with my senior management. After their departure Nicky manufactured some asparagus rolls and we went to West Lynn Gardens for Becky’s 30th birthday party (she is the daughter of Nicky’s friends Jan and John). They had booked a ceilidh band, so organised “dancing” was the “activity” part of the evening. Watching it was very entertaining. Doing it (and yes, we both did) was hilarious at times. Grasping the sequence of actions, and which was left and which was right was a challenge for many! 

It had been a busy day for both of us, so we were pleased to get to bed and have a bit of a quieter day today. This applied to me more than Nicky, who after church she went off to prison collecting Grace and Faye (who live in the opposite direction) on the way. I did a bit more laundry, the ironing (yippie!), made a chicken, kumara and veg salad, and finished assembling and cooked the bread and butter pudding that Nicky started yesterday while making the asparagus rolls (the best bit in my view). I have also put together my first draft of this year’s holiday photo book.

Nicky has just done some more mowing and we will be heading for the tellybox shortly.

Take care, Rick

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