Magic?

Some strange things have been happening this week. The laundry basket hasn’t been generating it’s own pre-ironing, the duvet has stopped heading for the window, and pens have stopped self-levitating, moving to other parts of the house and hiding themselves. I can only assume there has been an orientation shift in the local magical field.

With Nicky having had here first week on her trip, I have had my corresponding first week home alone. She flew to Los Angeles last Sunday, had a couple of nights there and an excellent day in Harry Potter World before flying onto England. She spent a couple of days in Farnborough with her sister and then headed north to Loughborough on the train. Her host there, Jancis, very kindly drove her up to Dinnington to visit my mother.

Toilet on the aircraft

View of LA from the hotel

Home, at last.

I didn’t have any worked booked on Monday, and with Nicky on her way and much of the apprehension of the previous week lifted I felt the need for a day of re-grouping. The weather joined the party so I changed the bed, did loads of washing, a range of household organising chores and enjoyed the warm sunshine. I also knew I had another major task to achieve in the afternoon - the purchase of tickets for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in Melbourne next year. As I had pre-registered I was one of those able to by tickets a week early. The notification email said I could join the “waiting room” an hour before the tickets went on sale. The waiting room had been open about 10 minutes when I joined (had been chatting with Claire on the phone), and that put me 29,886th in the queue!!! An hour and a half after sales opened I was finally able to purchase tickets. About an hour after that I received an email to say that all performances had sold out, so more dates would be added! To celebrate I made myself lasagne for dinner, and got my first mozzie bites of the season while at the washing line.

Work this week has consisted of phone and remote support on Tuesday, and a long but good day in Matakana on Friday. On Thursday I had an impromptu visit to the Rock Pool at Parakai Springs with two friends from Deep and Meanginful. We drove straight from there to our evening meeting in town. I parked in a P&D car park which I use when visiting one of my customers in the area. What I didn’t realised is that it is also a residential car park, and we found when we got back to the car park that it was closed - the roller gates were down. After some discussion of options we decided to try and squeeze the car through a gap in the enclosure, but before we got very far with this a resident appeared and said the exit gate would open automatically, despite of what it said on the sign. This was true, so we were on our way, and overall, it was a good day.

I decided to treat myself to breakfast up at one of the local cafés on Saturday morning, which I enjoyed as I started on The Listener crossword. With Nicky not being here I had to Google much more than usual, but I’ve almost got it finished. When I arrived at the café it was foggy, but by the time I left it was sunny. After getting home and making some iron bread I cut the grass. After lunch I had a very pleasant stroll down to the beach, and sat on the sea wall in the sunshine for awhile. It was warm enough just for a shirt and jeans, though catching the breeze in the shade was still cool.

Today has been dull and at times wet, so I have been cooking, reading and have started a jigsaw. I shall be settling down to watch the telly shortly.

Take care, Rick