51 Years

I am given to understand, Dear Reader, that even those on foreign shores are aware that we have had a long and tumultuous week in politics. The main instigator, Jamie Lee Ross, has been admitted to a mental health care hospital this afternoon. The specifics of his allegations are starting to be overshadowed by the bigger questions that they are raising; how sexual harassment is treated in large organisations, how donations to political parties are handled, how the polotical parties manage themselves, and how MP’s are selected for the parliamentary list. I wonder how much we will see really change.

On Monday we had a bit of a treat. A trip to the cinema to see First Man, and then dinner at Bodrum Kitchen in The Brickworks. The film, if you haven’t already seen it, is very good, and is the first that I have seen that really tried to portray the dangers faced in the Apollo missions. I thought it was done very well. Bodrum Kitchen is Mediterranean style food. I had a couple of kebab skewers with accompaniments, and Nicky had a grilled fish salad. We both enjoyed our meals and are pleased that all four of the restaurants we have sampled at The Brickworks are places that we would happily visit again.

It occurred to me a day or two after seeing First Man, that just under 51 years separates the signing of the armistice at the end of the First World War, and Neil Armstrong taking his first steps on the moon. To me, the amount of change that our world underwent in such a short period seems immense.

Our working weeks have been quiet again, but peppered with a few deviations from the norm. Nicky provided cover for staff at Massy Library at the end of Tuesday so I collected her from there after doing a job in Glen Eden. On Thursday I took her to work so that I could help her return a display cake to a local shop who had kindly loaned it to the library for a Royal Wedding display. I had a challenging day in the office on Wednesday trying to figure out how to run old operating system installers in newer versions of the operating system. Turns out that Apple won’t let you, so I had to come up with ways of building “old” machines. An interesting bit of learning.

Our weather is slowly improving, and some of the afternoons are now quite warm, but the beginnings and ends of days are still quite cool. We were warned it would be a cool spring.

Nicky was quite tired yesterday after a poor night’s sleep due to Harry Potter preparations weighing on her mind. She spent some of the night roasting a pumpkin, some of which has been used today for trial runs of various pasties and sweet delights. Our sampling has gone well as all the goodies were very good. The only improvement we could see was to use more than one layer of filo pastry on one particular batch. She wasn’t working yesterday as she had the day off for BHB Quilters. Fortunately Mary called in because we had a power cut for an hour or so and couldn’t get the car out of the garage, so Mary was able to transport all her stuff. I read and pottered and had a walk down to the beach, and Stella and Steve came over for post-quilting Scrabble which was enjoyed.

The weather was pleasant enough to tempt me to Karekare this morning while Nicky was at church. The sun wasn’t out at the beach but the air was quite mild and still, and the sea calm but cold. I was actually able to swim for a change (normally the waves are too strong) but I didn’t want to get too cold so didn’t stay in too long.

Take care, Rick