Going round in circles

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It doesn’t feel like it has been a good week, because the negative things which have happened have occupied our thoughts more than the positive things.

It started on Tuesday morning, with a funeral for one of my elder customers. Nicky came with me and although there was joy and laughter in the service, which Helena would have wanted, it was moving and affected us. Then on Tuesday afternoon we had an email from Bert the Builder with some detailed costs about the “additional extras” we had discussed when meeting him in Hawera a couple of weeks ago. We were not surprised to discover they are beyond us, but the confirmation of our expectations was a disappointment. A major fire started in town at the construction site of the new Convention Centre, and though this didn’t affect us directly, it was to have consequences for us the following day.

On Wednesday we were up at the library to print out the BHB Quilters Circle 2020 posters in colour, when we met up with a lovely lady that Nicky had worked with. She had been temporarily moved out of the CBD because of the Convention Centre fire and was in BHB library for the day, so we invited her home for lunch. Life has been difficult for her and Nicky found her news distressing.

On Saturday while attending the birthday party of the adult son of a friend of mine, we heard a house alarm sound and Nicky went to investigate, followed soon afterwards by me and others. She found the house where the alarm had been activated, and disturbed the burglar who I then saw running to his get-away car. Nobody was hurt but when the owners returned they were quite distressed and we, along with others, provided statements to the Police.

Not long after the Police left Nicky and I, we settled down to watch the All Blacks play England, and I’m sure you all know how that turned out.

Throughout the week Nicky has been having problems with her hearing aids, which has been very frustrating and has contributed to the general poor tone of the week.

However, it hasn’t all been negative. Bert the Builders figures show that we can, with two additional items (some underfloor heating and higher specification double glazing), build our new home and be a little under budget. Adding driveway and paths takes us over budget, but not by too much and we feel they are essential to the usability of the house. This is really big for us. It means we know we can build our home. The big problem is fencing and/or haha, so we have sent more questions to Bert to further explore our options.

On Tuesday Kanchan, who Nicky used to work with, came over for Scrabble and they had a good catch up. On Friday we went into town to watch the Tuia 250 flotilla arrive -  a number of waka and the replica of the Cook’s Endeavour. It was much more low-key than we expected, but we enjoyed the Maori group who sang and performed a welcoming haka, and we enjoyed seeing the flotilla. We missed out on the free Mr Whippy ice cream because we decided to have it after our picnic lunch, which due to the bitting southerly wind we went inside to consume. By the time we got back, the Mr Whippy van and everybody else had disappeared, so I bought Nicky gelato instead.

On Saturday, prior to the birthday party, we went over to Pakuranga for a Heritage Festival walk round some of the shoreline looking at the geology. This was interesting and a was a very pleasant walk in the spring sunshine.

Today, I did our last Heritage Festival event for this year - a six hour walk up six of Auckland’s volcanos. Like yesterday, this was interesting and the weather was even better, but the length of the walk, and especially the step bits in the sunshine, was a bit of a challenge.

Nicky went off to church this morning, then had a couple of people back for morning tea, went to visit the family who had been burgled to see how they were, and then started cooking for tomorrows family lunch (I had made my contribution of chocolate cheesecake while waiting for the rugby to start, as it needs to cook in the fridge for a couple of days). She enjoyed having a quieter day at home.

The last notable thing which has happened this week is that our new roundabout has finally opened. They have been building it at the junction of Exminster and Rathlin for weeks, and finally it is done! Yippie!

To close, some pictures for your your illumination:

Welcoming the flotilla:



Some of the flotilla:




Pakuranga shoreline:


  Rangitoto from Mt Hobson:


Take care, Rick

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