This is an ex-tree.

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This week has been a little more normal, along with the Heritage Festival featuring large on the social front.

I have been busier with work having something on every day, and a machine on my bench over the weekend. 

Nicky was at church on Monday morning and then had another visit to the dentist for further work on her tooth. She didn’t make it to church on Wednesday so headed off into town a little earlier than planned for a Festival talk about the St. James Theatre restoration, which turned out to be as good as she expected. 

Thursday saw us both heading into town for different events: Nicky for a lunchtime concert (greatly enjoyed) and me for Deep and Meaningful conversation in the evening (interesting discussion of the difference between how we see ourselves and others see us).

On Friday we both did a Ranger guided walk round Gitto’s domain, which is not only in Blockhouse Bay, but is also one of the oldest of the 4000 (yes, four thousand) parks and domains in Auckland. Inspite of it being damp underfoot after major overnight rain, it was an interesting and informative walk. We also found the diorama of what the Maori village might have looked like around 1500 very interesting (the area wasn’t called Blockhouse Bay then!). This had been constructed by some of the library staff and had taken months of work.

Yesterday the Festival took us to Papatoetoe, to walk round the “railway district”. This included the old and new stations, and the remaining railway cottages that were originally provided for railway employees. These were pre-fabricated off-site and then transported (by rail) to the appropriate locations. They were some of the best quality buildings of the time. The weather was lovely and the walk was leisurely. We went on to a local Hindu temple afterwards but discovered shortly after arriving that there would be about 90 minutes of speeches before the short tour of the building (which is what we actually wanted to see), so we departed before proceedings began.


Today has been another lovely sunny day. Nicky went off to church as usual, then prison, and then to Stella’s for Scrabble. Just as she returned from church I departed to catch two buses to take me to Takapuna for a Festival walk around the fossilised forest. This is an area of shoreline where a lava flow was impeded by trees, the has produced some very interesting rock formations:


As the lava cooled and the tree burned away, rings of lava remained. The walk took a steady pace up a kilometre or so of coast, and provided some variety of foregrounds for pictures of Rangitoto. 


When I returned to Takapuna beach for a stroll along the sand and a paddle, it was absolutely packed. You could hardly swing a cat:


My bus back into town deposited me near the Diwali celebrations on Queen Street. I had a wander through the stalls, bought some very nice samosa’s, and enjoyed eating them while watching some dancing on the large stage which had been erected in Aotea Square. I got home about an hour before Nicky and we enjoyed having tea and sustenance together.


Take care, Rick

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