Excellent cake Gromit

At times it has felt like a funny old week (to paraphrase Arkwright yet again), but the weather has been gorgeous. Apart from Saturday (which was a bit of a relief) and this morning, it has been sunny, hot, very hot and dry all week. Gorgeous summer weather. It has been very pleasant popping out to The Rattigan for a little while to drink or eat, and then come back into the relative cool of the house. We have reached 30º a couple of times according to Luna, and 29º officially. It was reported on the Saturday evening news that Auckland has now had its longest period without meaningful rain since records began - 40 days. I guess it’s 41 by now. This makes me wonder how do you know if the rain means it or not, or does it just appear by accident?

Nicky has had another week of antibiotics and leg elevation, and things in the foot department have improved, but another visit to the GP tomorrow may be in order as it is not yet quite back to “normal”. Seniors Church, Holy Communion and ukulele concert have punctuated her reading and sewing. She had lunch up in the Bay with Valda and Jan on Monday, and yesterday was the first BHB Quilters of the year, which was well attended and went well.

I have had a quieter week with work, a few one-site jobs at the beginning of the week, and some remote support later in the week. On Tuesday I dropped my phone on the pavement, shattering the screen into a myriad of glass fragments. This made phone calls difficult to manage and texting almost impossible. Much of Thursday was occupied with setting up the replacement.

Friday was not only Valentines Day, but also Jancis’s birthday. I had already suggested that Nicky and I go to the Botanic Gardens for breakfast (followed by a wander round this years sculpture exhibition) as our Valentines celebration. When Jancis accepted our invitation to join us for her birthday treat we were very pleased. We enjoyed both the food and the art, but as we completed the tour and mid-day approached, it was getting rather warm so we returned home to the excellent birthday cake (carrot) which Nicky had made, lunch, and a quiet afternoon.

I had a walk down to the beach yesterday while Nicky quilted. The cloud cover brought with it lower temperatures and wind, though this also made the return up the hill more tolerable. Steve came over for Scrabble and then Nicky and I had corn on the cob and the last of the Christmas Pudding (with custard) for tea.

The weather wasn’t inviting enough this morning for me to go to Karekare while Nicky was at church, so I stretched my legs locally before doing the ironing. In-between games of Bananagrammes and Rummy-O this afternoon Nicky made cinnamon brioche for tea, which turned out very well. She is off to evensong shortly, a new addition to the services at church.

We have given up on the dishwasher this week. For quite a while it has been reluctant to finish a cycle properly, but last week it really couldn’t get its act together so now we just to use it to store dirty dishes. We haven’t told Dawn as we don’t want her to go to the trouble of fixing or replacing it when we are going to be leaving later in the year, so now at the end of the day we get them out, wash them, and toddle off to bed.

Take care, Rick