Here we go again

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I have had an interestingly busy week with remote support, along with three site visits to a customer to resolve their issue. This has resulted in me having my second busiest week of this financial year, in terms of hours. It is a bit of a relief because looking at my half-year figures (the end of September) I am almost 50% down this year on last.

Auckland moved to Covid Level 1 at 11.59pm on Wednesday, and already it feels like their are more people around when we are out and about. Mask wearing is being encouraged but is not as prevalent at the end of the week as it was at the beginning. We are also being strongly encouraged to trace our movements, either with the governments’ Covid app or by making our own records. Both Nicky and I feel that complacency is already setting it as we are observing fewer people scanning the QR codes with the Covid tracer app.


Nicky has been busy keeping our home clean, inside and out, along with enjoying reading two Minette Walters books, The Last Hours and The Turn of Midnight. These are consecutive stories based in the 1300’s at the time of the Black Death.


We have done some socialising too. After church on Wednesday morning the congregation swamped The Bay café with patronage, and on Thursday evening I ran my first Deep and Meaningful discussion group for 11 weeks. We now have a new venue, which is very good, and it was the first time I had been there. A café at the Ponsonby Road end of K’ Rd open just for us, so we get the place to ourselves, no muzak, a square table seating arrangement which makes the conversation easier, and great food which is also better value for money. 


We did our last Heritage Festival event for this year on Friday: Sandringham - a History in Food. In spite of the stiff breeze we enjoyed the walking tour and stayed for lunch at the end. This we split between a Sri Lankan establishment (too spicy for Nicky’s enjoyment) and a French Café which we would like to return to and try their crepes. 



I continued with remote support on Saturday morning while Nicky Scrabbled with Stella and Steve. Much of her afternoon was taken up with a funeral up at church, and I finished reading The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz which Claire recommended, and I thoroughly enjoyed.


On the house front, with much help from Bert, we have a new date for the submission of our CCC of January 15th next year. I think we have had three updated schedules from him this week, all pushing the handover date back, which is now mid-December. We are preparing ourselves to not be in before Christmas, but are still hopeful. We are opening negotiations with removal companies next week.


Take care, Rick

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