Entertaining Inferno

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It has been a tiring week. Nicky has been very busy at church with the Thy Kingdom Come vigil, attending in the wee small hours a number of times, along with Tuesday afternoon with Life Group. Wednesday was a short working bee at St. John’s due to inclement weather. Yesterday she attended a winter retreat at Christ Church which was good, and today was her usual service at St. John’s followed by lunch.


But wait, there’s more! She also had a meeting with Louise about Pastoral Care, visited the hairdressers, and did lots of cooking.


We had Jacqui, Mark and Elaine (our immediate neighbours) over for dinner on Wednesday evening. Nicky made a large and very tasty macaroni cheese (with bacon) and steamed some veg in the microwave. I sautéd the veg with almonds just to finish them off. Mark and Elaine also brought a dish of veg and Jacqui added a rotisserie chicken. We were not short of food. I had made two apple pies earlier in the day and one of them went down very well with some custard. It was a good evening.


Thursday, as most of you will know, was my birthday. We had hoped to have a beach walk, so we drove over to Castlecliff, but I decided against it due to the wind and rain. The weather didn’t dampen the enjoyment of our breakfast at The Yellow House, or talking to the artist who was putting up her work as we left. It was the first day of her two month exhibition at the café, and we really liked her quirky style and bright colours. You can see her work at studio86.co.nz.




Nicky made my birthday cake (banana - we hadn’t had one for ages) when we got home, and prepared smoked salmon and Philly cheese open sandwiches for lunch. Both were lovely. We almost didn’t get to enjoy the cake. Nicky had bought some sparkly candle tapers and put 62 of them on the cake. I started lighting them:




Part way though I had a phone call from a customer, so Nicky took over the candle lighting, and then the candles took over the candle lighting and included the cake ribbons in the proceedings:



A wet tea towel extinguished the inferno and left the cake in need of a little surgery:



Bangers and mash for dinner followed by a FaceTime chat with my sister Gill and her lad John, rounded off a lovely day.


I spent much of Friday on the phone with MacOnSite work, but finished mid afternoon in time to pop a leg of pork into the oven to roast for dinner. We were being joined by Frances (Mrs Egg) and Felicity R-R. Felicity brought a range of cheese and biscuits which had both before and after the meal, and Frances gave me a lovely chocolate muffin to which just one candle was added. We also had the other apple pie that I had made on Wednesday, again with custard, and again we had a good evening.


While Nicky was retreating yesterday, I took advantage of the dry sunny weather to do lots of washing, some ironing, and to clean the oven. We have had some heavy rain during the week, and even more has fallen up river causing some flooding down river of us. We have been interested to see how high the river was and how fast it was running.


This morning we were up having our first cuppa in time to see the Platinum Party at The Palace from the beginning. We thoroughly enjoyed Paddington taking tea with the Queen and how it demonstrated her sense of fun, as did her “parachute jump” for the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. We watched the rest of the party while having some breakfast and pottering around, and enjoyed most of it. We have had a quiet afternoon watching the last two episodes of a police drama (Trigger Point) which we have been recording due to it’s very late slot in the TV schedule.


Take care, Rick and Nicky.

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