Visitors

 I have to start with the highlight of our week: Bruce and Wendy’s visit. While over here from Salt Spring Island they had a trip down to Wellington and called into Whanganui on the way back. They stayed at the Top 10 Whanganui River Holiday Park just up the road from us, for three nights, so we were able to enjoy as much of their company as possible.

Monday dawned cool and clear and soon turned warm and sunny. Bruce, Wendy and Nicky came for a ride on the Waimarie paddle steamer, while while I did my usual things with ropes and pigeons. After lunch at our place, snoozing at respective domiciles was followed by food preparation (salads to go with the steak) and dinner. 

We had previously invited Mark and Krystina from across the road for an adult games evening, so we had six for Triominos and Scrabble. It was almost midnight before we got to bed.

With Tuesday being my day off, Bruce and Wendy joined us for breakfast, bringing avocados with them to go with poached eggs and toast. We packed up a picnic lunch and took our visitors to Paloma Gardens, which Wendy really enjoyed and Bruce found OK, but hard work for his knee.

On our return we found Rob the plumber just packing up after finishing the relocation of our LPG tanks. We are now compliant again, which is a relief. Another afternoon snooze was followed by wine and nibbles at the Top 10. Next stop was Christ Church for drive-in pancakes (which were lovely) as it was Shrove Tuesday. From there we drove into town for dinner at Mint, a café/restaurant which I had been wanting to try. It turned out to be very good. Bruce, Wendy and I shared entrées of green lipped muscles and sticky pork ribs, kumera fries and a pizza with chillies. Nicky had the ribs as a main course dish. It was all very tasty and we were unable to manage dessert.

Being so stuffed we had a walk around town to give Bruce and Wendy a bit of the flavour of downtown Whanganui. Our meanderings took us to Cooks Gardens and the Observatory. The later is something we hadn’t visited before. It has five bells hung in its frame. One was made in Sheffield, and the other four by Taylors of Loughborough. Another illustration of the resonance of the Whanganui - Loughborough relationship which was unexpected and very pleasing… warming the cockles of our hearts!

By the time we got back to the car it was almost dark. I noticed that there was a mobile phone on the car roof. This was a surprise to say the least. On investigation we discovered it wasn’t locked, so I called the last number which had rung it (some 10 minutes earlier) to try and establish the owner. It was the owner, using another phone, who had called, and we quickly established that it was Wayne, who had taken our pancake order at Christ Church. He must have put his phone onto of the car while doing so. What we found amazing was that it hadn’t fallen off the car while we had driven into town, over speed bumps and round corners, and that while parked, no passing pedestrian had picked it up. Nicky returned the phone to Wayne at the church office the following morning.

We had another late and warm night, so didn’t wake feeling refreshed. Nicky snoozed in the afternoon while I did some MacOnSite work after my morning’s sailing. In the evening Nicky attended Christ Church for the Ash Wednesday Service, after we had done The NZ Listener crosswords.

Thursday started wet, but sailing was dry and cool. Nicky didn’t have any borrowers at the Aramoho Community Library, but did finish reading the latest Robert Galbraith novel. I did some strimming and we watched the final episode of The Capture, series 2, in the evening, along with the Sewing Bee. Both much enjoyed.

Friday was cool and the sky looked ominous but it didn’t actually rain. Sailing on the river was cool again. Nicky got some laundry dry but was feeling cold and tired. I did the rest of the back garden strimming and the trenching, and dinner was followed by telly. Nicky thinks autumn has arrived early.

We had an early cuppa yesterday, and the rain arrived while sailing so Nicky only did a little laundry. She made lovely date, orange and mascarpone scones. They went very well with an afternoon cuppa. We started a jigsaw in the evening but I quickly abandoned Nicky to it, and went to bed. I still find the two back-to-back Saturday sailings very tiring.

It was drier overnight. This morning Nicky dropped me at the Waimarie wharf before going straight to church to undertake her Hospitality duties. She collected me on her way home. The rain returned late afternoon forcing us to dash out and retrieve the washing, but encouraged us to get on with the jigsaw, with which we will continue this evening.

Take care, Rick and Nicky