Change of direction

 For those of you not in Aotearoa, the preliminary result of yesterdays General Election has given us a National/ACT coalition government, with possibly a hint of NZ First (Winston Peters). In short, a change from left to right wing policies. The the result from the official count and Special Votes will be issued in about three weeks, but it doesn’t usually change the overall result significantly. Again, for those of you offshore, Special Votes are those cast outside your electorate. The system here enables any voter to walk into a voting Polling Place anywhere in the country and cast their vote. If the Polling Place is not in their registered electorate, they cast a Special Vote. The result is no surprise as National have been ahead in the polls for some months. Even though Chris Hipkins did appear to make a good fist of the Premiership after taking over from Jancinda, there still seems to be much resentment for the Covid restrictions which kept us safe.

Much of our week has been routine, but the weather has been variable: some sun, a bit of rain, quite a lot of cool wind, and but above average temperatures. We tied for second place in the quiz this week, but the tie-breaker gave our opponents bragging rights (the value of the prize voucher is the same for 2nd and 3rd).

On Wednesday and Thursday I did a “garden project”. One of our palm trees (which is growing very nicely) was making cutting the grass (and pioneering plants) around its base very difficult. I decided (in consultation with the Head Gardener) to clear the area around it and its neighbours and put down some of the bark that Stella gave us and we still had in storage. In our long term plan for the garden this is how we hope to suppress the pioneering weeds and minimise the maintenance. I am pleased with the end result:

On Friday I did a First Aid course for work, which was good as it is 14 years since I had last done one. At home, Nicky made beef bourguignon casserole in preparation for our Saturday night dinner guests. In the evening I made an apple, blueberry and sultana pie for the same reason. We cooked in advance because of Nicky being at church on Saturday afternoon helping with preparation for the Parish Fair, and I had two planned sailings on the paddle steamer. Our advanced preparations for dinner made the production of dinner much easier and less stressful.

However, Saturday didn’t go to plan. The weather stepped in and changed things with strong winds making it unsafe to sail. We rigged and fuelled the boat in case the afternoon was calmer, but it wasn’t. The people who had booked the afternoon charter were already on their way from Wellington. Nicky had collected me from the wharf mid-morning and we were just about to head back for a 12.30 restart when Jen the Manager called me to say that I wouldn’t be needed as it was still too windy to sail. The chartered passengers were relieved to hear this when they arrived, and apparently thoroughly enjoyed their meal and couple of hours on the moored boat.

The skipper however, was not happy. At a meeting with Jen this morning (Sunday) much was said (I am told) and he resigned (again). The lack of skipper prevented us from sailing today, but as we were tidying up the boat, the wind got up again and would probably prevented sailing anyway. It looks like we won’t sail again until we have a new skipper, so we are going to have some enforced downtime for a few weeks.

Just going back to Saturday evening, our dinner with Mark and Krystyna was very good, and we watched a little of the election results coverage with them. Today after Nicky collected me from Taupo Quay, she took herself off to church. We’ve both had time in the garden this afternoon strimming and weeding.

Take care, Rick and Nicky.

PS: We have just learned that turnout for the election was 78.4%.