It's not cold

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 It has been a hot and sunny week. This was the MetService forecast for Wednesday:


It has even been hot in Dunedin. The weather has dragged us into the garden for weeding, watering, planting, replanting and grass cutting. We have moved bench #3 from the bottom of the garden to beside the shed with bench #4. Bench #1 may soon join it. The benches are much lighter to handle now that they have had a year or so to dry out. The weather has also encouraged us to go inside to cool down, and the lilies to flower:



Some of Nicky’s regular commitments are coming out of holiday mode, so she has been cleaning at church with Dale, and staffing the Aramoho Community Library. 


My working week has been interesting. On Monday we had a staff meeting to discuss the current situation and how the manager intends to proceed. We are still having to use stand-in skippers and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. I was asked if I would train for a skipper’s ticket. I explained that I didn’t feel that it was fair to the Trust to raise their hopes and spend their money (approx $6,000) when I intend to retire in June next year. The manager was initially enthusiastic, and suggested an intense training course, but nothing has been said since so I don’t know what is going to happen. One of the other deckhands has been made temporary bosun, and with stand-in skippers we sailed on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. We should be sailing 6 days a week at the moment as this is our busiest part of the season. The future is uncertain so I’m just taking it week by week.


On Tuesday afternoon we drove to Manaia, about an hour and a half west of Whanganui along the coast. We were meeting James and Wendy, friends of ours from Auckland who usually spend a bit of time in this part of the country at this time of year. The arrangement was to eat at the Waimate Hotel: 



We arrived a little early so had a brief amble around the town centre, assailed with the smell of freshly cooked bread and hot cross buns. Manaia is “the bread capitol of New Zealand” as it is the home of the Yarrows bread factory:



While the Hotel Waimate appeared unassuming, it was clean and tidy and provided a very friendly welcome. We had a lovely time catching up with Wendy and James. We enjoyed the food, a good example of NZ pub food. Wendy and James shared a surf and turf having discovered that the portions were very generous. Nicky had fish tacos (she only managed two so brought the third home) and I had a steak burger. We shared raspberry cheesecake for dessert. On our drive home we had a gorgeous sunset behind us:



On Friday evening we went to Dale and Bob’s for a BBQ in Springvale, on the other side of Whanganui. We had another enjoyable and relaxing evening with lovely food (the Angus steak fillets especially). 


Nicky is just making a salad to go with some smoked fish pie for our tea, and we will probably catch up with some telly this evening.


Take care, Rick and Nicky.

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