Plunged into darkness

 We have had a week of mainly lovely weather - mild and sunny with cool winds - especially this weekend. Thursday was the only fly in the ointment with some light rain showers until it cleared late afternoon.

The dramatisation Mr Bates vs The Post Office was shown on TV over two nights, Sunday and Monday. It had us both riveted and appalled at the way Post Office had treated so many sub-postmasters, and that nobody from the Post Office, Fujitsu or the Government has been held accountable. Nicky listened to Nick Wallace’s audio-book about this scandal. There is a true story documentary on tonight which we are looking forward to watching.

Our fly screens arrived last Saturday in a much smaller package that I was expecting. I unpacked them on Monday to find out what we needed to do to fit them. The technology used is velcro. One part of the velcro is already fitted to the screens, the other provided on rolls with adhesive  backing to attach to our window frames. We are not sure about this so are going to go and look at Alex and Jocelyn’s installation before we proceed. I suspect once the velcro is stuck on, it isn’t coming off.

Our evenings have been busy. On Tuesday we went to an Astronomy Society lecture on Alien Earths. This was presented by the head of the Carl Sagan Institute in the US and was about looking for other planets that could support life. It was very interesting, but as we expected, unable to provide any conclusive answers about the existence of life elsewhere in the universe.

Our quiz evening on Wednesday was preceded by dinner out with Mike at a Japanese restaurant in town - Momiji. Mike invited us as we regularly give him lifts home from work on the paddle steamer and the quiz venue. We thoroughly enjoyed our meal (edamame beans, vegetable spring rolls, salmon and rice for Nicky and tempura salmon for me). Lovely tastes and textures. We will go there again. We rounded this off by coming first at the quiz with 93 points.

Thursday was the community kai at the marae. While it was still busy and very noisy, there were fewer people which made it more enjoyable. Our final outing was last night to Mark and Krystyna’s for dinner - paella followed by a luscious raspberry cheesecake. Great food and a lovely evening. It is very handy to only have a 5 minute walk each way and feel no need to use the car.

On our return home on Tuesday evening all the street lights were out on our part of the road. Not only did this make the road very dark, but also our house during the night. Usually the street lights provide us with just enough illumination to get to the toilet during the night without having to put any lights on. The absence of the street lights was very noticeable. On the upside it made star gazing even easier than usual with there being virtually no light pollution. By Friday morning the street lights were up and running again.

With the weather coming to the party this week Nicky has got lots of weeding done. The vegetable garden next to the drive is now looking really tidy. Today she planted the blue iris bulbs given to us by Paul and Jenny, and is hoping to gradually plant the purple hollyhocks, golden lachenalia and aquilegia this coming week. In addition to sailing on Friday, I have done two 2-hour sailings each day of the weekend. While this has been great in the lovely weather, with only and hour each day between sailings it has been very tiring. It has all been made a little more challenging due to our senior engineer having a motorcycle accident during the week. He has a number of broken bones but his life it not at risk. We don’t expect him back at work again this season.

The lilies which Frances brought us last Sunday have started to open, and are very aromatic:

We put the clocks back last night (and tested the smoke alarm), so darkness arrived an hour earlier this evening. Autumn is moving along, and winter isn’t far behind.

Take care, Rick and Nicky.