Mind the gap

 It has been quite a week for the English abroad, watching history unfold from a distance. From mid-morning until late afternoon on Friday we watched the BBC’s Election coverage of Labour returning to government after 14 years on the opposition benches. This is a much more palatable time of the day for watching the results come in, and we pottered round the house doing some of the jigsaw and some ironing as the day progressed. It was also very pleasing to see the BBC doing their thing. Much better reporting and presenting than we get here.

The other significant event, of course, was the English football team getting through to the semi-finals of EURO 24. I’m still not sure how they managed it, but they did. I was up at 3.50am this morning in order to watch the match live, and then the Netherlands-Turkey game to find out who our opponents would be. After all that I was too jaded for second breakfast so when Nicky went to church I went back to bed for a snooze. It’s tough being a fan.

Our week, in what I can safely say is sunny Whanganui (for the latter part of the week anyway) has had its events, though none of them particularly historic. Safe-Ur, our temporary next door neighbour, had returned from Australia and moved out of Jacqui’s caravan on Monday. On Tuesday Jacqui sold it and the caravan was towed up the sloping driveway. This has changed our view a little as their is now a large gap in place of the caravan:

We had three consecutive evenings out. On Tuesday we had dinner at Caroline’s Boatshed with Eleanor and Jack from up the road, and some friends of theirs who they get together with once a month for dinner out. Nicky enjoyed her lamb and me some scallops. Wednesday was quiz night. Our team did not fare well. We were placed 14th out of 24 with 93 points. In previous weeks this score would have probably got us a place. Thursday was Community Kai at the marae, which was more enjoyable this month as their were fewer people so it wasn’t as noisy. We think fewer people came to the Marae because it was very cold.

A jigsaw has been completed this week, as the weather was a bit iffy at the beginning, and quite wet on Tuesday. Both of us have had periods of feeling under the weather, but now seem to be improving, in a relative way. Nicky didn’t go to home group but did feel well enough for me to take her to the eye clinic for her annual check-up. Things don’t seem to have changed, which is good.

We had further excitement on Wednesday as the very nice engineer from ARC came and fixed our dishwasher and oven. During the morning I took the oven door apart to clean the three panes of glass. He had shown me how to do this when diagnosing the problem last month. I had been waiting for his return in case I couldn’t put it back together again. It was a bit of a challenge because it turned out we hadn’t reassembled it correctly. He showed me the correct way which was much easier. I might do it again in another three and a half years. The repairs didn’t take as long as anticipated so the cost was lower than quoted. Overall for the two visits, the diagnostics and repairs it cost us $302 to get both appliances up and running again. We are very pleased that it wasn’t too expensive.

While he was here, the I asked the engineer if it was possible to re-position the oven in its housing. We noticed it wasn’t quite square sometime after moving in and it was just catching on the roll-out pantry. With a bit of labouring assistance from me, he improved the position so it now doesn’t catch and looks better aligned with the microwave. I’m almost as pleased about this, as having it working again.

Nicky staffed the Aramoho Community Library on Thursday, and enjoyed the monthly fashion talk to the museum on Friday. This month a brick red dress knitted and worn in the 1950’s. We have had an email from the library with the first issue of their newsletter. The main item which caught my eye was the suspension of the “request for purchase” service for 12 months due to budget constraints. We have been very pleased that most of the things that we have suggested have been purchased. The notable exception was my request for a guide book to the English Football League grounds, which I was expecting to include comments on the pies and toilets, along with the quality of the pitch… Oh well.

Take care, Rick and Nicky.