Wellywood

 The highlight of this week was not the pumpkin pie that I made on Wednesday, but our day trip to Wellington on Friday. Maria, an Auckland friend, was going to the World of Wearable Art with a friend of hers (Kathy) and suggested we meet for lunch. We hadn’t driven to Wellington from Whanganui before, so thought it would be a good idea to find out what it was like, and to also visit The Hanlon’s. Lucy and Charlie were also able to come over.

The drive turned out to be very straight forward. We stopped at Viv’s Kitchen in Sansom to buy a range of cream horns. Next stop was Levin for toilets and a range of fruit slices and doughnuts. Using GoogleMaps we easily found the car park which had been recommended by Krystyna (down the road). We met Maria and Kathy in the foyer at Te Papa… Aotearoa’s national museum. We had a very nice lunch in the café and a very good chat. It was great to see Maria again. Before leaving the museum we had a quick look at the marae, its carvings and stained glass window. The view over the harbour from the fourth floor was beautiful too.

On our walk from the car park to Te Papa Nicky was very amused by the pedestrian cross lights. The conventional red and green men had been replaced with localised silhouettes:

We drove up to The Hanlon’s and we were greeted by Milly and the entire youth contingent. The cream horns and other goodies were thoroughly enjoyed, as was the Persian Love Cake, which Lucy had made, and she and Charlie brought with them. Tim came home early from work, and it was really good to see them all and have some lovely catch-up conversations. Before we left Milly gave us a guided tour of their home as we hadn’t been there before. We departed at about half past six and had another easy drive home. We stopped at the Caltex in Levin for petrol and to eat the chicken and cranberry pie that we had taken with us. It was a lovely day, and as I warned Milly before we left, we will hopefully visit them more often in the future. 

The rest of our week has been quite routine and rather quiet. Nicky washed the duvet at the laundrette on Tuesday morning after a “mug-of-tea” incident. We put the summer duvet on the bed and on Wednesday decided to put our winter duvet back into storage as we both seemed to be warm enough overnight. 

On Wednesday morning the graffiti/mural artwork which had appeared last week was painted over by the Whanganui Council Graffiti Police. We now have a plain grey wall opposite our driveway. Nicky went to the cinema to see a documentary about Angela Merkel which was very good. I picked up a rat trap from Sustainable Whanganui as we had spotted a rat in the front garden last weekend. It was under the Kowhai where birds build nests in springtime. We had a late lunch on garden on bench #1 as it was T-Shirt and shorts weather. We followed this with our weekly crossword. Our quiz team leader Danny was hospitalised and diagnosed with salmonella, but Nicky, Mike and I were joined by John. We came 10th with 83 points.

While Nicky staffed the Aramoho Library on Thursday, I helped Bob the Bosun get some coal for our weekend sailings. Nicky visited Danny in hospital and then went off to church for some Prayer Ministry training, only to discover it had been postponed, due to illness.

We had some rain yesterday while sailing and Nicky had to hastily bring in the washing. She ironed, and made beef goulash for dinner. Afterwards we started watching Sherwood series 2. The weather has been better today which I appreciated on the boat. After work I joined Nicky at Dale and Bob’s home for their house blessing and some good conversations.

We changed the clocks last night so are now enjoying our first lighter evening of the season. Spring has sprung.

Take care, Rick and Nicky.