Fair and wet

 Our week started with a Public Holiday for Labour Day. The morning was suitable for laundry and ambling while Nicky cleaned at church, but I was rained off from working in the garden in the afternoon. I made some wholemeal pasta for the lasagne that I was preparing for dinner, but it wasn’t what I would call a success. Back to refined flour next time.

Libby (from Nicky’s book group) and Graham came over for morning tea on Tuesday, so Nicky made muffins. She didn’t go to the Vestry meeting in the evening because just after dinner she started vomiting. We haven’t figured out the cause, but 24 hours later Nicky was feeling fine and helped us achieve 11th place at the quiz with 77 points. However yesterday she met two others who’d had the same complaint, over the same time span. Much of Nicky’s week has been taken up by helping prepare for the Parish Fair at church, punctuated with her usual commitments.

My week has been one of working in the garden, laundry in Nicky’s absence, and some MacOnSite work. I finished reading Kiss of Death by Stephen Tester. Set in 1918, the book’s main character is a lady lawyer in Wellington prosecuting a women for murdering her husband by kissing him when she had Spanish ‘flu. Nicky had already read it, and I enjoyed it just as much as she did.

I dropped Nicky at church on Saturday morning for the Parish Fair. She had been assigned the china & glassware stall. The weather forecast was suggesting rain, sometimes heavy, from 8am to 1pm. I work on the paddle steamer from 8.30am to 1.30pm. The forecast was almost correct to the minute, though to describe some of the rain as heavy was being on the optimistic side. By the time we had finished preparing the boat, I was soaked to the skin despite wearing a rain jacket. The rain was streaming down my overalls into my boots. While I was on the helm on the return down river, visibility was less than 1000m at best as I approached the first bridge. The rain was torrential. I had hung up my overalls to dry when changing into my uniform before sailing. However my overalls were no drier or any drier than my uniform by the time we were back at the wharf. I was still dripping when collecting Nicky from church after the fair, where there had been numerous participants and eager buyers. To their surprise they succeeded in raising a similar amount as last year, when the weather was lovely.

On arriving home I stripped off and put everything in the washing machine, and dashed into the shower just as a visitor arrived. While at the Parish Fair Nicky had taken a phone call from Gail Van Veen, a friend and neighbour from her Auckland childhood. Since being widowed and her adult children leaving home, Gail has bought herself a lovely wee RV and is touring the country. Gail happened to be in Whanganui on her way to Levin so got in touch via her sister Carol. We had a very happy hour or so sharing a pot of tea and catching up with our lives since we had last seen each other, probably about 7 years ago. We hope to see Gail again in the future.

The late afternoon was rounded off by drinks and nibbles at Craig and Sarah’s, fellow parishioners at Christ Church. They have both turned 60, so invited a houseful of guests to celebrate. We bought fish and chips for a late dinner on our way home.

Nicky dropped me at the Waimarie wharf this morning on her way to church, to prepare the hospitality tea & coffee trolleys. While the sky was clear and sunny, the breeze was cold and strong. It is was so much more appealing being on the paddle steamer in the dry. Nicky took advantage of the sun and stiff breeze to do a couple of loads of laundry this afternoon, before making pizza for dinner.

All week we’ve been watching more and more poppies coming into flower, and spears on our flax growing taller. We didn’t have any Trick-or-Treat visitors on Thursday, but on Wednesday a family of ducks wandered down our drive, we assume on the way to the river:

Take care, Rick and Nicky.