Christmas Week

 Christmas comes but once a year, along with a bit of an increase in the waistline and time spent connecting with others. The regular question preceding the 25th of “what are you doing for Christmas” elicited more responses this year of “Oh, just having a quiet one” from the people which I asked. We had both a quiet time and connection.

The week began with Bob and I shifting another 120 bags of coal down to the wharf for our upcoming sailings while Nicky cleaned at church. The showers of rain made the laundry a bit of a challenge. Nicky cleaned wax out of a mountain of ramekins from church while I made mince pies, shortbread, walnut bread and a cheese soufflé. 

Christmas Eve dawned dull with a bit of rain. Nicky and I braved the supermarket and Nicky made a brilliant find. We keep our “in-use” nuts and dried fruit in the pantry in plastic containers that once held “bottled” fruit. We also have a few dedicated storage containers that over the years have given up the ghost. As the last of these has reached the end of its life we were looking for replacements. We found nothing that was both the right size and that we liked. While at the checkout Nicky hit on the idea of looking for more bottled fruit in plastic containers (which we haven’t seen for years) and not only found them, but they were also the right size to fit on the shelf in the pantry - Win-Win! Three were subsequently purchased with great joy. We even get to eat the fruit!

On our return home the weather had brightened up so Nicky did some gardening while I made a 1.5kg Christmas Pie (chicken, bacon and drunken cranberries in a hot water crust pastry). By the time we were walking down to Doug and Cheryl’s for afternoon tea, it was warm and sunny. Their adult daughter is staying with them at the moment while looking for work where Julie can use her architecture qualification. We chatted for so long we almost missed the beginning of The Chase. After an evening of reading, Nicky went to Midnight Mass.

Christmas Day was also a little dull until the sun came to the party mid-morning. We stuffed our breakfast croissants with left over cheese soufflé which worked very well. I had a second one with lemon curd and banana. Gifts were extracted from under the tree and opened and enjoyed. We drove over to Castlecliff and had a lovely walk along the beach. The breeze was only light and the other walkers friendly. The sea was a gorgeous range of colours and some of the clouds were quite interesting:

We headed home for our lunchtime picnic of smoked salmon on walnut bread and pumpkin and kumera humus with crisps and carrot sticks. We sat in the dappled shade of bench number one. A series of texts finally confirmed who would be calling in later: John for a cuppa and mince pie, Frances and her son Adam, daughter-in-law Jade and granddaughter Phoenix for tea. We set about making salads (to go with the Christmas Pie) and organising the house. John arrived shortly after Frances et al and stayed for about an hour of entertaining conversation. The six of us then sat down for dinner (with a lovely bottle of wine) followed by Junior Monopoly. It was a lovely evening, full of humour and warmth. We were not too late crawling into bed but we were very tired.

Boxing Day began mild and damp, but it quite quickly dried up. Nicky spent some time in the garden while I did my 350th trip on the paddle steamer. In the afternoon we met up with Phil and Kristina at the Columbus Café in Mitre 10 to have a cuppa together and had a quiet evening after a dinner of Christmas Day leftovers.

I was due to sail again on Friday, but with winds of 40km/hr gusting to over 100 km/hr it was cancelled. We had a power cut for a couple of hours in the morning, but the juice came back on just before I went off to do the shopping. Nicky started making pizza dough ready for tea, as Kat, Israel and Ari were coming over from Palmy. We met them at Kowhai Park on the other side of the river, so that Ari (nearly 2) could have a run around before they came back to ours for pizza (which were excellent). Nicky made two pizza’s topped with roast chicken and cranberries, and added some Brie to one of them. Their company was as entertaning as ever and it was really good to see them.

Yesterday we were not sailing until 1pm, so I didn’t need to be at work as early as usual. This gave us time for a FaceTime chat with Gill & Dave, which was good. The calm start to the day developed into a hot and sunny one. Nicky did six loads of washing and got them all dry. We did the jumbo crossword when I returned (because there won’t be an issue of The NZ Listener next week) with a pot of tea. We followed our cheese and onion omelettes with mince tart and custard and had our cups of tea in the garden to enjoy the lovely evening sun.

Today has again been warm and sunny. Nicky dropped me at the wharf before going to church. Much of the rest of her day has been doing the ironing, while I made a lemon curd cheesecake for Tuesday evening. I cut the grass in the back garden as the day cooled and Nicky produced pork fried rice for dinner.

This is the last blog post of 2024. We hope you have a great New Year and that 2025 is a good one for you all. It certainly holds some changes for us.

Take care, Rick and Nicky.