Pancakes!

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 Autumn has got into its stride and we have had a noticeable drop in temperates and a couple of brief periods of heavy rain. This has encouraged our tea drinking in the back garden to be undertaken in the afternoon and not the early evening. We are enjoying the new location for the Sentinel which Nicky and I moved recently:



Nicky is hosting her home group this month. With Lent starting there was the usual drive-in-pancake event at Christ Church on Shrove Tuesday. The home group members went down after their meeting in convoy and Nicky returned with a bacon and cheese pancake for each of us. I followed this by making pancake stacks for dinner: pancake - bacon - pancake - banana and maple syrup - pancake. Lovely.


Nicky cooked and pureed the last of the apples that we have been given on Wednesday and used them to make a crumble on Thursday for our Community Kai at the marae. She absented herself from the quiz night for an hour for the Ash Wednesday Ashing Service at Christ Church. We missed her literature knowledge and ended up 7th with 83 points. This month’s Fashion Talk at the museum on Friday was as good as ever. An exquisite turn of the century pulled thread sports dress for croquet and tennis in real linen. Yesterday Nicky attended a Lent Retreat and arrived home feeling calm, joyful and serene. Soon there was a knock at the door and Nicky was surprised to receive a request from the Whanganui Gardening Club to visit our garden during their summer programme. So that will be December or January for a hopefully comparatively weed free experience.


I had two days off from sailing this week, as our contracted skipper had other commitments on Wednesday. Bob the Bosun and his wife Robyn came over on Tuesday morning for a cuppa and a catch up. While Bob is improving and the antibiotics are helping, he is not right or well enough to return to work. It was good to see Bob all the same. The weather was good on Wednesday, so I got all the grass cut before we quizzed, and we managed to fit in a few hands of Mah Jong too. Saturday was a long day for me with an almost 12 hour shift in order to do three sailings. The rain started to come down just as we were getting off the Waimarie after the last trip, and was very heavy for awhile in the evening.


We have started watching a dramatisation of the Lockerbie plane crash and its aftermath with the actor Colin Firth. It is one of those major news stories that I feel we missed much of the detail at the time. The PanAm plane in which a bomb exploded over Scotland when Claire was 10 days old. Much of what was happening outside our little world wasn’t impinging on our consciousness, as we were spending most of our time in the Neonatal Unit of the hospital. We were more aware of the events in the months and years afterwards.


Nicky had a good morning at church today and I had a quiet Whanganui  River sailing. The sunshine that persuaded Nicky to undertake a couple of loads of laundry this afternoon is being replaced by grey clouds coming from the south east. We might be in for some more rain.


Take care, Rick and Nicky

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