Sadness and celebrations

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 Our friend Eleanor, who lives down the road, celebrated her 80th birthday at Caroline’s Boatshed yesterday. We had accepted her invitation to join her and many friends for lunch followed by birthday cake. It transpired that we were destined to be late arrivals.


On Thursday morning I did my usual amble to the dairy to get four copies of the River City Press for Nicky. She had time to have a look at it before going off to staff the Aramoho Library and spotted a familiar name in the death notices. We needed to check that we were thinking of the correct person, the 39 year old son of friends of ours. Nicky found the funeral notice on a local undertakers website and discovered that he had been taken by cancer. His twin brother died around 10 years ago in a car accident. We were shocked an upset and let Eleanor know that we would be late for her lunch as the funeral was at 11am Saturday morning. It was a somber occasion, and the first time that I had attended a funeral of someone younger than me.


We were pleased to see Eleanor when we arrived at Caroline’s Boatshed. We ordered our meals which arrived just a few minutes later with everybody else’s, which was a pleasant surprise. We were expecting over an hour’s wait. The 30-40 guests who had travelled from far and wide, occupied five tables in an enclosed area of the Boastshed and we enjoyed our conversations and meals. We were pleased to return home however and have a quiet pot of tea.


The rest of the week has been much more routine. The laundry has been dried outside when the weather has been dry. Nicky hosted Home Group again on Tuesday. The night was very windy and had the wheelie bins dancing. 


I had an enjoyable amble around Virgina Lake on Wednesday with some warming sunshine. The magnolia are now flowering:



8th place with 90 points was the best we could do at the quiz, but in the afternoon Nicky had trimmed the front garden flax and I had cleaned the drains by the drive and the house, so some of the day was productive.


Before Nicky went to the Aramoho Library on Thursday, we were very pleased to receive a text from Kat and Israel letting us know that daughter number two, Audrey Xenia, had been born.


The Object of the Month talk at the museum on Friday was the Williams Barrel organ, the first barrel organ in New Zealand. It was made in Leeds in 1829 and arrived here in 1830. It became part of the museum collection in 1890 along with over 3000 other items acquired by the curator on a visit to Northland. It was restored to working order some years ago, so we were able to hear it played too. The inner workings were quite interesting:



We enjoyed watching Prince Caspian film in the evening. Today has been windy and there have been some heavy showers, so I have been working on our current jigsaw of nursery rhyme characters, while Nicky was at church. After our post prandial siestas we had four rounds of Mah Jong. We’ve been enjoying Ben Fogel’s travelog of China this week. Such contrasts to marvel at.


Take care, Rick and Nicky.

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