Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

Emily and Shona have been with us this week. They have done laundry, Sky Tower, read, Mission Bay, slept a lot, the cinema, Orewa, Wiawera (thermal pools) and almost finished the jigsaw. I was working at Hungry Creek on Monday modelling, and this is just 5 minutes up the road from the thermal pools at Wiawera. So, I roused the girls at 7am so that they could get organised before departing on the 1 hour drive up North. Claire, Emily and Shona spent the morning wallowing and then the afternoon being shown the sights round Orewa, Red Beach and Stanmore Bay by Claire. They kindly collected me at 4pm and E&S slept most of the way home while Claire drove and I acted as tour guide. On Tuesday evening E&S treated us to a night out at Bricklane, a local hostelry which it turned out served very good food (we had veg & meat platters with fries and wedges to share between us, then a couple of gooey desserts) prior to participating in the weekly pub quiz. We managed, with the help of th...

First of all, thank you to all of those of you who read this blog and email with comments. I am coming to realise that far more people are regular readers than I thought, and it is good to know that these words of mine are being read. Our biggest item of news this week is the arrival of Emily and Shona - Claire's friends from England. After visiting Hong Kong and having a two week tour of the South Island they arrived in Auckland on Thursday lunchtime. They are camping out in our "spare bedroom / office / ironing room". I think it would be true to say that they arrived a little jaded after seeing more of the South Island in two weeks than many of the inhabitants see in their lifetime's. So, sleep and laundry have been high on the agenda, though some shopping has been completed. Today, with both Nicky and Claire being at work I took them to the Waitekere Regional Park visitor centre and then onto Bethalls Beach where we had a lovely stroll in the wind and sun and didn...

As another fun packed week draws to a close I have to try and remember what we have done. It seems to have been mainly work for all of us. Claire has done an extra shift at Whitcoulls, I have done three MacOnSite jobs, and Nicky has been as busy as ever with her regular hours an emergency cover. However, we have managed a couple of good evenings out. On Wednesday we went to the Stardome in Cornwall Park. This is also where One Tree Hill is located. You may remember Nicky and I tackling it without extra oxygen when Sir Ed died. We had a wonderful time in their "planetarium" learning what we were seeing in the night sky about Auckland - the southern hemisphere basically. This was very informative because I knew that what looked like The Plough to me couldn't be The Plough because that is only visible in the northern hemisphere. I was very pleased to discover that it is actually the Southern Cross - the star cluster which appears on the New Zealand flag. We were also told wh...

First of all apologies to all you regular blog watchers. The problem is I tend to update the blog on a Sunday evening. It is the end of the week and we tend not to go out with Monday morning being just round the corner. However, last Sunday we were out - at the cinema with Steve and Ros and Lucy, Tim and Katie, to see Prince Caspian which most of us enjoyed. By the time we got home it was about half past eight and all we wanted to do was eat and go to bed. Now I know I could have updated the blog later in the week, but I was doing MacOnSite work Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and just didn't get round to it. The Monday and Thursday jobs were in town so I walked there after finishing work at Ubertec. A consequence of this has been discovering a coffee house chain called Esquires. They not only do very nice coffee, but also excellent chocolate and caramel muffins, bacon and egg pie and things called thimbles, which are small pastry delights and are wonderful. It is a good job I was doi...

I am writing this in the middle of the night (3.30 am) because I ate and drank too much last. We went out to what turned out to be a very good restaurant called The Falls (www.thefalls.co.nz) to celebrate our 23rd wedding anniversary. It was also the first time that the three of us have been out for a meal together since arriving in NZ, just over 9 months ago. We chose The Falls because it came out top in a reader poll in a local newspaper some months ago, and we had seen it while going to and from Henderson library and liked the look of it. Nicky popped in a few weeks back while using the car park next to it and booked for us. Nicky and I both started with soup of the day (beef and tomato), and for mains Claire and I had salmon and Nicky had pork. Claire and I shared a chocolate mouse dessert and I had a coffee with kahlua and bourbon. I also had to finish off Nicky's wine so that and having three courses is why I am suffering now. I should have known! Anyway, all the food was exc...

It has been a quiet week this week, with no really exciting events that I can recall. I worked at Hungry Creek modelling on Monday which was good, especially now that they have a gas heater which is like a jet engine - almost as noisy and pretty hot. We didn't need it on for long fortunately. Nicky has done her "regular" hours and emergency cover today, Sunday, at New Lynn. She enjoyed having Tuesday and Wednesday at home and was able to visit both Ruth and Mary, though Mary had gone on a trip at the last minute so Nicky only saw her briefly. Claire has had some time off work due to suffering with a heavy cold which most people both at Whitcoulls and the Library Service are also battling with. She seems to be on the mend but is still very congested and not sleeping too well. The weather has been getting a little milder and damper, but we have still had some spells of sunshine. Nicky decided this evening that we have really lost it. Today has been the first Sunday that Cla...

The best day of last week was Monday: it was my birthday so there was a public holiday, but of course The Queen had to muscle in and have her "official" birthday on the same day, making everybody think we had they day off because of her. Indeed. Anyway, it was another chance for all three of us to have a day off together. We started with a lie-in and and a leisurely breakfast, accompanied by present opening by me. I had bought goodies for a picnic lunch (smoked salmon and cheese wraps, dips & crisps) which we planned to have "out" somewhere. We headed off west to find Waitakere village as Nicky had been impressed by it on her EcoBus tour. However, when we got there we discovered it was not the place that she was remembering. It was however an enjoyable drive, and took us half way towards Bethals beach, which is where we headed next. After a stroll down the beach we sat on a picnic bench in the sun and ate our grub, while being monitored closely for crumbs by a p...