Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

 We have entered the last week of autumn. The weather has already started to turn wintery. It has been quite a chilly week with rain on a couple of days, and the wind has brought down most of the leaves. The tree which featured as last week’s photo now look likes this: I swept the paths and drive on Thursday, and then on Friday cleared out the gutter on the eastern side of the house. Nicky has attended all her regular activities, and in addition had a Hospital Visitors team meeting over at Louise’s in Springvale. When the weather has allowed she has also done some weeding. We had a FaceTime chat with Jancis, which we hadn’t done since about January I think. While she is still having to use lots of painkillers to manage everyday life, she did seem to be in better spirits. It was good to catch up with her. There was no quiz this week due to the quiz master being away. The inclement weather encouraged me to start a jigsaw. It’s another one from the jigsaw exchange and is taking us a w...

 The sailing season is coming to its end, and this week we have only sailed at the weekend. Having all five weekdays away from my deckhand duties has been treat, but I have done some MacOnSite work. Nicky’s new pale shocking pink iPad arrived on Monday so I began the process of setting it up. This didn’t go as planned because I had forgotten that the new iPad would have a different connector to the old one. I don’t have the appropriate cables to connect it to the Mac which has the backup of her previous (completely dead) one. We are both very pleased with the colour that Nicky chose and have bought a protective case which is partially transparent so that we can still enjoy the colour. We did quite a bit of laundry on Tuesday to take advantage of the weather. This included Nicky washing the starry counterpane at the laundrette while I did the supermarket shopping. For dinner I had a go at making smoked salmon soup. 40 years ago when we first met, Campbells used to do a lovely conden...

 While change has not been momentous this week, it has happened. The shorts have been put away for the winter, as the weather has turned very cold by our standards. I have changed how I am making my porridge - don’t all gasp at once. At the beginning of the week the weather was still quite mild with lots of sunshine. Steve and Louise came over for lunch on Monday. Nicky did tomato soup with some lovely stuffed bread she had bought. I hadn’t seen them for about a year so it was good to catch up. Wednesday morning was a shock to the system with a cold and frosty start. Nicky had been late to bed Tuesday night (Wednesday morning actually) and needed the car for going to her morning book group and hospital visiting. The book group call themselves the Decibelles as there were originally 12 readers participating. I needed to get to the wharf for an 11am sailing and was up early so decided to catch the 7.25am bus into town. While waiting at the bus stop I noticed that we had frost on our ...

 We have had another week of largely clear sunny weather. Wednesday and Thursday started off damp but cleared up. You can probably tell that it is a slow news week Dear Reader when I start the blog with the weather report, and then go on to say that probably the most notable event of the week has been Sheffield Wednesday managing to avoid relegation from the Championship. That’s football, for those of you on a different planet. The usual routine activities have taken place at the usual times, which is very pleasing for those of us who like a little structure in their lives. It gets so confusing when things happen on the wrong day of the week. While we were playing Triominos after dinner on Tuesday we had a 4.6 earthquake which went on for about 25 seconds. No damage (that I’ve spotted), just a bit of a wobble. On Wednesday morning we went over to see Alex and Jocelyn to have a look at their fly screens and see how that have fitted them. Their daughter-in-law supplied them and us wi...

 On the whole our week has been dry and sunny. The wind has been cold at times towards the end of the week. Friday however was significantly different. We had some rain overnight but by the time the paddle steamer left the wharf we were in sunshine. An hour later, just as we turned after collecting some passengers from Upokongaro the rain arrived - heavily, and just as I started my time on the helm. The rain on my face felt like sharp little pin pricks. Fortunately I was wearing my sunnies so my eyes were protected, but the skipper had to close his. He was only able to take over the helm when Bob the Bosun brought him some sunnies from our merchandise selection. My uniform didn’t dry out until after breakfast on Saturday. Nicky had her hair cut on Monday morning after vestry cleaning. She was very pleased on returning home with the prospect of not having to go out again until Friday, with the exception of quizzing on Wednesday evening (we came 4th with 92 points). This also enabled...

 Internationally recognised at last. We, as in Whanganui, were the subject of a question on The Chase this week. The popularity of the programme here in Aotearoa has not gone unnoticed by its producers. More and more Kiwi orientated questions are been asked. This one was about the language from which the place name Whanganui is derived. Bradley might have made mince meat of the pronunciation, but the subject of the question was noticed by us, and locals alike. It was even a topic of discussion in the mess room at work! Brilliant. It has been quite a routine week for us, again with much enjoyable autumn weather. On Tuesday Nicky had lunch with Home Group at Devine, the café in the Summerset retirement village complex, which she enjoyed. She filled in for Rosemary on the hospital visiting roster on Wednesday morning, and then attended Peter Cameron’s funeral in the afternoon. He was a very popular and long-serving member of the Whanganui Anglicans congregations. We came fourth at the...

 Our first week without daylight saving has been notable for the weather. The clear sunny days became cloudier at the beginning of the week, but the northerly winds pushed the temperature up to 27º on Wednesday. A very windy Thursday was followed by a wet and windy Friday. Some of the west coast on the South Island had 700mm of rain in 24 hours. Auckland was also in the firing line, but Whanganui got off lightly. The many hours of rain have done the garden a power of good apparently. The changes have brought us some glorious sunrises and some lovely light. The hills glowed for a few minutes on Wednesday morning: On Thursday morning the shepherds were on high alert: Sailing was cancelled on Friday because of the weather, so we started a jigsaw. Nicky also stewed kilograms of home grown apples that we had been given by various people. In the earlier parts of the week before the rain came, I washed the car and the house windows. It think it’s the first time I’ve cleaned the windows th...