Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

 While it has been a more routine week, there have been a couple of developments. We had always planned for the second bedroom, now known as The Room of Requirement, to be Nicky’s sewing room. Our hope had been that we could also use it as a guest bedroom. Unfortunately its limited size makes achieving these functions a challenge. In addition, since the early days of our living here we discovered what a lovely room it was to sit in. Many years ago when Nicky worked at the Sutton Bonnington campus of Nottingham University, the library had a re-fit. In the process the lovely big 6’x4’ oak tables were being thrown out. Nicky asked if she could have a couple as they would be just great for her to use for quilting and sewing. One weekend we hired a van and collected a couple. We didn’t start using them until we moved into Matata Street in Blockhouse Bay and set one up as our dinning table. After three years of trying to use them in the way we intended in The Room of Requirement and fail...

 The week didn’t start well with England’s defeat in the EURO24 final. Spain were the better team, but football is probably still wandering in the wilderness. Enough said. Almost 18 years ago, when we still lived in England, we bought a dozen tumblers from IKEA. Decorated with two different styles of patterns of dots, they were a good size and shape and had a well weighted base. They were for use at Claire’s 18th birthday celebration and so we viewed them as Claire’s tumblers. By the time we left England I suspect a couple had already succumbed to the force of gravity and landing on the unforgiving terracotta tiled floor of the kitchen (a floor which claimed more crockery and glassware than any other we have lived with). Over the years in Aotearoa their number have slowly diminished. Claire didn’t take them to Dunedin with her, trusting the remaining ones to our loving care. This week, the twelfth one has broken, the result of a saucepan lid toppling over on the draining board. The...

 I don’t think the penalty was justified, but who am I to question the decisions of a football referee. England won and with their semi-final victory still tingling in their feet, they will face Spain tomorrow morning NZ time. We will see if football finally comes home, but even if it does, I don’t expect it will hang around for very long. In other feats of athletic activity, I have ambled everyday this week (don’t snigger). This is the first time for many years that I have had a walk every day. I have been helped by the high pressure system that has been sitting over us for the past 10 days or so. We have been waking to chilly, sometimes foggy, mornings before being bathed in winter sunshine by mid morning. While still chilly outside, the solar gain from our big north-facing windows make it T-shirt weather inside until late afternoon.   Much of the back garden is shaded by the house at this time of year, so weeding and strimming has been primarily an afternoon activity. Nicky...

 It has been quite a week for the English abroad, watching history unfold from a distance. From mid-morning until late afternoon on Friday we watched the BBC’s Election coverage of Labour returning to government after 14 years on the opposition benches. This is a much more palatable time of the day for watching the results come in, and we pottered round the house doing some of the jigsaw and some ironing as the day progressed. It was also very pleasing to see the BBC doing their thing. Much better reporting and presenting than we get here. The other significant event, of course, was the English football team getting through to the semi-finals of EURO 24. I’m still not sure how they managed it, but they did. I was up at 3.50am this morning in order to watch the match live, and then the Netherlands-Turkey game to find out who our opponents would be. After all that I was too jaded for second breakfast so when Nicky went to church I went back to bed for a snooze. It’s tough being a fan...

 Halfway through the year already, and Italy are out of Euro 2024 in the first of the knockout games. I was only a little surprised. The games with an evening kick-off time coincide nicely with my breakfast time. I can have a couple of mugs of tea during the first half, do my exercises at half time, and settle down to the excitement of the second half with my porridge. A grand way to start the day. Nicky brought Sarah home with her for lunch on Monday. Sarah has recently had a knee operation so getting about is challenging for her. Nicky was cleaning at church in the morning with Dale, and I was doing my usual Monday morning duties before laying the table for lunch. We both had a snooze in the afternoon after Nicky had taken Sarah home. We received a delivery of plants for Frances (Mrs. Egg) on Tuesday morning, so Nicky dropped them into her on her way to home group. In the evening we watched Infamous, a film about Truman Capote writing In Cold Blood. It was a bit grim, but Toby Jo...

 Yesterday was our 39th wedding anniversary. We decided to celebrate over two days by taking bus trips round town to see parts of Whanganui that we hadn’t been to before, and from the higher vantage point that a bus provides. This would also enable us to use some different bus routes from our usual ones in our exploration. We started out on Friday morning by getting a bus into the main terminus in town at Trafalgar Square (no monument to Nelson, just a shopping centre). One of Nicky’s regular borrowers at the library got on the bus with a friend a few stops down the road. Both of them had forgotten both their Bee Cards and Gold Cards, but the driver let them on anyway. We had a chat with them before they got off to have a coffee and a walk. We only had a few minutes to wait for the bus that would take us round East Whanganui. Some of the trip was on familiar roads and passed familiar places, and it was good to learn that we could get to them by bus if we needed to. We discovered th...

 We started the week with a spectacular sky, prior to the rain that followed a little later: Nicky went off to church to do the vestry cleaning and then onto the hairdresser. I spent the day just pottering round the house and not feeling great. On Sunday evening I had had some severe pain on the right hand side of my head. It only lasted a few seconds, but the aftermath lasted a couple of days. It felt like either a tooth problem or an ear problem. I already had a dental hygenist appointment for Thursday, and also managed to get to see a GP on Thursday. Neither found anything wrong, but the GP put me on antibiotics as a precaution. Things improved until I pulled a muscle in my neck on Saturday morning! I finished reading a very interesting book called Our Moon on Tuesday. I learnt much about our relationship with the moon and how it has been the cornerstone of calendar development through human history. The samples brought back by the Apollo missions have had a significant impact o...