I gave myself a break. Took a friend down south to Petone and Wellington. Introduced him to the wonders of the Dutch shop, the South African shop and Davies trading where you can buy all the Asian herbs and spices you can think of. In large quantities. Loaded with licorice, delicious cheeses and way more spices and herbs than I needed we left Petone for Wellington.
Briefly walked into Te Papa (museum of New Zealand) to see the exhibition Nienke was raving about. A very colourful display by
Nike Savvas called Finale: Bouquet.
Beautifully done and very impressive. It's a big hall filled with plastic strips attached to fishing line. Not that environment friendly though ....
Time for lunch in the sun. A nice fish and chips with a IPA at Macs brewery at the Wellington waterfront. Shopping is a very tough task indeed. I can see why some people hate this work.
Being away for a year means you miss out on what's going on in the life of your friends. The only solution is to catch up as quickly as possible. Had a great dinner at Guy and Liesbeth and extensive 'brekkie' in the morning. Enjoyed all the progress on their land and learnt a lot about the finesses of a 'really' good gin tonic. The Rolls Royce of the GT's. At least you won't drink too much of this stuff with that price tag. Even the tonic was secretly smuggled into New Zealand by pirates from Hong Kong I think....
Although we do experience some rain at times (bucketing down at the moment) the sun is peeping from behind the clouds more often than not. The fruit trees and geraniums are colouring the garden beautifully and producing a bit of shade for our young chickens.
Nienke arranged a job for me. Painting a friends house. Worried I might get bored I guess. Got our friend Dick to help me. The painting is not so bad, not a big fan of the sanding though. But with my own music coming from the speakers and the sun shining on this beachfront property, who can complain.
You know that feeling when you do something but it does not work out the way you want it to? That happened during the tennis competition. My ancient rackets had strings in them I put in years ago. Good enough to catch butterflies (I know, blame the racket, not the player 😇). In order to force myself to restring them I took my knife out after losing the last game and cut the strings.
When I opened my box with stuff I need for restringing the rackets I found these orange strings. Looked strikingly similar to the stuff we use in our weed eater. So if I keep losing they get demoted. Anyway, added a few more kg's to the tension (I lost the manual years ago and have absolutely no idea what tension I put on). The rackets survived and lo and behold, we won the next game 5-1. Must have been the combination of the orange strings, orange grips and orange track pants. Needs some new tennis shoes as well, I wonder if they have .....
Not that we needed more firewood, but what do you so when a macrocarpa tree loses another limb. Just took the good stuff and burned the rest. Yes Te Horo, we're back home!!! I did inform the fire department first as the smoke covered the gardens of the newbies (townies) behind us for a while.
And there we were sitting around the fire yesterday. First time this year. Me resting from a day of making mulch for the garden and Nienke enjoying a well deserved break from her new work.
Dutch breakfast on a Sunday morning. Chocolate sprinkles on a 'beschuitje', a toasted sandwich with old Dutch cheese and another one with New Zealand cheese (also known here as modelling clay) to accommodate our boiled eggs.
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