Sunday Blog

It's 11pm here and dark and windy outside. 13 degrees. The fire is on and it could be home, if I shut my eyes.
We drove 45mins down the road to Bannockburn (without Meg, who refused to come home), and had lunch at Jan's cafe. Spook knew her when he was a boy, similar in age to Finn is now, when she worked with his Mum and Dad. She'd seen him briefly in 1999, but was quite emotional to find him there in her new cafe. We had a lovely lunch and had to leave her to work, so went off to look for the gold mines. There was a gold rush here in the 1930's and it's a wild and barren landscape. Finn could imagine Indians and wagons.
Home and met up with Meg. She insisted we all go out on the lake in pedaloes. She and I had a double and Finn and Spook had to tussle with one that was for four people. Spook looked really pissed off at working so hard to make something go so slow........and mostly in circles. Can't think that he'll be repeating that exercise! Don't think it was what he had in mind for New Zealand. We all had wet bottoms.
On our way to the lake, the gardening neighbours careered round the corner in a golf cart. Pat had been putting Keith's new knee through it's paces and she had won the round.   I'm invited over for some more planting after lunch tomorrow.
After tea, Spook and Finn climbed Mount Iron.   It took 26 minutes to get to the top. Not everything in New Zealand is extreme, though it did prove more satisfying than the pedaloes.