Christmas Eve

Happy Christmas! Ours got off to a good start yesterday. Most of the day was spent cooking. I made little mince tarts in mini muffin trays. Then I made a pavlova. I had the egg whites in the freezer to use up but the cake was not a success - it burnt on the bottom because my oven is too hot and too small. It either cooks too quickly top or bottom. I performed surgery on it and removed the bottom and we had the good bits in big pieces, topped with cream and strawberries, kiwifruit and banana and it tasted OK.

About 8.30 D and I went up to Franklin Rd to look at the lights. Most of the houses there are all lit up and it is a lovely atmosphere. By the time we got back it was present opening time. A grand affair this year in the sitting room with the Christmas tree lit up and the soft lamplight. Always a bit moving and melancholy. Hope there are many more of them, I thought.

D gave me the usual diary which I love (Nancy Tichbourne flower paintings, and other things I knew about but forgotten he had bought, E showered us with gifts - me, a book, a large cake of grapefruit and fig bath soap, a new special water bottle for the gym, a red leather label for my suitcase. I gave her a chocolate fondue set I had bought in Smith and Caugheys sale and wished I hadnt. Thankfully she was thrilled with it, also a beach towell which she also liked, a diary, and other bits and pieces, all chosen to please which they did.

E had her poloroid camera there and took some vintage style little square photos, D took a couple of ordidnary ones. I didnt have my finery on, so didn't want more.

It is now 9am and time for a nice breakfast of the things we like - in my case, musli and toast with my homemade strawberry jam, and a cup of fresh milky coffee. We will have our meal of the day - ham, salad and potato salad, when Pamela and Markus, and Eli, as her friends call her, come round.
So here's wishing you a very happy day with you and yours too.

Christmas

Happy Christmas from Ponsonby and Downtown Auckland.

Art by Eli

E gave me these paintings she did for my birthday. The first is one of her favourite author, Carson McCullers, the second is of her cat Casimira. Casimira is a gentle cat, a bit timid because she was ill-treated by her owners when only a kitten. She has become less so since E got her a playmate in the form of a cute tabby kitten, Scout. One of them has a penchant for bringing birds, dead or alive into the house.

Sing a New Song

Have been active on the music front with our choir giving three performances over the last couple of weeks. It has been fun going out in to the community singing to people with similar disabilities to our own. The first was to a group for professionals who have had strokes. When we were thanked the organizer of the group said he had been moved to see the big improvement in people in our choir group who had had strokes and whose language had been affected. Now after some months in the choir they not only talk better but sing beautifully too.

The next was to a group of stroke people with aphasia (loss of language). They enjoyed our carol singing and we enjoyed singing to and with them, as they joined in with familiar tunes and some carols.

Have been spurred on by the Young@Heart Chorus whom I went to hear with other members of our choir this week at the Civic . They are a group of older people in their 70s and 80s from North Hampton, Massachussetts, who sing pop and rock music mainly from the 1970s and 80s. They were excellent and had 5 New Zealand people to swell their numbers. They sang a medley of NZ songs too which were among the tunes I recognized - 10 guitars, Poi e, How Bizarre, and something from Flight of the Conchords repertoire.

Then on Saturday we had our own concert in a lovely old church, St Lukes on Remuera Rd, singing all lthe songs we sang during the year and some carols. There were about 60 or 70 people there - friends and relatives, and parishioners of the church. All this has been a new experience for me and quite exciting.

Hobart

Had a lovely time in Hobart, rather a compact city like Wellington. Weather was warm but windy which is better than cold or rainy! Went to museum, art gallery, pier area with historic buildings and fish restaurants where we went to in the evening for some seafood chowder. Indulged in a buffet lunch at the casino where we went with friends on our previous trip in 1993. Got on a bus and went to the botanic gardens and came back from a tiki tour over the bridge and into the burbs. Havent seen anything much to buy not even in Target.

Visited the State Library which had very spacious seating areas and free internet (10 minutes!) and also a lovely museum of decorative arts attached to it.

Launceston Sunday

We are having a nice time with Rae in Launceston. We went to a big market in Launceston , full of bric a brac which was a bit overwhelming for me to find anything to buy and bring back. Our friend's son is into it all in a very big way and I will be putting some photos of his collections on my blog after I get home. Of course he is 30 years younger than me so has years to accumulate even more and prune as he goes . He sells what he can part from on e- bay and does well. Such things as old biscuit tins, green glassware, lampshades you name it all housed in nooks and crannies in this big old villa. Rae of course has always collected beautiful china and was probably instrumental in getting me started in the 70s. Later yesterday we went to a rose show at a National Trust house out in the country, Woolmers Estate. In the evening watched a dvd about the family that owned it up until the 90s when the last reclusive member died. A related family runs a neighbouring estate as a tourist cum farming venture. The roses were beautiful, ditto those in Rae's garden. We helped dead head Rae's roses and other plants and it is very satisfying. Looking forward to getting stuck in at home on our return.

So you see we have been busy and that is just one day.

Launceston

Have had a busy day today and am a bit hot and bothered after wearing my heavyish sports shoes and socks all day. Started off at Cataract Gorge, quite unlike anything in NZ, maybe in Central Otago you would see similar things. Walked along the gorge, then across a weir to another big area with a cafe where we had a big glass of juice or a coffee and a friand or biscuit, then back across a swing bridge ( a little scary if schoolkids are on it at the same time, my friend informed me. Thankfully they were not, they jig up and down!) . Then a look at an old mill which houses a deli with yummy preserved and jammy goodies, fortunately too heavy for me to consider bringing back Will make my own edible goodies in due course. Rae had been baking before we came and has produced such delicacies as afghans, jumbles and iconic fly cemeteries for afternoon tea each afternoon.

Then to the museum where most of it was being renovated or the exhibition changed. There was a big shed with railway exhibits and an interesting film on the river and its part in the life of the city over the decades. In winter it becomes a raging torrent and even has flooded a few times, quite seriously.

Had lunch in City Park, with its beautiful roses and other plantings and some monkeys of all things in a big enclosure. Would have preferred some Australian wildlife but it will have to wait for another trip.

Back home via the supermarket to buy some food for our evening meal which I have volunteered to cook seeing as Rae has prepared these wonderful meals at all other times. Plus some unusual goodies which we don't readily have available in our supermarkets, like fig and wholegrain crackers, other yummy wafer biscuits, some Tasmanian cheese, some Cheesybite (an unusual mix of Vegemite and cheese!!!) which Elisabeth mind find rather curious. All in all a very full day. Home tomorrow.

Birthday Celebration

More heritage happenings

Went on a tour of Karangahape Rd buildings last week, many of which I knew from the outside but hadn't been inside before. Started at the Baptist Tabernacle at the top of Queen St. When it was built it was the largest building in Auckland until the Town Hall was built. Then went on to St Kevin's Arcade, the Mercury Theatre, George Courts, Samoa House, the old Baptist Congregational Church , now Hopetoun Alpha, an events centre and finally the Pitt St Methodist Church.

Earlier in the week we had been out to Panmure on a walking tour which started at the old block house, one of two remaining ones, then took in the Panmure Catholic cemetery where many of the early and later clergy and religious are buried. There is a newer church on the site of the first church which goes back to 1848.
Walked on further to look at the Anglican Selwyn church which was lovely inside, then on to look at the Tamaki river and the bridges over it, from up high and the Panmure lagoon further on.

Flower Power

Kowhai, peach blossom, kaka beak

Heritage Week

We are taking the opportunity to widen our horizons a bit and rediscover Auckland. Unfortunately the weather is rather bleak for doing so as there are many walking tours of the suburbs. Yesterday we went on one to Grafton, much of which has disappeared with the motorway. In fact I flatted there as a student in the early 1960s in a big old villa. The bathroom had a fearsome caliphont and the kitchen was built into the back verandah. I lasted a few months then went back home, before venturing overseas. Anyway we started at the Grafton Cemetery where a lot of the early settlers were buried. Over 1000 graves were removed when they built the motorway in the late 1960s Newton, not a very salubrious area, then or now.

Then over Grafton Bridge which is closed to private vehicles between 7am and 7pm and used only by buses for a quick connector ride from the city to Newmarket. If you think you sneak across in your car you will have somebody with a big candid camera photographing your number plate so you can be sent a $180 fine for doing so. It does seem a bit mean but it does make it a bit more congenial walk over without an excess of car fumes, and it speeds up bus journeys for those who use the busses a lot like me. This is the third bridge on the site - the first was a pedestrian bridge only, then Sir Arthur Myer had the other erected in 1910 at a cost of $140 000which sent the Australian contractors bankrupt as they didnt get paid until the end of the job. Last year the bridge was earthquake-proofed which we are all very pleased about after recent events in Christchurch.

Then on we went to Auckland Hospital with unremarkable architecture. No traces whatsoever of the old buildings some of which I have in memory, However it is good to have a new big hospital within a couple of kms from home should we ever need it.

On to the Domain entrance with its fancy gates - one large with a nude statue of an actual athlete from the 1930s, which caused a huge uproar when it was erected, without figleaf. I must say being so high up therfe is not much to see anyway but we were told they had train trips from Hamilton in the early days for people to some and see for themselves. The second gate post is much smaller and just has a swan on it! Once bitten twice shy.

From there to Outhwaite Park, where the Outhwaite family lived in a very grand house. He was English, she was French and was friend and benefactor of Suzanne Aubert and her work as I read in her letters and biography.

The last section of the tour took us to some of the residential streets tucked away behind busy thoroughfares, not in such a good state of repair as in Ponsonby.

Happy Birthday

to Elisabeth. Had the usual family gathering a trois over a cup of coffee and cake, then departed for the foodhall to save on fuss and bother. She had celebrated with her friends with a party at her place at which there was a special guest appearance of Noise Control at some stage of the night (or morning).

Father's Day Tea Table

Portraits by Elisabeth

Floral Art

Spring has finally sprung into action in our neighbourhood. The tulips are in our front porch , the cherry blossom and manuka blossom on our way up to Three Lamps.